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Topic subjectPS5 incoming Oct. 5th, slowly weaning myself off The Show with...
Topic URLhttp://board.okayplayer.com/okp.php?az=show_topic&forum=11&topic_id=305025&mesg_id=305755
305755, PS5 incoming Oct. 5th, slowly weaning myself off The Show with...
Posted by Nodima, Sun Aug-22-21 11:54 PM
The huge, very good Indie and Under $20 sales on PSN this week. Here's what I've touched so far...

DONUT COUNTY was exactly what it'd always been sold to me as: a quite funny, super enjoyable, very easy game you can finish in an afternoon and feel pretty good about. I'll admit I was hoping for some kind of challenge room sequence to unlock once the story was over, if only because it's about as satisfying to making things fall into a hole as any other mechanic in video games, but it was also nice to just sit with a thing, finish it and say goodbye.

EVERYTHING is a game that came out a few years ago as a PS4 exclusive but I think is now out on...everything? If you don't know, this can be as much an interactive screensaver as a game (and really isn't much of a game even when you're fully interacting with it) and the primary game (cheekily called the tutorial) can be completed in about an hour if you catch on to the basic flow of things, but the game is surprisingly well written and doesn't just totally rely on Alan Watts archival audio and cheeky art style to carry it. I was pretty impressed, especially at $2.99 rather than $14.99!

COFFEE TALK is a game that, for whatever reason, I've had an outsized understanding of as some definitive visual novel of the past few years...and after 13 Sentinels, I'm in the mood for another! Unfortunately, this game has a major issue with every character speaking in the same tone of voice, only filtered through some very, very stock personality traits. It's got very good lo-fi beats to chill/study to and an attractive visual design, but when the whole point of your game is the story and characters...it sucks pretty hard to have as amateur a feel as this game does. I will say, I'm impressed by how Absolutely Tumblr / Extremely Online this game is, but at that point I'm laughing AT the game, not with it.

WHERE THE WATER TASTES LIKE WINE is a game I realize I'm going to feel obligated to finish due to contributions from Austin Walker and Cara Ellison, as well as apparently dismal sales at launch that put the actual developers in a real dark place mentally and financially...but I can kind of see why this game flopped. Despite good, authentic Americana music, mostly great writing and voice acting and a stellar art style...the thing you spend the most time doing in this game is watching your avatar slowly saunter across a low poly map of the USA, either playing a dull as grass rhythm game to just barely increase your movement speed or just setting the controller down and reading an article. This, no hyperbole, SUCKS SHIT.

NIGHT IN THE WOODS I can tell I'll be a big fan of, but I've known that for years...which is why I told myself "why bother? you know you like it, no need to know exactly why!" I'm on day 3 or 4 so I feel like I've got a lot left to unpack, but other than the bass guitar mini-game (which I just can't tell yet if it's SUPPOSED to sound bad because Mae is bad at guitar, or...) I'm pretty hooked. Coffee Talk and WTWTLW have fundamental flaws that ruin the other good parts of those games, whereas this one seems to at baseline at least get everything to pretty good status.

GHOST OF TSUSHIMA is coming back in the rotation thanks to the new DLC, though I won't be playing that until the PS5 arrives...and, off the strength of finally giving the Legends multiplayer add-on a shot with my sister tonight, I damn well might just play that whole game over again (on NG+, Lethal+ of course!) this fall. It took a while to get back in the rhythm, and I truly truly suck ass on Lethal+ in a way I didn't anticipate (even though it's been over a year since I touched this game...) but the multiplayer is shockingly (shockingly!) good for a free trinket to the point I was legitimately sad when she said she needed to call it a night. This game is just plain FUN.

The rest of the lineup from the sale includes Scarlet Nexus, The Sexy Brutale, Zone of the Enders: 2nd Runner (which I've played several times, just never in HD), Dishonored 1, Dishonored 2 and Prey with all DLCs (I think this cumulatively cost me like $20 which is insane...sure hope I click with them!) as well as Yakuza Kiwami 2, Yakuza 6 (still need to fit 3, 4, and 5 in there somwhere...), Bully (this'll be my 3rd time trying to click with this game - you're welcome, Rockstar!) and Ruiner, which I just remember looking very cool during a Giant Bomb Quick Look years ago.

Oh, I also got Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle Deluxe on Switch for $20 as something to lay and play hungover or going to bed. It's fun in those little bursts but hasn't totally sunk its teeth in - I wish it had more of that XCOM meta layer, or that platform had some kind of trophy system. Oh well!

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