Hades I bought this because of the great reviews. I like it. I'm not sure how much I like it but I like it.
Fall Guys It's a 60 player, last player standing, maze challenge marathon that feels like Mario Party. I'm playing it on the PC but I think it'd be better on the Switch.
I started playing Returnal this weekend. I think it's the first "roguelike" game I've played. It's quite difficult so far, which at least early on has been due to the greatest challenge being the boss yet getting very little actual exposure to the boss before you have to spend another hour building yourself back up to get there. I like the Souls format much better so far. When I fought tough FROM Software bosses like Kalameet, Darkeater Midir, or Sister Friede, I spent most of my time actually battling those epic bosses, not starting over and wandering around gathering stuff for an hour then getting trounced in a few minutes because I haven't been able to practice learning the patterns and timing of the boss. I'm assuming this is the norm for this genre. I really like the challenge but not the format of starting over with the exception of a few unlocks. The visuals are quite pleasing. It seems to have somewhere between 1080p to 1440p for the internal resolution but looks much higher with whichever temporal upsampling technique is using. Occasionally certain assets like little plants will look low resolution, but most of the time it's a very nice looking game with very distinct colors in HDR. It runs at 60 fps or very close to that most of the time, and the controls feel very quick and sharp. Emphasis is on quick, agile movement rather than precision aiming. You can hip fire and land a decent amount of shots, but you have to keep moving almost constantly in combat or you'll die quickly. The audio is exceptional, probably among the best on PS5 so far. Both the quality of the audio samples and the spatial audio are excellent. The haptic feedback implementation is also probably top 3 so far along with Astro Bot and WRC9. I'm not sure if this roguelike genre will grow on me or not. My main gripes are with the format of the roguelike and high $70 price. Everything else is quite impressive, better than I expected. I was going to wait until it was $40 to $50, but reviews from ACG and SkillUp and the fact that console-phobe Alex from Digital Foundry loves it and was looking forward to actually picking up a controller to play it again led to me caving into curiosity.
Halo Reach It ditches the Flood which was probably the weakest part of the Halo games and showcases one of the biggest battles in the Human-Covenant War. Now that I've played into a bit more I'm really enjoying it. It's probably got the strongest campaign other than Combat Evolved. It even has some space combat segments that are pretty good.
Horizon Zero Dawn on PC The game itself is good and it looks good and runs pretty well (solid 60fps at 1440p on ultra settings), but the port is glitchy. I've had it crash a few times.
I was curious to know how the PC version of Horizon is running now. I was surprised it had technical issues at launch considering how good this game looked and ran on the Pro when it was new. Kojima used the same Decima game engine, and I've read it runs quite well and has DLSS support. I've been annoyed Horizon hasn't received even a patch to unlock the frame rate for PS5, although it's possible they could do that leading up to the sequel's launch.
Finally started on Cyberpunk. Lemme go on record saying that the amount of genital customization is entirely unnecessary. I almost gave up and gave my dude a vagina...which is another unnecessary option.
How does it run? I know it ran like ass and crashed a lot at launch but there have been some patches.
Well I only have about 2 hours on it but nothing critical so far. I've seen two NPC walk through doors so I expect more of that. I had one start up crash which wasn't a big deal. I'm getting 45fps average with everything maxed on my 5700XT. I can live with that. The game is beautiful and really has that strong Cyberpunk theme. Definitely MA so I'll have to keep the headphones on. Lots of sex ads with moaning popping up on screens.
Halo ODST It's like they tried to combine Halo and Rainbox Six. Not sure if I like it. They didn't change the enemies or most of the weapons enough that a stealth type of thing really works. The enemies are still bullet sponges so you can't take them down quickly like in a stealth tactical game, so the silenced weapons come across as silly peashooters. Also the lighting in this game is just weird. It's like every scene is either way too dark or way too bright. I keep having to fiddle with the gamma settings.
I'm playing through Mass Effect 1 (Legendary Edition remaster) at the moment. It feels exactly how I "remember" the game so to speak, so I think they absolutely nailed this remaster.
I finally got to ODST.. been playing the mcc in coop with a friend who lives on the west coast so it takes us forever to beat each title since we could go months between each session depending on our availability. I totally agree with the horrible lighting in this game. It was probably fine on the console and got all funky on the pc port. I'm actually having fun in it though. It feels good being really weak and having all sorts of ammo issues. I like the claustrophobic feel of it too with running through buildings and all. I just read that they aren't porting Halo 5 to pc. What a weird decision. The PC will have all of the Halo titles including Infinite when it comes out in December, but will be missing this one title.
I finished ODST and ended up really liking it in the end. They made you feel much weaker than in the other games where you play as a Spartan. You aren’t some unstoppable super soldier. You’re just a low level grunt. I liked what the campaign did with flashbacks. I stand by what I said about the lighting engine being weird and glitchy though. I’ll probably play Halo 3 next when I get some time.
we're playing it through release order. honestly, when we started with combat evolved, we had to quit it. holy shit it got so boring.. i forgot how often the maps kept repeating itself. halo 3 had some coop connectivity issues we had to overcome.
I've been kind of all over the place with them. I played CE, then the first part of Halo 2 that's mostly about Master Chief, then Reach, then the rest of Halo 2 that's mostly about the Arbiter, then ODST, and next up is 3. CE was really impressive for its time in a lot of ways. But the campaign gets really cookie cutter with the corridors in the later parts. Which is a shame because the game really shines and feels way ahead of its time in the levels that have big outdoor areas and vehicles. I wish the whole game had been like that. I know Halo 5 was the most poorly received and reviewed of the Halo games and it has been pretty much abandoned by the Halo community, but I would still like to play it on PC at some point.
Single player and coop. But the online is very active. Halo MCC is well worth the money. Just buy it. Even if you never touch the multiplayer the campaigns in the Halo games are excellent.
I'm just doing coop campaign. I literally haven't owned any consoles since the PS2, Xbox, gc era so I've only played Halo and Halo 2 back then. This is my catch up time