A PS4 Thread: Because You Had to Play "Knack"

I agree with josh, arkham city was bullshit i thought

100% agree. asylum good others bad.

Similarly annoying: I started Arkham City on hard, and was surprised to immediately be in the guise of Catwoman. And then I kept getting my ass kicked over and over and over again, and thought, boy, this is much harder. So I quit the game and started again on normal, only to discover as best I can tell, I am *supposed* to get my ass kicked and maybe didn't necessarily need to start over again on normal.

While I admit that it's odd that the Catwoman DLC (which you probably can't get the game without these days) puts you into a fight immediately, before the intro/tutorial stuff that you get later, you are absolutely supposed to win that fight against generic goons, unless you've managed to unlock New Game+ right off the bat? In fact, you can't proceed without beating them.

It was totally what the game began with. No tutorial, no reminder of skills or abilities, just Catwoman in a fight with goons that ends with the goons knocking her out, suspending her over a vat of acid and Batman having to rescue her from Two Face iirc. I assumed you always ultimately get knocked out and suspended over a vat of acid to introduce Batman to rescue you. I have the Return to Arkham edition, maybe that changed things? Maybe it comes with all DLC and extra stuff integrated? Anyway, that's one of the reasons I struggled with the harder difficulty setting, because I was suddenly playing as Catwoman, didn't know any of her powers, and never got a reminder of what buttons do what. It was odd. Fwiw since then it's made me play as Catwoman one other time so far, fighting Poison Ivy for some reason.

ydnrc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xO83H3wAGP0

No, that's how I remember it. you start right in as Catwoman, and then no matter how you do, you get captured.

Anyway. Lotta running/flapping around in this game.

About 8hrs into Ni No Kuni and much as it's a sweet-looking, beautiful game which I will probably continue with, I must say I have a few complaints:

- fucking annoying battle system. Just so fiddly and unfair. Real time, but menu-based, so if an enemy is about to attack you, you have to click over to the 'defend' option really quickly and it's not always easy. similarly, if you select 'attack', your character will just hit the enemy over and over again for a set amount of time. it doesn't work. either make it turn based or a proper battle, but not this shit. now I've just got my first companion, it's even more confusing and hard to use.
- if this is a remaster, it's a shame that huge chunks of the dialogue weren't voice acted. especially since a lot of conversations you have go on way longer than they need to. I find myself just clucking through the written dialogue a lot of the time because it's boring and tells me stuff I already know, which shouldn't happen with an RPG- I want to savour the story!
- for these reasons it's massively inconsistent. the game presents itself as being aimed at youngsters and spoon-feeds you basic information and stuff you already know, but couples this with a needlessly complex battle and menu system that makes even the most Adult RPGs look straightforward

if this is a remaster, it's a shame that huge chunks of the dialogue weren't voice acted.

TBF I think this is just a thing for JRPGs in general. I've gotten used to it, but I can see how it can be off-putting to others.

partial voice acting is pretty common in JRPGs because they have a lot of text and don't have a huge budget. and then on top of that it also depends on which publisher is localizing it and how much they're willing to spend on the english dub, sometimes you end up with even less. or more in some rare cases.

Vampyr is free with PS+ this month. It looks like a terrible Dishonored.

Should I bother?

xp it must be cos I'm used to things like Witcher 3, Death stranding etc

I'm on the JRPG side... most of these games have SO MUCH text that you get bored waiting for dialogue to finish, and the dialogue pacing in most video games still feels incredibly unnatural (voice acting recorded in separate booths asynchronously, probably). I'd rather just read it most of the time

i’d rather just button-mash through most of the text dialogue tbh like i did in persona 5

plus, the voice acting is often really bad - i also prefer to read

oh yeah i always mash through when i've read the line rather than let the voice acting line play out even in games where i like the voice acting

maybe this is why my playtimes are always 5-10 hours less than everyone else's

my Divinity Original Sin 2 game is taking foooooorever, not only because i'm in a 4-player co-op, but also because they like to let the spoken lines play out in full. takes like 20 minutes to talk to everyone

I think Ni No Kuni's the only JRPG I've played where I wanted more voice acting rather than less. But even then I really just wanted more from the little welsh guy.

Agree on it being weirdly non-kid friendly for a game that's so appealing to kids. Years since I played it but my lad at that point was fascinated by it, while being nowhere near ready to play it himself.

i will also give vampyr a shot

or i would if their store wasn't down

I couldn't get past the gameplay in Ni No Kuni. It was stressin' me out

i never played ni no kuni 1 but i think they must have overcorrected with 2 because that had really basic hack & slash combat that got boring by the halfway point

it's frustrating because nnk almost, Almost scratches my Chrono Trigger itch

Forgot I didn't finish Arkham City so played a bit more yesterday. It's just such a step down from the first one with so much boring bullshit, like pulling yourself along on a raft with your Batpuller, or cracking those "codes" with your Batcracker, or facing those padded/armored baddies whose weak point is ... being punched a lot. Or after establishing the guys with guns as a major threat in the first one, now having guys carrying or running off to get guns all the time but just standing around while you punch other people. The snipers are pretty lethal, but so far they don't seem to be a real threat. The graphics are kind of grosser, too. Oh, and the writing ... it's so stiff and bad. I just found some doctor who tried to hit me with a pipe or something, and she apologizes. "Oh, Batman, I could have killed you!" And he responds with something like "Not likely. If someone takes a swing at me with a pipe, they don't get a chance to apologize." Come on, Batman, if you're going to offer comebacks, maybe hit some open mic nights first and test them out.

(Heh. "Batman: Open Mic Knight.")

Anyway, it's not *bad*-bad. It's fun enough. It just feels super padded to no real end.

OK, Arkham City is essentially done (I think I have a bit more Catwoman to play first?). This game is definitely dumber and less good than its predecessor, but it has a nice fight at the end. As usual, I had no idea what the story was. Some bad guy's evil plan to do something? Sounds about right.

Anyway, I have Ori to play, but I think that will be my reward for finishing Bloodborne, which feels like what I want to play next.

i've been playing way too much Control lately, so much so that I'm sure I dreamt about it all night last night, and also the other day in the pub I had a moment where I thought "Don't hit the triangle button and accidentally boost into a table and kill your mate"

lol

fuck! did the ashtray maze last night... mindblowing. just a shame it only takes about 5 minutes or something. i'm on the cusp of completing the game now.

i'll go back to control at some point, it didn't connect after an hour.

I think the AWE DLC for Control lets you replay the Ashtray Maze, though I haven't tried it myself yet. I really enjoyed the DLC, incidentally, moreso than the Foundation.

wha! that inspires me to crack it open some more. after I'm done with Fire Emblem, someday

yeah i played it for an hour and thought 'huh, it's a shooter and the game physics are weird', but coming back to it, it's a real Lynchian/Kubrickian white-collar phantasm with loads of twists and turns. it rivals only Death Stranding in terms of uncanny strangeness

okay, thanks for that. i'll give it another try sooner or later.

OK, *now* I'm done Arkham City. It really shows how much side content and other BS there must be if the Batman main story plus the Catwoman DLC main story adds up to ... 13% completion? Can that be right? Anyway, if it is right that means should I ever feel the need to beat anyone up as Batman (or Catwoman, who has more ... personality) I can just dive right back in to spamming the square button.

I was going to pick up Miles Morales on launch day for PS4 but worried about stock PS4 performance from the little i've heard... any takes out there that would assuage my fears?

Oh screw it. Had a reward certificate to burn from Avengers, so I pulled the trigger. At least it'll be forward-compatible

i feel pretty certain you won’t regret it

they remembered to put spider-man in this one

Ugh when I saw that video of the animation I was so close to pulling the trigger but I need to stop buying $90 CAD video games long enough to replace/upgrade my desperately wheezing desktop pc. I think this year's count and plick will include a lot of things I regret not playing/voting for

PS+ 12-month sub for $28 is really hard to beat:
https://kinjadeals.theinventory.com/just-in-time-for-ps5-bag-a-whole-year-of-playstation-p-1844203423

I'm always kind of leery of those mysterious key sites

same

I've used mysterious key sites for ps+ deals several times and it's been fine.

I had issues attempting to buy my son 12 months of xbone game pass where I was sent 4 lots of 3 months which it turned out were all introductory offers meaning he could only use one of them. I then spent hours of effort fighting for my money back.

Picked up Red Dead Redemption 2 for $20, which seemed like a good deal. I think I'm more or less down to two (maybe three) remaining titles that I want for the PS4, Last of Us 2 and Ghosts of Tsushima, but I've got so much left to play that I bet those titles will be down to $20 or less as well by the time I'm ready for them.

Got so many half-finished games. I did complete Control but got a bit stuck on the DLCs. There's one boss who destroys me within minutes on the AWE DLC and I can't do anything about it. Plus the whole game has an eerieness that I can only endure with that much intensity for a while.

I'm loving God Of War currently. Was a bit put off by how restrictive it felt compared to other open world games: It's a bit linear, or at least to start with, plus you can't jump or climb unless you're in certain places (after playing Control, this feels very strange). But it opens out as it goes along, and actually plays these perceived limitations to its strengths. Plus it's a beautiful game, the acting is INCREDIBLE and I really like the fact I have companions who speak to me all the way through so far, which makes it a far less lonely experience than some games.

I had a blast with God of War. I probably posted my reaction earlier, but I honestly don't need a game or system to look or play better than that, and yeah, good writing and voice acting goes on a long way.

If that's the main boss in AWE, did you get the new service weapon form? I saw a video where it went down in short order with that form after I spent many tries using other methods. Also, Shield has gotten a buff so it's a viable ability now (if you were like me and previously ignored it).

God of War isn't really an open world game IMO. Handsome, but I never connected with it.

It's the very last fight with Hartman. I have the surge weapon

But it involves putting these lights into sockets but as soon as i go in the dark (which is impossible not to) he just appears and decks me.

Are you staying in the lit areas to recharge your energy? Because you can basically dodge your way through the dark and avoid getting hit by the boss and with enough energy left to put the energy boxes back in. Also, right before you drop down to the boss area, you can call in a ranger for backup, which I didn't notice and which ended being a huge help as Hartman will focus his attention on that poor sucker.