More XCOM shenanigans. The more I played of XCOM 2 on the Switch, the slower, buggier and crashier it got. Not my greatest purchase really. It got to the point where the technical issues were becoming the overwhelming feature of the game.
But I was really enjoying the game itself before/aside from that, so in a flurry of enthusiasm I bought XCOM: Enemy Within in the current Xbox sale. And it's brilliant. I'd only ever played Enemy Unknown (the first one) before so this super-duper upgraded version has all sorts of new stuff in it for me. I'd forgotten the atmosphere of rising panic the game instils in you as you're desperately scraping through missions with teams of rookies, as cities panic and revolt and alien attacks pop up all over the map. It's entirely different to any other SRPG I've played, which are all about minimising losses: XCOM forces you to accept your losses, in the hope they'll enable you to build something that'll give you slightly more survivability next time round. Even my super gene-modified mecha-soldiers aren't helping me, much.
Also: it's a great advert for Microsoft's backward-compatibility efforts. This looks better than any game that's two console generations and nearly a decade old rightly should. It's like the Xbox 360 version but with a locked framerate, no texture pop-in, HDR and near-instantaneous loading times. Barring the old bits of the 360 interface that pop up from time to time, it's honestly like playing a brand new game. Very impressive, and a far better (and cheaper) purchase than that Switch effort that kicked this all off.
Mario 3D World on Switch. Another Wii U / Switch double dip. For some reason I don't really remember this on Wii U; I certainly wouldn't have ranked it highly. But I'm really enjoying it this time around.
A seemingly tiny thing that's made a huge difference is Mario's increased run speed. It means that running with the stick (as opposed to holding down the run button too) now gives you enough momentum for any jump. I've always thought holding a button to run in 2D Mario was a bit daft, especially now that we've got analogue sticks. Hopefully if they make any more 2.5D Mario games, they'll sack off the run button altogether.
Haven't started Bowser's Fury yet, but that looks brilliant too.
Control on PS5. Enjoyed this on PS4, but it really shines with the added oomph of next gen. The combat feels brilliant at 60fps, and destroying whole rooms in the course of a battle is great fun. As soon as I finished the game I launched straight into the DLC, which I almost never do. So it must be doing something right.
Incidentally, the raytracing mode on this is weird. 30fps, of course, but the reflections themselves are maybe half a second behind the rest of the game. It leads to some serious nausea. Now that we've had a few months of next gen, does anyone choose raytracing 30 over 60fps? I'm not sure better reflections are the system seller some people think they are.
I think ray tracing has huge potential, when it's used for global illumination rather than reflections, but I'm not sure this generation of consoles has the power for that. I'd certainly take 60fps over shiny puddles any day of the week.
Not surprised to read that about Switch Xcom 2 - I have it but haven't gotten that far, but I am yet to complete War of the Chosen on Xbox due to the game frequently crashing in the end game.I had planned to finish it this week and start a commander playthru, but going to play that on Vanilla Xcom 2 I think, I also have Chimea squad or whatever it's called on the PC that I only played the first mission off, so might go to that first.
Not surprised to read that about Switch Xcom 2 - I have it but haven't gotten that far, but I am yet to complete War of the Chosen on Xbox due to the game frequently crashing in the end game.I had planned to finish it this week and start a commander playthru, but going to play that on Vanilla Xcom 2 I think, I also have Chimea squad or whatever it's called on the PC that I only played the first mission off, so might go to that first.
Yep. It was doubly frustrating because I checked the reviews for the Switch version before I bought it and they were all praising the performance and saying what a good port it was. I mean it IS Xcom 2 on a portable device and I did get it pretty cheap in a sale but still, it's not a pleasant experience at all.
I am really enjoying Enemy Within at the moment though, it runs so well via backward compatibility and it's such a great game.
With regards to Xcom 2 on the Xbox, what model of Xbox did you play it on? I know it got some X enhancements so I'm hoping those (plus the additional horsepower of the Series X) might make it a little less crashy in the end game.
This is a One S - Had the occasional crash on the others, I never play Ironman as a result of getting really near the end on the original 360 Xcom only to have the save corrupt, but had it crash maybe 15-20 times today, I have found that turning off the Auto Save seems to help, I just couldn't get past the end of month report of an event that happened immediately after it.
In a genre with terrible sidequesting (at least recently) it's nice to see all of Atelier's are really nice quest chains based around using Alchemy to help the community. It's nothing mindblowing but they're easy and both involve and reward Alchemy so it gels with the overall charming feel of the game. The only issue is triggering them seems to involve sleeping for a day to get the next step but the game has great fast travel so it's a 'non issue'.
It's like literally every other PC exploration/survival game with the chop tree-make workbench-make thing-chop other thing gameplay loop. So fucking dull.
Yes, you can tame pigs. Yes it's 3Gb. And yes it's streamlined some of the usual survival game tropes. But holy shit am I bored to fuck of this now. As I am of the PC gaming community's inevitable hype train for whenever the next one is shat out. I've played about an hour of it and I suspect it's going the way of the Steam refund. PlAy It WiTH FrIenDs, nah I'm good.
I'll tell you a solid variation of this type of game we've all got into recently. Deep Rock Galactic. That has crafting/mining and other gaming tropes, but it's actually good. Very good, in fact.
See, I played a bunch of DRG and it's just too slow. Reward progression is at about half the speed it needs to be, or missions are twice as long as they need to be. It could be Destiny brain kicking in and going 'hey, open that engram, I bet there's a gun with a fun perk in there!' at me very hard but grinding 2 missions over the course of 60-70 minutes for maybe a few perk points that might add up to an amount of perk points that you can use to then purchase an extremely incremental upgrade to a passive ability feels bad.
The actual moment to moment of the play of it is nice! I dug it. I liked having a team of 4 people playing one of each of the different roles and getting in, hitting the job hard and then getting out again but it has a few fundamental problems; the environments can just completely fuck you by nature of them being randomly generated (9/10 fossils and that last one is in a tiny bubble cave hidden away), some of the objectives are just straight up bad (that 'find the blue crystals on the ice planet' thing can do one) and the reward progression just doesn't feel good.
The actual play of it is fun! It's just the… everything else around it that grates.
I'm having fun with Valheim. I've built two cool little bases, I have some bees that are making honey in them so I can make mead. I have a few folks that I play with and it feels like there's a wealth of potential here; the setting really, really helps with this. The promise of there being some sort of longboat based shenanigans on the horizon feels like a great carrot to chase.
But it's basically like any other exploration/survival game. Get a group of people together and I'm sure it's vaguely diverting as you're creating something/fighting things together. But then that's true of literally any game ever with the same core loop. ARK is shit, but I've still had some modicum of fun playing it with other people.
DRG is flawed in terms of progression, for sure, but it's an actual game at the core of it. Valdheim is, I don't know, a job? One where the visuals are smeared in Vaseline.
And before people are going like "waaaah cavalcade just being edgy and negative for the sake of it" it bears repeating the strange massive hype cycle in PC gaming for stuff like this is a real ongoing problem. There is literally no reason for RPS/random Youtubers wanking themselves into a frenzy over the game. But its been driven to 2 million plus in sales (from rubes like me too) on the back of these tidal waves of flavour of the month survival exploration game hype that are just nonsense.
I think one of the things that separates Valheim from a lot of other survival type games is that there's a structure to it - go into the woods, fight the bosses, progress that way - where as 7Days and DayZ and Reign of Kings and the like don't really have that so much as they have 'build base and then uh-'
I also think that it's move away from a lot of the drudgery of survival games really helps. There's a hunger meter but it doesn't give you any negatives when it's not filled; it only provides the user with positives. There's no thirst meter, no costs to repair objects, and other players don't have collision so you don't spend ages bumpin' into each other trying to navigate a corridor. It lowers the barrier for entry.
I don't know if it has staying power beyond a few weeks but I am digging it currently.
Talking of survival games… I've gone back to Red Dead 2 off the back of a prolonged replay of Hitman which showed me that for about the last 4 years (i.e. children) I've assumed I just can't get into certain games. Turns out it was just a lack of patience. I was trying to bludgeon my way through games and some are conducive to that approach (Uncharted, Tomb Raiders, that Mad Max game I liked) and some are not (Red Dead, Witcher).
Anyway, brain realigned and started this again and am enjoying it.
I’ve pretty much given up on the Switch now. I’m fed up of rereleases and games that run like shit. It’s not even comfortable to play handheld. I’m probably going to pass on Monster Hunter, and hope for a version on a proper console somewhere further down the line.
If it wasn't for Monster Hunter I don't think I'd be playing my Switch at all this year, what a horrible Direct.
Don't overreact too much, eh Al?
Staying out of this for obvious reasons, but I think folks in general (waves hand at the internet, not specifically here) need to get some perspective. There's a big difference between 'This is awful' and 'This isn't for me'. The latter is fine, because not everything is. Not everyone has a second console. Not everyone has played everything before. Being able to play things somewhere else other than on a TV is a big deal for a lot of people. And so on.
Take Miitopia. It's a good game for folk into that sort of thing, but no-one played it because of when it came out in the 3DS lifespan. You're telling me that with a 40m strong audience of Animal Crossing players just sitting there with Switches, resurrecting it isn't a good idea, even if you're not into it yourself? You're mad.
But I digress. Personally, I'm in for Mario Golf, Fall Guys on Switch (that on a system I can pick up and put down for quick games? Absolutely!), Neon White, Skyward Sword and World's End Club. That'll do.
Apex Legends on Switch remains something I'm morbidly curious about.
It's like literally every other battle royale game with the find-gun grab-armor shoot other thing gameplay loop. So fucking dull.
Yes, you can have a drop leader. Yes it's 30Gb. And yes it's streamlined some of the usual battle royale game tropes. But holy shit am I bored to fuck of this now. As I am of the PC gaming community's inevitable hype train for whenever the next one is shat out. I've played about an hour of it and I suspect it's going the way of the Steam refund. PlAy It WiTH FrIenDs, nah I'm good.
I don't have a Switch but am now tempted because of that Tactics Ogre inspired game, but also hearing the demos a bit meh?
If it was confirmed that Yasumi Matsuno was involved then the back pay I've just got from when I worked for Santander would have gone on buying a Switch Lite. But alas, I don't think he's involved even though it's clearly heavily influenced by him.
Will buy Persona 5 Strikers rather than waiting till my Birthday in June instead.
Also, I'm back on FFIX thanks to someone being very generous and helping me with my Vita issues, so that's four Final Fantasy games on the go at once
Pillars of Eternity - the second one just dropped on GamePass so I thought I'd take a look at the original. It's 100% generic fantasy bobbins, the Dragonlance of videogames, but I quite like it. It's nice to play something that's slow-paced, the plot so far looks like reassuringly unoriginal Chosen One bullshit, and surprisingly it works quite well on console with radial menus and the pause button making it all very playable. It's pure comfort gaming and a bit of an indulgence but it might be a keeper.
Apex Legends on Switch remains something I'm morbidly curious about.
It's like literally every other battle royale game with the find-gun grab-armor shoot other thing gameplay loop. So fucking dull.
Yes, you can have a drop leader. Yes it's 30Gb. And yes it's streamlined some of the usual battle royale game tropes. But holy shit am I bored to fuck of this now. As I am of the PC gaming community's inevitable hype train for whenever the next one is shat out. I've played about an hour of it and I suspect it's going the way of the Steam refund. PlAy It WiTH FrIenDs, nah I'm good.
I mean that would be cleverer if it was like every other Battle Royale game.
As it isn't you've sort of overthought that, tried for a top zinger and ended up wasting an opportunity for humour you could've saved for a better moment. 7/10 :(
I think I'm gonna re-re-restart Tactics Ogre when I finish FFIV, did I ever show you my XIV DRG Tactics Ogre Valkyrie glam?
I can't remember but I think I know which one you mean, if I'm correct it's the Valerian gear (orginally) from Heavensward right? Fucking Dragoons always get the sickest glams, Valerian, Ironworks, HW Artifact Gear, even the Drachen set is kinda' iconic.
I might also re-restart Tactics Ogre while I'm just one foot in the door because I think I made one choice at the start (what nice presentation that bit is tbh). The game itself also didn't look quite as 'sharp' as FFT but…I think it's got it's own style because of it? >_>
I wanna' reccomend FFT to anyone who liked the demo of Project Dodecohedron or whatever it's called (I haven't played it, don't think I will till tomorrow if that, it being from the makers of the insanely disappointing Octopath puts me off and the fact it's not even out this year anyway) but:
1)It's kinda' spicy, at least at first. You may well end up getting eviscerated by Chocobos!
2)It can be grindy…or I just liked to grind a certain amount of job points. For my money it's the best version of the Job System they've done what I've played (feel like FFXI might have something to say about that? FF5 nothing, go away)
A total clone of Crazy Taxi that looks great and the pseudo sequel to WrestleFest are both out next week. I reckon I'll end up getting both soon.
Whut!?
I have a feeling it'll probably end up being not as great. Not sure about the generic music in the trailer and the price is too high (I'd pay £15-20? It's more). But who knows? Could be ace.
Final Fantasy Tactics is a really difficult game, I never got to the end of it.
Tactics Ogre though is a masterpiece, probably the best SRPG I’ve ever played. I loved every second of it, and was still unlocking new characters right at the end. Then there was the option to go back and retry all the other paths you hadn’t taken - there must be hundreds of hours of game in there for those that want it. I’m amazed it never got a remaster and is basically still stuck on the PSP.
Update: I found my Vita charging cable! It… doesn't fit? It's in my Vita charger, it has a Sony logo on it, it's clearly not the right cable though because the plug on it is kind of long and thin whereas the socket on the Vita is much more square in shape. What the actual hell, has my Vita evolved while it's been sat in my drawer? I have no idea what this cable fits and no idea how I ever charged the thing in the first place.
Vita is the same as the PS3 controller cable, isn't it? Although it might be a PS4 cable… I got the newer orange Vita from Japan and I think that's PS4.
Yep, that's the one I need, Mart - it's bizarrely not the one I've actually got though.
Maybe it is an old PSP Go cable, it's definitely a Sony something-or-other. I did have a big sort-out of cables at the end of last year so I must have assumed it was the Vita cable and stuck it in the Vita charger. Doesn't explain where on earth my actual cable has gone but at least now I know what I'm looking for!
Yeah so far being given choices is already super cool, I had a choice to let a Necromancer leave or fight to the death, can only imagine you can choose some sort of pragmatic pathway or more hardcore 'punish evil no matter what' viewpoint and maybe more besides.
There's no set character here, no Ramza who was the very model of a noble who did what was right, here we seem to create a character and thus decide what he will do. I actually really appreciate this distinction from Tactics, ideally they should both exist in the genre and no game makes the other obsolete.
Turn rewind in battle is anti-frustration (something in Fire Emblem too now
fyi) too and apparently they made a change from the original to the PSP that eliminated a lot of job grind…thats a lot of good there overall!
Good times, play this, Tactics, Fire Emblem (all of them) and when you are done Project Rhombus: Bravely perpendicular will be nearly out
Beat Atelier Ryza, super fun and stress free game from it's 'slow' opening hours to it's rather restrained end.
I say restrained because the game DOES build up from a fairly slice of life-ey cute adventure to something that threatens to wipe out everything Ryza holds dear, but it doesn't go 'Full RPG' mode and raise the stakes astronomically high out of nowhere, it's a simple boss for a simple game and I liked that they did that honestly.
I don't think I should jump into it asap but here's hoping I play the sequel sooner rather than later, we know it's never going to go on sale like literally every game in this series hasn't, so it's not like there's a benefit to waiting…
I was halfway through Wev’s post and read that there was a Tactics Ogre style game on the Switch, so I rushed off and have played the Triangle game all weekend. Not enough fighting.
I then dug out my Vita, found the correct cable, charged, and updated the software. I have four games installed- Tactics Ogre , FF Tactics, Disgea 4 and Burly Men at Sea - which dates the last time I turned this thing on.
I can hear my mum now, “ if your friends jumped off a cliff, you’d jump too”
My adventures in digging out an old game because wev and Alastor reminded me of it continue…
I bought a new Vita charging cable for a couple of quid. They sent me four for some reason so if anyone needs a spare, give me a shout. The Vita's now charged and updated, it's only been a couple of years since I used it last but I'd forgotten how much I liked the thing, it's so much more comfortable to hold and use than the Switch it's ridiculous. Best handheld ever made without a doubt.
Getting Tactics Ogre on there was a challenge. It looks like a whole load of PSP games have been removed from sale (and what a tragedy that is) so there's no way to find the game via the Store. I did eventually manage to find it in my download list but quite astonishingly that's an absolutely massive flat list of every item of content I've ever bought on any Sony platform, that's completely unable to be sorted or searched. Even if they restricted it to stuff that could be played on the Vita, that would be a huge help, but no, there I am wading through all the stupid shit that's ever been given away on PS+ across three different platforms.
Found it in the end though! Installed it and wow, it still looks great. Obviously the resolution is a bit low by today's standards but the amount of detail they've packed in there is astonishing. Quite looking forward to dipping into this again now.
Those PSP games though, what a loss. The Sony online store is now PS4/PS5 only - you can download Vita games directly to the Vita and PS3 games directly to the PS3, but a whole load of PSP (and PS1) games got removed a while back and it looks like Tactics Ogre was among them. The stuff that's left on the Store is hardly a Greatest Hits collection (I guess if you want to play Carol Vorderman's Soduku then you're in luck) so unless you've already bought Tactics Ogre - or have an original PSP and a physical copy - then the game is completely unavailable for purchase. Kind of silly really given the file is clearly still on the store for previous purchasers, but who knows how Sony's minds work. The campaign for a full remake starts here.
It's already on. I dunno where the actual charger went, probably in a box in the basement. But since my model takes a PS4 charge cable, I've just plugged it straight into the USB mains. Fun times.
Vita only really came into its own once devs stopped treating it like a mini PS3 and made bespoke games, not shitty ports. I love my Vita.
The Vita was tremendous. Totally worth it for P4G alone, but Tearaway was tremendous, and I adored OlliOlli (even if I never finished it). Shonky Hunter was a lot of fun, too, and I should really give Gravity Rush another go…
I know there's a quote of me saying I'm gonna re-restart Tactics Ogre but I didn't mean just yet. Did you see my currently playing?
I mean yeah, sure, I think I'm at the end of FFVIIR so unless the final chapter is another one like Chapter 14(?) where it takes fucking forever, then I should have that done tonight and I'm ditching Chocobo Hot and Cold on IX because playing it on the PSP version of the game rather than the recent version with the x3 (or is it x4) speed boost is fucking hot garbage so I can maybe get that finished soon too.
But Persona 5 Strikers is out this week too and I've got that coming.
