Ironic Indie Lad

Started this the other night and went with an Astrologer class. (which is cheating, is too easy etc. according to Soulsborne snobs)

Spent a bit of time running past everything to get to Caelid and acquire the Meteorite Staff as its an S rank and scales with your intelligence stat. There is also a good spell to be found nearby. Once I had that, I grinded quite a bit to try maximise the volume and power of my spells. With that done I went to Stormveil castle and fairly easily beat Margit The Fell Omen, The Grafted Scion and Godrick The Grafted.

Really, really enjoying this so far.

He denied being a competitive bodybuilder lllllllooooololololollllllloooolllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll

Theres a post where they are promoting CONTROL YOUR NUTRITION meat seasonings.

You've heard of Big Tech and Big Pharm...these morons are genuinely calling out BIG SEASONING.

Watch out, Schwarz! Your reign of terror is over. EC3 is coming for you. 

Played enough of Horizon: Forbidden West to give some proper thoughts on it now.

I think overall I would have to say that this game is pretty decent but overrated. I know plenty of people say this about Horizon but its true imo, it seems to borrow almost everything from other AAA games and do them not quite as well.

I dont think the game is any better or worse than your average Assassins Creed.

The Good

• It looks absolutely fantastic, certainly on the PS5 anyway. I've not had any real tech issues other than some quite noticeable pop-in.
• The map is enormous and there is nice variety in the environments.
• The soundtrack is really excellent.
• The ranged combat is pretty satisfying.

The Not So Good

• I find the story and characters incredibly boring
• The main story is pretty much a big extended fetch quest. Its pretty much go to an area, fight a boss, retrieve something and bring it back to your base. Repeat. 
• The upgrades to your equipment and skill tree seems tacked on and quite shallow to me. It seems like it barely makes a difference.
• I found the hand holding extremely annoying. You literally can be standing for like 3 seconds and Aloy will say "maybe I should scan and look for somewhere to climb" etc. 
• The climbing is quite poor compared to Uncharted, Tomb Raider etc. 

This is some of the most embarrassing nonsense I have ever seen.

Bunch of absolute babies having a huge nervous breakdown in public.

Can someone just assure these guys that they are brilliant, they are important, they are talented artists, they definitely should have been pushed to the moon and paid hundreds of millions of dollars and had creative control etc. Hopefully then they will shut the fuck up. 

Currently the same score as Breath of the Wild, Mario Galaxy and Red Dead Redemption 2 (although obviously those 3 have far more critic reviews at the moment)

Review embargo lifted on Elden Ring so reviews are up at the usual places

8 minutes ago, Cod Eye said:

Just managed to get a PS5, which should be delivered tomorrow. 

What games are considered must haves? I'm not a fan of First Person games(although I have already ordered the last Resident Evil game), but really like 3rd Person ones. Is there any games that will show off the next gen qualities and really impress me?

One thing to note is that a lot of the PS5 games have a performance mode and a quality mode. Just depends on whether you want to prioritise the framerate or the graphical quality. I tend to go with performance as once you get used to 60fps, its quite jarring to drop back to 30fps.

The aforementioned Horizon: Forbidden West is genuinely impressive.

I think Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is a pretty good showcase if you are into a less realistic game. Kena: Bridge of Spirits is also lovely looking in that regard and is something of a budget game.

Demons Souls looks fantastic but is ultimately only playable if you like the From Software house style and / or hate yourself. 

There are quite a few remasters of games that were already stunning on PS4 but are now nicer looking, better framerates, zero loading times etc. If you haven't played them before then FFVII Intergrade, Uncharted Legacy of Thieves Collection and Ghost of Tsushima Directors Cut are all well worth a look.

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2022/02/sony-goes-game-pass-by-putting-shadow-warrior-3-on-ps-now-at-launch

This is quite interesting. Basically if you have PSNow, you get Shadow Warrior 3 for the cost of absolutely gratis.

I assume we will start to get more of this sort of thing in the coming months. I dont know the finances of it but its a nice incentive to get PSNow and probably a decent little spotlight on a game that could easily fly under the radar due to the big releases around this time.

Unrelated note - I got the chance to actually sit and play Horizon Forbidden West for an extended period last night and I really enjoyed it. One thing I will say is that it seems to encourage grinding / side quests. I have been doing the main story only and the next quest is recommended for level 17 and up. I am only at level 12! I don't want to have to do some bullshit fetch quest stuff.

Did anyone play any Forbidden West?

I installed it on Friday and have had a couple of quick sessions since then. I keep falling asleep which is either a big criticism of the games story and characters OR I am absolutely fucked. 

The launch edition of Elden Ring was back in stock on Amazon earlier so I bit the bullet. £45.

Any idea why this game is somewhat cheap compared to the launch price of recent AAA games?

15 minutes ago, Egg Shen said:

5? thats one of the rounds that everyone is pretty much in agreement that Whittaker won.

Yeah that's what I am saying. They were the clearest rounds in terms of 1 for Izzy and 5 for Whittaker.

Everything in between was close but I had Izzy taking them.

I had it 4-1 / 49-46 for Adesanya personally and I was a little surprised to see Whittaker say he felt he did enough to win.

1 and 5 were the clearest rounds. Everything in between was fairly close but I just felt Rob was struggling with the reach and wasn't doing enough when he was able to get inside. He could have stole a round or two if he actually established anything on the back of his takedowns or when he briefly took the back. I think the judges tend to disregard a takedown if the opponent pops right back up though.

The fight actually reminded me of some of the Cormier and Jones exchanges.

For anyone still on the fence about Cyberpunk, Xbox have released a 5 hour free trial of the Series X and S optimised update.

I do want to try it if its finally sorted but the timing is bad for me. I pre-ordered Horizon Forbidden West on PS5 and I am now feeling really hyped for this based on the reviews. That will be consuming all gaming time for the next while.

Delicious Dave Meltzer is saying on this mornings Observer Radio that there is an "Austin level" surprise still to come for Mania.

This is surely an exaggeration because there is only really Hogan and The Rock that are on that level. From the next tier, would Cena really be that big a surprise when he has just done Summerslam and a run of house shows?

32 minutes ago, RedRooster said:

I agree with both of these. But fuck, buy both games if you can afford to, @waters44. They're available at very low prices these days, particularly if you buy them pre-owned. 

They are also on Game Pass.

Dishonored 2 is great and I am pretty sure its one of the games that has received an FPS boost. Although its a few years old now, it still looks stunning if you ask me because of the art style.

Sorry for the double post but I have just remembered an absolutely incredible incident from one of our talent shows.

Again, this was 98/99 sort of time period so everyone was obsessed with WWF, South Park, Nu Metal etc. Truly the peak of culture. A bunch of guys had formed a band and were scheduled to do a Rage Against the Machine cover at the talent show. They were introduced, came on stage, took off their jumpers to reveal DX tops as the frontman bellowed "BREAK IT DOWN!" and they launched into the DX theme. 

I'm actually laughing out loud right now remembering this one guy in my class getting thrown out of the assembly hall during this. For some reason it absolutely whipped him into a frenzy and he was up on his chair giving it X-Pac style SUCK IT gestures.

Beautiful memories.

I have memories of some things from high school that I struggle to believe even though I saw them with my own eyes. 

This would have been in about 98/99. At the time, my maths class was on the 3rd floor of an old building with pretty high ceilings. In other words, it was rather high up. Our teacher used to assign us some work and then saunter off to the staff room to skive off for a bit. When this happened, the 'hard' kids would grab someone and literally dangle them by their legs out of the window and laugh hysterically as the poor guy begged for his life. Genuinely amazing that nobody was killed.

Around the same time period, our PE teacher used to set up the gym for "gymnastics". He would basically drag out a couple of trampettes, some crash mats and set up the wall bars and then fuck off for a smoke. For some reason he thought leaving a bunch of boys unattended in this era DURING A BOOM PERIOD~! would be fine. Can vividly remember a lad going for a beautiful D'Lo style frog splash off the bars and someone moving the mat out of the way so that he ate shit on the landing. 

It was always a thing in my school that the leavers would bring in eggs to throw at people on their final day. I can remember this escalating over time and you were lucky if you were just pelted with an egg. By the time I left people were bringing in eggs but also throwing pint cartons of milk at people and covering them in flour. 

We also had not one but two bomb scares between 98 and 04. Both times the "suspicious package" ended up being books being delivered to the library. 

I have a growing backlog of PS5 games and stuff downloaded from Game Pass. Despite this, I have dusted off my Switch and downloaded Knights of the Old Republic. I am taking my girlfriend up the highlands (not a euphemism) at the weekend and I cant think of anything she could possibly enjoy more than looking after the dogs by herself while I play a Star Wars RPG from almost 20 years ago. 

Did anyone bother with Dying Light 2? I was on the fence about it and it seemed to get mostly middling reviews and have quite a few technical issues etc. Still something I might pick up once it goes down in price and is patched up.

Probably two of the years biggest releases about to come out in Horizon: Forbidden West and Elden Ring. I am in a weird spot with these because I am 100% certain I will buy both but I am well aware there's a decent chance I will completely bounce off at least one of them. 

Finally - Nintendo Direct tonight at 10! Most of the rumours I have seen are suggesting that a new Fire Emblem is being showcased but beyond that I don't know what to expect. It would be nice to see at least a fucking screenshot of Metroid Prime 4 but that game is becoming the VEER IS COMING TO RAW of gaming. In a dream world, they will show some footage, give a release window and then announce that Prime Trilogy is on the eshop immediately. 

On 2/4/2022 at 11:41 PM, Egg Shen said:

Initially though Sky Sports, Catteral's use of "accessible" makes me think it may be ITV or Channel 5.

Hopefully the PFL sign more UK fighters for the upcoming season.

I think Stevie Ray is coming out of retirement but at 170lbs for PFL

10 minutes ago, PunkStep said:

All you need to know is that if anyone has NFT, Crypto or a name of a cryptocurrency in their Twitter bio then they're either a cunt or a nonce.

I think a similar principal applies IRL.

Apologies for the sweeping generalisation but every single person I have ever met who is into Crypto etc. is a tedious weirdo bell end. The type who say things like "wake up" and spout rubbish they just heard about (but firmly believe to be absolute fact) on the Joe Rogan Experience. In a nutshell, profoundly dull people with average intelligence who sadly think they are incredibly interesting and clever.

The office I previously worked in had a crypto guy. If anyone was going to snap one day it would have been him. I was waiting for the day where he just pulled the cord and white light engulfed us. Sadly it never came. 

As I seem to do whenever I am going through a bit of a rough time, I have recently been playing a LOT of games. Brief thoughts below.

Deaths Door (Xbox)

Been considering getting this for a while and then it ended up coming to Game Pass. Ended up playing through the whole game across a handful of nights and really enjoyed it. As with every game coming out now, there is a bit of Dark Souls influence but its really more of a classic Zelda. It follows the traditional pattern of - a bit of exploration, a dungeon, a new item or power up to help you progress, repeat. Definitely feels very Zelda once you get the hook shot.

Metroid Dread (Switch)

I'm a big fan of the series and a huge fan of "Metroidvania" games in general. It did feel strange popping this in and thinking that it was the first truly new 2D Metroid game since Fusion which I bought a GBA to play on release day almost 20 years ago! 

I really loved this. One of the best releases in 2021 I would say. The map design and boss fights are still leagues above the many, many games influenced by Metroid. There is some sort of genius at play when the bosses are brutally tough but you make just enough progress to think "I can get it next time".

The only criticism I have is that some of the E.M.M.I encounters can be frustrating but that could just be because I don't really enjoy stealth.

Eastward (Switch)

Another one I had my eye on for ages. Still in progress but in a nutshell it's beautiful art with a clear influence from both 2D Zelda and Earthbound. Quite a relaxing game to play as its not at all difficult but be warned there is a hell of a lot of dialogue to get through. Thankfully some of its well written and amusing.

Final Fantasy VII Remake: Intergrade (PS5)

I had no business buying and playing this considering how much time I put into the PS4 version barely 18 months ago. It somehow lured me back in though. I just really love this one for whatever reason. (nothing to do with Tifa's hilariously enormous tits)

Far Cry 6 (PS5)

Not familiar with the series but picked this up for £25 and gave it a bash. Enjoyed it for a couple of hours then started to feel like I was playing an online FPS against bots and got thoroughly bored. Cant see me going back to this.

Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth (Xbox)

This has probably got the worst name of any game I have ever played. I had no fucking idea what any of this meant but apparently its an Anime based on a D and D campaign?

Although this has a terrible name and I know absolutely nothing about the source material, this is very clearly a Castlevania Symphony of the Night tribute and a good one at that. The movement of Deedlit is basically lifted directed from Alucard and some of the music is very Castlevania indeed. The one thing this game does have thats pretty unique for this genre is an Ikaruga influence. You basically have the power of both wind and fire and you cycle between these at any time. You can absorb enemy attacks provided you are in the right form. Similarly some enemies are strong to wind but weak to fire and vice versa. Its quite a nice mechanic.

This is on Game Pass now and I would really recommend a quick playthrough if you like Castlevania games. You could probably get this done and dusted in under 10 hours.

Super Mario 3D Land (Switch)

I bought this when it came out and it just got absorbed into my backlog. I never had a Wii U so this is my first time with the game.

What can I even really say? Its a 3D Mario Game. The odds were that it was going to be absolute magic and....it is! Just a joy from start to finish.

And finally, I have just started on Spiritfarer and also have Pokemon Legends Arceus coming tomorrow. (I have a job, honest!)

If you wanted to, you could probably argue that Belals win over Wonderboy (given that it was a complete shut out with multiple 10-8s across the judges cards) is a better and more relevant win than any of Leon's.

13 hours ago, Merzbow said:

Alexis from Daughters is the biggest fucking piece of shit.

 

Fucking *hell*

Terrible stuff. 

I may have gone absolutely insane here but wasnt there a time where Bas Rutten was convinced that the man to dethrone prime Anderson Silva was....Benji Radach?