Baker’s Final March

[Deluziion90]

Congrats! What a grind lol!

[rjkclarke]

Another huge congratulations on this one man!

 

I absolutely enjoyed watching the video too. You did a far smarter thing than I did, by mostly sticking to front and backspin, and not really throwing any side on. I lost so many attempts by trying to be a bit more flamboyant and creating an angle that wasn't there with side. You can certainly do it, but I don't think it's probably worth the extra risk.

 

It was awesome seeing the way you kept that break going there were quite a few balls in there that would have sent a lot of people to Chokesville. You also looked more of a Pro playing off the cushion than even John Parrot did, and I think he was one of the best in Snooker for playing from a cushion.

 

3 hours ago, Baker said:

Now if you watch the video you can see my cue moving like it has an epileptic attack. That is just my old crappy controller.

 

Mine did that same thing! I always assumed it was the game, until I got a new controller. It wiggled around a lot less of its own free will!

 

3 hours ago, Baker said:

It was fun but I’m glad I can finally delete this game.

 

I still haven't....? There's a really sick part of me that's chasing a 155 Break. I'd love to be able to do it, and I think I could given enough attempts, but it just hasn't quite happened for me yet.

 

3 hours ago, Baker said:

 

 

Also this, made me laugh so much!..... You have no idea how much that actually helped give me something to smile about on an absolutely horrible day, so I really appreciate that dude!

 

24 minutes ago, det_gittes said:

Watching this actually makes me want to go for a higher break, not really the max but I don't even have the trophy for 80+, so maybe I'll get lucky with this one.

 

Do it!!!!! I'll try not to keep bugging you until you actually do, but I think you've absolutely got it in you to go back to it. It really is a case of just gradually getting better. If I can do it, you sure as hell can.

 

13 minutes ago, Baker said:

What I liked about this game as it’s very accurate to real life playing. It took me a while to get an 80 break too, but it gets easier the more you try it. Good luck!

 

Absolutely this.... Pure Pool is a pretty apt title, even down to the way slight touches of side spin completely throw off straight shots, so you have to adjust them to an angle that isn't true to what the aiming aid suggests is a nifty little feature. I love how much it feels like real life playing, yet the game is also incredibly frustrating at the same time.  All this Pool talk reminds me I ought to get and play Pool Nation on the PS4 at some point soon.

[det_gittes]

20 minutes ago, Baker said:

Playing with topspin straightens out the white line angle.

I know, but at least watching the video it looks like there is not a whole lot of distance between the red and the white ? just shows you have a good feel for it  

 

2 minutes ago, rjkclarke said:

It really is a case of just gradually getting better

Well, I did play some last night ?

[Baker]

9 minutes ago, det_gittes said:

I know, but at least watching the video it looks like there is not a whole lot of distance between the red and the white ? just shows you have a good feel for it  

Well I have to say that with a lot of shots I’m really not too sure how the white ball is going to react exactly. Many times, and especially with backspin the white ball doesn’t travel at the same speed as I think it would. Sometimes it would travel like I think it should, and then I do the exact same shot and the white ball thinks it’s Usain Bolt and travels with insane speed across the table.

 

Also the blue ball pot where I want to travel the white ball behind the low colors back to the other end of the table, a normal shot snooker players do, is impossible in this game as you can’t generate enough speed. And there is a change if you play a ball at max speed, you will miss, even though it’s going at the heart of the pocket. 
 

I just tried to get decent position with top and backspin shots.  
 

@rjkclarke Thanks man!

[Mori]

Congratz Bakker! ✊

 

 

[Baker]

 #320

 

 

Scarlet Nexus

 

Enjoyment: 9/10

Difficulty: -

Playtime: 50 hours

 

I played the demo a while back and I thought it was alright but nothing too special. The game turned out to be great.

 

The story was very good although a bit hard to follow some times, to the point where I looked up additional info after I cleared it. It’s a post apocalyptic story involving time travel. ? What more do you want..

 

This game also looked gorgeous to me. 
 

The battle system is very fast paced and every character has what’s called a psionic brain which gives them a special kind of power. Your two main protagonists, you have to clear the game as both to view both sides of the story, can use these powers of your teammates. Think of Invincibility, No Damage, Extreme Speed, Teleportation, Duplication and a few others. This makes the game a lot of fun as every enemy and boss fights you encounter is easily beaten by a specific power. It makes for fun, fast and addictive gameplay.

 

Other than that it’s just your typical JRPG. Highly recommend it if you enjoy these types of games.

 

What’s next?

 

The plan is to trade in all my games tomorrow and get a few new ones. Specifically Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. I also might pick up NEO: The World Ends With You and I’ll grab some PSN cards to buy the Ghostrunner DLC and save the rest for future use.

 

I also tried to launch Yakuza 3 remastered for the first time and it took me a few attempts to launch the game. I’m getting a bit fed up with my PS4 not reading discs anymore, I gave up on Crash Bandicoot 4 for now, although I had no issues with Scarlet Nexus.
 

So I might trade The Yakuza Remastered Trilogy in too and grab it from the PS store as it’s currently on sale. I would lose some money there but at least it saves me the frustration of trying to launch the game.

[Baker]

 #321+100%

 

 

Payday 2: Crimewave Edition

 

Enjoyment: 8/10

Difficulty: 6/10

Playtime: 150 hours

 

Payday 2 is a 4 player online coop game where you basically play as a team of bankrobbers. There are normal missions and stealth missions to complete. 
 

The difficulty of this game is in the stealth missions as it’s heavily based on RNG. The normal missions were very easy to complete once your character has a decent build. In fact it was so easy you’re basically just waiting around half the time for the mission to end. This is because you can convert enemies to fight for you and they are very OP. So we were just sitting in a corner waiting for the next drill, you need to drill into a lot of vaults and it can take 6 minutes, to finish. Very boring..

 

What can I say.. In theory this could have been a very fun game. Unfortunately this game is a technical mess. From in game glitches to game crashes. We did many missions where at the end of a 20+ minute mission we couldn’t interact with an objective and had to restart. It was pretty bad.

 

If Payday 3 could work out these bugs and the RNG of the stealth missions it could be a great game. Let’s wait and see.

 

Once again thanks to @Mori, @Koro249 & @Exhuman1988 for playing this game with me. 
 

I’ve been playing coop games with Mori & Koro for almost 2 years now and as I’m getting closer to my goal of 400 games I think this could have been the last one. Unless I can convince them for some other awesome game like Zombie Vikings.

 

Hey Dallas! Over here!!

Edited July 6, 2022 by Baker

[Baker]

So.. I bought a new tv as my old one was already 12 years old or something. Nothing special you would say but I noticed a big difference..

 

Yesterday I was with my brother installing the correct screen and sound settings just for watching tv. So you have your standard, gaming, cinema, etc. type of screens and when we went to set up the PS4 I was initially on standard and then I launched Pix The Cat because it’s a bright coloured game and thought it would be good to do the screen settings while playing it.
 

Initially I thought my controller was broken because I could not for the life of me control that cat normally. It had such a big delay in movement. And then I switched to gaming mode and holy shit. This game has just become a lot easier for me. There is almost no button delay anymore making it so much easier to quickly manoeuvre the cat. I never knew that was even a thing. I didn’t know a tv could have such a big impact on how quick and smooth your controller reacts.
 

I started thinking how much easier other games like SMB would have been with these quicker and smoother controls. 
 

I’m very happy with this. Gives me some motivation to start some other games in my backlog that requires quick controls.

 

So with my new 4K, 100HZ tv ( and new sound bar) now all I need is a PS5 but even after 1.5 years these things are just non existent over here. It’s really starting to piss me off a little. Let’s hope I can finally get my hands on one this summer as I’ve been checking stores almost daily since launch. 

Edited June 2, 2022 by Baker

[Deluziion90]

Welcome to the future of gaming haha! getting high HZ for a tv is really essential for decent gaming. Hopefully you'll be able to get a ps5 soon so you'll see the real big difference  

[Mori]

1 hour ago, Baker said:

So.. I bought a new tv as my old one was already 12 years old or something. Nothing special you would say but I noticed a big difference..

 

Yesterday I was with my brother installing the correct screen and sound settings just for watching tv. So you have your standard, gaming, cinema, etc. type of screens and when we went to set up the PS4 I was initially on standard and then I launched Pix The Cat because it’s a bright coloured game and thought it would be good to do the screen settings while playing it.
 

Initially I thought my controller was broken because I could not for the life of me control that cat normally. It had such a big delay in movement. And then I switched to gaming mode and holy shit. This game has just become a lot easier for me. There is almost no button delay anymore making it so much easier to quickly manoeuvre the cat. I never knew that was even a thing. I didn’t know a tv could have such a big impact on how quick and smooth your controller reacts.
 

I started thinking how much easier other games like SMB would have been with these quicker and smoother controls. 
 

I’m very happy with this. Gives me some motivation to start some other games in my backlog that requires quick controls.

 

So with my new 4K, 100HZ tv ( and new sound bar) now all I need is a PS5 but even after 1.5 years these things are just non existent over here. It’s really starting to piss me off a little. Let’s hope I can finally get my hands on one this summer as I’ve been checking stores almost daily since launch. 

 

Just imagine how smooth Payday 2 would run now ..  Glad you got some nice new gear. Have fun and good luck with those other games ✌️

[Baker]

39 minutes ago, Mori said:

 

Just imagine how smooth Payday 2 would run now ..  

It would probably still run like shit. ?

[Mori]

It probably would .. yeah.  

[Baker]

It was that time of the year again where I traded in most of my physical games. I got a bit less than expected: €100. Maybe some of them were just on sale or something.

 

Anyway, I traded in:

 

Call of Duty: Black Ops 4

Call of Duty: Vanguard

Dragon Quest Heroes II

Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne HD

Scarlet Nexus

Tales of Arise

Yakuza: Like a Dragon

Ys: Monstrum Nox

 

So a €12.50 per game average. Pretty mediocre I think.

 

Now what I got in return is:

 

Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

 

Very hyped about playing this game. Definitely the game that’s on top of my wishlist.

 

NEO: The World Ends With You

 

A bit of a gamble because I know nothing about this franchise or game but I’ve read a post of someone here where they said they enjoyed it a lot more than Tales of Arise. So it must be good!

 

I also grabbed a €20 PSN Card. Initially I wanted to buy the Ghostrunner DLC but I think I’ll just wait for a sale. Instead I’ll probably buy The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. But I’m not too sure yet.

 

Now for something else.
 

I’ve been actively trying to get my hands on a PS5 for 3-4 months now. Actively checking every legit website daily, well hourly. And yesterday I was on the official PS Store and I noticed that instead of saying it was out of stock it said nothing. Plus there now was a Horizon Forbidden West bundle on the site too. So I stuck around on the website and all of a sudden a 15 min. counter started, saying I would be placed on a waiting list and I had the chance to buy a PS5.

 

So my heart started raising a little bit but that soon disappeared as once the 15 min. timer was over I was placed on the bottom end of the waiting list. And then after about 25 min. it was all sold out. 5 min. later I had access to the store. ? So close!

 

And then I checked a Dutch site similar to E-Bay, where within the hour all these PS5’s and HFW Bundles starting to pop up. Yeah. The same ones you could just buy on the official store. Against ridiculous prices ofcourse. How I fucking loath these scalpers.

 

Ah well. I hope I get a lucky break soon. 
 

Have a good weekend!

Edited June 9, 2022 by Baker

[Baker]

 #322

 

 

Yakuza 3 Remastered

 

Enjoyment: 7/10

Difficulty: 6/10

Playtime: 100 hours

 

I’ll keep this very short. I liked it, but this is so far my least favorite Yakuza game. 
 

You still have the great story, substories, minigames, etc.. but the whole game just felt very old and clunky to me. And where the hell was the sprint button!?

 

I gave it a 6 in difficulty because there was one minigame that frustrated the hell out of me: Boxcelios. A shmup minigame. But it seems I’m the only one that found it frustrating over here. ?

 

I can only recommend this game if you really like the Yakuza games.

 

Now. Another 100 hour game. I feel like I’ve been playing only very long games lately. My last 5 completed games took me 650-700 hours.

In EZPZ ? terms that’s almost over 9000 platinums.

 

I need to play some shorter games before playing Yakuza 4 & 5.

Edited June 9, 2022 by Baker

[Mori]

1 hour ago, Baker said:

I need to play some shorter games before playing Yakuza 4 & 5.

 

I heard TorqueL is pretty short. :>

[Baker]

1 minute ago, Mori said:

 

I heard TorqueL is pretty short. :>

It’s going to be my 400th game. I would love to play it now ofcourse, but I need to show some restraint. 36 games left until I can play that masterpiece.

[Joe Dubz]

3 hours ago, Baker said:

In EZPZ terms that’s almost over 9000 platinums.

This comment seriously made me chuckle aloud ?

 

Congrats tho man, way to stick it out even if it wasn't great! You're playing them in order I take it? I just got started with Y0 myself, my very first one ever. Loving the hell outta that game!

Edited June 10, 2022 by Joe Dubz

[Baker]

7 hours ago, Joe Dubz said:

 

Congrats tho man, way to stick it out even if it wasn't great! You're playing them in order I take it? I just got started with Y0 myself, my very first one ever. Loving the hell outta that game!

I can’t really play them in order anymore as I already played Yakuza 6. So just 4&5 left and I’ve done them all. 
 

Nice to hear you’re playing Yakuza 0. That game is amazing! Enjoy.

[Baker]

✅ #364

 

 

Pix The Cat

 

Enjoyment: 8/10

Difficulty: 7/10

Playtime: ?

*** IT’S FEVER TIME ***
 

I already wrote something about how this game was impossible for me at first, due to my old tv, in the UR Clean Up Event so let’s look at the game a little bit.

 

Whenever I’m subscribed to Ps Now I try and test out a lot of games on my second account. And Pix The Cat, alongside Action Henk for example, immediately got me hooked.

 

I can only describe it as a puzzle Pac-Man game. You need to collect all the eggs, that hatch into ducks, in a level and then put them inside the blank circles. You have the Starter Grid, Main Grid and Desert Grid to choose from. Although at the beginning you only have the Starter Grid and you will unlock the others when you score enough points in your current grid.
 

You start of slow but Pix will start to move faster and faster as long as you don’t make a mistake, which is getting a duck into a free space before collecting all eggs or hitting a mine or skull. You can apply a trick called wall grinding to increase your speed fast. When you make a turn next to wall at the correct time you grind alongside it and it will increase your speed. Once you’re at max speed you get *** FEVER TIME ***. Here you get the most amount of points and the skulls that once broke your combo will now reward 10K points. A perfect run through a room gets you 25K points.

 

The rooms you go through are most of the time never the same, although some are. Most rooms have a flipped, mirrored, or slight variation of the path you need to take to do a perfect run. Some are definitely harder to manoeuvre through than others. In my successful 2 Million points run I think I got all the easy variations of the puzzles. Lucky me. ?

 

By far the hardest thing to do is scoring the 2 Million points on the Main Grid. 

 

 

Followed by scoring 1.5 Million on the Desert Grid. 

 

The trophy rarities are almost the same, and even though The Desert Grid is harder, scoring 1.5 Million points is much, much easier than 2 Million on The Main Grid.

 

Besides this there are 2 more modes: The Laboratory and The Nostalgia levels.

 

The Laboratory is basically a puzzle mode consisting of 100 puzzles where all the solutions are set. So I just followed a guide for this.

 

The Nostalgia levels are levels with some sort of gimmick. Either puzzles, or time constraint, or something else. There are also 100 levels in this mode. It’s in black & white and reminded me a lot of Steamboat Willy. 
 

I definitely recommend this game if you like these fast arcade puzzle games.

Edited June 19, 2022 by Baker
Improvements

[Baker]

 #323

 

 

Pool Nation

 

Enjoyment: 7/10

Difficulty: -

Playtime: 15 hours

 

Another pool game.

This game was fun but after Pure Pool this was a piece of cake. The hardest thing to do is getting a century break in snooker. But with extreme long, accurate aiming lines, and an overhead view this took me 2 attempts.

 

The game has quite a few UR trophies and it’s because of the online mode. You start of in League 10 and you need to make your way up and win League 1. You can only play against other players in the same league. Unfortunately the online part of this game is a ghost town.

 

So in order to boost this you need 2 ways of backing up your save. Cloud save and a USB stick or 2 USB sticks. First you need to get 1 person to League 9. Back up that save to USB, redownload Cloud Save which had League 10. And then get the other player to League 9. Back up both the League 9 saves, rinse and repeat.

 

You don’t even have to play against each other as you can just forfeit the match immediately, when it’s your turn, which would count as a win for the other player. Unfortunately in the beginning this didn’t work that well, but only for @rjkclarke ?, but we later realised it had to do with who was hosting the match. At one point he promoted to League 6, so I backed up both my League 6 saves. But when he relaunched the game, he was still in League 7 ?. At that point there was nothing left to do but delete all of our saves and start from scratch. Which wasn’t really too bad as we became more and more efficient in boosting this. But after this little set back we made sure to double check every time we promoted if we were in the correct League.
 

There is also a trophy for reaching Rank 100, but this is also extremely quick and easy to boost and took us only 30 min.

 

And you just need to play through career mode. I played on Easy difficulty but man, that was a mistake. It was too easy to be any kind of fun. And you can’t up the difficulty once you start a new career. So I just blasted through this.

 

And there is a mode called Endurance, which places balls on the table and you just need to pott them to gain time, I think? You need to survive 12 minutes and you need to do this without any aiming lines. But I did this first try and after 15 minutes I didn’t even know when this game would actually end, when you would fail. So I just quit out. I still don’t understand this mode to be honest.

 

Now because there is little info on this game, and we now know exactly how to boost this game the most efficient, we are thinking about co writing a trophy guide for this game. Although I don’t own a PC or Laptop so he would have to do the writing. ? His writing skills are much better than mine anyway, so that’s a good thing.

 

Thanks again @rjkclarke. I enjoyed our little conversations about JRPG’s and other miscellaneous stuff!

Edited June 21, 2022 by Baker

[Baker]

✅ #366

 

 

Ghostrunner: Project Hel DLC

 

Enjoyment: 8/10

Difficulty: -

Playtime: 5-6 hours

 

Alright. Got this game back to 100%. I liked this more than the base game, because the levels felt a bit shorter and there are no game breaking glitches anymore. At least I didn’t encounter any. 
 

Took me a little bit of time to get used to the controls again but after I was, this was a lot of fun. With the very fast gameplay and good platforming. Luckily you can’t play this DLC in assist mode, as that ruins the game I think.

 

That’s 2 games I completed from my incomplete games list in a week. I’m pleased with that. Still 4 games left. Let’s continue with probably Hard Reset Redux but maybe DMC 5. After Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin that is.

Edited June 24, 2022 by Baker

[Baker]

 #324

 

 

Stranger Of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin

 

Enjoyment: 9/10

Difficulty: -

Playtime: 35 hours

 

A reimagining of the original Final Fantasy, a game I unfortunately still never played. Although I knew a little bit about the story, something with an infinite time loop. 

And I really enjoyed this game.

 

It’s all about the battle system but the story was also very good. There are not a lot of cutscenes in this game and when there are, they are most of the time very short. Still they were long enough to explain the story pretty well. I liked that a lot about this game, because recently I’ve been skipping many cutscenes in other games because there are just too many and take too long. Very nicely done!

 

The battle system is fast paced. And when I saw classes that wield axes, two handed swords, etc.. I thought shit, this going to be too slow for me. But it wasn’t. Still I played as the faster classes most of the times. It’s very quick and easy to switch classes so I tried out most of them.

 

Because this sort of played like a Hack & Slash game and I suck at that I played on the easiest difficulty. Which was easy ofcourse but also just fun. After you beat the game you unlock Chaos difficulty and a whole lot of stuff to really build an OP character. Which I haven’t done because that takes a lot of time, plus you would need to play on Chaos level 300. The hardest there is. You need to play a bit on Chaos difficulty but you can basically cheese your way through this.

 

Since there was already a season pass I expect DLC for this game which I wouldn’t mind at all. I’m happy to go back and play this some more!

 

Great battle system. And I hope Final Fantasy XVI has something similar.

 

The game was short. My save game says 35 hours and I even idled quite a bit during that. Normally I would complete a game like this in 3 days, but it almost took me 4 weeks. This is because I’m completely burned out by gaming at the moment. 
 

Highly recommend this game even if you don’t like JRPG’s. 
 

What’s next? 
 

Yakuza 4!

 

And after that?

 

The plan is to tackle some backlog games. Mainly DMC 5, Crash Bandicoot 4 and Cuphead DLC. I can just switch around as everything I still need in these games are 5 min. levels or something.

 

Now Cuphead is a very good example of why I’m going to quit trophy hunting. I hated that game, against popular opinion. And here I am buying a DLC for a game I don’t like, and frustrate myself once again in a game I don’t like, for some stupid trophies.

 

Just 34 games left..

[Baker]

Well..

 

After months of trying to get my hands on a PS5 yesterday I got an email invite to purchase one on the official PlayStation store.

 

The event started this morning at 10.30. So I immediately clicked on the link and was once again at the bottom of the waiting list. It said it had an hour waiting time, but it went pretty fast. I had access to the store in 15 min.

 

Unfortunately there was a message that PayPal wasn’t working and you could only pay with a credit card. I always think that credit cards are a US thing. I don’t know anybody that owns one in my country, and neither do I own one, so I already accepted defeat again.

 

I managed to get the PS5 in my cart though and I just kept refreshing until they hopefully fixed it. PayPal would show up from time to time but it just didn’t work. And after about an hour of refreshing all of a sudden I wired €499 from PayPal to Sony. The site went completely stuck after that and I still can’t do anything on the site.

 

I did get a purchase order email that I bought a PS5 but on the site, which still isn’t working properly so that can be the problem, I can’t find anything I actually ordered it. So after many months of trying I hope my searching days for a PS5 are over.

 

I should be good right?

Edited July 7, 2022 by Baker

[Baker]

Happy to report my PS5 has arrived. ?

 

But man, what a lot of stress again.
 

It already started Friday when I noticed UPS would be the courier service for the package. UPS is by far the worst courier service in my country. 
 

It’s the only one that can never find my address. Not kidding. Every single time UPS had to deliver something to me it gets returned first because of a wrong street address. 

 

It should’ve come in Saturday. But ofcourse it was sent back due to the, once again, wrong address. Next it would come yesterday but the package was lost so that stressed me out. 
 

After they found it again it should come in today, which it finally did. But the state of the package.. FFS! I thought I recognised Jim Carrey as the delivery guy.

 

 

Totally broken open and everyone could see a PS5 was in it..

 

Now what does UPS do when you’re not home? They just throw your package somewhere in the building entry (I live in an apartment building), or hallway, or somewhere else. Not caring whatsoever. If I wouldn’t be home this would have been stolen ASAP.

 

This also means I’ll never order something from Direct Playstation again. 

Edited July 12, 2022 by Baker

[Baker]

I was thinking.. Now that I have a PS5, why am I playing an old Yakuza game remaster? I don’t know either..

 

And since my PS Plus subscription is expiring in 35 days and I’m not renewing I thought now is a good time to quickly upgrade to Ps Plus Extra. So for only €3.50 I now have access to some good PS5 games for a month.

 

So I’m dropping all my gaming plans I had (as always) and I’ll play some of those games instead. 
 

I’m going to play Returnal (DLC is free I assume?) and Guardians of the Galaxy for sure.

 

But I’m also downloading Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Observer: System Redux and Foreclosed. 
 

Any more good games in that Gaming Catalog?

Edited July 16, 2022 by Baker