Luseth

Woah where was my invite 😛 I love the premise of this but no one I know is really into these games so I would love to jump on with a few of you. Is it cross play i.e. Can I join on my XBOX or do I need to get the laptop out?

I put the £5 deposit down at the end of August thinking I could make my mind up nearer the time, turned out it was much nearer than I thought it would be. Got the notification last week and decided to purchase it (only the basic model) and it turned up on Saturday. Picked myself up a £22 256gb SD card and I'm away pc gaming for under £400. I let my gaming computer go about 6 months ago and I have a laptop that's fairly capable but I find it difficult to game on as my daughter wants to mess. So the steam deck seemed a good shout. My first impressions are really really good, it's incredibly capable, runs well and isn't too difficult to get to grips with in terms of how things function and that. I have played just 1 game so far, GTA IV and that played really well. Simple enough to get installed and up and running and now I spend an hour or so in bed of an evening shooting up Liberty City? I have also put a couple of my PS2 games on there, I have had Shadow hearts ready to play for a long time but finding time to sit down with the CRT at my desk is difficult (again because of the little ones) so thought I would add it to the deck and see how it performs so I will let you know on that front if I get round to it. I have a fairly sizeable steam library backlog to play though and I do genuinely feel like it will get enjoyed now. The screen's decent, the device is fairly snappy and simple and though it's only my first game to play GTA IV help up really well and played incredibly smoothly so I can see this potentially taking pole position when it comes to my gaming time in the not so distant future.

I have downloaded the demo and will give it a go, but I have just bought a steamdeck so the games I was going to buy between now and christmas might have to go on the backburner. This was up there along with Star ocean and Crisis Core ^_^

I am playing this on and off at the moment, I think it's fine as a big sandbox to play about with but this feels more akin to Saints Row 4 rather than the reboot that people were hoping for i.e. Saints Row 2 & 3. I am finding this a lot with big titles at the moment that they head in one direction and get too far down the road before they realise they are getting things incredibly wrong. By then it's difficult for them to find their way back (battlefield & Final Fantasy are 2 other franchises that I am fond of that have done the same thing). I will complete it I am sure but it's not keeping me gripped 100% of my gaming time and that's when I know a game's decent ^_^

So when it comes to gaming news, where do you get it from? Like where do you hear about new games etc. i used to watch digital foundry on youtube for reviews but moved away because i spent more time watching vids than gaming

I have put my name down for one, say's quarter 4 of this year Oct-Dec so hopefully will have one in time for christmas 🙂 I have quite a steam library that I have not really gotten through so between that and my current Switch backlog I could probably get through this cost of living crisis 😄 I may try some emulation with it, just because it would be good to play some of the games I have at home on the go (I.e. I just bought shining force 3 on the saturn which I am excited to try). But yeah, it does mean I have been watching steam and picking up the odd cheap game here and there which is probably not a good idea 😄 Like I never completed GTA IV so bought that for about £4-5 the other day.

@J4MES OX4D what are you gaming on? The screenshots you post look fantastic 🙂

I'm part of a little battlefield group and on the whole they are quite big fans of the series, we continue to play Battlefield V regularly and they continue to hold out that this game might come good. I on the other hand am struggling to see it, yes Dice have turned around battlefield games in the past but for me the way they treated the fans, the way they moved away from what battlefield was good at, how despite the complaints from the loyal fans they turned round and said that the fans were wrong rather than admitting they got it wrong. It's left a real sour taste for me and it's certainly the last time I pre-order a battlefield game sadly.

I mean we could do that or we could just @GazzaGarratt in just every post full stop just so he has a bazillion notifications 😄 I reckon he has been keeping them all at bay up until this week by satisfying their sexual urges (the bots I mean)

It was one of my favourite game series growing up, there isn't much quite like it! I was a big fan of the red alert series (even red alert 3) and did contemplate booting up the remastered set but haven't gotten round to it yet.

It has, in fact I have dying light 2 still to play yet, it has been sat on the shelf for a little while as I am trying to get through some of my backlog (which as you can imagine could take forever!)

Sadly the planet is only heading one way. I tend to shy away from the conversations as they are incredibly depressing. I have taken steps to make my potential future better i.e. we have an AC unit in the house to keep one room cool where we can hide if need's be, I have an allotment for veg (and next year will also be using half our garden), have put in a water butt recently for watering and with the allotment I'm also learning skills where it comes to growing our own food just in case things really go to shit in the coming few years. Food will be much more expensive next year because of the drought, there will be less of it and it won't be all the pristine / uniform veg we see in the shops today. Sony's price rise isn't really shocking when you consider the value of the other currencies against the US dollar, almost everywhere linked to Europe and the UK has seen a fall but I do get people's frustrations with Sony, how come they are increasing prices whilst Nintendo and Microsoft do not feel the need to?

How is the steam deck Phil? I have looked at them but not sure how much use it will get, I already neglect the xbox series S as I have a switch and PS5... As far as retro games go, it is something I have been leaning into more, the games tend to be more varied, with older retro they are also shorter which means I do also get to complete them. The 360 / PS3 era is some of the best as far as games go, the PS4 will feel quite stagnant when we look back at it I think as we haven't seen many jumps forward (the VR being the obvious exception). But as far as game content goes we seem to have plateaued a little bit.

I am a little disappointed but on the plus side I do have quite a few games to play with a few others coming out yet this year so it could well be a blessing in disguise. Agreed on the comms though, I feel often the industry revolves around hype which in turn generates pre-orders.

Oooo how much did future tactics cost you? It's one I wouldn't mind picking up at some point (not sure if it is the original influence but it's similar in gameplay to valkyria chronicles isn't it?)

My latest purchase, it has sat in my local CEX for a little while but i havent had the spare cash to pick it up til now ^_^

Yup bonkers, it's why I don't wholly get DLC to some extent, I think the only time I have likely appreciated dlc is with the witcher 3 and that's because they were essentially additional games. As with all things though people just accept it as the norm and there are people that must pay for all the additional crap (in fact for my jrpgs I remember seeing some dlc, can't recall the game but you could pay to have the girls in the team run round in bikini's, I mean wtf is that about?)

Will be one I definately pick up, that said I have at home FF Tactics advance 2 and have not played that yet 😄 But yeah this is one to get on the Switch most definately ^_^ In fact I have a feeling I have played this briefly before, maybe on the PSP?

JRPG's are very much my go to ^_^ But it depends a lot on the type of combat you enjoy, sticking with the retro theme game rather than moving to modern titles - Tactical games, my go to would probably be fire emblem or shining force series (the latter being on megadrive albeit rather expensive these days) For something similar to Final Fantasy, the Breath of Fire games are brilliant 🙂 Otherwise it has got to be the Suikoden games probably ^_^ Some of the best JRPG's ever to be made (especially the PS1 era games) I much prefer the turn based combat, the action style is fine but I just grew up on the turn based stuff and if done well it can be brilliant (Dragon Quest XI for example).

I finished that one as well @Riff Machine , so I am 3 chapters down now (I have done the Japanese one as well), and whilst I am enjoying them I just feel like it is missing something to link all of the stories together at the moment. It is nice playing short stories as it means I am completing them which is something that typically take's forever with such limited time as a dad! The voice acting is quite good and I must admit, with it being the first proper 2d-hd game I have sunk my teeth into it has really won me round (and it looks great on the OLED screen)

There were some great consoles but I had to go PS2, the games still hold up well today and we still saw the experimentation of early gaming but with decent 3d models and the such. The hardware was impressive, we saw customisation with different coloured consoles and the range of games was brilliant from JRPG's to first person shooters. I mean you had time crisis, GTA San Andreas & Final Fantasy X all on one console ^_^ It saw a lot of the traction for a lot of the game series we enjoy today. It had backwards compatibility, we saw voice acting turn up and really between the PS2 and xbox I think it brought the console properly into everyone's homes. The consoles before were great but all of a sudden you had everyone's house owning one. My wife grew up in a poorer household and they were never really interested in video games being girls in the 90s / early 2000s, it was much more of a boy thing but even their household had a couple. (In fact she thinks her mom still has an upopened Silver PS2 which I am banking on getting hold of at some point 😄 ) I could go on about the positives of every console there, they are all great in their own way 🙂

I booted up streets of rage on the megadrive last night with the CRT I picked up recently and it looks surprisingly good. I always thought that graphics had come on leaps and bounds but honestly the 16bit era holds up incredibly well with the right set up. The other thought I had was the time spent waiting for each level to load, there was nothing.... I know there is a lot more data to load with modern consoles but it wasn't all that long ago that Sony were bragging about having next to no gaming load times, then I played the megadrive yesterday and was like 'oh wait they are basically copying Sega 😄 ' I think one thing that I probably miss and appreciate at the same time is the evolving of game guides / in game information (waypoints)etc. It's all made easy to speed up our gaming time, as I have gotten older I have less and less time to actually game so this allows me to complete games. However I look back at the Final Fantasy games on the PS1 as my favourite era and at that time I used relatively little to no guidance. This brought more to the experience though, the exploration and the discovery. In fact the first time I play FFVII I missed Fort Condor completely, imagine my surprise finding it years later! The other thing is I sometimes feel obligated to play with friends, if I get a message of an evening 'do you want to play clubs' or 'is anyone up for battlefield' I feel a little obligated to join them (especially if I haven't gamed with that person or group for a week or so). The other thing is, developers need to realise bigger does not always mean better. We have seen it a lot with ubisoft games and the likes of Just cause over recent years. I would much rather they spend time on much more crafted smaller worlds. Now that I have my retro set up, I am just sorting out my gaming storage to make things more accessible but I can see it taking up some more time in my gaming schedule going forwards, there is a lot more uniqueness.

I have this too 🙂 Completed the prehistoric chapter last night, it was shorter than I thought it would be and while you can figure out what is going on it probably worked far more of my brain than I would have liked it to! Gameplay is great and it looks really good too!

Was my favourite growing up and I still have many of the games (albeit caseless) from my younger years. Back then I was very much a JRPG only fan (multiplayer online had not turned up yet and I was a bit of a loner in my younger years, really did not like people, to be fair I still don't 😄 ) But just thought I would share a couple of the games in my PS1 collection -