I do love Brother, though. He's so bad he's awesome.

"Dahncingh Yunagh?! I waghnt to seeegghhh!"

Finished the Octopath Traveler demo last night, in that I finished exploring the entire available map, got all the items and did all the side-quests, as far as I can tell anyway. With Kiseki games and Cosmic Star Heroine, I think I might be enjoying JRPGs again. Very optimistic for this one! All they need for the final game is to include some QoL polish that were in games like Bravely Default, such as a slider for encounter rates, fast-forwarding/text/cut-scene skipping, and reduce the excessive DoF, vignette and bloom effects (they are nice but really overdone and almost ruin the beautiful art direction), and we'll have one hell of a game.

i only just started playing Nier Automata after not enjoying the first few hours and it confusing the hell out of me but i started again thanks to being burnt out by overwatch and i am enjoying it more now, also completed persona 5 which i was happy with but i need to complete it again

Second only to ELEX this year, imho. Work of art. Larian is amazing.

Elex comes out next month...?

What games do you recommend to listen to music to? I love listening to new albums/bands while playing some games, the thing is though I cannot quite focus on both, so it must be a game that allows me to go back and forth between music and gameplay.

Got the PS4! Just started Bloodborne last night. ID's Smoking_Gnu1 if anyone wants to add me there.

I dunno if you're into driving games, but FUEL is the game to listen to music to. It's kinda like Mad Max, where you drive around in this massive, ravaged world (~6,000 square miles worth of free-roam, twice the size of Jamaica) and just find stuff. You can race too, but I liked just finding collectibles and exploring. It's my go-to game whenever I have a backlog of new albums to listen to.

Oh, and GTA V, because the radio is so shit.

Depends on what type of music. For more aggressive stuff, I sometimes like to fire up a UT2004 bot match and raise hell. Arena shooters in general are excellent for this. Running through E1 in Doom 1993 (GZ Doom port) while suffocation's debut is blasting is a favorite pastime of mine.
Atmospheric stuff is well suited to the sandbox mode of building/management strategy games like Anno 1404.
The most important thing is that there is NO STORYLINE to follow in the game so you don't feel like you're missing out on something. Tags to describe such games would be "arcade" or "sandbox" maybe.
As the other guy suggested, driving games fit that description as well, especially more arcady ones because you want to hear the sound of rubber on tarmac in any sim.

Yeah, sandbox games are definitely the best for that. Back when I was really into Minecraft I'd usually just queue up a bunch of Ulver, Senmuth or ambient techno before I started playing.

Lately, I've been listening to videogames OST mostly (Right now I'm listening to the Secret of Mana OST). My go to games are Cities: Skyline, Banished and Age of Empires II. I've heard of Anno 1404 before, what's the best game in the series to start with?

1404 has the most depth and is just fucking beautiful. For any novice in the genre I'd recommend 1701 (which is confusingly the older game) but since you seem to know your way around building, go for 1404 straight away.

I can't believe Anno 1404 is not on Steam.

In some countries it is listed as "dawn of discovery". It's on gog as well though, i always prefer gog versions.

Nice! I'll add you, but I don't have PS+ at the moment so I can't coop or whatever. I let my subscription lapse because I wasn't playing online much anymore and the PS+ monthly games were all shite. But I'll have to renew it when Monster Hunter World comes out, so I'll get back online at some point.

Speaking of monthly PS+ games, one of them this month was Just Cause 3 and I knew it was a reasonably big name so I downloaded it... and fuck me, I'm hardly a snob but this is some lowest common denominator shit right here. It's basically all the worst elements of GTA games rolled into one big pile of making things go boom boom and then (presumably) clapping your hands like a happy idiot when the big boom booms happen or the bikes do the big jumps. 0/10 and I hope the developers feel real pain.

meanwhile Xbox Live's free game is.....

Oxenfree!

Wow! This game is really evocative and moving. Great writing and characters, creepy atmosphere and excellent pacing. Great 80s vibes, makes sense this came out the year of Stranger Things and other 80s revivalism. Good stuff, check it out.

lol, I just vaguely recall a demo of... Just Cause 2 I think and yeah it was generic horseshit. I hear JC3 runs like ass on the PS4 too.

And yeah, seems like Xbox and Playstation freebies have switched sides in terms of quality... used to be the other way around. Sigh.

The best part of Just Cause was the grappling and parachute features. I got JC2 years back for PC and I had more fun doing "The Floor is Lava" stuff than any of the destruction stuff because it is so repetative.

I think that's what sandbox games are all about, in general. :V

Basically. If there is anything sandbox games should learn from JC it is the movement mechanics. Other sandbox games would be a lot more fun.

Oh yeah, it doesn't handle it too well. It's a nice-looking thing tbh - good graphics, everything's nice and bright and the water in particular puts your skyrims and witchers to shame. But once you get more than 2 or 3 things going smashey-smashey and boom-booms all at once the framerate slows to a crawl.

Still, the PS+ games aren't all bad. There was one a month or two ago called Titan Souls that was kinda cool - basically SNES-era Zelda meets Dark Souls, but only boss fights - and that kept me on my toes, but yeah it's probably not worth the $10/month or whatever it is. I just haven't cancelled mine out of laziness, which is how they make half their $$ no doubt.

I need to cancel mine. I'm at month 2 and I've already paid too much for what I'm getting out of this.

Namco: Buy Ace Combat Assault Horizon and get the soundtrack for free in-store.

CDProjekt: Buy Witcher 3 and get the soundtrack and a bunch of other stuff for free.

Atlus: Half our 3DS games come with the soundtrack for free.

Nintendo: Stick the soundtrack in with Metroid, call it a Collector's Edition, and charge more for it.


Nintendo is the most shamelessly greedy company in gaming.

So I bit the bullet and started Dark Souls 3. I was craving more Bloodborne but wanted to play a different game instead of a NG+, so here I go. Awesome so far, just beat the first boss and now I'm in the Undead City. Definitely a bit of an adjustment after the faster pace of Bloodborne, but I'm hooked.

What advice can people give me on weapons? I used the Hunter's Axe for the entirety of Bloodborne and loved it, but it already looks as though DS3 encourages you to switch up weapons, or at least there seems to be more available right off the bat. I'm currently alternating between Deep Dark Axe and the broadsword, but I think I want something heavier.

Nothing says entitled like saying that paying the equivalent of $1 for a video game is "too much" money.

Kids these days. I paid $70 for an N64 game when that fucking thing was new. That was one game with wonky controls that was sold out everywhere that December, but fuck it, I wanted to fight IG-88. Now I pay $60 for a year and get around 70 games for that and have such an unlimited swath of options, my son and I are never lacking in something to play.

I know that most modern gamers have never faced anything remotely resembling hardship, challenge, or difficulty in life, but come the fuck on. Have some perspective. You want cheaper games? Play them on your fucking phone and sit through the adds and microtransactions. You hate this stuff? Well that cheapskate attitude created this environment. That, and Apple training so many people that video games are supposed to be freebie throwaway entertainment half as filling as a candy bar and for less money.

^ $20 a month for something I don't use is too much money.

I have no idea what the rest of your rant was about.

"Kids these days" is always a good way to start a rant, hey. And give over. Not to try and shatter any bubbles, but you do know that most of us probably had N64s and a couple of generations before that to boot, yeah? I'm pretty sure we don't need history lessons for things we lived through. But considering you've already done it, remember how (note I didn't pretend this pre-dates you?) back in the early 90s you could get shareware discs for like $10 or less that had as many games as they could fit on them? There's a good parallel. I mean I guess what I'm trying to say is stick your "we used to walk 10 miles barefoot in the snow" routine up your arse.

In any case, we both speaking about the fact that the PS+ fees still aren't worth it. For my $13/month (I checked) I generally get 4 "indie" games read: buggy imitation 8-bit stuff you couldn't sell for more than $2 on steam) that have little to no replay value, that I usually play for an hour or so each, and that delete themselves the second I cancel my membership. Is it worth it? Nahhhhhhh. Add in that I've paid solid amounts for most of my other games - go see how much Bloodborne, Witcher 3, Nioh etc are still going for months/years after they came out - and basically the only thing I'm getting for the "privilege" of the PS+ membership is online co-op in a handful of games I've already finished a kazillion times, whose online userbases are dwindling, and that I only just revisit because the monthly member games are crap.

Are we getting a glimpse at from nothing game studios' business model?

Holier than thou nonsense mixed with some "kids these days" condescension, which is hilarious considering I'm betting Turner is older than him. [Edit: my bad, he has a few years on him... still, Turner's in his 30's, not some young entitled whippersnapper]

PS+ is garbage nowadays which is why I let my subscription lapse. The monetary value of the games they give isn't in their price points, but in the games themselves; since they are all essentially completely worthless to me, I'd be paying for nothing more than online play and cloud saves, and since I'm not currently playing online, then yes, PS+ is effectively a waste of money.

I'll re-sub when Monster Hunter World comes out, for sure, and maybe earlier if I have a reason to (I have 12-month cards bought at a discount that I haven't activated yet), but for now, I have zero reason to re-sub.


Damn

How is someone "entitled" by having standards about what he or she is choosing to spend money on? Good grief.


That's probably because the soundtrack was the only really good part of the game... and even that grew wearying after a while. Also, I'm pretty sure the "free" soundtrack was only a digital good, whereas the Metroid soundtrack is a physical CD.

Also also, the "bunch of other stuff for free" was content chopped out of the game, then held hostage for PR purposes. CDP-R is not a good or reputable company in any way, shape or form... anymore, that is.

A friend of mine made me buy Furi, and I absolutely love it. It looks great, sounds great, and is fun as hell, even though I'm beyond awful at bullet hell stuff.

Cuphead is finally coming out in a few days.



Can't believe how incredible those animations look. Must be the best 2D animations I've seen yet. Game looks like a fun little Gunstar Heroes-lite too.

so exciting! can't wait.

also, got the new Metroid for the DS - I gotta say I really wish it was high-end sprite art instead of rendered 3D but holy moly is it a lot of fun. Really, truly feels like a complete Metroid.

If I had $20 to blow on entertainment, I certainly would blow it on Cuphead. Looks friggin' fantastic.

It feels like I've been waiting an eternity for Cuphead. I will definitely be buying this.

Is it January yet? I want Monster Hunter World so bad

Is it October? I want Mario Odyssey.

^ What in the fuck?

I have no words to express just how ridiculous that balloon-rat-cat-dragon thing is. I love it.