bellow

Started this last night. Have to say it looks amazing for that hyper coloured cartoony style it's got going, and is smooth and stable with it. Strange no one bothered with it except missing Maf. I thought this was a well regarded franchise in the JRPG genre. I think I put about 60 hours into Vesperia but walked away before the end because the (unskippable) scrip became badly annoying, with multiple characters chipping in some of the most inane dialogue I've ever experienced in a game. I did like the action side of it though and the RPG set ups, so I'm willing to get busy with this. Already I'm feeling it has a more reasonable premise and more grown up dialogue, and that make me feel I might make it. And the combat! Jeez. I'm in that simple early game, but it feels good. Very good.

I think I share this with a lot of console gamers, but coming out of the sewers in Oblivion and finding a digital world without boundary is something I still think of today. There's also a couple of opening CGI game intro which stick in the mind - Witcher 2, Fable 3 and Kingdom hearts 2. I'd also mention the final game in street fighter in last years Evo which nearly gave me a feckin heart attack.

More or less exhausted the first area in this after a magnificent 45 hours. There's some high level quests and hunts left (and loads of Gwent quests that i avoid. I don't really like card games in real life, so I'm loathe to start doing it here), but the game has been asking me to move on in the main quest for ages. I'm not that sure the upgrade is all it's meant to be tho. I'm playing on performance mode, and while the game looks something on a par with AC Valhalla I'm not sure it's making 60fps. It certainly doesn't seem as smooth as some of the other games I've played in performance mode (which is basically everything on the XSX). It's not bad by any means, but a little jarring after a couple of years tuning my eyes to this new standard (can hardly bear to put on the Switch these days). I'm enjoying this playthru a lot though, more than my first go when the game launched. I don't remember that much from the game, just occasional locations and story beats, so it's pretty fresh. What's made a big difference is the option to remove fish eye lensing from Witcher sensing. I hated that back in the day and remember doing nought but moan about it on games TM forum. And there's a lot of Witcher sensing to be done in this. More or less every quest. But I'm taking a bit of a break now to start Tales of Arise. Bloody decent RPGing start to 2023 for me😃

Like several here I didn't get any gaming stuff for Crimbo, even from my eldest who has a penchant for buying me games that he's coincidentally interested in (it's the blag that counts). So I've gone on the good old Xbox deals page and grabbed Tales of Arise. It's been a while since I played a JRPG having burnt myself out a year or two ago with several back to back final fantasies. But this is highly rated and will be a break from my current 'do everything' playthru of Witcher 3. Will start early January, although I've noticed only Maf bothered with this on the forum.

This game has just improved by a whole 50%. I don't know if this is an update addition or it was done ages ago, but you can now turn off that horrible sick inducing fish eye effect for Witcher sensing. I hated that so much back at launch it ruined my appreciation of the game. Now I can just focus on all the magnificent RPGing in the game, and stop worrying about being knocked sick every five minutes. Belter.

Excellent. Love me some tomb raiding. Didn't even know there was an Amazon games division. Hope they don't go all woke and give us one of those stupid female action heroes who can take down hordes of highly trained and massively armed mercs with a bow made out of drift wood.🤔

Apart from the very high end of first party games I wouldn't be surprised if it was the Achilles heel of the next generation too.

Had a good go with the update. Graphics mode is not viable in my opinion, it's a judderfest on XSX. But on performance I'd say it's exactly what I was hoping for. Everything looks better, very current, in fact it's a lot like AC Valhalla If you ask me. And it's got a stable frame rate. After the hour or so I had last night I'd say it was well worth the effort and a good time for a replay. (On console, anyway. It seems to me that PC gamers have need to hang on for a patch or 2).

I'm not sure what I'm expecting on console. It's very smooth and crisp in it's original state and if it's just a case of tuning it up to 4k 60fps, I'm not sure I'm going to notice that much. The thing I don't like a lot in the game certainly won't be addressed by a graphical update, and that's the 'lightness' of Geralt. There's not a lot of heft to his general movement, and he feels very light in combat. Of course that could still be a hangover from RDR2, which felt like moving around in treacle.

Mo'fecker! You're right, it's doing a 53 gig upgrade (which is strangely the size of the full game).

Have I got my dates wrong. I'll put my Xbox on and see what happens. I definitely didn't get it yesterday.

So said I many months ago. And tonight I began my return to the world of Witcher 3. A bit previous you might say. The update doesn't land until Thursday. But I thought it would be fun to play out the opening 2 or 3 hours with the game in its original state. And fun it's certainly been. I've fought ghosts and ghouls, quested, cast magic, made potions, oils and bombs, arrested an arsonist, brought a dozen deserters to heel - all in the first hour. The game certainly wastes no time getting going, something I'm extremely thankful for after my recent playthru if the torturously slow RDR2. I'm up for it.

I'm planning to start playing the game tonight so I can have a few hours with it in its original state, then upgrade asap. I'll always choose performance over graphics anyway so I'm not expecting miracles, although the game was always good looking anyway. For me it's just an excuse for replay. From what I've seen it looks a bit overly colourful, but I suppose I can adjust that myself.

I'm going for God of War too. Best are 1, 2 and the first reboot. (We have the new one but my eldest is making slow work of it so I probably won't get a go until next year). My disappointment was always 3. I remember hating the combat because they seemed to use the power of the new generation of console to just fill the screen with enemies. Consequently I was constantly getting knocked out of combos, and the thing I liked most about the series, the ridiculously balletic bloodletting, was reduced somewhat, and getting thru combat situations became a mashy affair. That's how I remember it, anyway, and I never got past the first chapters on numerous attempts. I also got to heave a bit of a sigh of relief when the portable games game out, and the power restrictions of the psp gave the game back it's combo heavy charm. I will offer the caveat that my gaming skills are low now, and we're probably lower still back then, so I could easily have been overlooking combat nuances in the game to nullify the problems I was having. But since the question here is about disappointment I'd have to go with it.

Hardly ever post here because I prefer to report such stuff in the 'games' forum. But I've managed to complete the definitive version of mafia before I'd really become inspired enough to even conduct a search for the relevant thread. Yeah. Was ok😕

You'll go in tomorrow and beat it first try. It's always the way.

Fucking done! The credit roll image below has been 5 years in the making, the culmination of several attempts, false starts, disgruntled mid game abandonings, and then this final push (which still required a decent break half way thru to recharge my depleted anti tedium neurons.) Fuck me this was a slog. Sure, it's an amazing looking game, possibly the best I've seen - but for all the plaudits the game received, at it's heart this is a two trick pony. It's all guns and gob. But for me it performed neither of those tasks with any real aplomb. The gunplay was serviceable but heavily reliant on slow mo and dead eye aiming to make it even approach being fun. And the dialogue - the constant, unending fucking chatter, inane, repetitive, unnecessary for the most part, an exercise in mistrust in which the writers felt it necessary to impart every single thought their characters could possibly have on their predicament and relationships as they wound their way thru a rather prosaic narrative - well that can just go and eat a bag of cowboy dicks. I hate this game. I hate rockstar. I hate that I forced myself to play it for fear of missing out on the greatness that was promised by so many reviewers and fanboys. Cunt of a game.

Yeah, I can see that. I just never got into to a lot of that stuff.

Yeah, liked 1 and 2. Really atmospheric I thought, but the way you're describing this is tells me it's not for me. I listened to one reviewer saying the combat system simply doesn't work when faced with multiple enemies. I can hardly think of a worse thing to say about a game of this kind. It's like saying the double jump mechanic doesn't work in this platformer....

Milking cows, shovelling shit, and catching bulls, all in wondrous mini game form. And talk talk talk talk talk........ Excellent start to the epilogue. Just what the game needed after 70 hours of gunslinging and chatter, the opening hour of a 20 year old JRPG.

Not that I keep abreast of this stuff (didn't even know there was a game show this week) but if there's to be announcements I'll be looking at Microsoft really. I could do with a reason to rejoin gamepass. After exhausting their first party stuff I haven't subbed for ages, although, to be fair, 95% of my gaming since had been off their deals page. Since I generally play RPGs and single player action adventure stuff I'll be wanting something off Bethesda, Obsidian, Ninja theory and the likes. That fable reboot seems to have gone a bit AWOL too. Honestly, I look at the monthly gamepass announcements on these pages and, while others here enthuse, I shrug and move on.

So, against all the odds (the 'odds' being me constantly muttering how I'll never play a rockstar game again after this pompous bullshit while clocking mad hours and not being able to simply walk away) I've reached the epilogue. The last main campaign mission came and went and I can't say I was that moved by how things turned out, possibly because I was waiting for some big showdown within the gang, but the game wanted blood and bullets, as per usual. Given how much spiel you had to listen to in the course of this narrative I was surprised at how little they ended up having to offer in terms of twists and intrigue. Still, the game isn't over yet, and I know this epilogue has legs, so maybe there's time to offer a bit more closure.

A lot of the improvements to the base game, multiple loadouts and changing ammo type on the fly, were already in place when I played it this month. Might be why I had a better experience than some who played the game at launch. As for this expansion. I wasn't expecting sci-fi, and I'm not sure I'm interested. The little Stranger things episode in the main game didn't do much for me tbh.

When it came out I thought Witcher 3 was the big leap forward for it's generation. I have it loaded up on my XSX awaiting the update and a long planned replay, but I would say it doesn't really hold up to the games on @DisturbedSwan's list as it is now. still great tho.

I'm touching 60% on this and have been seeing stuff (magical dwarves, and hot air balloons to name a few) that I never encountered on previous failed playthrus. The game is compelling, I'll give it that. But to get any joy out of it you really have to accept it's bullshit. For the most part I've knuckled down and let the game be itself - the long horse rides, the monotonous animations and rather overly expositional dialogue that seems to feature in every mission and interaction. (Feck me, these bastards could talk). So what's left to moan about? Sure, you can be laid back about all of its pompous idiosyncrasies, but there's one thing that just pisses me off so much that it's hard to overlook, and that's the constant wresting away of control from the player. In every session my gamepad just becomes this useless hunk of plastic while Arthur enters the influence of some unseen hand. And now, all of a sudden, (and often when you need to most), you can't change weapon or even check what's in your inventory, you can't give Arthur a tonic, you can't run or get in cover, you can't do anything you might want to do because the game knows better. I can only assume this was meant to keep you immersed in the Gameworld but, for me, it does the opposite. I'm constantly reminded that this a game because my fucking buttons have stopped working and I can no longer play it😡. Worse still is that (twice now) the run button is taken away from you without any warning and while you're still tapping the fucker to make Arthur go somewhat faster than a wounded sloth, it's been transformed into the button that skips cutscenes. Who the fuck thought that could ever be a good idea? Rockstar? Cuntstar I say.