What Are You Playing?

Griffith said:
Right, it begs the question: what was PS3's killer exclusive? Was it Demon's Souls, a game even most Dark Souls fans didn't play? :guts:

The problem with the PS3's exclusives (or PS3 games that didn't go to PC) is that a lot of them have since been ported to the PS4 and PC. I mean, I enjoyed the likes of The Last of Us, Catherine, Valkyria Chronicles, Trine 1 and 2, but you don't need a PS3 for them anymore. Well, you still do for Catherine, but that's getting an enhanced PS4 remaster later this year.

The only games I can think of that are still exclusive to PS3 are inFamous 1 and 2. I liked them just fine too, but in an industry that's absolutely flooded with open world games, I don't know if they'd really stand out anymore.

Griffith said:
And that's just how MGS4 felt to series veterans! :troll:

Can't argue with that! :iva:
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Walter said:
That's Sony's fault :femto:

Yeah... and I have no idea why Sony isn't squeezing value out of that property. There must be some licensing crap because it makes no sense that an already localized version isn't available on PSN like in Japan. It'd capitalize on the craze with zero overhead yet they're just not doing it. You'd think they'd be doing something with it by now. Hell, slap a new coat of paint on it and it wouldn't even feel that different from getting a new Souls game to most; the difference between Demon's Souls and even DS3 isn't so great.

Cyrus Jong said:
The problem with the PS3's exclusives (or PS3 games that didn't go to PC) is that a lot of them have since been ported to the PS4 and PC.

Just not the ones, or the ONE, Wally and I want! :ganishka:

Well, you still do for Catherine, but that's getting an enhanced PS4 remaster later this year.

Of course it is. =)

The only games I can think of that are still exclusive to PS3 are inFamous 1 and 2. I liked them just fine too, but in an industry that's absolutely flooded with open world games, I don't know if they'd really stand out anymore.

Yeah, it's actually been a turnoff for me for a while, thus why I haven't played purportedly transcendent examples like GTAV and Witcher 3.

Can't argue with that! :iva:

Too bad MGSV got so messed up in the end, it sort of got things back on track before being derailed for good.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
I beat Donkey Kong Country earlier this week. I enjoyed it a lot, but it was shorter than I expected. I still remember the first time I played it as a kid. They had a kiosk set up at the local video game store (I miss those...) where you could play it before it came out. I remember how amazing the graphics were at the time, and I still think it holds up.

Next up: Sonic 3 & Knuckles on Steam! :ubik:
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Started Witcher 3, and I don't know if it was late and I was tired, but they sure do talk A LOT. Gameplay looks promising, but aside from the tutorial and fighting some ghouls I spent most of the hour playing it as a passive participant. I hope that's not going to continue once I dig in further.

Rhombaad said:
I beat Donkey Kong Country earlier this week. I enjoyed it a lot, but it was shorter than I expected.

If you liked DKC, and want to try something more substantial and challenging then after Sonic 3 give Donkey Kong Country 2 a try. It's the best of the... bunch. :badbone:
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Griffith said:
If you liked DKC, and want to try something more substantial and challenging then after Sonic 3 give Donkey Kong Country 2 a try. It's the best of the... bunch. :badbone:

Hehe, I plan on it. It's on...the list. :badbone:
 
i've been playing back through sonic adventure 2
I'm working towards getting an all S stat chao
and of course all A rank
This game still looks like crap and the cutscenes are awful but somehow i still love it
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Rhombaad said:
Hehe, I plan on it. It's on...the list. :badbone:

The List! :magni:

What games AREN'T on the list, like because you played them growing up or you're just not interested? :guts:

Salem said:
The witcher 3 has a ton of cutscenes and as much gameplay. Enjoy. definitely not a game to rush. A lot of the sidequests are a good hour.

Eee, that's what I was afraid of, actually. I think another factor that made the Souls style so appealing in the last generation, at least to me, isn't just the improved difficulty and lack of hand-holding, but also the lack of passive storytelling, i.e. hours of semi-mandatory cutscenes and/or voice acting. I've navigated enough dialogue trees to last a lifetime, so if I have to talk to NPCs I'm almost out right there. BUT, perhaps this is the exception where its done so well its truly rewarding. After all, there was a time I was drawn to that before the genre became over-saturated.

A joy I've rediscovered in the GTA/Red Dead model is the bite-sized nature of the missions. I can just knock one out in a few minutes if I don't have more time, or I can do half a dozen or more in an hour if I do. I wonder if GTA is really so popular because budding dads actually have time to sneak off and complete a mission or two here and there (it's also all relatively easy). Nothing worse than being stuck on an hour long sidequest when duty calls, "Just a minute!... I hope." :ganishka:

Gamehowitzer said:
i've been playing back through sonic adventure 2
I'm working towards getting an all S stat chao
and of course all A rank
This game still looks like crap and the cutscenes are awful but somehow i still love it

When we were discussing Sonic 3 above it actually made me consider if Sonic Adventure should be counted among the "good" Sonics or not. I remember playing the hell out of and enjoying it, like it was the equivalent of Sonic's Mario 64, but I don't know if it was really good or if that was out of devotion and I was essentially a frog in a boiling pot of bad Sonic and didn't realize it. I know I sure didn't have the same devotion by the time Sonic Adventure 2 came around and I hardly played it at all (but I didn't play Mario Sunshine much either =).
 
Griffith said:
After all, there was a time I was drawn to that before the genre became over-saturated.

I understand that feeling all too well. Souls became one of my favorite series ever for similar reasons. In my opinion, this one brought me back to wanting to hear what happened next. I love the storytelling in witcher 3 and it certainly can feel exhausting sometimes. The flip side is by the end of the game, the dlcs, you’ll have sunk hundreds of hours into gameplay alone. That is ridiculous on one disc to me. This is not a game to get out of the way though. You’ll be turning it off going in like that. I took a break half way through and then came back. Still my favorite this generation.

On a side note, the difficulty setting could make or break it. I want to say easy will change your health to reset when resting. As opposed to finding health potions, which can bog down the fun in the first few hours.
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Griffith said:
The List! :magni:

What games AREN'T on the list, like because you played them growing up or you're just not interested? :guts:

A lot of N64, PSX and PS2 games, though there are still a bunch on there. I played and re-played so many of the Final Fantasy games during my late teens all the way through college, then it was only World of Warcraft for years, so I missed out on most of the great games that have come out during the 90s, 2000s and 2010s.

Edit: I compiled the list of games I want to play by looking at IGN's Top 100 Games of All Time list from a few years ago, Wikipedia's list of the "greatest video games of all time" and Metacritic's top video games list. For every title on the list that happened to be a sequel, I went back and added all the critically acclaimed titles to come before it in its series, as well as all of the critically acclaimed games that came after. The only titles I skipped were RTS games, arcade-only titles and games I've already played and have no interest in replaying. Needless to say, the list is quite long, but I'm having a lot of fun working my way through it. :serpico:
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
I started re-playing through Breath of the Wild (with my son watching this time and giving me directions), and it's still really fucking good. This playthrough happened sporadically, but it's actually been exactly a year since I started playing it.

I remember being pretty bored with the game after beating it and having explored everything, but starting fresh, everything feels pretty new again. That moment-to-moment experience of exploration is still solid. Combat is comically easy now, though. Once you've mastered the timing of parrying/deflecting attacks (even Guardian shots, with 3 health and a wooden shield :ganishka: ), the only trouble is getting ganged up on. Haven't found any area or event that's surprised me yet, but I'm sure to come across a few new things, and that's exciting to me.
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Rhombaad said:
I compiled the list of games I want to play by looking at IGN's Top 100 Games of All Time list from a few years ago, Wikipedia's list of the "greatest video games of all time" and Metacritic's top video games list.

So you actually have "the list" written out already? Well now you gotta publish that with the completed titles crossed out. :guts:

Walter said:
I started re-playing through Breath of the Wild (with my son watching this time and giving me directions), and it's still really fucking good.
Walter said:
I remember being pretty bored with the game after beating it and having explored everything, but starting fresh, everything feels pretty new again.

I've been thinking about doing this awhile to take advantage of the Switch's Wii U's adaptability; it's hard to get quality alone time with the TV or my PC these days, but with the Wii U I can hide in plain sight while the boob tube provides me cover. =) Problem is the only game I have for it that's worthwhile compared to my other options is BotW and I too played it to death when it came out. I also can't decide whether to get the DLC and jump back into the endgame, fearing I'll find it stale and uninviting, or just start over, fearing I'll never get back to this point or ever play the endgame DLC (not to mention the shrines). I'm glad to hear restarting indeed refreshes the experience since that's the way I was leaning, though now I realize I also got a lot of exclusive stuff, like Epona and classic tunics, borrowing amiibos from people. I won't get those back (not that they're worth anything now =). Is it possible to start over without losing my old saves, like via another user account so I can just casually replay it without worrying about regaining my place? I recall some horror story on here of that very thing wiping someone's progress midway through.
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Griffith said:
I also can't decide whether to get the DLC and jump back into the endgame, fearing I'll find it stale and uninviting, or just start over, fearing I'll never get back to this point or ever play the endgame DLC (not to mention the shrines).

My advice is to skip the DLC (Champions Quest or whatever it's called). It's not great, and it's a real chore to do. I think the best part of this game occurs before you become overpowered and your map has been filled out. Maintaining the elements of danger and exploration was key to the fun that I had, and the further you get in the game, the more those diminish. If you have the DLC though, and you plan to start again, you could always do the Master Quest stuff, which I haven't touched.

Is it possible to start over without losing my old saves, like via another user account so I can just casually replay it without worrying about regaining my place? I recall some horror story on here of that very thing wiping someone's progress midway through.

Good question. I very nearly lost my completed game save before checking this possibility. So this is really an oversight by Nintendo, but there aren't profiles for saves. You get one manual save, and a series of autosaves. So the way I did it is, I manually saved my old game, and I'll only auto-save for my new game. If you manually saved in the new game and then moved on (like I did at first), the autosaves would eventually wipe out your old game. :magni:
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Griffith said:
So you actually have "the list" written out already? Well now you gotta publish that with the completed titles crossed out. :guts:

Yep! I've been deleting the ones I've already played, but I'd be happy to post the full list once I'm finished with it. I still work on it now and again in my free time (usually on the bus or on my breaks at work).
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Walter said:
My advice is to skip the DLC (Champions Quest or whatever it's called). It's not great, and it's a real chore to do. I think the best part of this game occurs before you become overpowered and your map has been filled out. Maintaining the elements of danger and exploration was key to the fun that I had, and the further you get in the game, the more those diminish. If you have the DLC though, and you plan to start again, you could always do the Master Quest stuff, which I haven't touched.

I don't have it, I was waiting to see if I got a Switch, so I'll probably just skip it altogether (but adding NEW CONTENT to the replay is kind of enticing and sensible, hmmmm... this is why I haven't done it already =).

Walter said:
Good question. I very nearly lost my completed game save before checking this possibility. So this is really an oversight by Nintendo, but there aren't profiles for saves.

That's insane, why bother with profiles at all then? I made a profile for my wife for Wii Fit and Nintendo makes me choose which one I want to use every time I start the damn thing and it won't even distinguish saves between them!? Conversely, on my PS3 I played Demon's Souls on my brother-in-law's profile before making my own, but now I can't log onto PSN under his profile because his account is saved on there, and the Demon's Souls saves won't copy to my profile where I can register a PSN account! PROFILES URRRRGH!! :mozgus:

Walter said:
You get one manual save, and a series of autosaves.So the way I did it is, I manually saved my old game, and I'll only auto-save for my new game. If you manually saved in the new game and then moved on (like I did at first), the autosaves would eventually wipe out your old game. :magni:

That'd work, but it's awfully risky though considering one bleary eyed late night save could cost literally over 100 hours of progress in your main game. Feel's inevitable to me really. Maybe I'll see if I can save my current game to a USB and then pop it in a drawer before starting over so I don't have to worry about it.

Rhombaad said:
Yep! I've been deleting the ones I've already played, but I'd be happy to post the full list once I'm finished with it. I still work on it now and again in my free time (usually on the bus or on my breaks at work).

Once you're finished? Oh, I see, TOP SECRET, huh? :carcus:

(I guess I could just check the lists you cited and do the math on the sequels =)
 

Walter

Administrator
Staff member
Griffith said:
That's insane, why bother with profiles at all then?

Oh, you know what I never actually tried to switch system-level profiles. I meant more of an in-game profile system (which doesn't exist for Zelda).

Maybe I'll see if I can save my current game to a USB and then pop it in a drawer before starting over so I don't have to worry about it.

I'm fairly certain that you could do this.
 

Aazealh

Administrator
Staff member
Rhombaad said:
The only titles I skipped were RTS games, arcade-only titles and games I've already played and have no interest in replaying. Needless to say, the list is quite long, but I'm having a lot of fun working my way through it. :serpico:

You should at least play through Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis (first real RTS as we define them), Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, Red Alert, and Warcraft 2 and 3 (especially as a WoW fan). Oh and before all of these you should play Populous. Just add them to the list. :iva:
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
Griffith said:
Once your finished? Oh, I see, TOP SECRET, huh? :carcus:

(I guess I could just check the lists you cited and do the math on the sequels =)

I wouldn't go that far. Simply incomplete. :void:

Aazealh said:
You should at least play through Dune II: The Battle for Arrakis (first real RTS as we define them), Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun, Red Alert, and Warcraft 2 and 3 (especially as a WoW fan). Oh and before all of these you should play Populous. Just add them to the list. :iva:

I hate to say it, but I've lost interest with RTS games over the years, although as a Dune fan, I've always wanted to play Dune II.

Populous sounds really interesting; I may have to check it out. :serpico:
 

Griffith

With the streak of a tear, Like morning dew
Walter said:
I'm fairly certain that you could do this.

Me too, but after moving I can't find my USBs save the one in the Wii U that has BotW on it... eh, I may just use your auto-save only method, aka DON'T SAVE STUPID!

I finished Red Dead Redemption and was both slightly underwhelmed and very impressed. The slightly underwhelming part is that the progression is basically just the GTA model ad infinitum plus some side quests, which almost feels like stalling the plot, but it does the job of keeping things open, loose and fun while giving you a straightforward path if you want. So, that aspect of it didn't impress, and similarly the controls, while fine and perfectly serviceable, are a bit clunky or constricted compared to today's cutting edge, but are still relatively versatile and impressive when you consider this game is 8 years old now (and I actually lost respect for MGS5 because it's basically just RDR with jeeps =)! Speaking of which, it's still very impressive graphically, and while the models do show their age up close, the art design is still top notch and holds up today so I never felt like I was playing an "old game." Just gorgeous.

Lastly, the most enduring part of the game has to be the atmosphere, themes, and story elements. This game still has the misanthropic cynicism of the GTA series, but without the flippant attitude or overabundance of crude humor, and that serves the game well and allows it to feel a lot deeper than most games, particularly the back and forth dialogue while you ride that touches on everything from the role of government, humanity, family, religion, etc without ever feeling forced or preachy. The simple plot, particularly the ending and epilogue, are also worthy of the classic Westerns and make the game feel like a true edition to the great Western canon. Pretty damn impressive!

Now I'm trying Undead Nightmare, which is definitely a departure for better or worse. :guts:
 
Recently got the platinum trophy on my favorite game of all time, Shadow of the Colossus. I typically don't care about trophies, but I just wanted that one.

Now I'm thinking of getting the DLC for Deus Ex: Mankind Disappointed Divided while I wait for the new God of War. Have any of you guys gone through it yet? Is it worth it?

I also really want to get my hands on Zelda BotW. It would be my first Zelda. But I don't like the idea of getting a console just to play one game...
 

Rhombaad

Video Game Time Traveler
I finished Sonic 3 & Knuckles over the weekend. I'm so glad I decided to play the original Sonic games. I had a great time with every one, but I think Sonic 3 & Knuckles was my favorite. The graphics were amazing for their time, the boss fights were enjoyable and there was a lot of extra stuff to do.

I started playing Final Fantasy II over the weekend and Castlevania while on the bus and at work (which I beat on the bus to work this morning). It's too soon to give an opinion on Final Fantasy II, but I don't mind the EXP system so far, and that appears to be the main gripe with this entry. Castlevania was awesome. I gave up on it last year when I couldn't get past the hallway before you fight Death, but I gave it another try and only struggled with Dracula himself. I'm probably going to skip Castlevania II: Simon's Quest and play Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse when I get to it on my list.

The next game I'm going to play on the bus and at work is Mega Man. I've heard I'm in for a challenge. :magni:
 
I just finished getting achievements for all three Souls games, and need another game to make myself pass the time with.

Choices are Witcher/Metal Gear/FF/Zelda - wondering if you guys had any suggestions.
I'm most of the way through Witcher I think but it feels like a drag of a game to play in 2018. :schierke:
 
Lawliet said:
Recently got the platinum trophy on my favorite game of all time, Shadow of the Colossus. I typically don't care about trophies, but I just wanted that one.

Now I'm thinking of getting the DLC for Deus Ex: Mankind Disappointed Divided while I wait for the new God of War. Have any of you guys gone through it yet? Is it worth it?

I also really want to get my hands on Zelda BotW. It would be my first Zelda. But I don't like the idea of getting a console just to play one game...
You say it would be your first? Well you could always get some emulators on your computer or phone and play a couple of the old 2d zeldas if you'd be interested in that instead of buying a console just to play zelda lol. If you're worried about just getting one game on the console i'll just list off a few that i think are worth picking up, Splatoon 2 is fun if you want a shooter with something different, the binding of isaac is nice for the dungeon crawling and vast array of abilities and items, if you want a racing game there is Fast RMX and MK8DX, The shovel knight games are worth playing, and if you look through the games before buying i'm sure you could find somehing you'd like.
 
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