whatchu playing now

I'm also doing Alan Wake rn, in the middle of episode 4 where there is a set piece that is really something. Then I'm going to finally go back and beat Control. I got stuck on an early boss in that game (possibly the first one?) and got frustrated. I think easy mode is the way to go from here.

Control added some quality of life changes including an option for easier aiming at some point. Trying to nail some of those flying enemies was just a pain in the ass.

They also added the Assist Mode where you can't die.

I think I'm up to episode 4 of Alan Wake as well. Also, pretty certain I played the AWE DLC in Control, but I can't remember! The more I sit with it, the more I feel Control is one of those rare games I might one day play a second time.

I take it back, I just finished episode 3. This game is pretty wild, but one ongoing annoyance is that since it (so far) takes away all your ammo and equipment between episodes, it doesn't matter if I use up all my ammo and equipment, and yet, since I never know when the end of the episode is arriving, I'm always afraid to use everything in my arsenal.

Star Ocean: The Second Story R

I had no concept of the series until this came out. Remake of the apparently classic PS1 era JRPG done in the new HD-2D house style. Though sorta switched up. Backgrounds are 3D, characters are sprites.

Regardless it looks beautiful and is quite a pleasant thing to sink into. Combat is live, not turn based. Not a particularly sophisticated system, but fun and splashy. A whole host of non-combat skills and specialties like cooking, crafting, smithing to play with.

Really easy to boss the system if you look up guides, but that’s kinda made the game more fun in some ways. And the quality of life updates (haven’t played the original, but I’ve played old JRPG’s) make this a smooth ride.

Pretty tight! If you’re looking for some vintage JRPG stuff that feels good in 2023, I recommend.

as you progress in it please keep us updated to how you rate it! i've been meaning to play star ocean 2 for ages, heard it's "one of the greats" but i never got to it... wanna see if you have that experience with it as you play thru the R version. i might follow suit, or i might just play the orig, haven't decided

i got control back around when it came out but i got stuck on the first boss. but since i saw on this thread that they eventually added assist mode, i restarted the game. glad they finally added an easy mode for shitty gamers like me, i was enjoying the game before but just couldn't aim well enough to deal with intense combat without getting killed.

i played star ocean 2 around 2000 and didn't really like it? it was pretty boring and grindy, and i hated the blue hair style of anime. i didn't know about the gamebreaking stuff. people playing it should look up how to get the secret characters. there's like 3 characters you can get by refusing to join up with other characters.

Ha, think I may have just hit that aforementioned set-piece in episode 4 of Alan Wake. A taste of kickass things to come in "Control"!

btw, reportedly Alan Wake 2 did not break the top 150 in PS or Xbox sales for October. Maybe not releasing a physical version was a poor plan, especially right before the holidays. Can't exactly ask for Alan Wake 2 under the Hanukkah tree.

started on The Case of the Golden Idol. Its' a lot better than it looks.

I'll try Alan Wake 2 after I finally finish picking my way through the Resident Evil 4 dlc (I've only been playing 1/2 hour at a time, and put it down for awhile).

Taking forever for a lot of the games I want to drop down in price, even on sale. I did finally pick up a used copy of Dead Space remake for $20, that's my usual trigger price, but seeing shit like RE4, or God of War:Ragnarok, or Lies of P, or Lords of the Fallen, or Plague Tale Requiem, or Last of Us Part 1 on sale for $40+, I just can't do it. Most of those are not that old, tbf, but still.

Oh hey Alien: Isolation is ten bucks

started on The Case of the Golden Idol. Its' a lot better than it looks.

Believe it or not the DLC improves the presentation which was kind of jarring when I played it, but yeah, great detective game (which I actually prefer to Obra Dinn but I have bad taste).

ha interesting, think I'll definitely getting the dlc at some point.

I started Idol but I didn't really vibe with the puzzle system as much as Obra Dinn's. I may dig back into it though

I think I agree with Lee, although Obra looks and sounds amazing, I think I prefer the puzzle mechanic in Idol. I mean it's nothing mega fantastic, just more my vibe.

Red Dead 1 (PS4) and God of War: Ragnarok (PS5) dropped down to $30 at a few places, and that price point (with some store credit) finally proved enticing to me. I can now complete the backlog cat fort I've been working on.

Nice - I just finished "God of War: Ragnarok" last week, and it was a blast. The graphic details are absolutely insane. I actually started back in January, played for 30 hours (and wasn't even at the halfway point by then), then took a hiatus because it was a bit of a slog. Then I completely started over a few weeks ago using the "Give Me Grace" difficulty setting (where combat is not as hard). I realized a few things about my playing style, adjusted accordingly, and then had a LOT more fun the second time around: 1) I skipped almost all of the side quests, which mostly weren't interesting to me, and focused on the main story, and 2) I forced myself to mix up combat techniques to keep things interesting (and there are a LOT of options for combat techniques).

It was also more fun once I just accepted it as being the absurd mythology mishmash that it is, with an even more absurd mix of accents (Mimir = Scottish, Atreus = Californian surfer, Brok = backwoods southern, Freya = Nancy from accounting, etc.)

Red Dead 1 (PS4)

If you can get the version that comes with Undead Nightmare, that's probably the best DLC that Rockstar has done, I think.

Yeah, it's included.

yep, it's a goodun

Another one I've been waiting for, the second Plague Tale, is on sale at a few places, including GameStop, which also has a promo where if you pick it up in the store you get another $5 off. But - and this seems highly unlikely - the GameStop site claims there are no new or used copies within 100 miles of where I live. Hmm.

I just played through Golden Idol (but not its DLC) and I liked it more than Obra Dinn. I think the main thing I liked was that there were none of the audio sequences where you can't do anything. You can play Golden Idol at any speed you want, whereas Obra Dinn forces you to play slowly.

Just finished Alan Wake Remastered. What a blast, especially when it leans away from horror and leans instead into the weird and surreal, which is sort of the same deal as "Control." Honestly, just like that one I kind of tuned out of the story about halfway through, but I still enjoyed the beats and twists of its/their gibberish as well as the rhythm of combat, once it got more comfortable.

Oh, wait, I guess there's DLC? So I have a little more to go, lol.

I played the first DLC, but bailed on the 2nd one. They're pretty short, but I was itching to start AW2 already.

The AW DLCs are worth playing; they lean *much* harder into the surrealism. They're also a lot harder than the base game. I almost gave up on one of them, but I'm glad I didn't.

I picked Control back up last night, and I'm about where I left off originally, I think. IDK why but it's feeling much easier this time around (and I haven't even tweaked any of the accessibility settings).

I suspect that's a hallmark of good design, though there's a chicken/egg element to it: do games get easier because you get used to the controls/combat/whatever, or are the games designed/paced to ensure you get used to the controls/combat/whatever by a certain point? I'd be curious, with something like, say, Dark Souls ... obviously it never clicks with some people, for many reasons, for those that start out struggling but eventually "git gud," I wonder if a lot of people "git gud" around the same point in the game? Are infamous "skill check" bosses and stages inserted based on game testing, where/when the designers think the player should finally have a good feel for things? I know a lot of people complained about the first boss of "Armored Core" being among the toughest, which iirc turned a lot of people off until they tweaked the difficulty.

Finished Alan Wake's special episode 1, started he second, which has a really awesome rotating building maze set piece.

Picked up a Series S on a good Black Friday deal and it comes bundled with three months of Game Pass Ultimate for free - I like metroidvanias, rouglites and platformers so if there's any recommendations for Game Pass stuff that fits the bill I'd love to hear about it!

similarly just got the fat PS5 on a BF clearance deal, the price was too good to pass up -_-
what's the cheapest way to play games? should I just get PS Extra for a month and play the backlog on that?
can you still get cheap PS credit or are those days long gone?

you could play thru a lot of good games on PS Plus before you needed to buy anything else. the down side i guess is that some of those games are only on there for a limited time

oh do they rotate out often? does the first party stuff stay permanently?

i don't know which are first party developers tbh. most stuff is there for a good long time, i see Returnal for example has been on there for over a year now. but some of the triple A stuff seems to last for a few months at most

ok thx. guess I'll just do that first.
now trying to login to the PS website for the first time in a couple of years, still a pain to navigate

lol when you manage to get logged on you can always just browse thru the library yourself and see if you think it's worth it

my sub has lapsed at the moment cos i'm skint but tbh i was mainly in it for playing all the old Atelier games on the Classics list

it's also good for new but short indies like Lake which i'd've felt kinda robbed by if i'd actually paid full price

Did you (xposting) get one with a drive, or a digital model? The cheapest way is to find used discs. In fact, the cheapest method is to find used PS4 games that have a free upgrade to PS5. Like, Cyberpunk (I paid $10) or Miles Morales (less than $20). A few good ones have modest fees for upgrading, like Ghost of Tsushima or Control. Even digital, I think there are always some good sales. Like, the complete Witcher 3 is $15 right now, that includes the PS5 version.

I never had PS Plus or whatever, and they recently raised their prices, but if I had had it from the start there were a lot of good games cycling in and out of there. Of course, you have to keep paying to play them, so that I assume adds up.

yes got a fatty with the hard drive. that PS4 upgrade tip is good, will definitely look into that.

oops meant disc drive, they all come with a hard drive

still thinking of going xbox for this gen since i like forza horizon and dont like any of sony's first party offerings. xbox + switch used to not cover all jrpgs but i think it finally does now

finally managed to log in to the PS website, my old password didn't work but sending out a password reset email was a bit too hard for them apparently
apparently I last played my PS4 in Dec 2020, but bought some cheap JPRGs after that in sales and never booted them up. Crystar anybody?!?!

even the cheap tier of PS+ gives you some generic crap to play every month but i'm basically still in for multiplayer access. sometimes you get lucky and they put good old stuff in, probably even better if you haven't played anything new in 3 years

Yeah it me

the sales are very frequent, recommend using dekudeals to keep track though the PS store wishlist system is actually not bad - Sony sends you notifications when something is on sale

still enjoying control with all the assist mode features on but i wish it was more trippy puzzles and a lot less going into a room and blasting away at 30 bad guys who all look exactly the same and like every bad guy you've blasted in every other room

saw that cocoon is on sale (a little bit - down from $25 to $20) so i'll probably pick that up

Good reminder for Cocoon, the reviews have been excellent!

A few good ones have modest fees for upgrading, like ... Control.

Do you mean the Ultimate Edition? Because I got the regular version on PS4 not long after it came out, and when Ultimate and PS5 were announced, I distinctly remembered an outcry that the regular version couldn't be upgraded to a PS5.