vortextk

It's funny that you ask who the psychedelic level was for, and the answer, is ME! Not because I'm old enough to have been there or experienced any of it, but it's what I wanted desperately from this game but really only got a little bit?

I just finished the game as well. I loved the original psychonauts. I played the game late 2000's maybe 2010. Bought a used xbox from a pawn shop across the street from my job, blockbuster(yeah), and rented the game from work.

The levels in the original psychonauts are just...even more so than they could be today because of how much more rare it was then, fucking weird. They're great. The milkman conspiracy? The idea of the meat circus? Cause holy shit that gameplay of it was bad. The theatre? Playing against napoleon on a board game? BLACK VELVETOPIA?! Becoming a kaiju in the lungfish city?

And that's where my biggest disappointments lie with psychonauts 2. To be clear, I really really liked this game. The way they tied the weird eccentricities from the first game, your water curse, Ford Cruller just being a mess, your family that hates psychics is very good. I can't believe they were able to tie up these what seem like and probably is random weird fun things they decided to do in the first game into a cohesive whole. It worked for me, a lot.

The getting the band back together of the old psychonauts that are all a little broken by what happened to them and what they had to endure felt incredible. It goes back to 2021 GOTY arguments when Vinny had so much to say about them, Alex too I think?

And then the game plays a little better and looks how you think the original looked like on modern consoles. That's cool and expected, but I was kind of let down by the levels as a whole. The gambling hospital was really great and reminds me of persona 5 and how great a casino is for a game, with the sounds and colors and slots/wheels/horse races etc I guess.

I also LOVED Helmut Fullbear's level. It's my favorite level in the whole game. I thought I was going to be in for a majestic visual and audio production beyond what I could have imagined. It turns out, I wasn't. "Nick's" level is really funny, his demented little twisted royal mind. Bob's level is funny and was a good time. Cassie's library and books was really solid and clever. Ford's different shards are fairly solid. Compton boole is atleast very unique like the theatre from the first game but felt very small and just ok to play. Loboto is, you know, toothy and again a demented mind that really plays up his trope but didn't do a whole lot game wise since it's the first thing you do. And the flea circus and subsequent scenes are also clever!

I thought I would only get more unique gameplay and visuals and perspectives compared to the first game. I know the crowdfunding development maybe didn't go super well, but with extra time and microsoft money and just it being the second game, I wished for and wanted more. That said, I enjoyed it a lot and I can't believe how much it had to say about these characters when the first game really only relishes in how KOOKY almost everyone is without much else to them. I'm glad I got around to it finally because double fine and schafer are pretty incredible in what they do, even if it doesn't win all the awards or sell ten million copies.

Also, and I can't believe this, I didn't know Jack Black was in this game until his entire level was over and I was just randomly looking up a different voice actor and saw him listed. He's not hiding, I just didn't put it together.

Can confirm about their recent efforts being all over the place. Crisis core seemed to run absolutely fine. Wasn't a stutter shit show like 7r could be, but it is a fairly "ok" looking game. A lot better than it's psp roots but it's not really a modern looking big budget game either, cause it isn't.

7r was pretty bad for me for awhile. I screwed around with a couple hours of it here and there last summer until finally a month later I had spent enough time, doing .ini edits and a couple of tiny performance related mods to FINALLY get the framerate almost completely stable. Once I got it there, the game ran pretty good, but why am I spending my time on something I paid roughly 50 bucks for they can't be bothered with to fix themselves?

Then you get into weird old releases with bad fonts or touch screen interfaces making their way to PC ui. As far as I know octopath traveler came over just fine with better overall effects and everything else perfectly stable. I played some on switch and just barely touched my pc copy...Not really interested in strategy games so didn't keep tabs on like, diofield, triangle strategy and tactics ogre on pc. Valkyrie Elysium seems fine? As does Star ocean? Technically speaking.

World of Final fantasy is locked to 30 fps. Digital Foundry just did two videos on all of the FFXIII games detailing wins and misses there too. Overall, they just don't seem to care and so we're fighting over scraps.

@bigsocrates: I went back to cyberpunk and restarted from my launch save. I got fairly far. It's modded to hell and back, lots of positives with that and it's fun with good enough character stuff and story. It was never that fun to play, but my "what if I tried my making a hacking/stealth/mono-wire build like Lucy in edgerunners"(yes that show fucking got me good) is now just overpowered and combat doesn't really exist. All I really need to go back and do is just...follow up on the major side quests and keep chugging through the story while 1shotting goons with quick hacks etc. It made it less fun to play than before, but since witcher 2 and 3 cdpr for me has never had the most FUN games, just atleast in the case of the witcher phenomenal worlds and writing for me.

I tried to go back to Tales of Arise last year. I still want to now but, the combat...doesn't feel good to me. I gave up on Berseria. I've never really played any other tales aside from Destiny on the ps1. Berseria just...the limits of artes based on the little diamonds and how easy it was to be low on them as well as just, combat I couldn't understand and never felt good to play, made me quit even when I did enjoy my misfit party -a lot-. Arise plays better and I enjoyed the party here too, but the combat again...Against normal enemies I could understand it well enough, but every time you fight a boss and the entire like stun/stagger/break whatever it was called, it's been awhile, mechanic doesn't exist and they don't react to hits at all and just nail with you huge attacks while you do 1-2 hits and then just avoid because the MAIN battle mechanic for stringing together characters into chaining attacks is turned into only specific instances on bosses made me...hate playing it. I don't understand tales games. Here's a million abilities, I don't understand what's good and when to use or switch the abilities and in the case of Arise the most fun I did have getting stuff going and chaining stuff isn't how every boss fight works. I'm 20 something hours in, I'd like to finish it buuuut....

Sakuna of Rice and Ruin. I had a lot of fun and my only complaint was that you will feel super under leveled which makes fights impossible because of the seasons and farming. It makes the farming and rice matter, but sometimes it sucks to be like "oh, I do 1% damage to this enemy per hit, guess I'll just wait for the ingame year to pass and harvest to be over". I stopped playing cause of online shit but should go back.

The Ascent. I started after finishing necromunda for that same grimey cyberpunk style. It's....really really neat to look at and listen to, but it's not that fun to play. It just feels like a really basic twin stick shooter and after several hours almost none of the rpg stuff matters and it's just kind of boring aiming and shooting over and over. I tried to go back once, it felt boring. I doubt I'll do much else with it but who knows.

@rebel_scum: You can both change it to completely stop time, as well as a setting to swap support spells to spells not on cooldown, as well as left/right on the d-pad swapping whole sets(from the fire to earth set for example). Don't believe there is a way to change your current offensive spell without the wheel.

The controller is very busy and there are a lot of good settings to tweak.

I really enjoyed this. Mix of infamous and prototype to me, two game series that I don't feel were perfect either. It's got some framerate issues on ps5, hopefully it's better on launch, I had a really tough time seeing enemies but I haven't messed with turning off console hdr to see if that would fix it as people complain it's busted?

The combat has a lot of flash and movement to it, tons of abilities ala spells for you to cast and it looks like she'll end up with easily 3-4x the amount the demo starts you off with. Even just playing this demo you can unlock a lot more support spells already.

The world seems to be a playground to cast magic in and do combat. I feel combat felt better every time I went back to the demo, I played like 2+ hours over 3-4 sessions. I was a little more instep with the controls because there is a -lot- going on there. I don't expect the story to be much or the open world to be anything but vomit icons on a map.

It's far far from perfect. What the hell is with the UI anyway, but there are a ton of accessibility and gameplay options, like turning the chatter between cuff/frey up or down as you want, even down to basically off except in forced important story scenarios. Looking through those settings makes it feel like they really cared to make the game what you want. Too many to list honestly.

If the game is a by the numbers open world icon hunt with a bland story but the combat and movement stays to the demo level or gets better, plus obviously a ton more character customization and spells, I'm in basically day 1. I felt like I'd be in the minority but that it wouldn't be as small as it seems. I will say, I hope it freaking runs well on pc because that's where I want to play it and things like ff7remake ran bad but ff15 ran well.

@theonewhoplays: As someone in the middle of the latest expansion, these last two expansions quests are mostly cut scenes and talking. Very little fetch, and it's better for it.

To me, no, it's not just an MMO, because I've never seen or played one with a story that mattered; that plays out like a long time television show because they don't have to shove in every idea they have in a few year development time and 10-40 hour run time.

Yes, someone like Jeff would be WELL IF YOU GOTTA PLAY 80 HOURS FOR IT TO GET GOOD, WHY EVEN BOTHER? But sometimes, that's just the way of it. Nothing is for everyone but XIV has basically killed off me ever wanting to play something similar to this style of MMO again because I will never care for any others remotely as much as this one.

I LOVED the trailer, and then..liked the game. For as much Jazz as you might expect, I didn't feel like I got a lot? It seemed a little all over the place with scenes and I know it tries to come together in the end as a big culmination, it only kind of worked for me.

The chapter with the double bass player though? That last picture in your post? Fantastic. Amazing. Best part of the game, basically emotional chills over just riffing on music back and forth with a computer.

I just wanted to say that yes, I did play and beat Asura's Wrath with DLC for the first time in 2020. I did it on an emulator.

@zombiepie: Fuck NFTs. Fuck crypto. Fuck the block chain. Fuck stocks and stonks. Fuck Capitalism, go home.

Agreed. They seem to be maybe overly long grindy jrpgs that I would love to play for the class stuff but most likely won't because of 1: straight grind time investment and 2: I LOVE the artwork style used for this game in promo materials and hate the ingame look of it. The newest game looks much worse in my opinion, knowing what the switch is capable of and also I think they went in a further direction of making them look like something I don't enjoy at all.