Currently playing...

[Foozwah]

The Wii makes awesome light relief after sessions on Last Of Us 2 on the PS4

I get that.

The Last of Us 2 is incredible and raises the bar in so many areas, but man is it grim. I'm loving it while not enjoying it if that makes sense.

Problem is I'm having so much fun on the Wii I don't want to go back to the Last Of Us 2. Just well finding it too depressing. Think I just need a break from killing things. Kind of putting me off any consoles in future. Everything mostly revolves around shooting things or violence and the graphics are getting ever more graphic. Gaming is what I play to escape the nasty stuff happening in the real world not sure if I want to play though it in my gaming anymore.

Quite sad really that a console I've had for 14 years has given me more in the past week than perhaps years of owning other console systems. Maybe just have to accept my tastes have changed and the new AAA is no longer for me.

That's very cool, re: Wii, but you've still got a Switch, yeah? I finally got a PS4 a few months ago, to play some of the bigger non-Ninty stuff that I felt I was missing out on, but have quickly found that aside from the LS games and No Man's Sky I primarily use it as a Netflix, et al streaming box, whereas the Switch is still my near-constant gaming companion, for when I just want something fun.

My 13 year old is on PS4 constantly though, cos he's at the age where endless repetitive online shooter action somehow="grown up", but my 10 year old and I are enjoying no end of Switchy goodness, on games both AAA and indy. Too much to keep up with, really.

[MattyP]

That's very cool, re: Wii, but you've still got a Switch, yeah?

No. As much as enjoyed my Switch there was simply nothing coming up I wanted to play the games I did play I can also get on the PC. Never used it as a handheld so it was kind of wasted on me in the end.

In some sort of gaming Nirvana at the moment with having the Wii and PC. The Wii has all the quick pick up and play games I love and just upped my WiiRemote count to full accompaniment of four. Great fun when I have my boys over at weekends. The PC services all my techie high end cutting edge gaming needs. Loving VR on that at the moment.

Have a PS4 mainly to play the Sony exclusives. Looking at picking up Dreams at some point on that to have a tinker with. Also like the arcade games on there so regularly use it for things like Resogun.

I will pick up Nintendos next console when they release one. Hoping they release a couple of versions - one more like a home console because I don't need a screen on the device as I never play handheld. Kind of frustrating with the Switch just wanted to mainly play Mario, Zelda and other Nintendo exclusives the cheapest way possible and would have been happy with a box to plug into the TV sans onboard screen and joycons etc.

[WiteWulf]

A Short Hike is currently engaging me on the Switch. Nice, gentle little open world game with a very Nintendo feel to it.



Less than a fiver on the eShop at the moment, too. Can't say fairer than that

[Foozwah]

That's very cool, re: Wii, but you've still got a Switch, yeah?

No. As much as enjoyed my Switch there was simply nothing coming up I wanted to play the games I did play I can also get on the PC. Never used it as a handheld so it was kind of wasted on me in the end.

In some sort of gaming Nirvana at the moment with having the Wii and PC. The Wii has all the quick pick up and play games I love and just upped my WiiRemote count to full accompaniment of four. Great fun when I have my boys over at weekends. The PC services all my techie high end cutting edge gaming needs. Loving VR on that at the moment.

Ah, fair enough. I quite like the handheld aspect, esp . when the older son is on the PS4, though I still prefer docked for Zelda and a few other titles. But yeah, it it doesn't do what you're after then best focus elsewhere.

I'll be very interested to see which direction Nintendo goes with the next generation: keeping with the hybrid model or splitting their efforts back out into console/handheld again, cos I can't see them letting go of the handheld market that they've successfully held (no pun intended, but what the hell) against all comers, even when often against technically superior hardware (from the Lynx onward).

Glad you're having a Wii renaissance, in any case, it's a cracking machine to this day.

[Deckard]

Yes I bought a HDMI convertor for my Wii many a moon ago - works a treat

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07 ... UTF8&psc=1

Fuck me - 130 quid ! Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Nintendo GameCube

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Paper-Mario- ... SwGJVfP6OT

Although I will never sell my copy...

[venusian]

A Short Hike

Bought on your recommendation. It is indeed quite lovely. I'm only a couple of hours in but it feels like running around in a tiny snowglobe; you know it won't last long but while it does, it's beautiful. It's not a million centimetres from being a rural version of The Touryst.

I'm not much into giant pixel art but (a) this isn't pixel art and (b) you can turn it off and have some lovely unpixelated 3D.

[WiteWulf]

I'm not much into giant pixel art but (a) this isn't pixel art and (b) you can turn it off and have some lovely unpixelated 3D.

Very much this.

Bear in mind the reason your character is trying to get to the top of the mountain, and there's a nice little twist at the end that'll fair pluck at your heart strings.

(Is someone chopping onions in here?)

[WiteWulf]

In other news, The Last Campfire snuck out today. Anyone planning on picking it up? Looks cute, and at <£15 it's gotta be worth a punt. I'm gonna wait for reviews and see what performance is like on the Switch before I take the plunge.

[MattyP]

Yes I bought a HDMI convertor for my Wii many a moon ago - works a treat

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07 ... UTF8&psc=1

Fuck me - 130 quid ! Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door (Nintendo GameCube

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Paper-Mario- ... SwGJVfP6OT

Although I will never sell my copy...

Have you ever modded your Wii? Just finished up modding mine after many moons of promising myself to do it.

The idea and main reason for me was to get my collection of Wii games onto solid state memory and store the disks away as backups. Well it worked a treat. Takes around 30mins to mod and put the software on the rest of the time is spent ripping the disks. Used a 64GB memory stick to store the games. It's awesome. Also emulators are an added bonus playing C64 and Speccy games is great. Well worth doing if you haven't already done so!

[funkstar]

I did chose Prey which is very good indeed. Immersive sims are not usually my thing, so this is special. (I'm not good with upgrade trees or consumables, due to FOMO: I'm not playing through this again just to try a different upgrade route.)

But, I remembered something completely different, that I've played in the Spring: Layton's Mystery Journey: Katrielle & The Millionaires' Conspiracy. (Just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it.) It's on the Switch, it's a Layton game, and I remembered that some of those were quite pleasent time wasters back on the DS, so why not...

So, Laytons are essentially collections of somewhat random puzzles, interleaving very Japanese takes on story in a very Western setting, with anime art style. Think Phoenix Wright, but with the puzzling completely disconnected from the story. Normally, not much else needs to be said, but in this one, well, I got incredibly annoyed at the writing. It plays it all as innocuous fun, with most of the 'mysteries' having no, or well-meaning culprits with no harm done, but the politics of this one caught me completely off guard. Now, it's fair to say that I've changed my own political views quite dramatically over the 10 or so years since I played the first Laytons, and have become somewhat more sensitive to the implicit politics, well, everywhere, but I expect a certain politics in, say, Call of Duty. I didn't expect it from a glorified puzzle collection.

This time, though, I found the game chock full of glaring abusive power structures, privilege beyond compare, and utterly shameless adulation of wealth. Think Gordon "Greed is good" Gecko, but caked in sugar, and he gets away with it, too. For example, Katrielle obviously exploits her personal assistant (who works for free); but that's ok, because so many of those we meet who are in employ of someone else (you know, workers) turn out to be frauds or cheats, so he has it coming, amirite. Only the guys on top are clean: None of the many millionaires Katrielle ends up working for are actually bad guys, it's always the people around them who are corrupt. Further, we're obviously meant to be impressed by their opulent wealth (even when that wealth is explicitly appropriated from someone else). A significant interaction of the game is clicking about in the environment in search of puzzles, and this is accompanied by snippets of text with the characters reacting to the environs - and this in obsequious fashion when the millionaires and their stuff is concerned. In addition to this, genuine crimes go unpunished, fraud and vigilantism is idolized, there's clear abuse of public ressources by pretty much all the public officials we meet, and on and on and on.

On other words, it's a very charming, and utterly loathsome, capitalist hellscape. Thanks, I hate it.

[WiteWulf]

Hehehe...I'm getting flashbacks to my first playthrough of Persona 4: The Golden, and my being torn between loving the gameplay and the whacky plot, and being utterly appaled at the rampant misogyny and homophobia throughout.

Loved the game, though, and it's still in my top 5 games ever played, if I'm honest. But, wow, Japanese politics and sensibilities!

[rowan]

A shame about the sound of the Layton game as I also really enjoyed a couple of the early ones on DS.
Persona 4 I also enjoyed but your comment slightly worries me that I'm desensitised to all that stuff, as I don't particularly recall much misogyny / homophobic content although I do remember "ridiculously reinforced" gender stereotypes. Was a fair few years ago I played, mind.

As for today, also from Japan, over the weekend I started revisiting EDF 4.1. It probably has a bunch of similar faults which I've either not noticed or am not going to call out as the whole thing is so tongue in cheek I'd like to think it can get away with it.

Absolutely brilliant game in every single way.

[VNVObit]

I enjoyed the first Layton game but subsequent ones started to annoy me with large ish gaps between puzzles which I wasn’t enjoying (my daughter on the other hand loved them)

As for political sensibilities or even etiquette it’s just such a different world view from westerners and not sure it’s changing much (have seen articles about moving away from promoting based on length of service and dress codes for women but not much else)

[WiteWulf]

Pulled a sicky today as I just wasn't feeling it, decided to treat myself to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater on the PS4 as it's been getting so many good reviews.

omigod...I can't remember the last time a game on a flat screen had me wanting to vomit so quickly. I had to give up after playing the tutorials for about 20 minutes. My motion sickness in games is definitely getting worse as I get older (something to do with my eyesite, maybe?) but this was just ridiculous. I only hope The Boy enjoys it, as I doubt I'll be playing it much...

[oxo]

Exact same issue here with Tony Hawk. Full on motion sickness on my laptop. Luckily I bought it from the epic store so just refunded it as id only played it for 30 mins.