Video Games

Finally arrived just before 8. Its very quiet compared to the PS4

Have we had Vampire Survivors yet? Such a stressful, but joyful experience.

Honestly I think my favourite things about this gen of consoles is the loading time and the lack of a jet engine built in.

loading times FTW.
I played the PS5 version of Skyrim, previous generation loads would allow me to put the controller down, have a cheese sandwich, make an old fashioned, smoke a cigarette and still read the blurb on screen.
PS5 will load before you could recognise the picture was a hagraven.

I've been playing Total War on my increasingly obsolete PC and the load times are killing me.

That's a game worthy of a reboot

there's loads of them now, I've been playing Total War: Warhammer 3 most recently

So you're not playing Shogun, or medieval TW? Shogun was revolutionary to my gaming life.

Didn't keep up obv

Disc or online copy?

Spotted today on my way to run an errand. If only they spent that money on the gameplay instead....

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If you still haven't given it a go, please do. It's 4 months later for me and I still think about Part II. I see it as more of a masterpiece than before even.
Listened to a 5h video essay on the game the other day at work and I still get emotional over the game. Can't get tired of it. Still watch playthroughs and cut scenes on youtube every now and then

If you still haven't given it a go, please do.

Will do for sure, was waiting for some of the performance issues to be sorted on the PC port and a bit of free time to get stuck in 👌 (need a week of rainy weather or something for a good excuse to hide inside)

Nintendo Switch for sale:

The good:
Console is in perfect condition with screen protector applied since day one so mint display. Both Joy-Cons have brand have new joysticks installed, so no stick drift (left one installed yesterday, the right one has seen a little bit of use). Comes with TV dock, power adapter, HDMI cable, box, Joy-Con lanyard adapters, Joy-Con controler, carrying cases with space for accessories/games.

The bad:
Right Joy-Con slides out from the console without pressing “RELEASE” button. You still have to use a bit of power to slide it off, so no accidental disconnections.

Collection around London Hoxton area or can post at cost.

£170

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Won't go into more detail to not do a spoilers, but I was quite disappointed with the ending of ToTK, both from a gameplay and story perspective. I'm not hugely surprised but it is a bit of a shame.

I don't think I'm going to get that far. Got as far as unlocking the fifth sage, went off and played other games, discover I have zero urge to go back. Feel as if I'm unlikely to be surprised by anything.

I recently picked it up again from my self-imposed exile after 10 days (and 50 hours...). Realised I was only around 2 hours away from the end of the main story.

Haven't finished it as I decided to hunt around for some improved gear & food before the final battle as it seems pretty tricky!

Going to try to finish it off some evening this week. To be honest I've found the story as a whole to be average throughout.

I'm still holding out for a Master Mode DLC though, it'll be nice to have a fresh playthrough too. Still nice to wander around getting distracted by sidequests though!

I felt the same tbh, I only came back to finish it cause I knew if I left it longer I just wouldn't do it. I picked up dark souls 3 in the steam sale and that's really what I want to be playing.

Be interested to hear what you think!

I think a bit of my disappointment is that I actually really quite liked the story. One of the first things I did was go and get all of the dragon tears cause I was interested. But hey, 100ish hours of enjoyable game and like 1hr of disappointment is still damn good going!

Yeah it was not exactly a memorable ending.

I did the same thing with the dragon tears from the get-go.

Tried the final boss once (the first part was pretty easy to finish in a very passive manner!), figured I needed to spend a bit of time stocking up on weapons, upgraded outfits, food etc. Went completely overboard and beat it with relative ease on the second attempt.

To be fair I found with BotW also that I had more fun just wandering around after completing the main quest!

Will probably start another playthrough soon and take things at a bit more of a relaxed pace though

I loved BotW all the way up until I was nearly done with the open world stuff but had zero desire to do the final fight. it was great but the fun definitely wore itself out. sold my switch to Amey with zero regrets having bought it just to play it..

I was saying to a friend that in a game like ToTK it's difficult, cause the core of the game is exploration and discovery, and some puzzle solving, combat is kind of secondary (and in my opinion not very good, it's just way too easy), but you can't really create a climax to a game with exploration and discovery, so it uses combat, and it's just disappointing.

The only specific prep I did for the final fight was make sure I had a decent amount of gloom heart loss restoring items, and I found it just disappointingly easy. I am a really big fan of games without difficulty settings cause I think it allows the developers to dictate the experience they want a bit more, but I kind of wish this game had one.

Maybe if there is a 3rd game in this sort of BoTW series I'll just wait for master mode to release before I play it. I got the DLC for the first game but I already had 100+ hours in it so I got bored quite quickly. I just don't feel like these kind of games have that much replayability when you already know where most stuff is.

I'll just wait for master mode to release before I play it.

But you'd still have to run through on regular mode to unlock it. Also, I recall BotW's master mode only making a very few things difficult but a lot of things tedious.

The first game I played while taking a (probably permanent) break from TotK was Horizon: Zero Dawn (on PC - haven't had a Playstation in the house since a burglar relieved me of my PS3). That does have difficulty levels, but also offers much more meaningful variety in how you can choose to do things. Of course, now I'm drumming my fingers waiting for them to release Forbidden West on PC.

Wasn't Master Mode available from the get go assuming you'd bought the DLC?

Though I'm just thinking and one of the things I disliked about TotK was the ability to over-rely on sages to take care of the larger battles. In Master Mode in BotW, I found it tricky enough with 4-5+ enemies simultaneously as they start healing before you had an opportunity to hit them again.

I'm not massively keen on the sages as a mechanic in general to be fair. I can never be bothered specifically activating and deactivating them as needed so I end up running around trying to find the one I actually want to activate or having Tulin inadvertently blow a bunch of collectibles away.

Still very much enjoy it to be fair, but with so much going on it's a tricky one to balance.

combat is kind of secondary (and in my opinion not very good, it's just way too easy)

I think this is my main criticism, once you've got a few sages it just becomes a bit too passive. I'm sure the game does the same tracking of stats that BotW does so it will increase the power of the enemies over time. So I imagine it's designed with the sages in mind, so switching them off will likely not do too much to fix that.

Yeah, I have played sections without the sages and apart from when there's a massive amount of enemies, I don't really think they make a huge difference.

I think the worst thing about the game is being able to pause and heal. It just makes everything arbitrary. Your health in combat is effectively "how many times can I fuck up". Once you are not getting one shot by anything, you can just have so many health items, that you can use with no penalty, that you will eventually just win.

Your attacks also just do too much hitstun. It's too easy to quickly combo, knockback, back up, face someone else.

I'm being overly critical here. I enjoyed it a lot, but I feel like it was just shy of being truly great and I think that's a shame.