#Sony PlayStation 4

[dickdebonair]

THURSDAY, The Rom [Spider] fight sucked, and took up the majority of the last stream. So I know most people had to bail due to the arachnophobia. HOWEVER, I have squished her. So back to our regularly scheduled goofin' Come by the stream then. You know where to find the link.

[everygame]

Spider-Man: Miles Morales (PS4)

Developed/Published by: Insomniac Games / Sony Interactive Entertainment Released: 12/11/2020 Completed: 11/01/2023 Completion: 100% playthrough. Trophies / Achievements: 82%

Well,  I wrote “see you in a year, Miles Morales” after playing through Spider-Man’s DLC and it took me about a year and a half to get to this, but I'll count it. I’ve written about two of these, so let’s just bullet point this one out, no order.

Peter Parker’s new face suuucks. I know it’s a done deal and it’s not even like the original face actor (John Bubniak) does his voice, but the new guy doesn’t fit the voice at all and does, as everyone says, looks like “we’ve got Tom Holland at home” except even more of a twat. At least he’s only in this briefly, but man, it’s going to be tough to play the next one. And I like the PS4 Spider-Man suit so much, too! It might even be my favourite Spidey design.

Miles is a great character. He’s completely out of his depth, and I love that they’ve drilled down on this even down to how he moves through the world, with a more awkward swinging style than the OG Spidey.

Unfortunately the main storyline here is a bit… cliche? Not only does it hit all the beats you expect, there’s far too much convenience to it. You’re in serious trouble when the mysterious baddie turns out to be like, the only other character that’s in the game, and without spoiling too much, super-hero stories are (imho) at their weakest when you think the existence of the hero might be the reason why the villains exist (rather than vice versa) and ending with the same “Eyyyy, New York protects it’s own, Spider-Man” beat again is played-out.

The worst thing about this is that the game is absolutely at it’s strongest when Miles Morales is doing what it feels like he set out to do, which is be his neighbourhood Spider-Man. I can’t tell if this is something that happened when they turned this from something DLC-adjacent into a full-priced game, but there’s a thread of missions where he’s helping out his local bodega and stuff that basically gets dropped completely and it actually feels unfinished. The conclusion is given in a… podcast, where your side-kick Ganke literally names every person in Harlem that helped which made me think it was going to lead to a conclusion where the big-bad kidnaps them all or something, but… no. Nothing.

To be honest, actually, that this uses the whole city is a weakness. Whenever I play these big open world games I think about how I never really learn the city, they’re just a backdrop to whatever I’m doing, unlike your Yakuzas and that, where you’re intimately familiar with the map and it becomes ever more real. Why couldn’t Harlem have been that? I don’t really need to be swinging all the way to the bloody financial district. Fence me in!

Yet… the game still feels great to play, all the side-missions and collectibles and shit are a breeze to play/fun to collect, and you don’t even notice that just as in the original the upgrades barely matter. Even here when combat and stealth are even more complicated with new invisibility and electricity powers (that aren’t especially well tutorialised) you can just basically play the game as competently as you wish and enjoy it.

Why does this game have a museum flashback? Is this something that all PlayStation Studios games have to have? It feels like such an afterthought here though, adding nothing to the major problem that the main baddie is a big-time idiot who, at the end of the game is basically running around with their fingers in their ears shouting “la la la I’m not listening” and it really, really undoes the pathos. I ain’t crying about a museum visit again, Sony!

I’m so very tired of Ashley Burch’s one voice. I guess I never played enough Nolan North games to feel this before.

Will I ever play it again? I like that the main storyline is so quick and actually, I did briefly consider beating the NG+ quickly to platinum this. But my backlog spreadsheet has more than 700 games on it. Really.

Final Thought: Starting to feel a bit weird about how much of my media consumption is Marvel now. At the time of writing I play about an hour of Marvel Snap a day and the next game I’ve downloaded to play through is Guardians of the Galaxy. Ah well, I did spend the Christmas period watching Rogers and Hammerstein musicals, I’ll let myself away with it.

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi, either via a one-off donation (pay what you like) or by joining as a supporter at just $1 a month.

[pitagain]

#365DaysOfVGM Day 95:

Skies Unknown (Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown [2019])

The ambience here is, as many have said, is akin to that of jet aircraft taking on and off, to the skies no less, with an atmosphere so mysterious and calming. It all lives up to the name of the game and music in spades! Not a bad track by any means, it’s just so specialized in that one area that there’s not much to talk about besides that

(Length before loop: 1+ minutes, album version has an extra 17 seconds at the end)

[keepfronting]

#streetfighteriv #streetfighter4 #dhalsim #streetfighter #sonyplaystation3 #playstation3 #ps3 #keepfronting

[acquired-stardust]

Resident Evil 4 Playstation 2 2005

[random-meme-bot]

My hand slipped...

Originals under the cut

[n64retro]

Mortal Kombat 4 (Eurocom, Midway, 1998) magazine ad for Sony Playstation and Nintendo 64.

[buthigor]

(Capcom)

[splinkoplinko]

Things I don't like about Nintendo:

Making games impossible to play again (Vimm's Lair getting raided by a bunch of companies including Nintendo, online stores getting shut down by Nintendo, more than one subscription required for some NSO Virtual Consoles like Genesis, N64, and GBA, lack of regional translations and ports, etc.)

Taking down fan creations (fan games, mods, music remixes, gameplay videos, etc.)

Putting limits on the monetization of tournaments featuring their games (https://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/63433/~/community-tournament-guidelines)

Shutting down online services for consoles that are still very popular and used frequently (3DS getting shut down recently.)

The Switch and a few of the more recent games on it being not that great (Pokemon especially, I'm pretty sure the Wii ran better and it's almost 17 years old.)

Now I know that Nintendo isn't the only one that does this. Microsoft, Sega, and Sony aren't that great with their older games (though some of those are better than others), but Nintendo is much worse and much more strict. Sega doesn't even make consoles anymore, and modding isn't as popular on PlayStation and Xbox platforms due to it being tricky, but their games that are on PC have had plenty of mods, and the companies have no issue with them. I've heard the Xbox Series X/S isn't too good, same with the PS5, though I haven't noticed whenever I used my friend's consoles, and I have an Xbox 1 and PS4. The consoles are also definitely better than their previous gens, which is hard to say with the Switch (hot take, I prefer the Wii U 💀).

[virtualfotodivision]

07.19.2020 | Ghost of Tsushima

Captured on PS4.

[everygame]

God of War (PS4)

Developed/Published by: Santa Monica Studio / Sony Interactive Entertainment Released: 20/04/2018 Completed: 06/08/2022 Completion: Finished it, doing only a smattering of side-quests and things. Trophies / Achievements: 32%

Well this is an interesting one to write up. Difficult, even! Because the best way I can describe God of War, sort, of, is that it’s a bit like one of those TV shows where people go “oh, it’s good, but it takes [X NUMBER OF EPISODES] for you to get into it” and you definitely think “aye, sack that, what, do I have infinite amounts of time?”

Except I’m probably really only talking about the narrative of the game when I say that (like it is exactly a TV show) because the actual playing of this game was, quite honestly, boring. 

Now, I might be being unfair here. There’s an argument to be made maybe I wouldn’t have found it quite as boring if I hadn’t recently slogged through what feels like so many triple-A/”worthy” titles recently–or really, that the few that I have slogged through have been so bloody long. And God of War isn’t even that long, so it feels especially unfair.

But that said… I’m not so sure. Yes, if I had been trapped in a cave for a few years, God of War would probably seem absolutely incredible (well, apart from all the times the main characters are in caves, which is a lot, and I’d probably hate that) but we don’t experience anything in a vacuum, and I think I’m just completely and utterly bored of “do a fight, do a climb, do a puzzle, do a cut-scene” done over and over shuffled into different orders.

The thing is though that God of War really does go out of its way to make this work, and I suppose the elephant in the room is that it does this by making Kratos… a sad dad [everyone boos].

Wait! Wait! I know, we’re all sick of it. We’re as sick of it as doing fights and climbs and puzzles and cut-scenes over and over! But while I wouldn’t exactly call this a “soft reboot” of the franchise, considering it does directly reference the big beats of the earlier games, by taking Kratos, giving him a son, and exploring that relationship… it really works.

I’m genuinely surprised to be saying this, but the father and son interactions of Kratos and Atreus… are good? They’re full of genuine pathos as you watch the two characters struggling with grief in their own ways. They interact constantly, no matter what boring thing you, the player, have to be doing, and the relationship became genuinely meaningful to me. It’s a pretty stunning reversal for the series, to be honest, considering that the third God of War was more or less drivel. The tale of the two who are only trying to honour Atreus’s late mother’s wishes (yes, unfortunately the game does set off the “woman dies so man/men can learn a lesson” klaxon) is so small in its way it’s refreshing, even if they do still end up doing what the God of War does, which is kill loads of enemies, fight gods, etc.

But as good Kratos’ relationship with Atreus is, and the story overall, to be honest, it doesn’t rescue a game that feels… well, pretty annoying otherwise. I mean, it starts with the controls, which heavily use the triggers (annoying) but if you change that to “classic” throwing your axe while aiming is a face button which threw me completely. It’s definitely one of those quibbles where you might be like “who cares?” but the inability to make melee be on face buttons and aiming/firing be on the triggers meant I never got comfortable (I just gave up and stayed on the triggers, throwing the axe fast enough for some challenges was impossible for me otherwise.)

It’s weird too, because the gameplay unfolds itself at a glacial pace at first, which rather than easing any player actually just makes the beginning really boring. And unfortunately, it’s not like as it opens up it gets much better. The upgrade trees are horrible, seeming to be entirely made of side-grades that I rarely used, and even the ones that you want to be useful (like being able to hit multiple targets with the axe in one throw) turn out to be barely helpful at all–or even unhelpful. If you’re fighting an armored ancient, you basically have to not use multi-targeting to ever hit their exposed heart. Or I did, anyway. Annoying!

I just didn’t like this as a game like… at all. I mostly put up with it to see the story through, which I enjoyed a lot. Which puts me in an interesting position…

Will I ever play it again? …Because I’m very interested to see where this story goes in Ragnarok but I also can’t be arsed to play it. I suppose if there’s some amazing accessibility options that stop me from ever having to push a block ever again (although actually I’m dog sick of climbing as well now). But maybe it’ll be the first game I ever actually sit down and watch someone play, like on stream? Because you lose a lot of story if you only watch the cut-scenes. 

Final Thought: Actually, watching some idiot play a video game sounds even more annoying than playing this was. Forget it then. 

Support Every Game I’ve Finished on ko-fi, either via a one-off donation (pay what you like) or by joining as a supporter at just $1 a month.

[pitagain]

#365DaysOfVGM Day 153:

Terra’s Theme (Final Fantasy VI, including the “World of Final Fantasy” Prismelody: Terra version, especially the “PIXEL REMASTER” version [1994/2016/2022])

Another iconic track to round out the cast of music nicely. Yet again, a good Flute ends up endearing me to the track’s already impressive Horns and Drums that sound so close to the real deal, what else can I say about this rightfully revered composition? Well, maybe I can also mention how it's the perfect match for Terra's position in life at this moment; she now has control over her actions, after her extended time in a world she's never truly experienced until now.

So naturally, as much as I don’t care for the overpriced Pixel Remaster, I knew it was a good idea to listen to every official Terra theme arrangement I knew, and yeah, it paid off with the Pixel Remaster’s even greater focus on said Flute! Likewise, World of Final Fantasy’s take on the track drops the lovely Flute, but makes up for it greatly with more electronic sounds to give it a futuristic vibe, also befitting of the magitek FFVI’s world is known for, so it’s a good alternative in that regard.

My thoughts on Final Fantasy VI are as follows: From both gameplay and story perspectives, the game is an absolute blast to go through in the 1st half with many different perspectives presented, but somewhat falls off in the 2nd half, because the non-linear structure there isn’t scaled or balanced to make the encounters all that engaging anymore, and the less talked about a certain villain, the better. Still, that 1st half alone makes this game plenty worth any RPG fan’s time, and the 2nd half isn’t straight-up bad, just kind of a letdown in comparison to the 1st half

(Length before loop [Original and Pixel Remaster]: Nearly 2 minutes, [World of Final Fantasy]: 2+ minutes)

^(Go to 50:06 if your browser doesn’t go to it automatically)^

[sandytrish008]

I was playing the Crash Bandicoot N. Sane trilogy recently, it reminded me of Crash's relationship with his sister and I found myself comparing it to Dr Neo Cortex's relationship with his niece Nina, they have such different dynamics lol

[acquired-stardust]

Resident Evil 4 Playstation 2 2005

[gaypengwing]

Leon and Ashley? Whoever made this mod I love you let’s be best friends!!!

[w31rd-l0s3r-k1d]

I made this Sims 4 Playstation 2 game cover, inspired by The Sims 2 cover !!

I plan on making one for The Sims 3, I'm just taking my time on it. The logo I used for The Sims 4