Categories
PS4 Sony

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection

I’ve been trying to “get” Street Fighter 3 3rd Strike many times, maybe since 2004 when it was first emulated. But it took me an hour in a real arcade to finally start to understand it.
The 30th Anniversary Collection is probably the best version for a couple of reasons. First, it has a training mode, something most of the original games lacked.
And I’m actually impressed by its “arcade” filter, which turned out to be pretty close to the real arcade.

The character I picked this time is Yun. Not because he’s considered one of the strongest characters by the experts: I’m too dumb to use his juggling abilities. But because his basic attacks are very strong.

This time I even managed to beat Gill. The boss has a nasty ability to ressurect himself with full health, if he has a full meter when downed. Even if you manage to survive his comeback, he usually wins with a timer. So, I won with a timer as well 😝

Categories
PS4 Sony

Diablo 4

Something I didn’t expect is that I’d have the most success with Rogue, out of the three classes I tried until now. Rogue has the same concept of two weapons slots the barbarian has, but in her case it’s for ranged and dual-wield set of weapons.
The class mechanics are what you’d expect: homing arrows, barrage of arrows, imbuing arrows with elements. But with her I didn’t die once yet. With barbarian: many times.
I’m at level 24, ending of Act I, and I’m seeing an “orange” item for the first time just now. How times have changed since Diablo 3…
Are we dealing with a dysfunctional family again? I think we’re dealing with dysfunctional family again. First we had Adria who sacrificed her daughter.

Diablo-IV-20240108162231-mp4-000239-870

Now we have Lilith and that Angel who killed his son the goth-necromancer because anger management and prophecies, and now mommy is angry.

Diablo-IV-20240108162231-mp4-000258-837
Seeing Vigo as Knight Penitent after playing Blasphemous is… strange. I’m not sure if the reference is intentional, but it is quite obvious.

Diablo-IV-20240108161837-mp4-001311-791

Categories
PS4 Sony

Diablo 4

They certainly took a lot from MMORPGs. Diablo 3 was mostly linear. Here, every village has a bunch of quests for you. And since everything is leveling up with you anyway, it doesn’t matter much which village you start with.

Diablo-IV-20240104123944
Interesting aspect of playing as the barbarian is that your weapon mastery grows with use, not with your level. That’s different from any other Diablo game I remember, where everything, and I mean everything, was tied to your character leveling up.
I of course build a Whirlwind barbarian. Luckily, this skill is available as soon as level 3. And in the meantime, it’s a lot of fun, mowing hordes on mobs.

Diablo-IV-20240104123559
Surprising that the first area is very Slavic. Less surprising after the success of Witcher, of course, but still, names like Fedor, and areas like Zeleny Lowlands or enemies like Volkodlak.

Categories
PS4 Sony

Diablo 4

After another 45 minute wait for yet another 4GB patch that should have been downloaded in 15 minutes, I finally launched the game.
It does feel a lot like Path of Exile, which I always found incredibly boring. When the skill tree has a search button. At least characters wear pants, though.
I usually play as Crusader/Paladin, but for the lack of such, decided to give Necromancer a try. Nice that they give you 4 skeletons right away. No need to slowly build your army anymore, it seems.

Diablo-IV-20240103201529
The main mechanic from Diablo 3 remained the same: use Signature Skill to build Essence, use other skills to kill everyone, repeat. Better than spamming a single skill from Path of Exile, I guess.
Then, I decided to give a Barbarian a try, and strangely, I enjoying it much more than I’d expect. Funny thing about Barbarian is that she had 4 weapon slots. One for bludgeoning two handed, one for slashing two handed, and two for dual-wield weapons. And her skills work in such a way that she uses the right weapon for each job.

Diablo-IV-20240103212353

Categories
PS4 Sony

Diablo 4

 

Diablo IV_20231231221521

What I like about console versions of Diablo 3 is that they work completely offline, both on Switch and PS4. No such luck with Diablo 4, unfortunately.
The game won’t even show menu without internet connection.
So, I had to download latest system firmware.
Then I had to set up PSN account.
Then download 12GB update.
I wasted an hour, and didn’t play Diablo 4 at all this evening.

Categories
PS4 Sony

Order 1886

Completed Order 1886.

The-Order-1886-20231230233833-mp4-001457-258
The story is told in such a way that the characters have all the context, and don’t try to explain anything to the player. “In medias res”? Which is good in terms of storytelling, but leaves me with a feeling of missing something.
Oh, there are not just werewolves but also vampires. Oh, Lord Hastings that we protected half of the game from rebels is actually a vampire. He’s Jack the Ripper that was mentioned at the start of the game. And the United India Company tries to ship vampires to USA.
Why? I don’t know. Usually those gaps are filled by Codex, but there’s none here.

The-Order-1886-20231230210537-mp4-000638-277
Surprisingly, I didn’t find the game short and the ending lacking. Yes, it doesn’t wrap much of anything, and it’s a shame we won’t get to see the sequel. But then sequels rarely stand up for expectations anyway. Just ask Assassin’s Creed.
Alistair, the commander of the Knights, turns out to be a werewolf. Interesting that he refers to Lord Hastings as “my breed”, meaning that in this universe vampires and werewolves are somewhat related.
Lord Chancellor knew that fact, but he was unable to kill a child. Instead, he tasks Galahad to do that for him.
I must say this all doesn’t make sense, stories about people that live for hundreds of years rarely do. For example Lafayette is clearly meant to be the historical figure, as he “seen two Revolutions”, and is “the most American Frenchman I know”. But that would mean he’s 86 years old with the look of 30, and that is without the Grail powers, as he’s knighted during the events of the game. Unless of course the American and French revolution happened in this reality around 1860.
We end up with Galahad and Tesla on the run, and martial law declared in London.
It’s now clear who helped Tesla get Galahad out of Thames. It credits he just appears as “misterious man”. Presumably it could be either Arthur himself, or Bots, one of Arthur’s knights, as Ravi mentions him, although saying that he may not be alive after all. But that would explain why Ravi has the same sword design and bottle as other knights.

Categories
PS4 Sony

Order 1886

Don’t get me wrong, it’s cute. It’s just not the masterpiece everyone claimed for it to be. Being exclusive doesn’t make a game into a masterpiece, you see.
Fighting werewolves in a steampunk version of Victorian London is a nice enough idea. But on top of that they put Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. At first I thought some of the characters were sharing the names. But it turns out they are supposed to be those knights, having lived for hundreds of years. Then there are historical figures, such as Nicola Tesla, that of course supplies us with new weapons.

The-Order-1886-20231227225117
Gameplaywise, it’s a cover-shooter. But at least the enemies are not as beefy as in Gear of War, and they respect headshots somewhat, so shooting is actually quite satisfying.

The-Order-1886-20231228000707-mp4-000035-035
There is a strange mechanic for such a game to examine different objects. Something I’d expect in an adventure, but not in a shooter. Maybe just a way to flex.

The-Order-1886-20231227225741-mp4-000010-010

The-Order-1886-20231227225741-mp4-000103-063

Or “gun porn”, as you can also rotate some of the new guns that way.

I got excited when I reciver the Lewis machine gun. But it turned out to be a strange contraption that requires you to spray enemies with termite, then ignite them.

The-Order-1886-20231228001220
The voice acting and cinematography are superb. To have a direct quote from Resident Evil was surprising.

The-Order-1886-20231229000232

The-Order-1886-20231229000240
Turns out the knightly names are codenames, and each Knight has also a first and last name. So Perceval is Sebastien Malory (Thomas Malory was the author of Le Morte d’Arthur). And when Sebastien dies in the explosion, Lafayette inherits his codename of Perceval. And they live for hundreds of years due to the Holy Grail they have.

Categories
PS4 Sony

PlayStation 4

I for one forgot how noisy PS4 is while installing games, and that it takes fucking 10-15 minutes to install one.
Another thing I didn’t knew and it blew my mind… You can’t just connect any Bluetooth headset to PS4. It needs to be “supported”. Out of the 3 I own, none are, are neigther of them are cheap.
You can always connect your bluetooth headphones to TV, of course. But it’s ironic that Sony claims they don’t support A2DP because those have a lag, but running A2DP through TV will have even more lag, which is fine.

Categories
PS4 Sony

PlayStation 4 gambit

I got so annoyed by the fact that I got myself an unhackable PS4 Pro that I found a PS4 9.00 on eBay and bought it.
The seller didn’t lie, it was indeed 9.00 firmware, and he even was kind enough to ship the hackingUSB with it.
So now I have two PS4s, one of them hacked. And a bunch of cheap PS4 games on top of that.

Categories
PSX Sony

Re-Loaded (PSX)

Gaming as a kid in the ’90s was a very confusing experience. Most of the information I’ve got was from game magazines, featuring a game on the cover, that would be hopefully reviewed or at least previewed in the issue.
One of the magazines I proudly owned had Re-Loaded on its cover. But I never actually played the game, and a few seconds of gameplay I’ve seen many years later gave me an impression it’s trash. Now, I can finally confirm my suspicion.

First of all, it turns out to be a sequel of another game I’ve never seen called Loaded. The gameplay is Chaos Engine like, with multiple characters to pick from, each with a regular and a special attack. The characters and enemies are prerendered, but the levels are 3D, with multiple levels of elevations.


One of the main issues with gameplay is that enemies movement is not discreet, but weapons are. Meaning enemies would run at you at an angle you can’t hit them at all.


The only feature of note is that some enemies will try to roll rocks at you from above. Adding insult to injury, from the 3rd level onward, most of the enemies shoot at you, turning the game into bullet hell.

This is all topped with what was considered in the 90’s as “edgy humor”. One of the characters is a cannibal, another is a crossdresser, the planet is named Kee-Butt (such laughs), and so on.

Categories
PS4 Sony

Playstation 4

I’ve been eyeing Playstation 4 for at least 5 years now. For the very few exclusives the console actually has. Today I finally went and got it from CEX, since I already had half of its price in coupons. And all I can say, I missed the train.
The console firmware is 10.71, someone updated it this year, so it can’t be jailbroken yet. And even the seconhand games for it are still surprisingly expensive. I guess because it is still “good enough” for so many people. So, games from 2020 go for 20-30GBP.
There are just a few games I wanted to play on it that are not available on either PC or Switch. So I guess I’ll just sit on it for now.

Categories
Sony

Darkwatch review by GmanLives

Mostly interesting because I remember the cover, but I always thought it’s a third-person shooter, and not an FPS:

Categories
GC Nintendo Sony

Bloody Roar Retrospective

Interesting retrospective. I didn’t know that the GameCube version of Bloody Roar looked better than Bloody Roar 4 for PS2, and that they scrapped some characters after Bloody Roar 1.

 

Categories
PS3 Sony

Killzone 3

Прошел Killzone 3.
Сюжет тут очень странный. В какой-то момент Chairman Stahl который как Гитлер, только Капиталист, решает разбомбить Землю. Что в этом странного? Земля вообще не участвует в конфликте, конфликт вообще между двумя другими планетами. Смысла в этом столько же, как и в бомбежке Воронежа.
Под конец бравые пехотинцы внезапно превращаются в бравых космических пилотов. Схренасе? Так что финального босса у нас нет. Есть пострелушки в космический крейсер.

2022-02-21-17-57-02-mkv-000462500
За финального босса может сойти разве что шагающий крейсер из предыдущей миссии.

2022-02-20-22-01-25-mkv-000268078
И да, мы случайно уронили космический крейсер в радиоактивный вулках, и геноциднули целую планету. Ха-ха. Вообще не припомню чего-то более циничного.

Categories
PS3 Sony

Killzone 3

Миссию по спасению Narville’а, которая еще есть в прологе, мне пришлось переигрывать раза три. Игра намертво подвисала в рандомных местах.

2022-02-19-21-33-32-mkv-000020944
С воображением у авторов настолько плохо, что тут есть футуристическая M14 и футуристический MG42.

2022-02-19-21-33-32-mkv-0002916672022-02-20-15-09-58-mkv-001122246
Arc Cannon полностью ломает механику игры. В шутере с укрытиями оружие, которое пробивает любое укрытие. И даже целиться из него толком не нужно.

Categories
PS3 Sony

Killzone 3

Вспомнил тут, что кажется так никогда и не играл в Killzone 3. Решил исправить. Зря.

1
Это конечно какой-то эталон вторичности. Helghast’ы – типичные нацисты, вплоть до красных повязок на рукавах и формы шлема. Но при этом со Сталиным во главе.

2022-02-05-13-19-23-mkv-000591667

Оружие – M4, SPAS-12, LAW, но все с неонкой. Миссии, опять же, полнейший WW2. Снайперские дуэли, отстрел пулеметчиков, вот это вот все. В какой-то момент появляются даже окопы с огнеметчиками.

2022-02-05-12-42-12-mkv-001216667
Весь первый эпизод пытаемся эвакуироваться с планеты после убийства диктатора. В итоге крейсер подбивают, и наши войска на планете благополучно застревают.

Игра у меня разок намертво подвесила PS3. А говорили что на консольках багов не бывает.
2022-02-05-12-25-56-mkv-000797522 2022-02-05-12-25-56-mkv-000962500   2022-02-05-14-38-12-mkv-001442789 2022-02-05-21-24-36-mkv-001313650

Categories
Sony

Архитектура PlayStation 2

Пожалуй самый подробный разбор на тему архитектуры PlayStation 2:

https://www.copetti.org/writings/consoles/playstation-2/

Categories
PC Gaming Sony

Hard Levels in FPS Games

Пожалуй подпишусь под Wolfenstein 2, TimeSplitters 2 и Blood. Остальные уже или плохо помню, или не доставили проблем.

Странно, что в подборке нет ни одного Call of Duty, в которых полным-полно выбешивающих эпизодов.

А какие FPS бесили вас?

Categories
PSX Sony

Tomb Raider (1996)

Забавно, что я всегда считал, будто Tomb Raider выходил и на N64, а я его просто не видел. Оказывается, версию для N64 в свое время отменили.
Непривычно, что Лара не цепляется за ledge’и во время прыжка. Для этого нужно зажать отдельную кнопку.

Поскольку у PSX в то время еще не было аналоговых стиков, камерой можно вращать лишь стоя на месте. Интересно, что Лара поворачивает свою голову вслед за камерой.

Побегал пол часика, но поиск рычагов, которые еще и не нажимаются как следует (нужно стоять точно напротив рычага, иначе нет) меня в итоге задолбал.

Плюс там весьма странная система автоприцеливания, когда иногда попадаешь, иногда нет.
Еще смотрел тут видеопрохождение на YouTube’е, и YouTube обычно некоректно растягивает 4:3 изображение до 16:9. Так вот, в 16:9 у Лары как раз фигура нормальной женщины (за исключением талии, конечно).

А какие у вас воспоминания о том самом Tomb Raider’е из 96го?

Categories
*.XLS PC Gaming Sony

Пройдено с декабря

На PC:
Mother Russia Bleeds
Rage 2
Wolfenstein: Old Blood
Wolfenstein 2: New Colossus

На PS2:
Ace Combat Zero