TheMightyEthan

Yeah, I usually check a trophy guide before I start to see if there's anything that can't be gotten easily after finishing the game once (and by "easily" I mean without having to replay huge sections of the game), and if there's not then I do like you and play through once blind, then go back and do cleanup if I feel like it. If there is something that can't be gotten easily after finishing it (like the collectibles in The Order), then I look at the guide for that thing during my first playthrough, but I try to look the bare minimum amount necessary to get the thing, without looking at other stuff.

Yeah, I really like the style. Are those your own creations, or are they based on a reference of some kind?

Yeah, the demos would be good to show off the headset, but other than the London Heist nothing really seemed better than what was in Playroom VR, or the free demo packs.

Playstation VR Worlds I'm saying I "beat" this one because I played all the demos. Honestly I'm surprised they had the balls to actually sell this, it's basically a demo disc. The London Heist was amazing though, especially playing with two Moves. I did the shooting range before the game itself just to get a feel for it, and at first was thinking "I wish they'd made it so you could use your other hand to stabilize your gun hand", and then I realized that I could just do that myself, they didn't need to make a mechanic for it, and my mind was blown. I never thought I'd be in to VR shooters, but I'll probably pick up Blood & Truth on the strength of that demo.

The above discussion about glasses prompted me to try it without mine (I'm far sighted, really only need glasses for stuff that's close-up, and counterintuitively the lenses for the screen strapped to your face have a long focal length, so as far as the lenses in your eyes are concerned you're looking at something far away), and I actually like it better. The light shield actually seals against my face, which makes it much more immersive. What kind of adapter do you have? I think I'd play it more if I didn't have to switch out HDMI cables every time.

This was actually a pretty easy plat. A single playthrough. I did use a guide for the collectibles, but the only reason I did that was because there's no in-game way to track which ones you've gotten, so going back to clean them up after you've gotten a few would be a PITA, cause you wouldn't know which ones you're missing.

It does have some insta-fail stealth sections, but I only actually failed a few times, and never got put back more than a minute or two. It certainly did not strike me as bad stealth at the time.

The Order: 1886 I actually thought this game was pretty good. It definitely doesn't deserve the bad rap it gets. It's got a 63 on Metacritic, which is insane. It deserves to be more like high-70's, low-80's. I know this will make me sound like a crazy person, but I think Naughty Dog could learn a lot from this game. Like ND's games, it's an adventure game with combat, stealth, and exploration sections, and uses TPS mechanics for combat, but isn't really a "shooter" per se. Unlike ND's games, though, the combat encounters don't overstay their welcome. I've always felt like ND's games have three times as many enemy encounters as they should, and each one lasts 3 times as long as it should. In The Order, though, I never felt like combat went on too long, or that there was too much of it, each encounter felt satisfying, and they balanced the various types of play really well. It was fairly short, about 7 hours, but anymore that's a positive for me. 4/5

@Mister Jack They made it so the next gen upgrade on console only comes with the Ultimate Edition, instead of giving to existing customers, so if you wanted the fancy new features you had to buy the game all over again. That's on top of releasing the Ultimate Edition on the same day as the AWE expansion for the base game, and for only $40. So like I bought the base game on PC for $60, and then paid another $25 for the season pass, and not only did I pay more than twice the cost of the Ultimate Edition, I didn't even get the last expansion any earlier than I would have if I'd waited for the cheap version. Like, I get that GOTY editions are going to come out and cost less than the base game + DLC, but usually you at least get to play it earlier in exchange for your money. Then, to put a cherry on top, they claimed there were technical limitations that prevented them from giving the next-gen upgrade to existing console owners, but when it launched there was an error that meant it did in fact give it to them for a short time, before they caught the error and revoked it. Meaning they actually could have done it, but wanted you to buy it again instead. Anyway, they basically told everyone never to buy anything from them ever again, cause they'll fuck you over.

I just platinumed Concrete Genie a couple weeks ago... ? I'm excited about Control even though I already played it on PC because I'm happy I can get to see it on PS5 with all the pretty raytracing and stuff without actually directly giving the dicks at 505 any money.

Maybe I will then.

After I got the Death Stranding plat I was trying to decide what to play next, and I settled on The Order: 1886, since it's nice and short and will get something off my backlog. I bought it a while ago because the way Gamestop had structured a sale it was actually cheaper for me to buy an extra $9.99 used game than not, and I'd been curious about this game for a while so I threw it in. It's aggressively fine. I'm on Chapter 4 of 16, and enjoying it well enough, but I can see why you'd be disappointed if you were expecting some amazing experience. Since I wasn't expecting that though I'm perfectly happy with it. You're a steampunk knight fighting werewolves with retro-futuristic guns in late 1800's London, which is all I wanted. The visuals are... interesting. They worked really hard to make sure the image is as free of jaggies as they can, which results in a really soft image, but the overall effect at first glance is that even the actual gameplay looks like a prerendered cutscene. Like the kind of cutscene where the dev prerenders it using the actual game engine, but with all the settings cranked way up, and antialiases the hell out of it. I say "at first glance" because the effect doesn't hold up to close scrutiny. It uses a combination of 4x MSAA and temporal post-process antialiasing to get the smooth effect, but at the core it's still just a 1080p game, and there's only so much they can do. They've succeeded in eliminating jaggies, except on some very fine details in some surfaces, but at the cost of introducing different sorts of artifacts. Edges, especially on narrow lines like wrought iron fences and gun barrels and stuff, get kind of a wavy look, which changes as the camera moves around. It's also really noticeable on enemies when they're kind of far away and so not very many pixels, where it causes a weird blobiness, like you're looking at them through wavy glass, or a smudge on your glasses. Honestly, the thing it reminds me most of is playing old SNES or GBA games in an emulator with 2x Super Sai filtering turned on to smooth it out. It looks smoother, but it adds in a level of weirdness to edges. The most bizarre thing though, and I have no idea what's causing it, is that as you move, any vertical surfaces in front of you warp around really strangely. I'm assuming it's something to do with the temporal post-processing, but it's not just edges, it's the whole surface, so it ends up looking like it's waving or rippling. Almost like you're looking at everything through heat haze, but less pronounced. Very strange. I might try to take a video of it next time it's especially bad. None of that really detracts from the game though, other than the weirdness of the enemies I pretty much only notice it when I'm just walking around through environments, not while anything interesting is happening. *Edit - The more I think about it, the more I think this game could really benefit from a PS4 Pro 4k upgrade. I know the softness is intentional, they were going for a film-like look, but at 4k they could keep the softness and just the weird artifacts from all that anti-aliasing wouldn't be nearly as apparent.

Man, y'all read serious shit. All I read is sci-fi and fantasy, with the rare literary fiction thrown in.

And it's done

Only one left. Just gotta get all the memory sticks.

lol, for a second I was like "What am I doing to slow you down?"

Pixel 3 XL (refurb) - My current 1st gen Pixel is finally crapping out on me, it crashes any time I try to make or receive a phone call. Like, the whole phone freezes and then does a hard reset. So that obviously doesn't work very well. It's a known issue with the 1st gen Pixel, something about the audio processor chip not being soldered securely enough, I'm actually kind of lucky it's lasted this long. Decided to go for the XL this time because it was only $18 more and the bigger screen will be nice for remote playing PS5 games, which I've been doing a lot more of recently.

I got RE7 in the PS+ Collection, maybe I'll try it sometime...

The purple is a little bit paler than what I was expecting, but it's growing on me, and overall I'm really happy with how they came out.

I expected this. We knew XBL was sunsetting, so it was pretty foreseeable it would be rolled into Gamepass.

Have you tried checking back a few minutes later? Sometimes they don't release all their inventory right at the same time. When I snagged my preorder, I had missed one of those notifications by like 15 minutes, but I thought "what the hell, I'll check anyway" and they were out of stock, but then I refreshed once and they were back in stock, and I was able to get it. That was at Walmart.

That sounds really cool, but I don't know that I can deal with a VR zombie game.

@MetalCaveman lol, when I first saw that my brain interpreted her ears as eyes, so she looked like some kind of weird hammerhead person.

On PS5 when the PSVR is connected you can go into settings>accessories>PSVR and there's an option to calibrate. I assume it's similar on PS4 but I haven't actually done it myself.

Of the 9 presidential inaugurations that have occurred during my lifetime, this is the first time I'm going to actually watch it. I hope to the gods that Pelosi is staying away. She's third (second? I'm never sure how that's counted...) in line for President after Kamala Harris, and gods forbid there be a mass casualty event...