VIDEO What are you currently playing?

Currently playing through Middle Earth: Shadow of War. I have never enjoyed the Lord of the Rings movies, but I heard that the gameplay was awesome. So far, I'm quite enjoying it and just treating it as a hack-and-slash experience.

 

I've finally started playing Yakuza Kiwami. I started 0 earlier this year, but got distracted and heard Kiwami would be a better jumping on point. And I'm glad I did, it's so good. The main plot is so melodramatic, but the action is so fun and the stuff with Majima is gloriously nuts.

I've also been playing Battlefront 2, so I'll alternate between them for now.

 

Yes - Finally, you have joined us Sean-chan.

 

You couldn't pick a better time to get into the series, either, we just got 6, we're getting Kiwami 2, we're getting the Hokuto no Ken crossover game, we're getting remasters of 3-5, it's a goddamn feast of mahjong and shogi simulation. Also gangsters or whatever.

 

I hadn't heard they were remastering 4-5 as well.

 

https://www.polygon.com/2018/5/22/17380082/yakuza-ps4-remaster

Edit: Now I should note that while the article mentions there's no official western release date, the series creator has been pretty explicit that these ports are happening for US and European fans, so...

 

Finished 1st castle of P5. That whole thing was both incredibly fun and frustrating. Will be going for more in a bit.

Really want to play Last of Us after seeing the E3 stuff of 2. Still need to finish Uncharted 3 on.

 

We’re getting to the point where we should start a Yakuza topic, but this is exciting news! I missed the announcements about the other remasters and was wondering how I’d play 3-5 without jumping back to PS3. I guess I’ll play 0 after finishing Kiwami!

 

DMC4 Special Edition.

 

So 90 hours in and I'm slowly getting the hang of MHW - I'm sure others have done this much, much faster!

Had a new longsword, had the camera set to far, tried it out on the agile bastard that is Tzitiki (high rank variant). Despite him getting a few lucky hits in,. I dodged more so will be looking into the Evade armour skills. Defence held up better too. Have finally worked out to read the heartbeat for the monster in the bottom left corner and had a Shamos tailrider to harass the hell out of it. Also finally purchased the Armourstone or whatever it's called, next will be the one that ups the attack. The item did seem to make its effect felt.

Also found some new investigations that allow me to go after the king bastards that are Odogaron and Toda-Kadichi, but with 5 faints allowed instead of 3 - that's a major advantage, will have to try that.

 

I’m in Chapter 4, where the game opens up fully, and I keep stumbling onto sidequests. They’re getting a bit repetitive though - I assume I’m safe to continue with the main story as I please? They aren’t limited to particular chapters?

 

There's a clearly demarcated point of no return but otherwise you're safe.

Also, honestly, don't sweat the sidequests in Kiwami too much, they're same-y because the series hadn't figured out its idiosyncratic tone so it's a lot of "Man, my life as [boring individual doing boring thing] sure is hard. Hey Yakuza guy, you seem like you could [do Yakuza thing]! Could you?!" and then you do the thing.

By contrast, in 0 you might, say, help a dominatrix learn to be better at her job before going to assist a human statue who is attempting to sneak away for a bathroom break. On the way back a small boy needs your help to purchase pornography. He thinks it's a fun magazine, don't crush his naïve hopes and dreams by denying him the goods.

 

I did loads of 'em later in the game without any aggro - but, I would encourage you to do the Majima fights as often as you can to unlock the Dragon supermove before doing the endgame.

I'd agree with Ramza that the quests in later games are more inventive.

 

The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit. Sort of a teaser of a demo to the upcoming Life is Strange sequel by Dontnod, this is a really nice game where the main character is a young grade-school boy with a huge imagination. Even though the demo itself lasts at most a few hours, it can really get to you emotionally as the previous games had. The boy lives with his abusive, drunk dad while reminiscing about his mother who died years before. It's a free game, so I'd definitely recommend trying it out.

 

I picked up Metal Gear Solid V: Phantom Pain last night and got about 2 1/2 hours in. It's the first Kojima game I've played since MGS 2: Sons of Liberty, and so far I like it. I can appreciate Kojima's vision for trying to make a kind of gonzo-cinema experience with his cutscenes, and while it doesn't always work, the experimentation is usually interesting enough. The gameplay of sneaking around and exploring is fun. But man, the writing is sooooo bad lol. Maybe it's lost in translation, or is it supposed to be a kind of Starship Troopers parody? From what I've seen, all his games are like this though.

 

MGSV is the worst written game in the series, they had to make a ton of compromises because Kiefer Sutherland was too expensive to record a lot of dialogue with, and the entire team got fired before they were done so large swaths of it got rushed. Even people who enjoy the bizarre MGS story antics (myself among them) tend to point to V as an example of a game where you should enjoy the gameplay and not worry about the story because it's awful. So.

 

My wifis been terrible so I've been playing EA's first Battlefront game on the offline modes. I might be losing brain cells but it's still pretty fun.

 

I think if they'd finished it properly it could've ended up being one of the greatest games of all time. I really enjoyed MGSV (especially all of the weird levels with the Man on Fire, Psycho Mantis and Sahelanthropus) but felt cheated that the original ending was cut off.

 

So a game of two halves earlier....

First, not a good half. Tried Nerg again and again Nerg gets to ignore Guard, Defence and just about every other stat it wants to. Tried taking out a Dodogama, as I'd got reasonably far with it in expedition before it legged it. Got it to near death and what happens, it brings out instant one-hit kill moves. Then Bazelgeuse interrupts what was supposed to be a private punch-up. Next time, the ground gets literally dropped a foot, trapping me so he gets shot by halitosis fire breath. So, massively ****ing frustrating.

Things got a bit better later as I got a Bazelgeuse Talon without even doing anything - the king bastard picked a fight, it got broken and if that happens, you get the parts. Cue a major, permanent defence upgrade. I then tried the same Jagras Blade that almost killed Dodogama on a load of Gastodon and it was a slaughter. With enough cash, I then upgraded one of the longswords and killed two Toba-Kadichi to start building a thunderlance. Might have a chance on the high rank version - or it'll be stupidly overpowered like the others.

The "challenge" of the game still boils down to that it nerfs you. Defence ought to allow your character to not get stunned, it doesn't. You can't cancel animations. The camera does not track your enemy. Everything is done manually and done slowly - you'll watch your character eat a ****load of food in a cutscene and find in the field, it takes its damn time to do anything. Hell, you'll press the button, expecting action to follow and it doesn't because it didn't register, instead you get it on the second or third press.

The game areas look wonderful and the monster animation is quite something, but I remain looking at this game thinking it could be so much better than it is. The only thing it really exemplifies is the idea of a live service game that doesn't rip off its consumer. That it's core gameplay is as addictive as it is to overcome all its self-inflicted flaws is impressive, but what it would be without those? So much better.

 

Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for me. Can't stand some of the character designs, but I'm really enjoying the story and characters personalities despite that.

 

Today’s MHW go started off awful - a Toba-Kadichi that wouldn’t die and a Rathian forever interfering but doing very little killing of its prey - the said Toba-Kadichi. Bloody frustrating - so had to give it another go this time. It got down to 5mins, the bastard is near-dead but isn’t going to sleep, I was aiming to capture this time, not kill, bu he just kept going at it. Then, immediately after I come out with the line ‘what is it going to take to kill you?’, wham, he’s dead.

After that did a load of casual collecting and killing, racked up both Kalu-Ya-Ku and Great Jagras. Then took a trip to Elder’s Recess.

I’m doing a Dodogama quest that isn’t working, no way do I take him out, especially as he’d whacked me twice. Then Bazelgeuse turned up… Until now, my Bazelgeuse strategy has been the Rincewind - ****ing leg it! This time? This, I go with the ‘oh **** it’ option and whack him. I’m going to get blown, that is inevitable, but I manage to get a couple of hits in, avoid a couple of explosions and a material piece drops. I dive for it, get it, it’s a Bazelgeuse talon! Exactly what I wanted and then I immediately get killed in an explosion. But I got the talon! Why does it matter? Because you can use it to give your character a permanent stat boost. I have the Defence one and it made a small but discernible difference.

I then take on Dodogama again, but this time with a water greatsword and pound his arse into the ground - which opens up a new armour set and a new camp, which was sweet.

Knowing I’m not going to top that anytime soon, I quit while I’m ahead.

 

Just popping in to reiterate how ******* great Hollow Knight is.

 

Finished life is strange before the storm episode 3 and the bonus episode

God the bonus episode ending had me tearing up like a baby

Spoiler

the whole before the storm doesn’t put max in a great light they leave on the day of her best friends dads funeral she leaves the tape saying they will always be Chloe and max even when apart and constantly talk yet you read the messages in the first 3 episodes and max totally ghosts chloe who is dealing with being picked on/abandoned and her dads loss.

Made me even happier I chose the ending I did in the original game.

Also fired up captain spirit I’m going to miss Chloe and max not feeling the new characters

 

Captain Spirit is a good teaser game for the upcoming LIS sequel. I played through the entire game (lasts a couple of hours) in one sitting. Chris is a likeable character; though I don't know if he's going to be the lead protagonist in the sequel when it comes out this Fall.

 

I'm heading back towards 'do not care anymore' on MHW after tonight.

First, Nerg. There were times when I could not even see my character, never mind which direction to face. On one bit I had Guard up, but the game I was on a ledge so it didn't count. Which was pretty much the story of the entire dumb, irritating fight.

So, decided to experiment with a new weapon, the bow. It wasn't bad. Tried my luck on Urugaan, which went better than expected - in that he didn't kill me outright. The big problem with this bow is my character kept putting it away. You can't just aim and fire, no you must manually pull the bow out, then aim and fire, by the time the second it takes to draw it is done your angle of shot is gone and it happens so damn frequently. Despite all of that, I get him down to the low health level. Time's running low so capturing? Might work. Except it doesn't, because again the game ignored its own rules! Skull icon denoting low health? Check. Shock trapped? Check. Fire Tranq Bombs? Check. Except I dropped 8 of the ****ers on him and he just shrugs it off, so that's 50mins up in smoke because the game can't even stick to its own systems.

The problem here is I do need to kill these bastards to get better armour but the entire affair is so blatantly stacked against doing so, it's not funny. Armour upgrades? Don't make enough difference in defence. Damage output? Also artificially stunted. It's a ****ing insulting endgame structure - the only challenge is that it stops you powering up your character, while supplying **** controls with a camera to match.

Time to play something else? Probably, except even with all this that central gameplay loop is damn addictive.