Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

@Elodin Just completed a few more missions of Chapter Two recently, it's shaping up really well, I think there is enough variety in the missions to keep it fresh. How is your playthrough going? (Rise of the Ronin)

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN I have been slowly doing more story missions, most recently I have been helping the book collector(name is eluding me). I'm trying to build up relations to get that 3rd accessory option. Not sure what chapter I'm on. Still enjoying it. Are you going for or against the shogunite? I'm playing a bit middle of the road as I'm role-playing more to whoever offers me the best chance to find my old partner

I spent most of the last week taking a small break from my Souls adventures and have spent more time back with Marvel’s Midnight Suns.

I might be playing the game wrong, I don’t know. I’ve spent over 30 hours and it feels like I’ve not really made much progress. I’ve grown into loop of running around and elevating my relationships with the other heroes and doing my research and training activities, petting the dog, searching for resources, etc. and then doing a mission. It’s satisfying, but at this stage I feel like I’m not even sure what the point is. I think I’ve spent too much time on the optional missions and I need to mainline the story missions quicker. They throw new optional missions at a fast clip so there’s always several to choose from instead of doing the story mission, and I think this messed me up. Still, the game’s balance of social interactions, resource management, world exploration, combat, and storytelling is just not very well attuned. The game probably would benefit from some firmer guardrailing of the player toward the activities that are needed most.

I am finding that I enjoy the tactical nature of the battles, and that might be another problem with my progress — I spend too much time analyzing my moves and so battles take me longer than they probably should. I’m approaching them like playing chess and trying to look several moves ahead before I play my first card. It’s satisfying, but also exhausting. 😅

I know it’s a long game so I figure I need to streamline it more so that I don’t grow tired of it before I get to the end.

@Elodin Pro-Shogunate, as that's the way a particular character I previously established a bond with initially indicated that they wanted me to go, but yeah, it's all morally dubious stuff, reflecting history and whatnot, I could have gone the other way and assisted Japan's resistance of the West, but as I'm sure you'll discover yourself there are up and down sides to going either way. Just cleared Chapter Two this morning, by the way.

@Elodin Glad to hear you're gradually making it through the story, though and that you're still enjoying the journey. I didn't do any book collector missions myself, but good luck getting your 3rd accessory option. I would assume you are still in the first chapter if you are only going through the game slowly, there are about fifteen mandatory missions in Chapter One if that helps, 11 in Chapter Two and eight in Chapter Three. Then you're done! I just started Chapter Three this morning. Onto RE2 REmake next when I'm done with RotR. Any idea what you will play next yourself?

Playing Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. The combat and story isn't the best but the world is great to just potter about in. Other than that I'm just trying to complete menu books and win all the races in the directory in Gran Turismo 7.

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN glad your enjoying it as well! Yeah RotR is a fun chill game for me. I'm sure ill blitz the story missions sooner or later. Not sure what's next, leaning jumping into Immortals of averum see if that is decent. I need a hold over game until Star Wars Outlaws in late August. I have been dabbling in Age of Wonders as well after I got a couple dlc on sale.

Just beat Elden Ring for a second time This time on PS5 and just from the disc version of Shadow of the Erdtree (v1.10). What a perfect game. That journey took me 860 screenshots to complete

Now I will get the DLC and start it

@Zuljaras Congratulations! Have you played any of the original Souls games or any Souls-likes? If so, can you choose any favourites? I plan to play Elden Ring SOTE Edition three games from now (getting thru my backlog). My next games after my current one (Rise of the Ronin, which I'm almost done with) are planned as : RE2 REmake RE4 REmake & Silent Hill 2 Remake when it comes out.

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN DS1, DS2, DS3, Bloodborne and Lies of P in that order and back to back

@Zuljaras I think mine goes DeS (2020), DS1, DS3 (never played DS2 to completion) Bloodborne and I haven't really played any Souls-likes to completion besides Fallen Order, but that is an amazing game - I think Lords of the Fallen (2023) will take the cake for Souls-likes, definitely take the crown, if the rest of it lives up to what I've played so far.

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN Ahh I forgot that I have also finished Demon's Souls (PS5), thanks for the reminder!

I also have Sekiro, Lords of the Fallen and Mortal Shell. However, I can't get into them now. Each has its issue for me.

Tried playing The First Descendant. I enjoyed the beta and was looking forward to the full game, but it's an absolute mess on PS5. The frame rate is terrible and the game keeps closing due to an error.

@Zuljaras Interested to know what your issue with Lords of the Fallen was?

@BlAcK_SwOrDsMaN I will definitely play it again but not now.

The thing that I did not like it was the combat. The weapon impact on enemies was kind of lackluster. It was like hitting them with plastic hammers But I was not that far into the game as well. I just defeated the first real boss, the lady with the wings and unlocked the hub.

If I have to rank all Souls game right now it would go like this Elden Ring > Bloodborne > Everything else

F123 has become my new casual game for when I don't feel like watching or playing anything with characters or a story. The F2 season was a bit easy, so I joined Williams with Albon and it's been a wild ride for 2 race weekends 😱 it's not the most relaxing game to play, but when you lock in it is crazy. I tweaked difficulty to make it harder before the F1 season, sucked in practice, qualified 18th despite initially thinking I'd put in a top 10 time to move on to the next round, so I skipped forward (I didn't realise short qualifying didn't have a knockout format) race time I blasted up the inside to maybe 11th in the congestion, and then midway through a quick decision to pit one lap early and let Albon go through battling Piastri and get myself out in open air paid off and I finished 8th (Leclerc out with engine troubles, very realistic for 2023, helped as I nicked a place as he went off track and slowed someone down)

Next race was Saudi Arabia which is just hold on to your pants and fly around and pray you don't hit a wall, which I quite like, and I qualified third because of it. I knew my race pace wouldn't be the same as my qualifying and aimed for top 8 again because of my start position, and just about came away with 5th. This time pitting a lap later to avoid battling thinking I could maybe get places back with DRS if was lucky. I'd switched my strategy to start on Mediums and switch to Softs thinking I could use softs better later on in the race too, but after initially getting up to 2nd from the start and kind of holding everyone up for a bit, I started to put in good times on the Mediums, and by the time I switched to softs I just couldn't get competitive times to those around me on Mediums. Don't know if that's a feature of that circuit or just random. But it is fair enough as I shouldn't have been that high to start with 😅

Started playing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart as my first game on my new 4K TV. Holy crap, have I been missing out. It's a completely different experience playing games on a TV like this. I was absolutely in awe throughout the one hour I played the game. I'm glad I've held off on playing certain games because this is absolutely the way I want to experience all my games going forward. It feels like I'm finally getting all the benefits of current-gen gaming now.

@LtSarge Nice one! I felt the same when I got my 1080p set after twelve years of rocking a 720p Panasonic TV. 😅 The difference was wonderful and I could finally see all the details I'd missed out on the PS4! What do you think of Rift Apart gameplay wise? Have you played the other Ratchets?

@mookysam I've played all Ratchet & Clank games except for the mobile title and Secret Agent Clank. It's been a while though since the last time I played one, so Rift Apart did feel rather refreshing but also familiar. Teleporting to different dimensions is such a cool way to show off the system's SSD. The adaptive triggers are just as cool as they were in Returnal. Other than that, this seems to be another traditional Ratchet & Clank experience, which is great. I love the gameplay loop of upgrading your weapons by actually using them. It's so addicting!

Trails through Daybreak is finally out, so I'll be pausing my play through of Valkyria Revolution to concentrate on that!