Video Games

Just played my first few games of cod. I'm shocking. Haven't played fps in ages and just instantly died repeatedly. Can see the fun though.

Not all that taken with it, particularly compared to the last one.

It's overly complicated for what should be a pretty straightforward shooter. You're forced to use the chainsaw to get ammo (which you have a meagre supply of) and health which feels really contrived. Then there's the flame-thrower to get armour and glory kills to replenish the 'blood-punch'. Just too much stuff going on for my taste, although the latter two are at least optional. Arena fights are much more prevalent than 2016's gore nests, almost to the point of annoyance.

Will persevere, but up until now I've only managed upto an hour at a time before losing interest.

I may have to do that, now lockdown is in effect.
Not sure anyone will be getting out to a post office to post any hard copies anytime soon.

Installed Half Life: Alyx only to discover one of my Vive's base stations has bitten the dust. Ordered another from Scan but that won't arrive until Weds, assuming it's not delayed by the lockdown.

Not happy.

Nooo :-(

Looks amazing.

I was in the middle of downloading it when I posted before.

my advice. don't bother.

climbing is glitchy, there's no rhyme or reason to what you can or can't climb, the game will just leap you off cliffs at random while walking/climbing.

the save/respawn mechanism is not just shit it's rage-quit inducingly shit. enemies respawn if you want to recover your health, the save points are infrequent and often miles from any difficult sections so you spend more time reloading and back tracking to get to the point where you died than actually playing and usually you just die in a few seconds while feeding yourself into the meat grinder of how the fuck do you beat this thing.

the last thing that killed you keeps all your xp and some life force and every enemy between you and the point you died respawns. I just spent over an hour fighting through a gauntlet of 14 basic enemies because I could only get 3 health packs and the combat is bollocks. only to finally make it through only to reach a shortcut back to the same save point and a dead end because I wasn't advanced enough to go any further.

then there's the combat. imagine dark souls, but the enemies can attack again mid parry, being hit once usually stun locks you into being hit 3 or 4 times until you die, enemies track you through your dodge and hit you where you stop, there's no fluidity to your actions as each animation pauses for a beat between moves and your cool jedi powers use up your force meter so you can only use them about once per fight.

as someone who isn't a fan of dark souls, this is just a pile of nonsense. what story there is gets ruined because you'll be playing the exact same minion encounters 20 fucking times in a row every time you get to the next checkpoint.

and inb4 git gud messages, it seems universally accepted that in order to 'fix' some of the attack timing issues you have to enable a performance toggle to limit the graphics rendering or else combat is basically unplayable.

watching fighting cowboy play it, and some of what you say did seem to stand out, principally the enemies respawning after you die so you have to constantly cut through them to get back to where you were.
What are you playing on? Console or PC? Would that performance toggle be available on PS4?
I've become partly obsessed with getting it for a decent price, even if it's a shit play. But I do have other games to be getting on with.

I'm stuck on a part of Sekiro because of the same enemy respawning mechanic. There's just so many and any of of them can kill you that I've not got enough health left to deal with the boss at the end.

Yes, the respawn thing is an issue. though I have found rarely a hard fight which was far from a savepoint. Althouh there were some.
I'm playing on second lowest difficulty (2/4) and it's challenging for me, as in: I have to actively calm down and control what I'm doing to get through large fights.

The thing were enemies track you during their unstoppable attack, so you have to dodge at JUST the right moment irks me to no end too, though.

I'm playing on ps4.

the further into it I get the more I hate it. I'm deep into sunk cost fallacy territory now.

Just finished a massive section with an annoying fight with 4 creatures, a few crawlspace loading screens, more creatures, a massive in-game elevator cutscene, a puzzle, an ambush fight and I was on a sliver of health, I walk to the door and a previously unspawned enemy bursts out the ground straight into an unblockable attack and hits me with two normal attacks before my character unfreezes and gg back to the fucking start i go.

i read a review that says the campaign is 12 hours long and was glad I dont have to grind through this shit any longer than that to feel like i got my moneys worth.

oh and one of the biggest causes of death, trying to fucking heal yourself mid-fight. you either move too much and it doesnt work or you freeze long enough they take off more health than you healed.

I bought a switch lite at the weekend, so far I just have Maio Kart.

Has anyone got any games they're not playing they want to shift? Anything Mario or anything else?

I wish I'd not been conditioned after years of PC gaming to go digital only. Forgot about the joys of the second-hand game market, especially when you don't have to worry about scratched discs! Otherwise I would've gladly handed off Odyssey, not 'getting' it unfortunately.

Switch games hold their value. The second hand prices at Game seem to be around the digital price.

I'm also not over joyed by Odyssey. It's good, but...

Yeah I've found the best deals on Nintendo's online store, they sometimes have sales when the game is still near RRP second hand

Good point, though that's also why I'm miffed I bought Odyssey digitally. Could've basically got all my money back by selling it on.

Glad to see I'm not alone in the Odyssey "it's fine" feeling. At first I thought it was just that 3D platformers were good for nothing other than nostalgia, though I recently picked up Sly Cooper series on the Vita. I'd never played them before and I'm finding them much more enjoyable than Odyssey.

Yeah, 'just fine' at my end too.

PS plus April games leaked to be Uncharted 4 (not played a single one so no clue if it's good) and Dirt Rally 2.
Will add them to my digital pile of shame, dirt will probably get played as I have a wheel

Yeah I know I'm not going to grab bargains but I'm old school and like physical media and would rather give money to you guys.. I've heard bad things about Odyssey. I'll keep an eye out for digital sales.

After BOTW, Odyssey has been my favourite and most played game on Switch so far.

I'm sure ACNH will end up eclipsing them all...

Mad Max on sale for £3 or so on Steam, recall it getting relatively decent reviews.

Same here, I've enjoyed Mario almost as much as BOTW.

Actually one of my favourite Mario games.

All the uncharted’s are good. Though some of the set piece gunfights in 4 can be a bit overwhelming.
Still haven’t finished it but it’s on the list.

Totally loved that game and put at least a 100 hours into it. Often just exploring the world and getting into random encounters.

Argos is currently selling Xbox One S (digital only, no disc drive) with 1tb drive for £149.99.

Pretty crazy deal.

Couldn’t choose home delivery and had to choose some random Sainsbury pick up about 2miles from me.

Forza 3 and Sea of Thieves included.

UPDATE: Looks like it’s not available atm.