Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@Jimmer-jammer Yeah, good thanks, I am applying for courses at the moment so hopefully I'll get on to a good one, and yes, still operating the helplines. It's quite rewarding and enjoyable.

That's interesting about your former employment. Definitely a TV Show I would have paid to watch!

@Black_Swordsman Glad to hear you’re doing well! Being an ear for people in need is a real gift and takes a tremendous amount of personal fortitude. Here’s hoping your courses pan out the way you’d like!

Plan a game purchase for tomorrow (its the day when the salary comes here where I live so) feel like I deserve to buy a game then (have planed the purchase for quite some time).

@oliverp Which one?

I cna't wait to buy Paper Mario 2, but unfortunately I had an awful pay day this month. That on top of me having spent all my savings over the last year, makes it really hard to justify new game prices. Especially since I still have quite some games left unfinished.

Finances will probably return to normal by next month, so it's nothing to be worried about. Just sad that the one game I was looking forward to happened to release this month.

@kidfred Oh its a big one which I might announce in the purchase thread. I of course hope that you soon will be able to pick up some new games.

@oliverp I might have an idea about which game 😉

I have decided to give up on the idea of being a professional musician and focus purely on psychology for a future career path. It was an accumulation of things that led to this decision, I suppose, but mostly the fact that I realised I had been holding on to my teenage dreams, mostly inspired by reading interviews with musicians, mostly from the band 'Iced Earth' and other rock and heavy metal bands about how you go "all in" when you're young if you're gonna make it, and then stick to it, kinda thing.

I realised that at this age a career in psychology, another of my interests, is more realistic, and on a personal level, more fulfilling to me. I also felt like I had "made my mark" on the music industry, with a handful of gigs from my teens under my belt, in addition to SoundCloud recordings, which people liked, flatteringly, recorded more recently. I will now just play guitar for fun, along with games, and read and watch cricket as my primary hobbies and interests, whilst focusing on psychology for the career and personal fulfillment.

I have "met up" with my college self in the best possible way now, still focusing on a couple of the same hobbies and interests I had at that age, but without applying the passion and drive necessary to become a professional musician to that unlikely end now, and instead applying it to becoming a professional psychotherapist.

@Black_Swordsman I find your decision and self-awareness quite inspiring. I'm closer to retirement than I am to my early working years, and I still don't know what I would choose to do or have a passion for. I do have some experience in psychology having spent many years talking to professionals with my personal history of depression, anxiety and other related mental illnesses, and I can certainly see the appeal and fulfillment of such a career choice. The very best of luck to you!

@Malaise Thank you for your feedback and for disclosing that, I sincerely wish you all the best with your mental health and everything else in your life. I hope you discover what you want to do, in terms of a particular ambition, what you and I both referred to as a passion, and if not, I hope you enjoy the things that you do do in life that you may not necessarily be passionate about in the sense of a specific ambition, goal, or drive.

@Jimmer-jammer @Th3solution I know you like your survival horror games, you two, so will you get SH2 Remake when it drops in a few months?

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN I don’t really have a deep history with the Silent Hill franchise, personally, although I do remember playing at least one of them on a prior console. It may have been the first one, actually. If I played the sequels too, I don’t remember much about them.

I have come to appreciate a good horror game, but I have to pace myself with them because I’m actually quite a scaredy cat. 😅 So I usually don’t play too many horror games in close succession; maybe 3-4 per year, intermixed with lighter fare in between.

So I’ll probably wait on the reviews for SH2 Remake before having any hype for it. It does look pretty good in trailers, but I keep hearing cautious concern from outside sources about Bloober Team’s mediocre output in the past. I don’t think I’ve played any of their games before, but nothing they’ve done has set the world on fire. Many think that the Silent Hill project is way over their heads, so I don’t know how to feel about it.

Also, I have a small horror backlog that I would like to clear some of. I recently bought RE4 Remake in the last sale, and I’ve considered picking up Dead Space Remake in this sale but I’ll probably end up waiting because I’m flush with lots of horror options otherwise, as I also have RE5, RE6, RE7 in my backlog and of course need to do RE8 later too, although I don’t own it yet. I also have Callisto Protocol, and Alan Wake to try. And then there’s the Dark Pictures Anthology I still want to get to when I have the more ‘narrative/choice-based’ style horror/thriller itch to scratch. I think I have 3 of the 4 from that series in my library.
Not to mention (although it’s not horror, per se but I class it as such in my mind) Days Gone which I would like to try one day.

So there’s a lot of competing titles in my library for when I feel the urge to be horrified. 😄 I do feel like the Dark Souls games are ‘horror adjacent’ as well, with their gruesome monsters, occasional jump scares, and creepy settings. So we know I still have DS3 in that series yet to go, and also Elden Ring.

Probably my horror roadmap would be: finish DS2 (probably about 30% done…?), then RE4, then maybe Alan Wake, then Man of Medan, then maybe Days Gone, then DS3, then RE5, then Dead Space,… I don’t know. Likely if SH2 turns out to garner high praise, then I might shoehorn it in there after RE4. I’ve been known to be fickle with my plans. I like to have a loose roadmap, but have the flexibility to just add random games in there when I feel like it.

Do you have a prior history with the original SH series?

Tomorrow I will buy PS5 machine, on beautiful date 1 June 2024.
(6 - 1 = 5)
My first plan was getting in May 2024 to make it having number 5 for my PS5 machine purchase, but my budget wasn't enough so i have to delay until June 2024.
I can't wait to play my kiddie PS5 games I have collected since July 2022. 😊

@Th3solution Well previous mediocre output doesn't necessarily rule out the probability of them releasing an excellent game in the future. I agree that the trailers look great. Let me know what RE4 is like for you, please, as I am considering purchasing it in the future, myself.

I do have a prior history with the original SH series, SH was a very good game and SH2 was a masterpiece imo. Played them a long time ago on PS2. (PS2's backwards compatibility with PSX games let me play SH on there as well as the PS2-specific SH2) I used a guide for both as the clues and hints for what to do and as to where to go next can be pretty obscure in those games, especially compared to RE and RE2. Also I think the general SH community consensus is that the games went downhill after SH2, some people say the same about the RE games after RE2/RE3.

But, OG RE4 was a masterpiece for me on the GameCube back in the day, beat RE0 on there as well. Still waiting for a remake of Code: Veronica!

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN @Th3solution Silent Hill is one of my favourite series and Silent Hill 2 in particular, one of my all time favourite games. Truly, I see it as a gold standard within the horror genre at large.

Everything I’ve seen of it over the last day has me very excited so it’s safe to say I’m not buying into the narrative that it looks anything less than promising. My only hope is that combat is kept simple. It no doubt needs an update - Silent Hill’s combat has always bordered on atrocious - but it shouldn’t be the focus nor should it be overly complex. I felt Alan Wake 2 made the mistake of trying to do too much without the balance and scenario design to back up its ambitions. In order to knock this out of the park, Bloober Team just needs to deliver a laser focused, functional and faithfully updated remake. The strength of the source material will do the rest. I cannot wait!

Received a random PSN message from someone I didn't know, "Thanks for the bridge to nowhere in Death Stranding"
Ha ha, I haven't played DS since Oct 22 and I'm sure all my bridges went somewhere.

I wonder if anyone has received a message from an angry Souls player, "thanks for telling me to jump".

@CaptD Haha! That’s funny. I would have thought they’d purge the items from the shared online world every 6-12 months.

There are so many useless messages in Dark Souls. About every other message is some kind of sexual innuendo joke. 😂

@Th3solution Yeah it was very weird,I think the ladders rust away after a short number of days but I guess the bridges are permanent.
Must have been quite the precious piece of cargo.