Give me liberty or give me Lee!
Been playing Fallout 4 for the past few weeks. After some serious deliberating, I sided with the Institute. My first instinct was to just cap Shaun in the back of the head and leave, which I actually did do but then I died in the Commonwealth before I could save (survival mode hard knock life). When I went back to do it again, I ended up agreeing to do the initial synth retrieval mission. And then I kept going, all the way. I massacred the Railroad, and felt awful for doing it. I destroyed the Brotherhood of Steel, and watched on in horror as the sky lit up and Prydwen crashed to the ground. Piper laid into me for my decision, but I told her that she wouldn’t understand. My character loved her son, and she did everything she did to have something resembling a relationship with him before his death.
My character is now doing their best to make up for the atrocities by trying work with the Minutemen to build strong, lively settlements. But underneath every good action, she will never escape the horrors of what she did. She corrupted her soul and became the face of evil out of love for her son.
For some fun headcanon, in my mind Paladin Danse survived the battle at Boston International. I saw him through VATS in a virtabird fighting at Liberty Prime, and when I downed his ship it fell into the water. I imagine him initially sinking into the river due to the weight of his power armour, but then freeing himself of it and swimming to the shore opposite the airport just in time to see the destruction. Whether he chose to rejoin the Brotherhood’s diminished ranks after that, or if he simply wanders the wastes a broken man without a home or a family, I see him surviving. It’s a nicer thought than him just blowing up on impact.
Found this cat living by itself on a bridge. There was a note in the trailer hinting that the owner drunkenly fell to his death one night, and a corpse on the level below confirms it. Poor cat lost its human. I would live there myself, but there’s not a full bed.
Damn you, environmental storytelling!
Elden Ring 1.5.
It’s massive, content rich, layered like an onion. After 12 Hours in, The Shadow Realm and its secrets within is daunting since we’re unassure if we’re even 10% done with it.
It’s not an expansion. It’s a whole game.
On chapter 5 of Yakuza 0. Enjoying it but think I am beginning to hit Yakuza fatigue now. Still, the '80s atmosphere is really cool, and the story so far is really good.
Sniper Elite 5 is proving to be fun so far. Me and @TheChicken have had a lot of fun and chaos in the invasion mode, where one person can invade another player’s game and try to kill them. I managed to blow up Chicken with a land mine which was great.
Helldivers 2 is definetly a lot of fun, a cool game to jump into occasionally.
Well luckily you only have one game left before the game radically changes its battle system to something completely different.
RE8VR (Yeah I’m really gonna try and play through this whole game blind in VR.)
Okay so I got to a point where Lady D is roaming around the Main Hall area when I have to find the remaining puzzle pieces.
It’s freaky and cool, but…
I’m sneaking around, waiting for her to move away before I can cross a room and round a corner, when all of a sudden
“RAAHH!!”
One of her bug-teleporting daughters shows up (and starts chasing me too) with a scream, and UGH THAT TERRIFIED ME.
YOU CAN’T JUST DO THAT RANDOMLY.
I thought I just had to avoid Big Lady and not her daughters too! (Who so far apart from clearly scripted cutscene introductions I’ve only had them appear when I get stuck in a room and have to defeat them like a miniboss.
Fly swatter goes “SLAP!”
can’t wait for you to tell us what you think of House Beneviento in VR.
just picked up ultrawings 2 for psvr2. it’s mad fun but the motion sickness is real in this game. only played for 20 minutes or so. hopefully i can work up a resistance, it’s the only game causing me actual trouble thus far.
Finished the Lady D boss battle tonight! Man, that was one wild and super cool setpiece! Felt like a rollercoaster at times!
You’ve got this MASSIVE chimera looking thing that Lady D is sticking out of, (obviously the big weak spot lol)
And there were various small towers she has you trapped on, where you have to either avoid her landing and crawling towards her while getting some shots off, or trying to shoot her from afar as she’s flying around.
Gosh, and the cutscenes! Grabbing you as you get this awesome view of the Castle, then smashing you into walls, oof.
Or at the end, taking you down with her as a tower crumbles to the ground in free-fall. That was cool!
God I’m gonna miss her. So charismatic. So tall. S-so, uh… myes.
Also hey oh whoopee, look at my flip skills!
Oh that´s neat, but no physical appearance I presume? It feels a bit belated though… They should´ve mentioned/showed them in Y4 or Y6 which still featured scenes in the orphanage.
You underestimate them.
Oh yeah, despite the shortcomings, I still love it as well, just like the rest of the series. But man, is it a conflicted affection
See that´s the thing, I´m actually kinda looking forward to replaying it someday, because I will already know the story and won´t feel “pressured” to play through it to find out what happens. I´ll be able to take it easy and adjust myself to the game´s pace better.
YUMEEEEEE!!! God, Akiyama, what did they do to you…
Well, Y0 and IW are still multi-character games, even if there´s only two of them. Unless we get lucky and get a Dead Souls port/remake some day.
Spoiler: It doesn´t
I love Majima, but man was his entire arc/role in this game forced (same goes for Akiyama really). People yap about him (and Saejima) not having enough space in Y6, but if they did, there wouldn´t be any plot to speak off in the first place or they would feel just as forced. Yeah, the Florist would probably do what he always does, i.e. being the sort of deus ex source of info which the characters could not obtain otherwise. I´m just sad that he got dropped without a single word or reference despite his major role in the first 5 games
At least RGG were open about it. The chapter is literally called The Plot
That´s the thing - there are so many of these characters they´ve introduced and who would be worthy of caring about, but they never bring them back (though IW has apparently tried to be an exception - can´t judge yet how successful though).
I liked it gameplay-wise, but not story-wise (as in its justification). The whole “I´m gonna disappear just so everyone else can live in peace (spoiler: Y6 foreshadowing) because Haruka apparently suddenly wants to be an idol and exposing my yakuza past endangers that” justification fails because: a) it was really more Park´s doing and dream (no matter how motherly they tried to make her during the whole shopping/arcade bit), and b) his entire sacrifice throughout the game (and everything associated with it) goes to shit in the end when Haruka has a change of heart (well, more like a moment of clarity then change of heart). Not to mention the blowback this all has into Y6.
I didn´t expect the character to turn out to be Kurosawa, so that was neat, but he was an obvious villain from the get-go. But man, was his plan the most overconvoluted thing ever. Aizawa was actually very fun in terms of the fight with him, and an unexpected final boss, but his revelation was probably the biggest WTF I´ve experienced in the series so far. I was like “Wait, seriously? This guy??”
Baba-chan was indeed rather boring (and a predictable traitor), and his role leads me to the other unnecessary thing in the game, that being Shinada´s whole segment. It´s great on its own and would be a neat spin-off title, but I feel like it contributed nothing to the main plot. And having Baba as his final boss topped it off, since Baba had at that point already decided not to shoot Haruka, so there was zero reason to fight him.
Watase and Katsuya were genuinely great. I´d really love to see Katsuya again, but sadly he joined the one-off team. At least Watase makes a return in some of the future games.
I am interested in neither, but I find the setting and premise appealing
So I’ve started playing Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus, whose PS2 emulation was just rereleased a few weeks ago on PS5. I’m loving so much about it, from the aesthetics, story and the stylized cutscenes to the smooth gameplay, character design and animations. Who knew being a raccoon robber could be so fun?
For an emulation, it does look really good graphically, better than some of the other PS2 emulations I’ve played like Bully and Psychonauts. I think that’s because of the new emulator they’re using which also has a few extra features like save states and CRT filters. Something that surprised me is that there’s a rewind feature, usually you only see them on emulations of earlier console generations but I guess the PS5 can handle it.
It seems like Sony are wanting to get more legacy PS2 games added to the Playstation Store, and I’d just like to point out it’d be amazing if IO would release Hitman 2 and Hitman Contracts on it!
currently rn is Battlefield and this awesome ww1 fps called isonzo…
Some open-ended exploration in RE8 has been fun.
Just backtracking to old areas to unlock items and special treasures is neat. (Plus, the game is throwing more/new enemies in these revisited areas so that’s spooky)
I’m sad there’s no item box in this game it seems.
I guess the point is to sell anything you don’t need/have room for, and keep buying the better and better weapons, but still… I want ALL the guns not pick and choose!!
Also damn, the OLED screen on the PSVR2 really makes the visuals and lighting stand out.
I took some screenshots of the game, and whenever I look at them on a regular screen later, they just look muted or bland or the lighting is off.
The OLED screens definitely have great contrast between light/dark areas that really add to the overall lighting and colour pallette of a scene.
Also DAMN, this one creepy old lady you keep meeting is SUPER well detailed. She’s also freaky as hell, because all her cutscenes have her get right up against my fice yikes ok thanks lady.
I’ll post a picture of her in the pictures thread later (though it might not do it justice)
Oh yeah, and the VR version has a completely seperate progress tracker that doesn’t link up with the Normal version, and unfortunately doesn’t support trophies. So I guess that’ll be my motivation to replay the game again some day, probably in that Third-Person mode they released which is an interesting change for Ethan Winters.
RE8VR: Just got to House Beneviento. The place with the living doll with a terrifying face. But also she’s not here, which is freaky.
(I was wondering if the game would let me choose the order to enter the next 3 houses for the main objective in the Ceremony site, but unfortunately it’s a step-by-step thing… ah well.)
Anyway, House B. This place is weirdly small. There are a bunch of creepy dolls on the road entering it. It is also eerily quiet. No monsters, no footsteps, just a bit of creaking, but that’s it.
I keep thinking I’ll turn a corner and see a doll scurry across the floor or on the ceiling, but nope.
Just pure never-ending anticipation that there’ll be a scary payoff to whatever this is. And I DREAD the time when the game decides to do that!
Entered a room where the lights immediately turned off and then on, and now I’ve got to solve a puzzle.
I did the first bit, found a locker I can enter and probably “hide” in which is terrifying to think about, aaaand that’s about all I can take for now! NOPE.
I feel like I’m gonna have to ask my dad to sit in the same room with me for this one sequence. I looked it up, and this is universally noted to be the most scary part of RE8. It is infamous for whatever it scares people with. So that’s great to think about. Yikes.
Oh yeah and I replaced the default head strap pads with custom ones that fit way better, are cooler, and can slip less (with extra head strap so I don’t need to squeeze my head to keep it on.)
Just finished Superliminal. A craaazy puzzle game based on the idea of using Perspective to solve puzzles.
Grab an object, hold it up to the ceiling or a wall far away, drop it, now it’s huge when you walk up to it.
Or inversely, hold it up up close to something, and suddenly it becomes a whole lot smaller.
The game also uses perspective in fun ways to traverse the environment, especially in later levels as things get more abstract and twisty.
Needing to feel around in the dark, finding a silhouette that tells you which way to go. Or, having items you think are real actually become perspective paintings on a wall.
The game is framed around some sci-fi dream therapy, as to how and why all these really weird nonsensical portals and objects and weird puzzle solving can take place.
I got some heavy Stanley Parable vibes since the game has a distinct office-type theme, and there are various intercom voice overs from a text-to-speech bot about certain brain dream procedures never working correctly, or recordings of a “doctor” treating you in a little humorous fashion.
It’s a fairly short, really good puzzle game IMO. The final ‘white’ section really broke my brain in some ways with how creative and interesting some of the puzzle solutions were.
And the game has a nice heart-warming congratulatory ending – so long as you don’t use any guides for these puzzles.