What Has Everyone Been Playing This Week? 4

[dataDave]

Won three out of five placement matches and got dropped into Gold Tier 1. One further win was all it took to get a promotion into Platinum. Not bad for only my 6th match against a human.

[Ghost]

Monster Hunter World has been taking up all of my free time over the last week thanks to the summer festival and all special events coming back. Must have played at least 30 hours in one week which is really rare for me these days.

[QualityChimp]

Well, I finished Portal 2 last night and I LOVED it.
What a brilliant game.

I didn't think they'd top the song from Portal, but the credits song, "Still Alive" is brilliant.
I went straight to YouTube to watch a few live vids of it being sung including the voiceover artist (Ellen McLane), the songwriter (Jonathan Coulton) and the Videogame Orchestra, which had the whole audience singing along.

I think I like Coulton's version best as he has a nice voice and the chord progression is really nice.

I'm still obsessing over this a bit. Coulton has a whole live concert on YouTube (with an amazing cover of "Baby Got Back") and his album, Artificial Heart, which has both of the Portal songs on, is streaming on Prime Music.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_Heart_(album)

https://youtu.be/-YMcqNc4nSY

https://music.amazon.co.uk/albums/B008W7Q4LW?ref=dm_sh_5FixUyTRzcN4pnwJHjloDGz14

[MonkeyJuggleDX]

Nothing.

Spent last week fishing and I had more fun doing that than any game I've played in years. Tempted to sell up most of my gaming stuff and buy new fishing gear.

[Neon Ignition]

Whilst my early mornings are still dedicated to a mixture of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker and Taiko no Tatsujin Switch, my evening play is clear at the moment. I think the next few days will go to burning though the VR demos etc I still have left and then I really need to clip through some PC games cluttering up my desktop and get back to backlog clearing.

[Colin]

Still chipping away at Just Cause 3, which I have been for months. I really need to find something new to play. PSVR is great but I can only play it in relatively short bursts and it's a bit of a faff to set up if I just want to get in to something quickly. Only issue is that I can't find anything that fits the bill, the only PS4 games I'm excited to play are still way off.

[Zaki]

Among daily missions on The Division (on XBO) I actually switched the PS4 on this week and it delivered some top arcade thrills.

Tempest 4000 was the driving reason. It's great to have a fully-fledged home console version for this gen. The visuals are suitably ace ... I love how the screen goes trippy (Yoshi's Island style) when you shoot the flower things I just hope the music goes deeper than the T2K and TXK tunes. As I said in another thread, I'm sure the trail on the PS Store features a T3K track (T3K has the best music imo) but there's no guarantee it's in the final game. Quick tip: on the title screen you can toggle three different soundtrack variants to begin the game with by pressing the triangle button.

Street Fighter V had an outing too with a proper old-school sat in front of the tv multi-player sesh. For all the mis-steps Capcom have made with this there's a really great game in there. I'm not saying this as any authority on SF (I'd say I've casually loved the series since it hit the arcade many moons ago in Seaton Carew ) ... it simply feels good, and feels right. We had a lot of fun playing last night.

Battle Garegga had a brief spell but sadly joins those Cave titles I went back to recently and am simply not great at anymore. I'm just not match fit with the trad shooters ... especially those that pose any kind of challenge. I just kept getting hit by sneaky shrapnel last night. Bah. Not to be a bad workman blaming his tools but there's a ton of truth in Seimitsu sticks being better for shooters than Sanwa JLFs. The TE2 is great for Street Fighter but lacks that tight precision for shmups, for me anyway.

A JLF with Kowal actuator is magic for shmups (better than a Seimetsu in my opinion)! Incredibly precise

Also, I think you really have to be in the right state of mind to play certain shooters. When this happens, I leave it for a few days/weeks and then come back to it - usually getting much further than before.

[dataDave]

[superking]

Binary domain - PS3

Not sure if there was much love for this when it was released? Im nearly finished now i think, coming up to chapter 6 and i think this is a very strong title. Although its mechanics and ideas come from other games (gears of war, kill switch, winback, vanquish) all the elements work and its a lot of fun. Cover is snappy, shooting feels good, enemy AI convincing, partners are not complete fools, good set pieces, decent pacing, audio solid, perfect campaign length to not outstay its welcome. Overall 7/10

[QualityChimp]

I've been on God of War and I'm a bit conflicted.

It's beautiful and engrossing and brilliantly seamless how it flows between action and plot.

However, I've been finding it a bit tough. Not pad-throwingly so, but enough for me to complain to the screen and know when to turn it off.
I struggled with an early boss fight. I had lock-on issues which I've sussed, but not been impressed with the system. If you've got enemies spawning behind you, you should be able to lock-on with a click, rather than need line-of-sight.
I also struggled with a tough, two-hit enemy, but he was spawning in a tight area and despite X-ing around his slow attacks, I was still dying.

I've turned the difficulty down from "story and challenge" to "story", but I feel like I'm wimping out.

I'm not sure if I should persevere and get frustrated a lot or just enjoy the story and the experience?

Don't ask dataDave, I know what he'll say, he loves the challenge!

[kryss]

MHW to finish the last Limited Bounty before the next big update next week.
No Man's Sky NEXT as they've ironed out a bunch of issues since the big update.
Octopath Traveler as I keep thinking about how each storyline is going to progress next.

Still chipping away at Just Cause 3, which I have been for months. I really need to find something new to play. PSVR is great but I can only play it in relatively short bursts and it's a bit of a faff to set up if I just want to get in to something quickly. Only issue is that I can't find anything that fits the bill, the only PS4 games I'm excited to play are still way off.

But it's so much fun, why do you need anything else?

[Cepp]

Sinking my teeth into Mario Kart 8; a bit lttp I know but I'm having a blast so far.

[QualityChimp]

Tidied up the Vita memory card and downloaded a load of PS+ games for it.

Binding of Isaac: Rebirth
GTA: LCS
Murasaki Baby
CounterSpy
Soul Sacrifice
TxK
Sine Mora
Dynasty Warriors Next
Guacamelee
Race the Sun
Dragon's Crown
Muramasa Rebirth
Claire
Hotline Miami

[MonkeyJuggleDX]

Muramasa is great. Went back to it over the weekend but seem to be stuck in a battle I can't skip that seems impossible to beat.

Also, Super Destronaut DX is pretty fun. It's Space Invaders on steroids. Although I admit I bought it as it's cross buy with the PS4 version and a 20 minute platinum but actually really enjoyed it.

[randombs]

Tidied up the Vita memory card and downloaded a load of hentai games for it.

A shop near me is selling a Vita 1000 for £35 in reasonable condition. I'm seriously considering taking the plunge for emulators, especially since it has the d-pad right where I like it. The regular used ones are £50+, and 2000 models are £70+. I'll get one of those SD2Vita adapters instead of a regular memory card.

I know there are Dingbats and other such consoles dedicated to emulation but their dpads/buttons are usually rubbish.

Back OT:

Street Fighter V AE

Had a few hours on this. I'm enjoying it so far.