Yeah Valhalla is really good as I just broke the 100 hour mark and still have a lot left to do. It took longer to get into compared to Odyssey or Origins but the Viking story is actually better than the story in those games once you get into it. Female Eivor isn't as good as Kassandra but she's still one of my favorite characters in the series. It's different than other games in that stealth isn't really required or needed. The easiest way to finish missions is to just go in guns a blazing which I suppose fits the Viking mold. I love the dual wielding as the combination of the Blacksmith's Hammer and a dagger is devastating. My only real gripe is that the collision detection is terrible. Moving around and climbing can be tedious as your character just stops moving against certain objects for no particular reason. Trying to climb through windows or up objects takes multiple attempts which can get frustrating. If you don't like AC games, Valhalla won't change your opinion but if you do it's well worth your time.
Good point. I'm playing on the Xbox One so maybe the high end PC or new series X experiences are different, but the collision detection on the older gen consoles is rough. So much so that it's noticeably worse then other games in the series as soon as you start playing. Maybe because a lot more attention went into the finer details, but even things like riding the horse over objects and close ups of the finishers look pretty bad. Even the jumping feels off. Takes a while to get used to.
Last edited by Huntingwhale; 01-28-2021 at 07:16 AM.
I've been playing Zen Pinball, which I believe became Pinball FX3 for the new generation of consoles since it was on the PS3. I have a good portion of the available tables for PS4 and they are awesome. I am waiting for the PSVR version to go on sale again so I can try that. I think Pinball VR would be pretty sweet!
Sweet, it is like my addiction for video games now. I forgot how fun pinball was and with the cool effects you can have on a video table it is great. I had no idea there was a PSVR pinball.
Good point. I'm playing on the Xbox One so maybe the high end PC or new series X experiences are different, but the collision detection on the older gen consoles is rough. So much so that it's noticeably worse then other games in the series as soon as you start playing. Maybe because a lot more attention went into the finer details, but even things like riding the horse over objects and close ups of the finishers look pretty bad. Even the jumping feels off. Takes a while to get used to.
I'm playing on series X and it's not good. There are times when climbing that your character stops being able to move in any direction then all of a sudden you can continue to climb. While riding the horse most of the time you automatically jump fences but sometimes you just run into them and stop.
Pinball in PSVR is fun and it's a great entry level VR experience for people. Limited motion sickness and it's immersive, since pinball is a mostly static, familiar experience.
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I've been playing Zen Pinball, which I believe became Pinball FX3 for the new generation of consoles since it was on the PS3. I have a good portion of the available tables for PS4 and they are awesome. I am waiting for the PSVR version to go on sale again so I can try that. I think Pinball VR would be pretty sweet!
It is/was also one of the few good games for the Vita. I've been playing since PS3 as well. Though PSP might have been my first Zen game?
There are a ton of awesome tables. It you like Star Wars or Marvel, you're in luck. I played many hours on Guardians of the Galaxy when it first came out, lots of replayability. Some of the Star Wars are very high quality. But none of the Zen table suck, unlike some other pinball games. Their proprietary tables are good as well. Must be like at least 50 in all?! I think the JAWS one is my favourite in VR.
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Free PS Plus games for February are Control: Ultimate Edition, Concrete Genie, and Destruction AllStars. Has anyone played Control? Looks like it has pretty great reviews but I must have missed this one
Free PS Plus games for February are Control: Ultimate Edition, Concrete Genie, and Destruction AllStars. Has anyone played Control? Looks like it has pretty great reviews but I must have missed this one
Control is great. I especially enjoy telekinetic-ally obliterating the enemy with flying objects from around the room. The atmosphere is also pretty neat.
I haven't played it in around a year though. At that time there was the occasional frame rate drop if the fights got too intense, but I assume they've since fixed it with optimizing patches.
I’m a couple hours into metro exodus and so far I absolutely love it.
Decent story, ok graphics, varied gameplay with some stealth and some fighting. Has some RE and TLOU vibes with the post apocalyptic theme plus the requirement to craft stuff.
What I’m most impressed with is how little hand holding the game has. I’m learning how to play it as I go along. Finding out when I need a mask and how the combat and stealth works. I find way too many games nowadays make everything about just following boring instructions that pop up in the HUD, following dotted paths and turning off your brain in favour of staring at the waypoint marker.
This game doesn’t do any of that. It relies upon you to listen to what the characters are telling you to do, figure out via trial and error what weapons and other tools do.
It is honestly so refreshing. I got so tired of setting my horse on auto pilot in AC Odyssey, being over powered in combat and basically never once having to figure out anything the entire game. It was never a challenge. Not just AC games but COD and even highly rated games like Witcher 3 or Horizon Zero Dawn were more about following the big waypoint markers, reading the on screen text, seeing the out of world context hint markers telling me where the resources were etc. I actually can’t think of the last game I played where my entire path the whole game wasn’t mapped out for me with dots, on screen graphics/text, big glowing markers and relied upon me to think about how #### works within the game world.
It really feels like I’m struggling to survive and when I die, instead of charging in guns blazing, I need to consider my next move, evaluate my strategy.
Trying to play an open world action game nowadays without waypoints, out of world maps and the like is impossible and many of them don’t even let your turn half that #### off because the hints and answers aren’t even located in world because the games are made for people who want the game to just take them to the next fight and plot point.
I know the games are different in style, this is a structured FPS game, not an open world action adventure, but it’s about the level of independence as a player and the respect the developers have for players to have a brain, use it and enjoy being challenged.
Could you imagine if all the old Zelda games just had giant waypoint markers that said “now go here” “then here” “then here”. They’d be so easy! Beating them wouldn’t have taken any effort or brainpower. Instead players were forced to read things in the game world and learn via trial and error, exploration, not some pop out text the devs put in as part of the HUD that explicitly tells a player what to do at all times.
This game has barely any HUD and never takes you out of the world so you can spend 20 minutes looking at a menu or skill tree.
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I’m a couple hours into metro exodus and so far I absolutely love it.
Decent story, ok graphics, varied gameplay with some stealth and some fighting. Has some RE and TLOU vibes with the post apocalyptic theme plus the requirement to craft stuff.
What I’m most impressed with is how little hand holding the game has. I’m learning how to play it as I go along. Finding out when I need a mask and how the combat and stealth works. I find way too many games nowadays make everything about just following boring instructions that pop up in the HUD, following dotted paths and turning off your brain in favour of staring at the waypoint marker.
This game doesn’t do any of that. It relies upon you to listen to what the characters are telling you to do, figure out via trial and error what weapons and other tools do.
It is honestly so refreshing. I got so tired of setting my horse on auto pilot in AC Odyssey, being over powered in combat and basically never once having to figure out anything the entire game. It was never a challenge. Not just AC games but COD and even highly rated games like Witcher 3 or Horizon Zero Dawn were more about following the big waypoint markers, reading the on screen text, seeing the out of world context hint markers telling me where the resources were etc. I actually can’t think of the last game I played where my entire path the whole game wasn’t mapped out for me with dots, on screen graphics/text, big glowing markers and relied upon me to think about how #### works within the game world.
It really feels like I’m struggling to survive and when I die, instead of charging in guns blazing, I need to consider my next move, evaluate my strategy.
Trying to play an open world action game nowadays without waypoints, out of world maps and the like is impossible and many of them don’t even let your turn half that #### off because the hints and answers aren’t even located in world because the games are made for people who want the game to just take them to the next fight and plot point.
I know the games are different in style, this is a structured FPS game, not an open world action adventure, but it’s about the level of independence as a player and the respect the developers have for players to have a brain, use it and enjoy being challenged.
Could you imagine if all the old Zelda games just had giant waypoint markers that said “now go here” “then here” “then here”. They’d be so easy! Beating them wouldn’t have taken any effort or brainpower. Instead players were forced to read things in the game world and learn via trial and error, exploration, not some pop out text the devs put in as part of the HUD that explicitly tells a player what to do at all times.
This game has barely any HUD and never takes you out of the world so you can spend 20 minutes looking at a menu or skill tree.
That entire series is awesome, but really comes to fruition in Exodus. If you like story-driven alternate dystopia shooters like Wolfenstein, the Metro series is almost on par in terms of quality. The series flew under the radar, but I'm glad I played it when I did. Definitely one of the underrated series in the gaming world.
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I also loved Exodus. I hadn't played the previous games and as Cecil said, found it refreshing to play a game with that level of grit and detail. The struggle for mask filters is truly real. The only issue I did have with it on Xbox One X was the level of jank to be had in the movement and aiming controls - just never did feel fluid or polished enough, even after the developer provided some updates in that area.
Yeah Cecil just summed up my thoughts on Exodus perfectly. Most games where I'm low on ammo it's an annoyance, with Exodus it just made the game better/more immersive.
I like a good open world game, but other than Hades my last 3 games have been Horizon, RDR2 and now Cyberpunk... I'm starting to crave something more linear again.
Wait... why. Like, why is it going to be better than Madden.
__________________ "The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway." - Brian Eno
If you don’t get it that’s ok but it’s light years better than madden. Always was. Gameplay, recruiting, career, every aspect of it is superior to Madden. I’m sure there will be some AAA misery porn title for everyone else to get excited about before year end but for now? WHEEEEEEEEEE
Edit: for those who clearly have never known the joys of NCAA the only real similarity it had to madden was that they were both football games. Most people had a favourite and stuck with it. They have similar play calling mechanisms and that’s about all. Some of the love is nostalgic of course but it really was the superior game, I stopped playing football games altogether when it died. Madden doesn’t come close to scratching that itch. I suppose now we should call off the fatwa on Ed O’Bannon.
The atmosphere is also pretty neat. 
