Gaming

[ochoill]

After getting through almost the entirety of Doom / Doom II / Master Levels on a replay.  You would forget how hard that game is at times.  Have about four or five levels left, will tip at them during the week but fancied something more relaxing this weekend so fired up the first Tomb Raider again.  Love the old TR games, 90s adventure perfection.  Just passed St. Francis' Folly there, from here in the level design is pure class with the only real let down being Natla Mines.

[Giggles]

I played through it recently and thought it was amazing. I remember being disappointed with Gta 4 when it came out because it was just a lot less... fun. There seemed to be too much of a shift from "fun" to "realistic" from San Andreas. No more jetpacks. Could you even fly airplanes? I can't remember...

12 years later I fire up Gta V and I'm hooked instantly. Great characters, great story, great soundtrack. What didn't you like about it?

[Nail_Bombed]

For anyone who's interested - there's a massive games bundle that itch.io have put out at the moment, under the banner of raising awareness for #BLM, the Community Bail Fund, and NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.
1000+ indie games, which would normally go for around $3400, is on this bundle - only $5 (pay what you want, but $5 minimum). There is a LOT of stuff here.

It's only got 6 days left on it, so for anyone wanting the games (and giving towards the cause), would want to get on it now.

https://itch.io/b/520/bundle-for-racial-justice-and-equality

[Airneanach]

After getting through almost the entirety of Doom / Doom II / Master Levels on a replay.  You would forget how hard that game is at times.  Have about four or five levels left, will tip at them during the week but fancied something more relaxing this weekend so fired up the first Tomb Raider again.  Love the old TR games, 90s adventure perfection.  Just passed St. Francis' Folly there, from here in the level design is pure class with the only real let down being Natla Mines.

If you think that's hard, give Final Doom a whack. The Plutonia maps in particular. Some of them are a psychotic piss take in overwhelmingly punishing demon gauntlets.  Classic Doom still plays so well. It just doesn't age. Sound design and visual aesthetic are spot on. Dripping in atmosphere, still.

On GTA IV and V, I've sort of backflipped on both of them over the years, as fickle gamers tend to do. IV got a bad rap nearly as soon as it came out for being a bit drab, but I've played it recently and it has a lot going for it. Now that V is on the block I see IV having much more of a place as Rockstar's attempt at doing something a bit more concentrated and noire (like err...LA Noire) . The missions are shite and the driving takes a huge amount of getting used to, but I think the writing, radio stations, atmosphere etc are all far better than V. V's prettier and it plays better, but there's something slightly aggravating about the way it just throws every mental thing it can think of at you after awhile. The story gets progressively worse once the three characters all hook up.

I'm playing World of Warcraft, for some mental reason. Actually it's latter day lockdown fatigue and the fact that it's free until level 20. Wouldn't usually be my cup of tae at all but I'm finding it relaxing in the evenings, hopping around the environments doing simple fetch quests. The real test for me will be sticking with it once it becomes more about buddying up with people and doing raids, group quests etc. I've never much liked the idea of that. Final Fantasy XIV I got a lot out of because you could play hours and hours of it pretty much by yourself. WOW so far seems like much more of a Dungeons and Dragonsy interface for group activity.

[Blackout]

Anyone switching from xbone to Ps5? I've been an xbox man since the OG and I was sickened at how many single player exclusives ps4 owners got this generation. I plan on getting it at launch then playing through the ps4 exclusives for a few months.

[Ducky]

Been with PlayStation myself since 1997, but I always end up owning (most of) the other consoles... had an Xbox, a 360 and well, didn't get an Xbox One. The only exclusives I wanted were Sunset Overdrive and the Forza Horizon series. Literally no appeal outside of those.

PS4 has some crazy good exclusives this gen. Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War are two of my favourite games of the last ten years. Then it's got smaller stuff like Resogun (best arcade shooter ever) and Guilty Gear.

The backwards compatibility of the Xbox kinda tempted me, but I'm already drowning in games on PS4, so didn't see the point.

[Ducky]

Anyone get The Last of Us Part 2 today?

Holy fuck I can't believe a PS4 is pushing these graphics.

[Giggles]

Has anybody ever seen the King of Kong documentary? It follows a couple of lads who are competing for the highest score on the original Donkey Kong arcade machine. It's well worth the watch, if even just for the absolutely bizzare characters that are in it.

The big baddie in the documentary is an American called Billy Mitchell who is, by all accounts, an absolute bell end. He was merited "gamer of the century" after getting the first perfect score in Pacman, and he holds a bunch of other high score records.

Back in 2018 he had a bunch of records disqualified from the Guinness World Records, after it was revealed that he was a cheating cunt.
Might be of interest to some that just a couple of days ago, Guinness have decided to reinstate his records after "compelling new evidence", although they didn't specify exactly what it was. Some people are calling Guinness cowards, saying that they just didn't want to fight against the lawsuit that he was apparently threatening them with.

Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2020-06-19-guinness-world-records-reinstates-billy-mitchells-pac-man-and-donkey-kong-records?fbclid=IwAR3ZUsQn4Xx0HpD1L1JelodlYa7Y0mnl_bOKcMuYbBkvOWpFyB5pUmoyZQM

[astfgyl]

Been with PlayStation myself since 1997, but I always end up owning (most of) the other consoles... had an Xbox, a 360 and well, didn't get an Xbox One. The only exclusives I wanted were Sunset Overdrive and the Forza Horizon series. Literally no appeal outside of those.

PS4 has some crazy good exclusives this gen. Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War are two of my favourite games of the last ten years. Then it's got smaller stuff like Resogun (best arcade shooter ever) and Guilty Gear.

The backwards compatibility of the Xbox kinda tempted me, but I'm already drowning in games on PS4, so didn't see the point.

This is going to sound as thick as shit, because it is, but I didn't know the xbox one was backwards-compatible by simply using the discs until I looked it up there now. I thought it was only digital stuff and I'd have to buy them again.

[ochoill]

After getting through almost the entirety of Doom / Doom II / Master Levels on a replay.  You would forget how hard that game is at times.  Have about four or five levels left, will tip at them during the week but fancied something more relaxing this weekend so fired up the first Tomb Raider again.  Love the old TR games, 90s adventure perfection.  Just passed St. Francis' Folly there, from here in the level design is pure class with the only real let down being Natla Mines.

If you think that's hard, give Final Doom a whack. The Plutonia maps in particular. Some of them are a psychotic piss take in overwhelmingly punishing demon gauntlets.  Classic Doom still plays so well. It just doesn't age. Sound design and visual aesthetic are spot on. Dripping in atmosphere, still.

Oh yeah I know it well, and played it in sequence with the rest there - had everything loaded into one game using wadsmoosh there with gzdoom.  It was the last one or two of the Final Levels actually where I took a break!  Yeah I fuckin love them though, can't beat them, ridiculously fast gameplay too.

Kept the TR buzz going and am in the middle of TR2 there now.  Barkhang Monastery.  Who builds a monastery like this?  It's a fuckin death trap.  Definitely my favourite in the series.  Going to do 3 and 4 after this too since I have them on steam and they'll play on the laptop with no grief, still haven't set my PC back up for games since Christmas (where I have a New Vegas file to finish again...)

[astfgyl]

Fuck I must play TR2 very soon. I'd love to be hopping around the monastery this minute. I may get me shit together

[Giggles]

Tomb Raider had fun levels, haven't played it since the 90's but I remember getting pissed off with having to shoot lads an insane amount of times before they died? Am I remembering this correctly?

[astfgyl]

Yeah some of them would take a fair few bullets

[Ducky]

Been with PlayStation myself since 1997, but I always end up owning (most of) the other consoles... had an Xbox, a 360 and well, didn't get an Xbox One. The only exclusives I wanted were Sunset Overdrive and the Forza Horizon series. Literally no appeal outside of those.

PS4 has some crazy good exclusives this gen. Horizon Zero Dawn and God of War are two of my favourite games of the last ten years. Then it's got smaller stuff like Resogun (best arcade shooter ever) and Guilty Gear.

The backwards compatibility of the Xbox kinda tempted me, but I'm already drowning in games on PS4, so didn't see the point.

This is going to sound as thick as shit, because it is, but I didn't know the xbox one was backwards-compatible by simply using the discs until I looked it up there now. I thought it was only digital stuff and I'd have to buy them again.

Funnily enough, when you pop the disc in it downloads a new build of the game to run on Xbox One, so you're technically correct in saying that it's only digital stuff that works, but you can use a disc as a licence key.

[astfgyl]

Fair point. Still cool to not have to pay twice and will probably get me dusting off a few of me old 360 pals