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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Sat Jul 11, 2020 22:48 
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Bad Girl

Joined: 20th Apr, 2008
Posts: 14353
I’ve resorted to a general guide to help me through Subnautica cause it’s fucking massive and it’s also fucking annoying when you can’t find certain bits of stuff that you need to make other stuff. I don’t feel like I’m cheating using a guide either since it’s so general it’s just a push in the right direction: I need a general hint at the very least to find some, I don’t know, fucking blood rocks in some mushroom kingdom. My plan was massively inefficient anyway - to keep building research centres in each biom and sending the cameras out to scout for shale rocks or whatever. I was doing just fine following the radio messages and knobbing about following the story anyway.

But then I made a Cyclops.

Holy fuck. I’ve got a battle station. A mobile base for fucking shit up and transporting all my guff about without having to constantly keep coming back to my shitty base to shuffle items around in the 5 lockers that’s are my only luxury items.

Now all my shit is in this floating battlesub and I’ve got to journey to the centre of the earth or something to cure my coronavirus. But first I need to improve it with missiles and shields and stuff I reckon and then find an opening wide enough to shove my long sub into. Fnaar fnaar.

(Oh, yeah this game is pretty awesome by the way. I’d recommend people use a guide though if you haven’t got (a) the patience or (b) the time to spend combing the entire sea. People have already done this so you don’t have to.)


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Sun Jul 12, 2020 9:20 
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chewbacca -future arc welder

Joined: 25th Oct, 2011
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I've stalled a couple of times so I'll take this advice I think. Probably have another crack at it this winter.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Sun Jul 12, 2020 13:20 
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Bad Girl

Joined: 20th Apr, 2008
Posts: 14353
I’ve been dipping in and out of this: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/pc/763304 ... /the-guide

And using this map: https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ ... 7FEA72D1B/

I think I’m prepared enough for my descent to the centre of the earth. I’ve got 8 lockers filled with crap I probably won’t need and the bare minimum of upgrades for my ship and the prawn suit. Essentially I’ve got an increased depth module and one other I just found and that’s it. I reckon I can smash through it now with a few quick saves and many exploding deaths but I can’t be arsed with too much knobbing about. I’ve done 16 hours of that and it’s too tiresome to continue that same gameplay loop over more hours. I’d prefer to continue the story now I know what’s going on so I’m going to go for it.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 14, 2020 13:26 
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Bad Girl

Joined: 20th Apr, 2008
Posts: 14353
So I've clocked Subnautica but I haven't clocked Subnautica.

I've completed the story quests and now I'm about to take to the stars but first I've got to build a rocket. It requires a lot of resources as you can imagine building a rocket would but, fuck me, it's taking some time to get all the bits together when I just want to be done with it.

Thing is, Subnautica starts off as an excellent video game. There's something fresh about underwater survival horror where you can die from drowning in a dark hole not knowing which way is up. I went scuba diving once and it scared the bejesus out of me. The hardest part of scuba diving is forcing your body to believe that you can inhale while you're submersed while every fibre of your being telling you you'll die if you do. You're sucking on a pipe that is your lifeline but has, for all intents, absolutely nothing noticeable coming through it. And you'll never know if it does or it doesn't because one minute there's oxygen there and the next there isn't and you're dead. Probably. I lived to tell the tale by freaking out underwater and being dragged back to sit on a beach while others played with friendly starfish and shit.

Anyway, the initial hours of Subnautica are great because, for me, it captures the terror of those few moments in the sea that I had. You've got limited time to swim down to the depths grab some junk and zoom to the surface before you suffocate and rip your mask off to take your first and last deep breath of salty water. It's quite nice swimming around the shallows before you have to go outside the baby pool to visit other places where the other items are that you need to craft the next bit of kit that will help you get further and further from your base and acclimate you to the area. There's the looming threat of your abandoned wreckage of your downed spacecraft ever present everywhere you go in the distance to help centre your position. You get more stuff and eventually build your first vehicle.

Building the seamoth is pretty great. Once it's done there's a sense of accomplishment and knowledge that you can go loads more places you couldnt before because now you get oxygen from your sea car, so you can park up and loot and whip back inside. You need to increase the crush strength for going deeper but you'll soon be going just 30 seconds from the surface to 500m's under the sea knobbing about inspecting wrecks and doing deeper looting; exploring the different biomes. The danger comes from straying too far or, god forbid, an exploding puffer fish killing you or something larger. Much larger.

At this stage you're probably sick of looting and crafting but the hook is to get even further out and following the story threads and the possibility of exploring your giant destroyed ship. You'll get radio messages from lifepods to investigate and those pods are normally near something to explore and usually a big cave. You follow the story and find an island and it's great to finally potter around on dry land. You'll get access to your downed ship and explore that too. But then you'll discover another island and eventually there's the possibility that you might get rescued yourself. And even a story that leads you 1500m below the sea and into the depths of the planet to seek out some stuff. You build what is a great big submarine for exploring the depths which is one of the best things in the entire game. One minute you're knobbing about in a tiny ship and now you have a massive ship to run. It's crazy and it's beautiful.

And right when you get the story thread to go beneath the planet does the game have a pissy fit and turn into a bad video game game.

You start to notice problems:

- the horrendous pop-in (navigation): You're zooming along and then *SLAP* across the face is an entire island that appeared in weird chunks 10 yards from your face. You're in the belly of the planet and discover a giant cave before PLOP PLOP PLOP the walls start appearing where you can't go utterly disorienting you. Can I go over here? POP POP POP no, there's walls there now. So where do I go? Over here seems POP POP no, not that way either. It doesn't help that some of the late game stuff requires you to use your submarine which is like driving a bus.

- the horrendous clipping and bugs: Sometimes you're inside dry areas and outside is all sea and monsters. Sometimes those monsters just fly inside the dry air and disappear. Sometime's you'll accidentally just clip into a wall and fall outside the map. There's one animal that can teleport you outside your vehicle. Sometimes that animal will teleport you from 1200m below the sea to 0m below the sea and you'll just fall through the map forever and have to restart.

- the horrendous pop-in again (looting): It's a fucking looting game and most of the loot is contained in tiny rocks which are placed on walls. They are not easy to see. The most valuable rocks are a very dark brown colour. If you're travelling along less than slow you'll have to wait to see whether the loot pops into place when you get near. Sometimes they load so slowly that if you're travelling in a vehicle you'll have driven by and they just load in behind you as the engine struggling to keep up. When the vast majority of your time is spent looting this is a fucking nightmare. You can't zoom about in the seamoth quickly scanning walls for rocks because they might not load in so the pace slows right down. It's all right at the beginning of the game but when you get late game and all you want is a fucking ruby you want to get it and get back to what you were doing.

- the monsters: Let's be clear the audio is fantastic all around and really adds to the feeling of place and, often, dread as monsters lurk about waiting to eat you or maybe even cling to your vehicle and try and shake you out. But eventually they start to look cartoony and non-threatening and actually, they look a bit shit. There's some big ones and the sense of scale is good but they need a reskin. But worse still, hours later they're a nuisance that threaten to ruin the game. Giant leviathans can destroy your submarine and won't fuck off until your ship explodes and you're back to where you started and all the loot on the sub disappears. You probably won't be able to get it back either without another sub so it's essentially back to the start of the game for you as you craft tons of items needed to get a seamoth so you can mine such and such to get such and such to get the submarine... etc. No one in there right mind will do this, so you just load a previous save. It's not very gamey putting you back to where you were. The game needed checkpoints not a fuck you, because the only saves are quick saves. And there's no load save option from inside the game so you have to quit and reload and the fucking load times are horrendous.

- the horrendous late game story: It's just a bit crap when you get to the centre of the planet and meet a big cuddly mind fish. I swear that earlier the game said that assassins (or similar) were being sent to get me but they never did. Instead the late game becomes a fetch quest for, urgh, more loot. It's just a bit boring. Plus the alien architecture is just a bit boring and by the numbers too. It's all boxy boxes and lacks any imagination whatsoever.

- more horrendous late game bugs: Plus, there's no waypoint markers like in a typical game to tell you what to do next so sometimes you'll be staring into a massive room, exploring every nook and cranny trying to find the next trigger to move on the encounter only to discover that it's not happening for some reason. Reload save. Now, I'm back and trying again and have only learned where I should be standing because I've read the wiki telling me about it because a bug stopped it from being triggered. And it's a nonsense thing too like, you should been in this area, and I was, but only before I did an earlier thing and urgh... just put fucking markers on screen if you want these encounters to move smoothly and transition from one to the next because if you don't you'll only get the player mardy because, if your game is working as intended, you're not communicating what you want me to do.

- under the sea (with more bugs and lack of attention): The biomes are all very good. The late game caves are poison lake and lava world. They don't even look like you're underwater anymore and they have their own lakes and rivers. They don't feel very good. And how come when you're indoors in the dry do certain animations play out like they're underwater. There's a bit where you mine a mineral on a stand and it plays the same animation with the same watery effects indoors as it does outdoors. Sometimes even the minerals fall off like they're still in the sea. It's lazy as fuck. And sometimes when you're on dry land your prawn just gives up and gets stuck on the spot. You get out and it doesn't play the get out animation and crouch down, it just locks into place. I had to run away until it was outside the area where it's stored in memory perhaps and come back to break it out of its spell.

- then the end game: It's just a fetch quest (a remarkably easy one with no thought or effort on the players part needed) and some story crap (oh and after you do this thing you need to interact with a gold bubble... man alive, you should see the minuscule size of this thing. Could I find what I was supposed to do? Could I fuck, back to the wiki... still no help, oh jesus it's tiny) and then it's onto the crazy endgame! Build a rocket to escape... it requires so many materials that you won't have them all, or even near enough for what it wants. I'm currently missing one thing altogether which, according to the wiki, can be found in two places on the map but the game has never (a) told me to go to either of these places or (b) when I've actually been there indicated that I needed to find the place. So now I'm dicking when I want to game to end trying to find things that I would have no idea where they were under the entire fucking sea without resorting to a sodding wiki. It seriously needs to be a game better. Something like less than 6% of all people on xbox had been to the end game location. If you want people to experience your game then be better at it. Oh and not only is building the rocket fucking tedious, you have no idea what materials you'll need in advance (such that you might stock up). I saved up a lot of stuff and even then I needed more. Shit, I had 8 lockers filled with crap! You need 60 of the most basic building block. 60 of the fucking things.

I was bloody enjoying this a lot, but holy shit, it's fucking desperate to try and sour the experience for me.

That was far too many words... anyway, I've been playing Subnautica. Not sure if you'd heard...


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 14, 2020 14:08 
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Bad Girl

Joined: 20th Apr, 2008
Posts: 14353
Actually it was 3.45% of people got to the centre of the planet. Only 2.45% actually bothered to build the rocket and escape.

Nice ending though.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 15, 2020 10:14 
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Prince of Fops

Joined: 14th May, 2009
Posts: 4296
Having given up on the borked Dishonored, I'm playing the much less unpleasant The Outer Wilds instead.

Mr Dave and Mr Chonks have both written eruditely and intriguingly about it, and deservedly so. I'm only 4 cycles in and each time the hooks sink in deeper.

One of the things I'm enjoying the most is the light mental tussle it takes to interpret and understand the mechanics of the places you visit. Reminds me of games like The Dig and Bioforge in that respect.

The saving mechanic, while on the face of it seeming as anathema to Hearthly, would actually probably pass his muster because it's entirely predictable.

Enjoying it so far.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Sat Jul 18, 2020 20:39 
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Gogmagog

Joined: 30th Mar, 2008
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Location: Cheshire
Just Dance 2020. Bloody loving it. I am SO GOOD that OtherOne has to put a giant box of Lego behind me to trip over so BigOne could stand a chance.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 20, 2020 16:27 
SupaMod
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Est. 1978

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The Yes, Chef!s are playing The Forest, or (as we refer to it) Faaaaaarust.

Technically it's a bit lumpy and you can tell it's a PC game first (we're on PS4) and more than that it's a single player game first (some of the MP stuff is clunky as fuck) but who cares? It's great fun and occasionally terrifying and we can build stuff. We are currently starting a massive fort on Norman Island whilst giving the finger to the cannibals one the shore (who can't swim). And then smashing up their shit to steal sticks.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 9:38 
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Hello Hello Hello

Joined: 11th May, 2008
Posts: 13381
Ghost of Tsushima on PS4 is great, started playing it last night and it immediately got its hooks into me.

Fuck me it looks off the scale gorgeous, and it's the first game where I've really noticed HDR doing its thing in a truly awesome fashion.

I'm not a massive fan of the setting (ancient Samurai stuff), but the game has reviewed so well across the board I thought I'd give it a go.

The combat feels super satisfying even at its most basic level (I haven't unlocked any special powers or abilities or attacks yet), and the whole thing is supremely well assembled.

Oh yes the music is lovely too.

So early impressions are excellent.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 10:14 
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sneering elitist

Joined: 25th May, 2014
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Bought Doraemon: Story of Seasons from the Nintendo e-store last night. Graphics are beautiful (it's like walking around a watercolour painting) and the music is nice, but the endless dialogue is so tedious. I remember Harvest Moon on the Gamecube had a lot of dialogue but this is just never ending. Some parts are skippable, but not sure what I'm missing by doing so.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 22:02 
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Hello Hello Hello

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Posts: 13381
Isn't the PS4 Pro a noisy bastard?

Like properly fucking irritating, not quite up there with original chipset 360s under full load whilst also streaming game data off a DVD, but not a million miles removed from that either.

Ghost of Tsushima is clearly pushing the console to its limits, and fuck me you know about it.

Microsoft did a far better job with the XB1X in regard of thermals and noise and actually sticking a quality fucking vapour cooler solution in there, unlike Sony who clearly thought 'Yeah just stick a fan in there and have it spin up like a wailing banshee, it'll be fine'.

Premium console my arse. I CAN HEAR YOU FROM OUTSIDE THE ROOM MOTHERFUCKER.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 22:24 
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Excellent Member

Joined: 25th Jul, 2010
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I don't know if I'm lucky, tolerant or just not playing the 'right' games but I've genuinely never been bothered by the noise. I'm playing through Uncharted 4 at the moment which is fucking beautiful so you'd think would be pushing it hard but I've never noticed it. See also: stuff like Spider-Man and all VR games.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 22:33 
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Bad Girl

Joined: 20th Apr, 2008
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Hearthly wrote:
Isn't the PS4 Pro a noisy bastard?

Like properly fucking irritating, not quite up there with original chipset 360s under full load whilst also streaming game data off a DVD, but not a million miles removed from that either.

Ghost of Tsushima is clearly pushing the console to its limits, and fuck me you know about it.

Microsoft did a far better job with the XB1X in regard of thermals and noise and actually sticking a quality fucking vapour cooler solution in there, unlike Sony who clearly thought 'Yeah just stick a fan in there and have it spin up like a wailing banshee, it'll be fine'.

Premium console my arse. I CAN HEAR YOU FROM OUTSIDE THE ROOM MOTHERFUCKER.


I agree with Hearthy here. It might be due to how warm it is at the minute and because my Pro is in a IKEA cubby hole thing but it makes a right fucking racket because it’s so hot. It’s so bad that I’ve had to turn it around the pump the hot air out. Mind you, the Xbox One X isn’t much better. It’s quieter for sure, but that gets even hotter and I have to turn that around too.

Honestly, I worry about both of them. Just placing my hand on both of them makes me worry they’re going into nuclear melt down.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 22:55 
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Bad Girl

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Anyway, I’m here to talk about Superhot: Mind Control Delete.

You get a “world map” where you can enter a “level”. Each “level” consists of a “run” through a number of random maps from a list of, apparently, 32. Each “run” can be either short/long and you’ll get between 5 to, I don’t know, 15 maps. You have to do each “run” in one go or it’s back to the beginning to start again and another randomisation of the maps. At the start of each “run” you can choose from 4 starting “perks” as the “run“ progresses you’ll reach “checkpoints” where you choose from one of two random extra “perks” which stack. The longer the run the more perks you accumulate. Each map consists of killing a number of enemies. Kill the allotted amount and move onto the next map in the “run”. You can take two hits with the chance of receiving a “perk” that increases the number you can receive.

In theory it sounds like a good setup.

In practice it’s a bit boring after a while. I swear to complete the game you’ll have to play something like 200 maps maybe more if you keep fucking up. There’s 32 maps but you’ll think there’s far fewer than that. It just felt like I was getting the same maps again and again. If you die in a lengthy run you’ll probably tire of doing the same old shit again ad infinitum.

I loved Superhot and I still think the VR game is one of the best games of all time but this is ... too much of a good thing, perhaps. I’ve found tons of areas in a few maps where I can cheese the enemies, probably because I’ve been playing the same fucking things so many times.

And the bugs? I played for two hours yesterday where 50% of the enemies had disappeared and it was just guns wobbling towards me. I swear to god I thought it was a game mechanic. Loaded up today? It’s gone. All the enemies are back. I feel like such a silly twat and now I think it might have been a good idea for a level! But now there’s a new bug that warps the backgrounds. Turned it on and off and gave it a couple of levels before it returned. Really disappointing for something that’s been in development for 3 years and also fucking annoying because I don’t expect any of these massive bugs in 2020.

Mind you, the later levels made me laugh. It’s got some good ideas to mix it up like an indestructible enemy that randomly chases you around and finds you hot swapping between enemies to escape it. But then one of these enemies hot swaps you! And enemies that explode into bits. They’re reet good. As they get within range you’ll be kiting around to get distance or behind cover so they don’t explode in your face. And proximity traps that also explode into bits which you can use to dispense of groups. When it’s good it feels great.

I don’t know, it’s good, I guess, but it’s not engorging my manhood like the first game.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 21, 2020 23:52 
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Paws for thought

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1. My ps4 pro doesn't really have any noise issues. It iswell ventilated though.

2. I can't really get too excited by superhot but not in VR. I tried the non vr version after vr, and it just seemed like the rubbish cousin.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 0:37 
SupaMod
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Put me in the "not noisy" PS4 camp.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 8:04 
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Hello Hello Hello

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Well mine is sat on a glass shelf out in the open, my XB1X is sat on the same glass shelf.

The XB1X is basically silent, whatever it's doing.

The PS4 Pro gets irritatingly noisy when it's under load.

Maybe they're not all the same.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 8:14 
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Unpossible!

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My XB1X is silent. Don't have a PS4


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 8:20 
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Hello Hello Hello

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Also by all accounts not all PS4 Pros are created equal, some seem to be noisy bastards right out of the box (i.e. dust buildup or suchlike is not the issue), whereas others get worse over time.

Apparently Sony used shit thermal paste on the APU which degrades quite badly over time, and it can be worth replacing that, but that's a full disassemble and stripdown job.

Either way there's no question that Microsoft used a nifty vapour chamber cooler for the XB1X, which costs more of course, but does a far better job of cooling at lower fan speeds, and thus lower noise levels. Sony however just used a big fan with a standard sort of heatsink and said 'job done'.

My PS4 Pro isn't at full 'jet engine' noise levels yet, if you have a look on YouTube there are videos of PS4 Pros making truly appalling rackets.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 8:32 
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Gogmagog

Joined: 30th Mar, 2008
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I think you should do a video of a PS4 pro, and Xbox 1x, and a Toyota Corolla

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 8:44 
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Hello Hello Hello

Joined: 11th May, 2008
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I can do you a Toyota Camry.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 10:20 
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Two heads are better than one

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Hearthly wrote:
I can do you a Toyota Camry.


Yeah but you know it will be swapped for a Corolla by next week :-)

I have a launchday PS4 which was moderately noisy at the start but has slowly degenerated into loud whirring fans pretty much any time its turned on
At the same time the main console menus are slow to do anything.
I'm sure opening it up and clearing out the fan would help with the noise but it'll be a pain to do


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 10:43 
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My PS4 Pro is quiet (as mentioned) but all wifi functionality is now fucked, so not only can I not connect to wifi but I can't turn the console on from the controller. Oh, and from recent very painful experimentation it's become clear that if I put the console into sleep mode there's like a 90% chance it won't connect to the controller when it starts up and I'm left very fucked indeed.

tl;dr: being quiet is really the only positive aspect of my PS4 in terms of hardware and when I get a PS5 the Pro is basically just going in the fucking bin rather than being able to be sold on or given to someone. Stupid fucking thing.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 10:48 
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Unpossible!

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Coincidentally, I opened my hellishly noisy Xbox 360 last week (maybe the week before, it's hard to keep track) and cleaned it out. Now silent again. Apart from the DVD drive, but that was always loud


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Wed Jul 22, 2020 21:26 
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Hibernating Druid

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My non Pro PS4 can sound like it’s about to take off at times. I’ve already de-dusted the innards, might relocate it and see if it helps.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2020 8:21 
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Hello Hello Hello

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Ghost of Tsushima got a full four hour session off me last night, it's a magnificent game.

Honestly, I'm not entirely sure it being a full open world game really adds much, I don't object to it as such, but the days of such a game invoking a pie-eyed sense of wonder at having A WHOLE WORLD to explore have long gone.

Thing is, whenever you find a little village or settlement or whatever, you can't help but stop to rummage around looking for all the shit that goes into all the various crafting recipes, and it does break the flow of the game up a bit.

Also, looking at all the skill/weapon/ability progression trees I'm reminded somewhat of God Of War, you know, where even at the end of the game the combat loop you learned in the first few hours was still an entirely viable way to play and you could never remember the buttons to pull off all the fancy combo shit you'd learned anyway.

It's the same basic problem that all games with this structure have, the designers have no way of knowing how much exploration and collection stuff the player is going to do, and therefore how much of the extra twaddle they're going to unlock, so they can't make any aspect of the game dependent on it. Therefore the game has to be doable by a player who simply piles straight through the critical path on the campaign missions, so they CAN design gameplay and encounters around stuff they know for sure you're going to have (like the extra weapons/abilities God of War 100% makes sure all players have as they progress through the main campaign), but beyond that it has to be, by definition, entirely optional.

This is a relatively small criticism though, and doesn't detract from the enjoyment of the game. The combat loop is supremely satisfying, and the visual/aural cues and feedback the game gives are perfectly designed.

Oh yes and you know that shit you normally have to do, looking at the map to see if you're going in the right direction or not? This game totally gets rid of that by having the wind indicate the correct direction head in for your current objective. It's a gentle breeze that's quite subtle, but if you need a more obvious cue, just swipe up on the trackpad and you'll get a gust of wind to show you which direction to go in. (This bends the grass and the trees in the wind, so it makes it really clear.)

Splendid game, even though I'm still relatively early doors with it, I think it's safe to say this one is worth a try.

EDIT - If you've got a 'noisy PS4' be warned, this game will bring out the worst in it.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2020 8:54 
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UltraMod

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Zardoz wrote:
My non Pro PS4 can sound like it’s about to take off at times. I’ve already de-dusted the innards, might relocate it and see if it helps.

You’ve added dust? I think I know where you’re going wrong

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Thu Jul 23, 2020 9:00 
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Prince of Fops

Joined: 14th May, 2009
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Hearthly wrote:

Oh yes and you know that shit you normally have to do, looking at the map to see if you're going in the right direction or not? This game totally gets rid of that by having the wind indicate the correct direction head in for your current objective. It's a gentle breeze that's quite subtle, but if you need a more obvious cue, just swipe up on the trackpad and you'll get a gust of wind to show you which direction to go in. (This bends the grass and the trees and the wind, so it makes it really clear.)



That's brilliant.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Fri Jul 24, 2020 9:45 
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Hello Hello Hello

Joined: 11th May, 2008
Posts: 13381
Findus Fop wrote:
That's brilliant.


It really is, it feels so perfect and natural it's a proper 'Why did no one do this before?' kind of moment.

(It may have been done before I suppose, but I've never seen it.)


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Fri Jul 24, 2020 10:58 
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Prince of Fops

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Hearthly wrote:
Findus Fop wrote:
That's brilliant.


It really is, it feels so perfect and natural it's a proper 'Why did no one do this before?' kind of moment.

(It may have been done before I suppose, but I've never seen it.)


Great design always feels so obvious, doesn't it. Will be checking out this game when it's down in price.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Fri Jul 24, 2020 12:31 
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Excellent Painter

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Hearthly wrote:
Findus Fop wrote:
That's brilliant.


It really is, it feels so perfect and natural it's a proper 'Why did no one do this before?' kind of moment.

(It may have been done before I suppose, but I've never seen it.)

There’s a section in Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the korok forest, where wind direction is your only guide as to which direction to take.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Fri Jul 24, 2020 13:30 
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Prince of Fops

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DBSnappa wrote:
Hearthly wrote:
Findus Fop wrote:
That's brilliant.


It really is, it feels so perfect and natural it's a proper 'Why did no one do this before?' kind of moment.

(It may have been done before I suppose, but I've never seen it.)

There’s a section in Zelda: Breath of the Wild, the korok forest, where wind direction is your only guide as to which direction to take.


Great design is even more obvious when someone else has done it already!


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 10:51 
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Hello Hello Hello

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Gah! Ghost of Tsushima annoyed me last night.

I've been sticking to NORMAL difficulty as I love the combat and I enjoy the challenge it provides, despite my crapness with a gamepad and some of the moves requiring some fairly adept stick + button combos - and in fairness to myself, I've been coping OK.

I've been doing a lot of open world style stuff, finding locations and shrines, killing enemy camps, finding friendly camps and settlements, getting a maximum health boost and a couple of item boosts, and generally having fun away from the main campaign missions, but last night I decided to progress the main campaign.

The first stages of the mission were all fine, I found the NPC I was looking for, we killed some baddies, had some story and exposition stuff, and eventually went to a nearby enemy fort where the mission objective was.

We scoped out the place, and identified some stuff we could do to distract and weaken the enemy, ahead of getting in there and starting the fight proper.

My first few attempts went badly, but as I got into the groove of the fights, the enemy composition, the layout of the camp, and so on, I was making more and more progress. After a death the game returned to its last checkpoint, which was just as the engagement was about to start on the edge of the camp, so that was fine.

However, on my next attempt I made a substantial amount of progress, clearing out nearly the entire camp with a combination of archery, stealth, distraction, and toe-to-toe combat, all told it'd taken about 20 minutes - and I was quite badly dinged up, but there were only two weaker style enemies remaining.

I got myself to a quiet corner of the camp, I hadn't noticed if the game had checkpointed or not, so I went into the menu and the game allowed me to save. Excellent, I thought, I'll proceed from here.

However, upon killing the two remaining baddies, a second wave came out of the back of the camp I wasn't prepared for, and having used up most of my resources and being very low on health, I got killed.

It turns out the game hadn't checkpointed again, so it took me right back to the beginning of the encounter.

No fear, I've got my manually saved game!

So I loaded in the save I'd created, the timestamp was correct so I was optimistic, but my manual save was....... exactly the same as the game's own checkpoint.

At this point I just wasn't in the mood to go again, I'd spent over an hour on this single encounter already, I thought I'd nearly done it, but it turned out it's a two wave fight, the game considers the whole thing to be a single checkpoint event, and a manual save doesn't make any difference.

Why for the love of god can't we just save our game when we want to? It always used to be a thing in games, I mean, heck, it was very common for PC games to have 'QUICKSAVE' and 'QUICKLOAD' keys, many of them still do.

Anyway, I figured I'd knock the difficulty down to EASY to get through this encounter, but fuck me EASY difficulty really knackers the combat, the enemies become incredibly crap, the time you have to react to stuff is massively increased, and the lovely, tight, sharp combat mechanics are basically ruined. I actually put the pad down in disgust before I even finished the encounter.

So yeah maybe I'm just not good enough, the game is clearly designed for the whole encounter to be done in one, hence the game not checkpointing before the second wave. If it were split into two I'd be fine on NORMAL, if I lumped away at it some more I'd be able to do it NORMAL I guess, now I know the second wave is coming, I'll probably have another go at it later on today.

The problem is the difficulty and accessibility options are nothing like as comprehensive as TLOU2, so all you have is the relatively stiff challenge of NORMAL, or the total cakewalk of EASY - which honestly just feels crap to play.

I could put it down to EASY just to get through this encounter and then put it back up to NORMAL, but I'd much rather get through on NORMAL, which I'd be fine with if the game would just let me fucking save before the second wave starts. (And this isn't such a rare thing either, games often give you midfight checkpoints on bigger encounters, in fact thinking about it, God Of War actually gives you a mid bossfight checkpoint, on that battle against the two brothers, so if you get past wave one of the fight and then die on wave two, it just puts you back to the start of wave two, and that fight is substantially shorter than the one I was doing last night.)

Anyway, I gave up with it last night and played Chase HQ in MAME instead.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Sun Jul 26, 2020 15:55 
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Kinda Funny Lookin'

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I played a bit of Carrion this morning (it's new to Gamepass). You play as a Shoggoth and the way it moves and consumes the puny humans is very satisfying.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 27, 2020 15:33 
SupaMod
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I have also had a quick go on Carrion on the Switch, but I find the "aiming" to be a bit fiddly. Moving around is lots of fun, though.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 27, 2020 18:01 
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Bad Girl

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I didn’t really “aim” in Carrion but just held down the button and flicked in the general direction of the thing I wanted or wanted dead. Seemed to work much better than trying to be precise.

Anyway, people say Ghost of Tushima and TLOU2 look good but fuck me does Resident Evil 3 look good. It’s fucking gorgeous. The RE Engine is so goddamn good. Jill looks stunning.

I had my issue with the difficulty yesterday though. I heard it was short and since this ain’t my first Resident rodeo I’d just jack the difficulty up to hard for my first playthrough. Y’know how many direct shots in the face from a pistol it took to take a single zombie down? Fucking SEVEN. It was about 6 shots too many. I was avoiding combat and whatnot but eventually got cornered by three guys with only 12 bullets so I wasn’t making it out without a love bite or two. I just couldn’t enjoy it at all so I’m going to restart it on boring old normal.

But by god that introduction is great though. I’ll be glad to do that again.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 27, 2020 20:28 
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Prince of Fops

Joined: 14th May, 2009
Posts: 4296
Hearthly wrote:
Findus Fop wrote:
That's brilliant.


It really is, it feels so perfect and natural it's a proper 'Why did no one do this before?' kind of moment.

(It may have been done before I suppose, but I've never seen it.)


Nice thread of Ghosts innovations to the genre

https://twitter.com/wrmaiden/status/1287467341832486912




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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 27, 2020 20:58 
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Hibernating Druid

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Still loving StarWars BF2, after realising that you can level up and unlock loads of goodies quickly by playing the Co-op games. Been most excellent playing in turns with my Youngling. :D

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Mon Jul 27, 2020 22:42 
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Findus Fop wrote:
https://twitter.com/wrmaiden/status/1287467341832486912

Went to college with Will, top bloke. Weird when worlds collide.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 8:34 
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Hello Hello Hello

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Posts: 13381
So after taking an evening off I returned to GHOSTS OF TSUSHIMA and THE ENCOUNTER OF DOOM.

As playing the game on EASY is so disgusting I was determined to do it on NORMAL, and since I'd allowed myself to be killed before completing it on EASY, my save game was in the same place, right at the start of the encounter.

And I managed to do it NORMAL, albeit, honestly, I basically cheesed it.

In essence I just fucked around with the limits of the AI in the encounter. I clocked on to the fact the NPC with me was immortal, there was no limit around how far away I could be from him, he couldn't be killed (so no fail state there), and he'd constantly fire arrows at any baddies in range of him.

From there I played around with luring baddies out of the base one or two at a time, there were certain trigger points whereby the whole camp would come out and give chase to me, but by doing careful 'pulls' I was able to bring them out in easily killable portions of enemies. Also, there was a nearby climbable rock formation the AI didn't seem to be able to path to, and were happy to run around underneath me whilst I shot their stupid Mongol faces off with my bow and arrow.

This approach also seemed to confuse the enemy archers, who remained within the camp, forlornly shooting at me from hundreds of yards away, so I had about 38 minutes to react to their shots. They also stayed conveniently still in the main, allowing me to shoot back and kill them with the infinite replenishing supply of arrows that the start point for the encounter provided.

Eventually just the boss remained, so I ran into the camp, climbed up one of the watch towers, (which completely confused him and led to much angry Mongol shouting, and revealed him possessing the embarrassing inability to climb a ladder), allowed my NPC friend to weaken him with arrows, and then jumped down from the watch tower to do a critical strike on the boss.

ENCOUNTER COMPLETED ON NORMAL DIFFICULTY.

From there I had a couple of talent points to spend, now I'd sort of been holding back on this because out of the gate you literally have EIGHT TALENT TREES to spend points in, as well as the ability to spend the same points on other sorts of abilities, so I figured I'd wait and see what I fancied before committing to spending the points, but of course had put myself in a bit of a chicken and egg situation.

Anyway I'd read a starter's guide to the game that cut through all that and said to start off with the DEFLECTION tree, and take it from there, and lo and behold once I'd unlocked some of the stuff in that tree, my problems with the combat went away, as there are abilities that make the parry and block mechanics a little more forgiving, without fucking up the entire combat loop like knocking the game down to EASY does.

And with that, I was off, for an entire evening of extremely enjoyable Samurai fun. I can hold my own in the combat on NORMAL now without too much difficulty, whilst still being challenged and enjoying the combat loop.

As per Mr Fop's link above, there are so many things about this game that are done exquisitely well. You know how we often say 'less than the sum of its parts' or 'more than the sum of its parts'? This game is 'very much the sum of its parts', in that everything is done extremely well, and the end result is a game that feels incredibly satisfying to play, and a world that is a pleasure to explore and engage with.

RECOMMENDED GAME.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 9:27 
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Gogmagog

Joined: 30th Mar, 2008
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Far Cry 5: it's a far cry game. Looks lovely, turns the fans on the PS4 on, and it's great. All the baddies wear aviators. Which are cool. Really cool. MaliCool.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 11:57 
SupaMod
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No, that's backwards.

It goes:

Really cool. Cool. MaliCool.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Jul 28, 2020 12:09 
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UltraMod

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Really cool
Cool
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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 9:35 
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Just a heads up for 'Fall Guys', currently only on PS4 and PC, I went for the PS4 version. It's currently free with PS Plus (although not so free if you had to resub to PS Plus to play it, as I did, because it's online).

I don't think it's a 'main' game, although I ended up playing it for three hours last night, I think it's a nice 'side game' to have on the go, so for example last night I took a break from Ghost Of Tsushima and played Fall Guys instead.

Quick summary? It's a Battle Royale game in the mould of It's A Knockout/Takeshi's Castle, 60 players start and get whittled down across a series of gameshow style events from one round to the next.

Everyone plays as a little (customisable) jelly bean with legs, there are no attacks or hostile activities, the most you can do is grab someone else, the majority of the game is running and jumping and diving, all done in lovely bright vivid colours.

It's one of those games anyone can play, you literally just look at the screen and can immediately work out what you need to do. (The rules for each different stage are explained in a single sentence.)

Stupidly good fun - give it go.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 9:40 
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ugvm'er at heart...

Joined: 4th Mar, 2010
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Fall Guys is unresponsive, buggy, overly simple shit...
I've put about 20 hours into it so far, 2 overall wins, lots of stage wins, and I love it.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 9:59 
SupaMod
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Hearthly wrote:
It's currently free with PS Plus (although not so free if you had to resub to PS Plus to play it, as I did, because it's online).

I'm super-confused about this chain of events. You got it for free with PS Plus and then had to pay for PS Plus?

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 10:04 
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The game is £15 if you already have PS Plus, but you get it for free if you already have PS Plus, so I'm not quite sure how that works.

In my case I'd let my PS Plus sub lapse so had to resub to PS Plus to play the game (as it's online), at which point I could download the game for 'free'.

I don't see what category of person already has PS Plus (so gets it for free) but also pays £15 for it.

Or basically, I don't understand who actually pays £15 for it.


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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 10:12 
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Hibernating Druid

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Fall Guys is brilliant, but also very aaarrrgh.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 10:15 
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Hibernating Druid

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Hearthly wrote:
I don't understand who actually pays £15 for it.

Future people will. New PS+ members from NEXT month won’t have got it for ‘free’ but will be able get it at the discounted price of £15.

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 Post subject: Re: What's Everyone Playing?
PostPosted: Tue Aug 18, 2020 10:28 
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Oooohhhh look at fancy-pants Nostradamus there. *



* Yes that makes sense.


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