LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Dec 17, 2021 13:36:48 GMT -5
The x3 speed mode in FF7 Classic on Switch has maybe made it a little too easy to grind. Or in other words, I'm about to go to the Temple of the Ancients, and I already have Omnislash.
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LazBro
Prolific Poster
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Post by LazBro on Dec 17, 2021 14:27:55 GMT -5
The x3 speed mode in FF7 Classic on Switch has maybe made it a little too easy to grind. Or in other words, I'm about to go to the Temple of the Ancients, and I already have Omnislash. Of course the downside of this limit break system is that by over leveling and choosing to equip Omnislash, I will now hardly ever use Omnislash, because I don't take enough damage to charge it. I know it's broken but I kinda wish 7 had an equivalent to 8's Aura spell. |
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Post by liebkartoffel on Dec 21, 2021 16:41:05 GMT -5
Man, Tales of Arise's late-game JRPG Gauntlet of Talking is brutal.
[MACHINE DEMIGOD SPENDS 5 MINUTES SHARING BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS LATE-GAME REVELATION]
SPIKY HAIRED PROTAGONIST: "You don't mean, [spends two minutes restating blindingly obvious late-game revelation]?"
MACHINE DEMIGOD: "Yes. It is now upon you to decide how to proceed. Please, take an hour or two to discuss the matter amongst yourselves.”
[GAME PROCEEDS TO SPLIT YOUR PARTY UP AND FORCES YOU TO HAVE THE SAME DAMN CONVERSATION FIVE SEPARATE TIMES WITH EACH PARTY MEMBER RE: BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS LATE-GAME REVELATION]
SPIKY HAIRED PROTAGONIST: "All right, Machine Demigod, we've talked it over, and it looks like we have no choice but to...Attack and Dethrone God!"
[PARTY ARRIVES AT GOD]
SPIKY HAIRED PROTAGONIST: "I know the plan is to Attack and dethrone God, but given everything we've learned since blindingly obvious revelation, I better check in with my fellow party mem--"
ME: JESUS CHRIST GAME JUST LET ME HIT THINGS AGAIN.
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Dec 22, 2021 8:51:03 GMT -5
Aeris died last night. My kids were not traumatized, though my daughter was very mad at Sephiroth.
With a few exceptions, I pretty much always have x3 speed going. Fights go way faster, text boxes populate so much faster, it feels like we get so much more done.
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Post by liebkartoffel on Dec 26, 2021 9:02:15 GMT -5
My unexpected Christmas present to myself was finally completing a run of Slay the Spire. I managed to stumble upon a synergy that allowed me to spend energy and draw cards nearly indefinitely. It was glorious.
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Crash Test Dumbass
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ffc what now
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Post by Crash Test Dumbass on Dec 26, 2021 17:30:27 GMT -5
I picked up Finals Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 on sale for the Switch. I've beaten 7 and 8 on the PSX, but I've never played 9 at all.
I also picked up some games from the Steam sale that are probably just going to linger in my backlog.
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Dec 28, 2021 11:07:17 GMT -5
The x3 speed mode in FF7 Classic on Switch has maybe made it a little too easy to grind. Or in other words, I'm about to go to the Temple of the Ancients, and I already have Omnislash. Our run isn't stagnating exactly, but it is becoming more restless. Even in x3, sessions with LONG cut scenes are frustrating to get through. The long stretch in the Northern Crater, which immediately followed by a talky bit in Junon before the execution, had my kids bouncing off the walls. I'm not looking forward to the post-Mideel lifestream cut scene at all. It also doesn't help that we've reached the point in the game where, if my daughter asks what's going on, I don't feel 100% about my answer. (*shudders at eventually explaining time compression in FF8*) |
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Dec 28, 2021 11:08:41 GMT -5
I picked up Finals Fantasy 7, 8, and 9 on sale for the Switch. I've beaten 7 and 8 on the PSX, but I've never played 9 at all. I also picked up some games from the Steam sale that are probably just going to linger in my backlog. You're in for such a treat with 9. It's not my personal favorite (6), but it's the next one that if someone says it's the best, I can't argue with the position. It's really great. |
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Post by Tifa Gooners In Shambles on Jan 3, 2022 12:36:34 GMT -5
how could this have happened
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ABz Bore🎄naz
Grandfathered In 
This country is about to be a shitshow again... if it even survives.
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Post by ABz Bore🎄naz on Jan 3, 2022 15:35:37 GMT -5
I bought No Man's Sky and Horizon Zero Dawn on Steam today since both were 50% off.
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Post by liebkartoffel on Jan 3, 2022 19:11:45 GMT -5
I really feel like playing FF6 again and I'm annoyed it's unavailable on either of my main consoles. I do own an SNES Mini but I'm too lazy to dig it out.
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Jan 4, 2022 7:52:52 GMT -5
I really feel like playing FF6 again and I'm annoyed it's unavailable on either of my main consoles. I do own an SNES Mini but I'm too lazy to dig it out. Right? I too am annoyed that I can get FF 7-12, including X-2, but nothing from earlier. And of course the Pixel Remasters are exclusive to Steam and mobile, which is dumb, because they'd make perfect Switch games. |
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Jan 4, 2022 8:11:54 GMT -5
Speaking of Final Fantasy...
We finished up Final Fantasy VII classic last night. With the assistance of grinding at x3 speed, I'd gotten so massively overpowered that we more or less walked through the final dungeon. I think the whole thing took all of 30 minutes. Over the years, I've started FF7 several more times than I've beaten it, petering out usually in the late game. I tend to do that with Final Fantasies: progress to the final dungeon, or nearly so, and then quit before tackling it. So it had been a long, long time since I'd actually seen FF7's final dungeon. Oh man, it's so lame. So boring. And (thankfully?) short, I guess.
In the final free encounter with true Sephiroth, I had counter materia equipped, which Sephiroth triggered when he took the first shot. So instead of beating the game with a triumphant Omnislash, I downed him with a plain counter hit. Blah.
I had originally planned to defeat the Emerald and Ruby weapons, but I decided that even at x3 it wasn't worth grinding out what was needed to do it. I've taken the effort to defeat each of them exactly once in my life, and that's probably enough.
My daughter loved it and immediately wanted to know when we'd be playing the next one. It didn't hold my son's interest, but he liked the boss fights, and it has inspired how he plays his own games. Over the last few weeks he's been telling me, "Daddy, I'm doing a boss fight!" and then he'll stand in place and kind of bob around, the way characters do in turn-based RPGs waiting for their turn. Then he'll attack; then return to his spot and start bobbing around again. It's the cutest thing you ever saw.
Going to take a break again, then maybe try to find something shorter to play before diving into FF8. I'm not sure how many sessions it was - I think actually it was less than Paper Mario: Origami King - but it was 36 calendar days from start to finish, and that starts to drag after awhile.
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Post by sarapen on Jan 4, 2022 11:24:08 GMT -5
Tekken 7 (DLC fighters and all) was on sale so I got it. I think I've been playing Xiaoyu for like 20 years now so my muscle memory of her moves are mostly still there. I really hate that Akuma is a major character since he's just slumming from Street Fighter.
I didn't think it was possible, but the plot of the story mode has gotten worse than previous games. The hell is even going on?
Anyway I may get PS+ for a few months just to play other people online. The changes to the fight record to allay people disconnecting mid-fight to protect their precious win-loss ratio looks good to me - rage-quitters get names marked in yellow, losses aren't available on the fight card now. I was always annoyed when I was kicking someone's ass and they'd quit just before the final hit. I'm only a mediocre player but I always accepted the loss, sometimes I even congratulated the other player. To do otherwise would be to dishonour myself as a video game martial artist.
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ABz Bore🎄naz
Grandfathered In
This country is about to be a shitshow again... if it even survives.
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Post by ABz Bore🎄naz on Jan 4, 2022 11:37:39 GMT -5
Started No Man's Sky last night to check it out. Immediately aborted my first run within 5-10 minutes as I was frustrated with learning how to navigate while trying to find plants to fuel my hazard protection.
Second run started basically the same on a different planet, but with the tiny bit of experience from my first run I managed to stabilize my suit and keep an eye on it. Explored around the first planet enough to repair my ship and take it to a different planet, and am now exploring around there.
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Post by Tifa Gooners In Shambles on Jan 4, 2022 21:19:36 GMT -5
giant bomb will be dead within the year
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LazBro
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Post by LazBro on Jan 7, 2022 10:11:37 GMT -5
Ended up waiting not at all, and we started FF8 last night. Had to be like, "Okay, now this game's systems are really weird, and as a result of their weirdness our first couple sessions are going to be a bit boring. But with a little bit of luck, the first 2 hours of this game will give us everything we need to waltz through the rest of it."
I'm not going to try to keep my level crazy low or anything, even though it's easier that way, because that means running from or otherwise avoiding encounters. Fine to do if you've played the game before, but what's the fun in that for first timers? One of the cool things about JPRGs is seeing all the cool monsters.
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Post by liebkartoffel on Jan 7, 2022 11:24:50 GMT -5
I still have the final boss rush to complete on Tales of Arise, last month I picked up AC: Valhalla for cheap, and C got me Guardians of the Galaxy for Christmas (with the assumption that we would play it together--i.e., she'd be in the room while I played). And yet...I'm still sorely tempted to pick up Ghost of Tsushima while it's on sale.
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ABz Bore🎄naz
Grandfathered In
This country is about to be a shitshow again... if it even survives.
Posts: 1,999
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Post by ABz Bore🎄naz on Jan 7, 2022 11:26:45 GMT -5
Started No Man's Sky last night to check it out. Immediately aborted my first run within 5-10 minutes as I was frustrated with learning how to navigate while trying to find plants to fuel my hazard protection. Second run started basically the same on a different planet, but with the tiny bit of experience from my first run I managed to stabilize my suit and keep an eye on it. Explored around the first planet enough to repair my ship and take it to a different planet, and am now exploring around there. Definitely getting into this game now. Created a tiny wooden base with a teleporter, visited a Space Station for the first time, and found some giant ship ruins with buried cargo containers, only one of which I was able to dig up as the rest are inside closed rooms in the wreckage that I am unable to open yet. I really need to figure out how to synthesize better fuel. My base generator for my lights and the teleporter pad runs for about two minutes on carbon/oxygen fuels. |
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Post by nowimnothing on Jan 7, 2022 16:24:30 GMT -5
Finished Obduction last night, after picking it up for free on the Epic store a couple of months ago. Pretty much what you would expect from the Myst studio. There were a few puzzles that I had to refer to a walkthrough (who has time to work out an alien math that uses base 4?) but mostly it was organic going from one to the next. The puzzles are not as slick as Portal but it is nice to play something contemplative where there is no penalty for taking your time and working through different solutions. I especially liked the gauntlet puzzle toward the end (use three different overlapping teleporters to change the terrain in order to move on the next section.)
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Crash Test Dumbass
AV Clubber
ffc what now
Posts: 7,058
Gender (additional): mostly snacks
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Post by Crash Test Dumbass on Jan 9, 2022 19:22:14 GMT -5
GDQ time again!
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Post by Nudeviking on Jan 9, 2022 23:50:34 GMT -5
My kid got some triple pack of Lego Marvel games for Christmas that she and I have been playing through by which I mean she runs around as Hulk or drives around the open world part of the game in a tank smashing shit up while I unlock deep cut Marvel characters. Occasionally we will actually do a story mode level. The fact that we've got three of them means that this is probably all we'll play in 2022 unless I somehow end up scoring a PS5.
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ABz Bore🎄naz
Grandfathered In
This country is about to be a shitshow again... if it even survives.
Posts: 1,999
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Post by ABz Bore🎄naz on Jan 10, 2022 0:06:33 GMT -5
Started No Man's Sky last night to check it out. Immediately aborted my first run within 5-10 minutes as I was frustrated with learning how to navigate while trying to find plants to fuel my hazard protection. Second run started basically the same on a different planet, but with the tiny bit of experience from my first run I managed to stabilize my suit and keep an eye on it. Explored around the first planet enough to repair my ship and take it to a different planet, and am now exploring around there. Definitely getting into this game now. Created a tiny wooden base with a teleporter, visited a Space Station for the first time, and found some giant ship ruins with buried cargo containers, only one of which I was able to dig up as the rest are inside closed rooms in the wreckage that I am unable to open yet. I really need to figure out how to synthesize better fuel. My base generator for my lights and the teleporter pad runs for about two minutes on carbon/oxygen fuels. I found a NORMAL planet for a change with grass and trees and derpy little penguin/hedgehog guys running around. I built a second base - more of just a couple of stone platforms for now - and a solar panel and a battery. These will work much better to power the base right now than a generator that I need to find fuel for. One annoying thing though, actually two connected annoying things - I picked a mission from a space station, and it told me to warp to a nearby system and scan five unique minerals on a planet. Annoying Thing 1: This planet is hostile and has regular superheated rainstorms, so I can't go exploring without either staying in my ship or digging tunnels. Annoying Thing 2: This planet has VIRTUALLY NO SCANNABLE MINERALS ON IT. I've found three unique ones, but after flying around a half-dozen times to new spots, it's all plants or exploration items. |
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Post by Murray the Demonic Skull on Jan 10, 2022 5:02:06 GMT -5
New job since mid November and 90% WFH because of COVID means much more time to play video games !
I finally finished AC Valhalla's main story after...80 hours ? And I still have one territory to conquer. This game is well made but really ended up feeling like a slog for me and like all AC games though the world is really well made the main story is...eeeeh. I can't bring myself to care for those ancient gods plotlines or whatever.
A couple month ago I picked up Tony Hawk's pro skater 1&2 and I really enjoyed it. It has an old school feeling with a well set difficulty level (hard enough that I felt like I achieved something once I managed to land those hard combos or when I picked up that very last stat point). Perfect palate cleanser from bigger games and nice to play for 15 minutes between meetings chores.
I picked up the Director's cut upgrade for Ghost of Tsushima. I still have a ps4 pro but I wanted that extra content. I really enjoy that game. It doesn't feel bloated and I like the overall vibe. The sword combat is excellent and since I love playing dress up in video games (and the whole lone ronin aesthetic) some quality armors and options. I'm going to pace myself to try not to burn out on it like I did on AC Valhalla because these games are terrible for my OCD (I HAVE to clear all those icons on the map).
I also picked up Disco Elysium Director's cut on PC. I've only played a couple of hours but it looks very promising and I appreciate the game roasting me for my boring normie choices in dialogue (I almost immediately got the "Rigorous self-critique"* and the "Regular Law Official"** thought because I always try to play nice in RPG and to be fair it also reflects me pretty well IRL. The writing is top notch.
*You're one sorry piece of shit. A cop penitent, a flagellant cop-monk. This is not the right line of work for you. You should be grovelling at the feet of a feudal lord, providing lurid evidence against yourself at a Mazovian show trial, or ripping the flesh from your back with a cat-of-nine-tails. Whatever made you this way -- you can be damn sure it was *your* own fault. Do it. *Really* criticize yourself. Who knows? You might uncover something of importance from your guilt-ridden past!
**Okay, so it looks like you've got a bit of the Normal in you. A touch of the Regular. Four grams of Johnny Normalcop. Who would've thunk it? You, the extremest of all the cops! You said some pretty boring things back there and now you have two choices: you can either leave it behind and forget about it, or you can try to utilize your normalcy. Internalize it. Get a touch of vanilla back into the herring-flavoured egg and liquorice ice cream of your mind.
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Post by Murray the Demonic Skull on Jan 10, 2022 7:50:11 GMT -5
Definitely getting into this game now. Created a tiny wooden base with a teleporter, visited a Space Station for the first time, and found some giant ship ruins with buried cargo containers, only one of which I was able to dig up as the rest are inside closed rooms in the wreckage that I am unable to open yet. I really need to figure out how to synthesize better fuel. My base generator for my lights and the teleporter pad runs for about two minutes on carbon/oxygen fuels. I found a NORMAL planet for a change with grass and trees and derpy little penguin/hedgehog guys running around. I built a second base - more of just a couple of stone platforms for now - and a solar panel and a battery. These will work much better to power the base right now than a generator that I need to find fuel for. One annoying thing though, actually two connected annoying things - I picked a mission from a space station, and it told me to warp to a nearby system and scan five unique minerals on a planet. Annoying Thing 1: This planet is hostile and has regular superheated rainstorms, so I can't go exploring without either staying in my ship or digging tunnels. Annoying Thing 2: This planet has VIRTUALLY NO SCANNABLE MINERALS ON IT. I've found three unique ones, but after flying around a half-dozen times to new spots, it's all plants or exploration items. It's been a while since I played NMS but don't hesitate to just not do that mission if it's too much of a hassle or to just wait until you're on another planet. You can pick these up very easily at every space station.
Last time I booted up NMS it had updated to include the power functions and as a result my whole base was basically useless because you didn't need power before. I had forgotten pretty much all the crafting stuff and good trading routes so I promptly gave up. It's a great game though I sunk a lot of hours in it.
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Post by sarapen on Jan 10, 2022 16:02:32 GMT -5
New job since mid November and 90% WFH because of COVID means much more time to play video games !
I finally finished AC Valhalla's main story after...80 hours ? And I still have one territory to conquer. This game is well made but really ended up feeling like a slog for me and like all AC games though the world is really well made the main story is...eeeeh. I can't bring myself to care for those ancient gods plotlines or whatever.
A couple month ago I picked up Tony Hawk's pro skater 1&2 and I really enjoyed it. It has an old school feeling with a well set difficulty level (hard enough that I felt like I achieved something once I managed to land those hard combos or when I picked up that very last stat point). Perfect palate cleanser from bigger games and nice to play for 15 minutes between meetings chores.
I picked up the Director's cut upgrade for Ghost of Tsushima. I still have a ps4 pro but I wanted that extra content. I really enjoy that game. It doesn't feel bloated and I like the overall vibe. The sword combat is excellent and since I love playing dress up in video games (and the whole lone ronin aesthetic) some quality armors and options. I'm going to pace myself to try not to burn out on it like I did on AC Valhalla because these games are terrible for my OCD (I HAVE to clear all those icons on the map).
I also picked up Disco Elysium Director's cut on PC. I've only played a couple of hours but it looks very promising and I appreciate the game roasting me for my boring normie choices in dialogue (I almost immediately got the "Rigorous self-critique"* and the "Regular Law Official"** thought because I always try to play nice in RPG and to be fair it also reflects me pretty well IRL. The writing is top notch.
*You're one sorry piece of shit. A cop penitent, a flagellant cop-monk. This is not the right line of work for you. You should be grovelling at the feet of a feudal lord, providing lurid evidence against yourself at a Mazovian show trial, or ripping the flesh from your back with a cat-of-nine-tails. Whatever made you this way -- you can be damn sure it was *your* own fault. Do it. *Really* criticize yourself. Who knows? You might uncover something of importance from your guilt-ridden past!
**Okay, so it looks like you've got a bit of the Normal in you. A touch of the Regular. Four grams of Johnny Normalcop. Who would've thunk it? You, the extremest of all the cops! You said some pretty boring things back there and now you have two choices: you can either leave it behind and forget about it, or you can try to utilize your normalcy. Internalize it. Get a touch of vanilla back into the herring-flavoured egg and liquorice ice cream of your mind.
See, I'm getting bored of Tsushima, even though it's basically samurai Red Dead Redemption, which I played the hell out of. I think it's because RDR had more varied activities - poker, kidnapping nuns, horseshoes, etc. All I'm doing in Tsushima is killing Mongols and writing haikus, it gets samey after a while. But the initial honeymoon period was great. Maybe I should stick to missions and not obsess over revealing the entire map. |
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Post by liebkartoffel on Jan 11, 2022 0:31:41 GMT -5
C and I both worked from home, and we just had AGDQ on in the background, so I managed to catch all 3(!) live world records today.
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Post by Lurky McLurk on Jan 11, 2022 7:50:19 GMT -5
Saints Row IV
TIFers with long memories may remember that I played Saints Row: The Third in April last year and, well, liked it enough to replay it a few months later as a bit of a break from Skyrim, but didn't love it. Its deeply puerile charms weren't lost on me, but the lack of any sort of compelling story, characters or challenge meant that each time I completed the game - around the 20 hour mark - I was happy to be done with it.
SR4 though... you know how it's a fine line (such a fine line) between stupid and clever? This game toes it absolutely beautifully. It's just so, so much fun. It's obviously not the first game to give you superpowers and let you loose on an open-world sandbox, but The Simulation setting distances you so much from anything approaching reality that the game's a joyful, consequence-free funzone of smashing things up and making them go boom.
Whereas SR3's sense of humour is a bit teenage edgelord, here it's replaced with gamey meta-references - which really works for me. I loved the Metal Gear Solid parody and Streets of Rage imitation, but also the "real world" missions being a spot-on pastiche of Mass Effect 2, right down to the colour scheme and bombastic soundtrack (just, y'know, with more nudity and vomiting). And of course the Mass Effect "Romance" options ("Hey Kinzie, wanna fuck?" "Let's go." *punches Playa*).
It's also well-written, in a way that SR3 wasn't particularly. Things like set up and call-back jokes ("Puckish Rogue!") but also for some characters it even does something approaching character development, like the rather sweet reconciliation between the SR2 and SR3 Shaundi's, and Kinzie being the one who's willing to stand up to Playa and call them out on their shit.
Only things I have to hold against it are that I find it difficult to listen to comedy dialogue and do comparatively challenging fights at the same time, and there's no point parodying They Live with a fight between Keith David and Roddy Piper that's less absurd than the original. Oh yeah and the DLCs become available too early in the game, so that when I played them they referenced stuff that hadn't happened yet.
Anyway, other highlights for me:
The singalong to Paula Abdul's Opposites Attract.
"It's the other default Playa from Saints Row 2" "Why's there two of them?" "Must be the Co-Op"
Emperor Zinyak and Jane Valderamma's scene from Romeo and Juliet, with Jane Valderamma reading Juliet's lines in TV anchor cadences.
Zinyak's annoyance at Playa not recognising an obvious Edgar Allen Poe homage ("It's a raven!")
Future Shaudi (y'know, to go with Past and Present Shaundi) in How the Saints Save Christmas.
And most especially, Playa's hilariously unsexy strip club dance.
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ABz Bore🎄naz
Grandfathered In
This country is about to be a shitshow again... if it even survives.
Posts: 1,999
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Post by ABz Bore🎄naz on Jan 11, 2022 11:00:13 GMT -5
No Man's Sky - Found my first Anomaly station, literally RIGHT BEHIND a regular station, haha! Nice to know that I can warp to the station and fly out to the Anomaly in about two minutes when I need to buy more upgrades.
Working on building a medium-sized stone base on my paradise world. Got my first AtlasPass V1 - I was very happy to look those up and realize they're an unlimited-use crafted key...I was worried they were going to be some sort of DLC purchase or loot crate BS like I've seen in other games.
I'm pleasantly surprised at how many Gek Knowledge Stones are on this planet too. I go out to track one down, and have another 5-6 within range, some like 20m from each other! Also figured out how to call my ship to me so I don't have to run 1000m back to it after exploring.
Found my second crashed/abandoned ship. (Part of the Artemis quest apparently, which led to the Anomaly station.) I repaired the drive and considered trying to repair the entire ship, but it looked like WAY too much work, so I scrapped it for ~675,000 units worth of junk. I'm hoping to someday get a nice cargo ship as I plan to mostly do mining and building stuff.
Incidentally, the first crashed ship I found, it appeared that I couldn't do anything with. I could enter it, but EVERYTHING was completely broken including the drive, so I couldn't even claim it and take it to a station to scrap?
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LazBro
Prolific Poster
Posts: 10,297
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Post by LazBro on Jan 11, 2022 11:01:43 GMT -5
Saints Row IVTIFers with long memories may remember that I played Saints Row: The Third in April last year and, well, liked it enough to replay it a few months later as a bit of a break from Skyrim, but didn't love it. Its deeply puerile charms weren't lost on me, but the lack of any sort of compelling story, characters or challenge meant that each time I completed the game - around the 20 hour mark - I was happy to be done with it. SR4 though... you know how it's a fine line (such a fine line) between stupid and clever? This game toes it absolutely beautifully. It's just so, so much fun. It's obviously not the first game to give you superpowers and let you loose on an open-world sandbox, but The Simulation setting distances you so much from anything approaching reality that the game's a joyful, consequence-free funzone of smashing things up and making them go boom. Whereas SR3's sense of humour is a bit teenage edgelord, here it's replaced with gamey meta-references - which really works for me. I loved the Metal Gear Solid parody and Streets of Rage imitation, but also the "real world" missions being a spot-on pastiche of Mass Effect 2, right down to the colour scheme and bombastic soundtrack (just, y'know, with more nudity and vomiting). And of course the Mass Effect "Romance" options ("Hey Kinzie, wanna fuck?" "Let's go." *punches Playa*). It's also well-written, in a way that SR3 wasn't particularly. Things like set up and call-back jokes ("Puckish Rogue!") but also for some characters it even does something approaching character development, like the rather sweet reconciliation between the SR2 and SR3 Shaundi's, and Kinzie being the one who's willing to stand up to Playa and call them out on their shit. Only things I have to hold against it are that I find it difficult to listen to comedy dialogue and do comparatively challenging fights at the same time, and there's no point parodying They Live with a fight between Keith David and Roddy Piper that's less absurd than the original. Oh yeah and the DLCs become available too early in the game, so that when I played them they referenced stuff that hadn't happened yet. Anyway, other highlights for me: The singalong to Paula Abdul's Opposites Attract. "It's the other default Playa from Saints Row 2" "Why's there two of them?" "Must be the Co-Op" Emperor Zinyak and Jane Valderamma's scene from Romeo and Juliet, with Jane Valderamma reading Juliet's lines in TV anchor cadences. Zinyak's annoyance at Playa not recognising an obvious Edgar Allen Poe homage ("It's a raven!") Future Shaudi (y'know, to go with Past and Present Shaundi) in How the Saints Save Christmas. And most especially, Playa's hilariously unsexy strip club dance. My opinion of Saint's Row IV is that I very, very rarely finish open world games, and I've beaten SR4 three times. |
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