What You've Been Playing This Week

[teddymeow]

Bit of Titanfall 2 (Thanks [MENTION=2540]teddymeow[/MENTION]!)

I'm up for some MP later tonight (or Strange Brigade!)

[QualityChimp]

Not played the MP, but the story is brilliant, with a really clever game mechanic.

We'll definitely play Strange Brigade together, but not tonight as I'm out out.

[nonny]

Having just picked up a PS5 (and never owned a PS4) I'm plundering the exclusive drawer of the Sony back catalogue.

I've put about 8 hours into God of War, 3 into Astros Playroom and I've also queued up the entire Uncharted series, Last of Us Remastered and Horizon Zero Dawn.

It very much feels like Christmas already

[Cassius_Smoke]

Having just picked up a PS5 (and never owned a PS4) I'm plundering the exclusive drawer of the Sony back catalogue.

I've put about 8 hours into God of War, 3 into Astros Playroom and I've also queued up the entire Uncharted series, Last of Us Remastered and Horizon Zero Dawn.

It very much feels like Christmas already

I'm really interested in your thoughts on the PS5 coming from Xbox for so long.

As far as games go, you're in for a treat with Last of Us and Horizon.

[nonny]

I'm really interested in your thoughts on the PS5 coming from Xbox for so long.

As far as games go, you're in for a treat with Last of Us and Horizon.

That might take a while as I'm taking my time with it all and giving each game adequate air time.

My first impression of God of War was "how did they even get this running on the base PS4"... very slick title, if admittedly it's more linear than it lets on, at least as far as I've gotten so far.

Really enjoyed the nostalgia in Astro's playroom and looking forward to going back to that as it's very charming. I found the haptics decent but not so much the spring suit sections with tilt controls. As a pack in title it's delightful though.

Overall the controller itself feels like a massive step up but I truly despised the PS4 controller. The sticks still feel spongy here coming from the Xbox controller, but thankfully the shoulder buttons and triggers are decent in the dual sense. I'd bedded in using it anyway which is a good sign.

All up I think the PS5 is a decent machine with a great controller. I also think it's easily the ugliest piece of gaming kit I've ever owned and I'm glad I can hide it away in my unit (just, its a bloody squeeze given how big it is even horizontal).

Anyway first impressions are very good, as I'd expected given I'm sampling the very best output from the first parties.

[Golgo]

Just finished No More Heroes 3. It was very ragged performance-wise and the side-missions/jobs were a total drag (ironically ****e is still ****e), but the fighting was pretty decent and the character design of the aliens was fantastic. That cheap 80s superhero-figure style crossed with bizarre alien protuberances and random abstract geometry is stangely effective. It's clear the devs love their game tons as well as the whole grindhouse aesthetic and that was quite infectious, coming through strongly in the loony voice acting. That said, I don't think Goichi Suda's ever come close to topping the sublime Killer 7, though. Maybe he needs another Shinji Mikami looking over his shoulder to focus his ideas a bit. Anyway, NHM3 is a good romp and worth a go. The appearance of

->Open Spoiler<-

Takashi Miike

was very funny - there's just so much unexpected craziness like that.

[fishbowlhead]

Finished Cod: Infinity War today. Great campaign and i feel this is underrated as far as cod campaigns go, takes a lot of cues from Titanfall2 & Killzone but still has its own thing going.

[wakka]

I finally got a new computer for general work and leisure purposes, so I've been tinkering around with a couple of games.

Parkitect

This is one that I've wanted to play for i don't know how long. If you're not familiar, it's basically a modern indie Theme Park/Roller Coaster Tycoon type game. I haven't actually a played a tycoon game for, oooh, maybe 20 odd years? Well up for it, anyway. Plus, I love theme parks.

I bought it from Steam, downloaded it, fired it up, jumped into a quick tutorial, then straight into the first level. I started plonking down paths and rides and shops, as one does, before progressing onto designing a Wild Mouse style roller coaster.

The visitor numbers were rising, I was progressing towards the goal of 200 guests, and my confidence was surging. I was a natural!

Then, visitor numbers started to drop. And drop. And drop. Nothing I could do would stem the tide of unpopularity - new rides, marketing campaigns. I was taking out loans just to keep the place running.

So I paused the game, and looked online for help. I found myself on the Parkitect subreddit. What I discovered was that my park was unimaginably bad, which was most likely why no one was visiting.

For reference, my park, which right up until I visited the subreddit I was terribly proud of...

->Open Spoiler<-

Pretty cool, eh?

Yeah, no, as it turns out. A sample of 2 different parks someone made on the very same level from the subreddit:

->Open Spoiler<-

And here's one more for good measure:

->Open Spoiler<-

So the good news is, I know where I was going wrong - absolutely everywhere, apparently!

I've since been watching some YouTube videos on how to build a decent park and it's interesting to learn about. It's not rocket science, but it definitely requires some work and creativity. I quite like that though - very different to anything that I'd usually play, which is simply a test of either dexterity or, in many cases, sheer persistence.

A very new and different type of game for me and one I'm enjoying learning about, albeit with a very embarrassing mistakes along the way.

Faith

This is a creepy lo fi horror game I found out about yesterday from reading this article on the Verge.

It's a pay-what-you-want Itch.io type of deal, and it's only 90 minutes or so in length. I can highly recommend it. It's very creepy. The basic premise is that you are a priest returning alone to the site of a failed exorcism in the 1980s. Things very much go bump in the night.

I really liked it.

[QualityChimp]

[MENTION=5490]wakka[/MENTION], I'm not sure I like that.
With Roller Coaster Tycoon, I loved that you could do your own thing and still win if you did it right.
I used to plan my paths really neatly with multiple exits meeting to minimise paths.
I watched aghast as my sister just plonked the paths down wherever!

[wakka]

@wakka, I'm not sure I like that.
With Roller Coaster Tycoon, I loved that you could do your own thing and still win if you did it right.
I used to plan my paths really neatly with multiple exits meeting to minimise paths.
I watched aghast as my sister just plonked the paths down wherever!

I think you can very much do your own thing (almost to a fault) but you need it to actually look good. If you look at the two parks from Reddit I posted above, they're both very different layouts and themes to one another, but both passed the same level with flying colours.

Guests are sensitive to the quality of theming and also to being able to see the workings of the park - the deliveries to shops, rubbish collection, etc - so you need to hide it like Disney or Universal do.

From what I understand you also need to give visitors a good route around the park - i.e. not make them walk miles and miles between rides, as in my design.

I was basically doing what your sister used to do, and was punished accordingly!

[QualityChimp]

Ha, I bet you can't cheat like in Roller Coaster Tycoon and if you need a certain amount of people in the park to pass, delete the paths to the exit once enough are in!

[wakka]

Reading old Reddit threads, it sounds like there were some exploits like that, but the developer is active on the forum and so fixed all that stuff once he saw people discussing it!

It's a cool game. I really want to put more time into it as I really like the idea of designing my own theme parks, and it seems much less hardcore than Planet Coaster (where the flexibility on offer looks perhaps a little bit too much for me, and where many of the builds on YouTube don't really resemble real life parks).

[Golgo]

Playing Bloodstained and don't like it at all. Disappointed. But playing Dusk also and liking that very much indeed.

[QualityChimp]

Reading old Reddit threads, it sounds like there were some exploits like that, but the developer is active on the forum and so fixed all that stuff once he saw people discussing it!

It's a cool game. I really want to put more time into it as I really like the idea of designing my own theme parks, and it seems much less hardcore than Planet Coaster (where the flexibility on offer looks perhaps a little bit too much for me, and where many of the builds on YouTube don't really resemble real life parks).

I really want this now, but doubt my laptop would run it! About £23 on Steam, yeah?

[wakka]

Yep, that's the one