Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

I'm playing Harold Halibut. I figured I'd give it a go despite Push Square's review and I'm quite liking it. The art style definitely elevates it, but I'm enjoying exploring the environments and chatting to all the characters. I was expecting it to be full of puzzles, like an old school point & click game, but it has more in common with a Telltale game.

I am going to finish up with Persona 3R this weekend finally. I have been putting off the final boss for about a week now because I am not ready to say goodbye to the characters in this game yet. I know a second playthrough is recommended to gather stray social links that couldn't be done in the first playthrough but it never has the same emotional impact as the first time. I booted up Soul Hackers 2 for the first time this week but I may need to hold off and play another game before going back to that as it's too easy to compare to Persona 3R and it is a far less polished game and I want to give SH2 a fair shake. So now I am wondering if a download of Fallout 76 is on the horizon for me this weekend.

@Black_Swordsman Ah I'm glad that you enjoyed Control on PS4 as I've been holding it off until I got a PS5. I remember it being one of the few games that was poorly optimised on base PS4, which is what I had. It's running without any issues at all on PS5, so I'm glad that I waited.

I've played it for a few hours now and I have mixed feelings about the gameplay. It's a bit too simplistic right now, I wish I had more weapons to choose from besides the handgun. I'm sure you unlock more weapons later on but it would've been nice to have more to choose from right from the get-go. I also like the challenging boss fights. However, I don't like how much stuff there is to read from collectibles. It's basically Dishonored-level of amount. As much as I love reading lore, it kinda ruins the pacing that there is this much to read so I tend to avoid doing it now.

@LtSarge Yeah, I don't think I read many, if any, of the collectible lore-based material, but I know there is a trophy for collecting all of them, so worth knowing if you are aiming for the plat.

Edit: Don't trust my memory alone though, Google it if you want to be sure.

@Black_Swordsman There's a trophy for getting 120 collectibles, which is far from all - should happen naturally if you're not avoiding them.
And then one of the DLC has a trophy for getting 80% of them, which is a little harder.

@LtSarge I'm not suggesting doing this as I know I probably missed quite a bit of lore, but the two times I've beaten Control so far, I've yet to read many of the collectibles and still loved the game even though I obviously missed a lot of lore. I will likely do the same again whenever I finally, and gladly, play the PS5 version someday.

As for weapons, you do unlock more and more as the game goes along. You'll get your variety.

Sorry for posting in here, but there is no dedicated thread and as a guy who is often criticised for being especially negative, I gotta take a chance to gush. I am now around 15ish hours into Granblue Fantasy Relink and I might love this game? Don't get me wrong, the story still remains somehow cookie cutter and unintelligible. And I am usually one who can live with bad gameplay if the story is good, but rarely can I make my peace with a game if it is the other way around. However, GFRs gameplay is just some of the best I might have ever experienced? Yeah. It is everything FF16 should have been, gameplaywise. It is Monster Hunter but with all the frustration smoothed out. Every boss fight is so spectacular it feels like it should be a cutscene or a QTE, but the fact you are in full control the whole time... it is just so special. Boss fights also have just enough mechanical variety to be interesting, but none of the gimmicks to the fight are every annoying or distract and pull away from the core of what makes this gameplay sing. The way certain character kits will just... click for you and the way everything else slots into place when that happens. The way you are slowly gearing out and building up your whole roster, and then seeing the AI do such a terrific job with the companions you have designed from the ground up.

Pure magic.

@Pizzamorg I've yet to play it myself but I've only heard good things, especially about playing it in co-op

I think the cool thing @Voltan is that the AI is so competent and you build them out yourself, that you kinda don't need anyone else. I only really have one friend who tends to play games like this with me and in this case that friend is playing on PC and me PS5, and there is no crossplay.

I remember how we often got stuck in Monster Hunter in a place where two people weren't quite enough to fell some of the hardest challenges, but then some of the randoms you would get in matchmaking were so bad, they must have been carried to that point and never learnt anything along the way. They would be the direct source of your failures and it was maddening.

As I understand it, you can push to the end of the endgame in GFR with your AI team and as someone who has no friends to play this with, that is such a relief for me.

@KilloWertz Right after I wrote that post, I unlocked the Shatter form lol. I think it's cool that you have one gun and it transforms into different types of weapons. My favourites are Spin and Pierce forms.

I'm halfway through the game now and it's been a blast so far. Remedy always make excellent games.

@Bentleyma I dont use push square reviews i find their opinions of games to be very different than my own and as such are of very little use to me

@Pizzamorg I'm the other way around, I favour gameplay over story in video games. It is probably my biggest achilles heel, as I often struggle to stick with games if the gameplay doesn’t click with me. But can happily play a game if the story isn't any good.

It would get boring quite quickly if we were all the same and all liked the same things.

I was like this when I was younger too, but I dunno if its just a by-product of getting older and consuming so much more media, but just having a nice gameplay loop is not enough for me alone anymore. I think it is a big reason why I like loot games, it gives me a tangible sense of progression even if a lot of it is fake. But it is also why I can't really play those first person shooters where there is no story, or progression, just refined shooting mechanics, because just shooting stuff with nothing else with it isn't fun to me, even if it may be the best gunfeel ever made.

@Pizzamorg It may be something to do that I grew up on games with little or no story, so have never held that element as that important when it comes comes to playing video games.

@Pizzamorg Hmmm, I wonder why Mr. Negative has no friends...

@LtSarge Yeah, it's cool that your weapon is almost like it's alive.

That's good. I have yet to play either Alan Wake game and Quantum Break was a tad bit of a letdown after playing Control (still liked it), but Control was so good for me that I'll play anything made by Remedy at this point.

@JohnnyShoulder @Pizzamorg I feel like as I've gotten older and have less free time, I want to spend it wisely when playing games. So when I come home from work, I don't want to sit and read a bunch or watch a lot of cut-scenes in a game. I want to actually do something that's fun. That's not to say that I don't enjoy those games anymore. But if the only thing I did was e.g. read, then I will feel completely unsatisfied with my gaming time. Which is why I've decided to play two games concurrently: one that's action-packed and one that's less so. Right now I'm playing Control and Trails from Zero. I'm enjoying the hell out of the former and because I'm playing it, I feel more inclined to play a game like Trails from Zero where there is a lot of reading. I mean, during the first couple of hours of Trails from Zero, I've done nothing but read. If it weren't for Control, I would've been very annoyed by Trails. Don't get me wrong, I'm loving the story in Trails, but it's the fact that there hasn't been much actual gameplay yet that bugs me. That will of course change down the line, but nonetheless, it's great to alternate between two different types of games in order to keep my motivation up.

@KilloWertz Remedy simply makes unique and fun games. I loved Quantum Break and it was a nice coincidence that I played it after experiencing Steins;Gate, a visual novel about time travel. So it made me enjoy the game even more.

I thought the first Alan Wake was great with a unique combat system and an interesting story. It'll feel a bit dated compared to Control but if you go in with tempered expectations then I think you'll like it as well.

I'm definitely looking forward to playing Alan Wake II in the future after I've finished Control.

I agree there is a deffo a line, @LtSarge - For example, while I would say I am a Yakuza fan overall, almost every game feels impenetrable to begin with cause the first 10 - 15 hours feel about 90 percent cutscenes before they open out and let you play.

@trev666 I find that I don't agree with most reviews in general. I'm able to find enjoyment out most games that I play, even universally panned ones. I bought Gollum a couple of weeks ago and I don't think it's terrible from what I've played so far.