Running video games (and consoles) thread

I'm 44 years old and video games are still the absolute best way I unwind.

I love open worlds a ton, but they take me so long, especially adult ones with kids in the house. I 100 percented GTAV and it took me 10 months of a few hours here, a few hours there, but I freaking did it and have no regrets! BOTW I did not 100 percent but it is stupid what it asks for to do so. I did all the shrines and main quests and it took me three months. I got the DLC and did that pretty fast.

Had a friend who bragged about getting through Red Dead II in like two days. I love how big it is and how beautiful it is but eventually gave up on doing anything more than main story because of it.

I have long realized I'm never getting to my backlog and definitely have moments where I just don't go any further in fun games.

There is a reason a lot of times I get distracted by Rocket League or Tetris 99 type games. I can play a few rounds, get that unwinding I need and call it good. It all works. To each their own.

Even old and with no time I still love it.

 

I'm actually coming around on Elden Ring.

If you decide to tackle it, this site really helps with guiding you. The game itself doesn't give you great cues on where you should be going and what you should be doing early in the game. That's a flaw, for sure.

Game Progress Route | Elden Ring Wiki

 

If your kids like video games and you're looking for something age appropriate for multiple players, the Lego games are excellent. Both the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings games have a bit of open-world to them - you do various quests that correspond to the movie plots, as well as other side quests within Hogwarts/Middle Earth.

They're releasing the Skywalker Saga in April (after what feels like 5 delays in production) for all 9 Star Wars movies.

 

Bumping this up to note that "old" Baseball Mogul and Football Mogul games are now available for free on their website. And by "old," I mean games as recent as 2018.

https://www.sportsmogul.com/store.html

 

Very, very late to the party, but I scored a PS5 about a month ago. Bought The Show.

Just now began dicking around with the stadium creator. I will never have the time, nor do I have the skill, to create a stadium from scratch, but it is fun to download and then tweak stadia I do know (aka County Stadium) to make them just a tad more accurate. There's some very creative people out there making some really cool shit. Pretty much every historic stadium is on there in some fashion and some of them are quite spectacular.

My extremely nerdy predilection for creating historic rosters now has a realistic manner in which to be applied. Love it.

I also bought Madden for the first time in a very long time just to have a second game and I have to say? I kinda dig it.

FIFA comes out later this week. Looking forward to getting it. I'm hoping the enhanced graphical capabilities allow me to experience Elland Road in all of its amazing shithole glory.

 

I have FIFA 21 and am not sure if I really need to upgrade to 23.

I do think I will buy the new PGA Tour 2K23. I've played the shit out of 21 and some of the new bells and whistles in 23 sound interesting. Though the EA golf game will have Augusta National in it, I was so underwhelmed by Rory McIlroy PGA 2015 that I'm not really interested in waiting for it. That and the fact that they've pushed the release date back like five times now gives no confidence that EA knows what it's doing.

Last bought Madden in 19 and quit when I took a team to the Super Bowl and the game froze at halftime, without fail. Super fucking annoying and it sapped any will that I had to go back and start it over. I may consider purchasing it when it's inevitably discounted in the coming weeks because I've yet to play a true PS5 football game.

 

I kind of gave up on Madden a long time ago, but one of my kids plays it. Have to say, it looks great on the PS5. My last FIFA was on the Switch, which actually wasn't too bad. I can't remember the year at the moment. Maybe time to give it a go again.

 

Bumping this back up, Madden 23 for the PS5 is $29.99 right now on Amazon. Seems like it's worth a flier, so I nabbed it. Coming tomorrow.

 

I stopped playing Madden years ago because they became so obsessed with making it look like an NFL broadcast, it no longer felt like you were actually in control of the game. The players all just kind of did what the play called for and the result seemed to be based on statistical algorithms rather than player input. I bought Madden 25 and never opened it. It’s still sitting in a drawer in my living room.

 

PS Store had Last of Us Part II on sale for $9.99 a few weeks ago. Had resisted playing it because the original was as close to perfect as a video game gets, from the story to the combat to the visuals. All impeccably great. Had not heard great things about the sequel, but it was worth trying at that price.

So glad I did. About eight hours into the story, and it's fantastic. The creepiness factor has been amplified. There's just a sense of dread when you're exploring abandoned buildings and such because the infected seem to just pop out of nowhere. There's one building where there's a lone, legless clicker crawling toward you that has stuck with me for some reason. Anyway, with the show starting on HBO next week, seemed like a great time to play this.

 

UPDATE: I've never had a video game give me actual anxiety like TLOU Part 2 has. Like, I can only play it an hour at a time. The story get so goddamn dark toward the end. Moral dilemma after moral dilemma. And so much violence. I'm going to power through and finish but I can't really say I'm enjoying it that much at this point.

 

I loved the first one, but had zero interest in the second once I learned more and more about it. I can't remember if it was a writer for Kotaku or Polygon, but they made a pretty compelling argument that the game is actively bad, despite the craft work that went into it, because it forces you to do so many grisly things without any other alternatives, despite it having the appearance of an open world game.