General Gaming Thread 2024

[Chris2K]

My word, Yakuza 6 was so, so good. Great story, great gameplay, great side stories, great mini-games, just so much fun from start to finish.

Spoiler

I guessed Haruka's baby-daddy very early on, because you don't make a character model as handsome as Yuta's without making him the lover of your main character's daughter.

I still don't quite understand why the ship was such a big deal and a secret worth killing hundreds of people for, but I tend to file things like that under "because Yakuza".

As much as Kiryu is the ultimate badass I have to say I like Akiyama more. He's just so damn cool.

I'm sure the cutscenes are too much for some, my XBox for example which nearly went into standby mode due to inactivity 4 times in the final chapter and post-credits scenes, but it's all so brilliantly acted and animated that it doesn't bother me at all.

Now back to Like A Dragon again, then Man Without A Name, then I might actually get around to buying Infinite Wealth.

[Ruki]

Be warned, Man WIthout A Name will make you ugly cry.

[Gongsun Zan]

Man, everything I hear about the Yakuza series makes me really want to dig in, but the thought of going through 8 (9?) games is frankly quite intimidating.

[Bobfoc]

39 minutes ago, Gongsun Zan said:

Man, everything I hear about the Yakuza series makes me really want to dig in, but the thought of going through 8 (9?) games is frankly quite intimidating.

You could start with Yakuza 0 and see how you like it. It's the sort of series I drift into every so often, rather than playing them back-to-back.

[Chris2K]

On 04/02/2024 at 05:35, Gongsun Zan said:

Man, everything I hear about the Yakuza series makes me really want to dig in, but the thought of going through 8 (9?) games is frankly quite intimidating.

The Yakuza/Like A Dragon games are really good in general, there are however a few things to consider if you want to play through them:

- The cut-scenes are very long, and incredibly frequent. To put some numbers on that, it takes around 2-3 hours in Yakuza Like A Dragon before you're even in the main area of the game, and about 75% of that is cut scenes.
- In addition to that, a lot of people are put off by the voice acting being in Japanese for the first 7 games. It certainly threw me off for a while, but you do get used to it and soon the voices of the main characters become as ingrained as any English speaking game.
- There is a massive downgrade in gameplay quality when the series jumps to different versions of re-masters. 0, 1 and 2 are in the superior engine (0 was the first game made in it, 1 and 2 are re-masters), but 3, 4 and 5 are in their original engines which causes a sudden drop-off in things like inventory space, combat-systems and features. It comes back to the main engine for 6, but then Like A Dragon changes the whole concept completely into a turn-based RPG.

Those are the main negatives, but everything else about the games is positive. The story, the characters, the missions, the side-stories, the acting, the animation is all top tier. Plus they're all free on GamePass, with the exception of the most recent release.

[FLiam]

Do people use the English voiceovers in the newer games? I tried on Like a Dragon and absolutely hated it. 

I’m still working my way through Like a Dragon and one thing I find difficult is tracking the side-stories - I find the interface isn’t exactly intuitive at the best of times. I’ve also completely lost/forgotten where to create gear, I swear a workshop of some sort was introduced to me at some point.

[Ruki]

39 minutes ago, FLiam said:

Do people use the English voiceovers in the newer games? I tried on Like a Dragon and absolutely hated it. 

I’m still working my way through Like a Dragon and one thing I find difficult is tracking the side-stories - I find the interface isn’t exactly intuitive at the best of times. I’ve also completely lost/forgotten where to create gear, I swear a workshop of some sort was introduced to me at some point.

I LOVED the English voice acting for Like A Dragon. I'm debating what to do with Infinite Wealth though... Kiryu's english voice is lacking. And for what might be his last/most emotional story yet, I want to hear him as I've heard him through 8 games (and one side game).

 

I just wish I had the option to have only him as Japanese. 

[Chris2K]

1 hour ago, FLiam said:

Do people use the English voiceovers in the newer games? I tried on Like a Dragon and absolutely hated it. 

I’m still working my way through Like a Dragon and one thing I find difficult is tracking the side-stories - I find the interface isn’t exactly intuitive at the best of times. I’ve also completely lost/forgotten where to create gear, I swear a workshop of some sort was introduced to me at some point.

I have been really tempted to switch back to the Japanese voices having become so used to them during the 0-6 playthrough, but I do find being able to listen during cutscenes instead of having to read every line is much more pleasant for my eyes.

There is a workshop I believe, it's down at the south of the map near Hello Work.

[OctoberRaven]

On 04/02/2024 at 00:35, Gongsun Zan said:

Man, everything I hear about the Yakuza series makes me really want to dig in, but the thought of going through 8 (9?) games is frankly quite intimidating.

Start at 0. It's IMO one of the greatest games of all time and while it's a prequel doesn't require prior knowledge of the series to grasp the story.

It also features the greatest cutscene in video game history (minor sidequest spoiler)

Spoiler

 

 

[Chris2K]

TIL there's an NPC in Hitman 2/WOA who uses his location in Miami to imitate one of Miami's most famous crime scene investigators.

 

[Ruki]

 

[The Kraig]

The 8-Bit Big Band have possibly outdone themselves with this one. Outrageously good. And yes, this is on Spotify now too. *walks while dancing*

 

[Kyle]

Oh, hey weird spider parasite maze section of Resident Evil 3, congratulations on making me quit the game and probably not pick it up again.

[Ruki]

1 hour ago, Kyle said:

Oh, hey weird spider parasite maze section of Resident Evil 3, congratulations on making me quit the game and probably not pick it up again.

Oh yeah, I remember not liking that section. 

[Chris2K]

Had a nightmare on Yakuza LAD yesterday (not Infinite Wealth).

Spoiler

I had forgotten how difficult the Majima/Saejima battle was, and after my initial excitement at seeing them was over I was quickly reminded with a curb stomp battle where I didn't even reach the Saejima stage.

That's fine, I thought, I'll go back to my last manual save and train up at the Sotenbori Battle building for a while. Except it turned out I had lost track of time, and my last save was 5 hours beforehand, having spent that time doing the Business Management game to get 30 million yen, exploring all of Sotenbori, maxing out bond levels with Namba (who I still will never forgive for his treachery), Joon-Gi Han and Zhao, and of course the pre-requisite hours of cutscenes.

That's fine, I thought, the autosave will have no doubt kicked in at some point. And it had! 14 seconds after my manual save, and not a single time after that.

I took out my frustration by skipping every cutscene, hammering the A button through the Business Management game to get my money again, then slaughtering 25 levels of the battle arena to get all my party up to Level 45 with my favoured job ranks at 22+. And more importantly, I saved the game.

With that done I went back through the Omi HQ to Majima and Saejima... and lost again.

 

[Your Mom]

Has anyone played Alan Wake 2? Just wondering about something. It doesn't have any story spoilers but I'll put it in spoilers just to be safe

Spoiler

I enjoyed the start of the game where I was playing as Saga and trying to solve the murders and I thought it was really intriguing but I rescued Alan and now I'm playing as him trying to escape the Dark Place and I'm finding the stuff with getting the different story beats and having to switch between them kind of tedious. Is this like the rest of the game? Because I kinda hate it  

 

[Hellraiser]

On 27/02/2024 at 23:27, Your Mom said:

Has anyone played Alan Wake 2? Just wondering about something. It doesn't have any story spoilers but I'll put it in spoilers just to be safe

  Hide contents

I enjoyed the start of the game where I was playing as Saga and trying to solve the murders and I thought it was really intriguing but I rescued Alan and now I'm playing as him trying to escape the Dark Place and I'm finding the stuff with getting the different story beats and having to switch between them kind of tedious. Is this like the rest of the game? Because I kinda hate it  

 

Spoiler

The Alan Wake Dark Place stuff is about 50% of the game and you have to do it. You don't have to go back and forth between Alan and Saga though. You can decide freely in which order to play the chapters of the story. You can play all the Saga chapters first and save the Wake Dark Place chapters for later. But you eventually have to do them if you want to finish the game.

 

Edited March 4 by Hellraiser

[The Buscher]

I got the THPS remake on Christmas 2020.  By about May 2021 I figure I'd topped out my ability and assumed I'd never platinum.  About a year later I picked the game back up, played the hell out of it and, against all odds, actually beat all of the really hard "get-there" challenges to earn a trophy only 0.2% of players get, and then went through the grind of earning the platinum (only 0.1% do it) before putting it away.

Couple weeks ago I had the urge to play again after almost 2 years, popped the game into my PS5 and spent the 10 bucks to download the graphically enhanced PS5 version.  Thought to myself "well I already platinumed the game once, least I don't need to do those awful get-there challenges again"

...I did the challenges again  they suuuuuuck but after knocking a few out the desire to see if I could do them all again took hold.  So now I've earned the hardest of the trophies in the game.  Still would need to grind through like 25 levels which takes a long time if i'm gonna get a 2nd platinum but no real reason I can't get there with the one brutal trophy over and done with.

Love this game.  Still bums me out the 3 and 4 remake got nixed due to Activision's dumbassery.

[Schlitzbrille]

1 hour ago, The Buscher said:

Love this game.  Still bums me out the 3 and 4 remake got nixed due to Activision's dumbassery.

The amount of saltiness I still have over that is silly, literally had the perfect baseline gameplay wise already done first time out.

 

Although in retrospect, this would've likely led to a THUG1/THUG2/THAW redo which yikes some of the storyline content hasn't aged well at all.

[GoGo Yubari]

On 21/01/2024 at 05:52, Chris2K said:

On a similar note, I have just completed Yakuza 5, although I had to re-do the entire final battle after missing the very last QTE when my cat jumped on my lap.

Hahaha, Jesus. That fight took me an eternity, the idea of that happening to me would probably make me put the game down for a week.

Overall, strong Yakuza game. Really enjoyed the baseball and pop idol side games (though in the former the power curve basically gets absolutely wrecked if you opt to take a few lessons from your old coach before actually trying the missions), thought the taxi driver one was fascinating because of just how Yakuza it is (by which I mean it pointedly rejects the idea of Crazy Taxi-style mayhem and forces you to respect the rules and regulations), didn't get that much out of hunting beyond a pretty good overarching story.

Didn't love who the final enemy ended up being though I get that there's a sort of

Spoiler

Kiryu vs. kind of a fragmented mirror version of himself when he was younger thing going on with Aizawa.

Looking forward to playing 6 but that won't be until the end of this year at the very earliest. Diving headlong into playing various FF7 things for the next couple months now.