Demons Souls is awesome, you dont need to learn parry/riposte to have fun and even beat the game (personally, i didnt start using stuff like this untill Bloodborne force me to).
About Castlevania OoE. That crab boss was a bitch and delayed me for a long time to, but the game really opens up afterwards. Best handheld Castlevania imo.
Thanks, I plan on checking out DeS some more. I think I’ve tried Royalty and a Temple Knight. I may check out some other builds. I keep trying to convince myself it’s 3d Castlevania so I’ll like it more haha.
Definitely glad to have beaten the giant enemy crab. A satisfying elevator ride to say the least. I’ve had the game on hold for a long time due to that SOB. I think I beat him but failed the final ‘jumping’ section 3-4 times.
I wish we could get new 2d Castlevanias. I know the mobile one is coming out, and I’ll probably play it, but I would rather have a console one. Bloodstained seems hit or miss at this point. Some screens look way too sexualized imo.
I finished Far Cry 5 on the PS4 and X1. I would recommend it as a rental only. The story does nothing for me and the formula is stale. Please note that I’ve played an beaten every Far Cry they’ve put out so it could be franchise fatigue for me.
Ni no Kuni 2 - This game is easy but enjoyable. I’ve made it Chapter 6 out of 9.
WiiU Games - I’ve started Bayonetta 2, Mario Kart 8, and Captain Toad.
I’m looking forward to starting A Way Out and Burnout Paradise remastered this weekend and God of War next week.
I really enjoyed A Way Out. Yes, gameplay wise it’s pretty shallow (QTEs, easy puzzles), but my friend and I had a blast playing it: we finished it in one sitting, took about 5 hours total. The finale is really something else from a narrative point of view.
It sounds like a fun game. I hope the ending is David Cage crazy.
Still playing Fortnite. Closing in on the Reaper and the completion of the Battle Pass so I’m going to play it a bunch the last two weeks here to finish it out.
I played about two hours of Trackmania Turbo on PS4 last night. Love that series so much. It’s great for a binge every now and then.
I randomly started a playthrough of Diddy Kong Racing on N64. I played it as a kid but never beat the game.
It’s both better than I remember and worse somehow.
Like, I love the hub world, but hate how empty it feels.
I also love the music, although the jolting lack of transition to the victory music when you win a race is ear-searing.
I love the open ended level structure that lets you play different races in different hub worlds in nonlinear fashion for variety. But I hate the fact that you need to repeat races so many times to completely clear a hub world in the first place. The coin challenge is actually a good thing to add some difficulty on what’s otherwise a brain dead easy game. But I just wish I could skip to it instead of having to play through all of the normal races first.
I also think the 5 powerups in the game are just okay. Not too fun, but not too bad either. They’re just “fine.” Mario Kart and Mario Kart 64 both did this way better.
The art style is also a mixed bag. The winter themed levels are incredible, but the dinosaur themed ones… not so much. Given what Nintendo accomplished with Mario Kart 64, I can’t help but feel like the tracks are a bit barren here in comparison.
The three different vehicles do add some nice variety and definitely make the game feel distinct from Mario Kart in a good way. Track design is also generally well done in the sense that it’s fair.
I just keep thinking that they didn’t flesh out the game as much as they really wanted to. It lacks excitement. I’m having fun though. But the repetitive nature of the single player really hampers the fun.
I’m up to Primal. I took a year break from FC4 before finally finishing it. They’re good games, but the franchise is definitely stale.
I love both of those games… Fortnite is my new obsession.
What platform are you playing on? I’m on steam/PC.
Playing the entire Xenosaga triology again because the Xenogears 20th anniversary (yeah, I should be playing lXG but I replayed that one 2 years ago, and I never played XS back tô Back.
Got to the cathedral ship in XS1, the story, music and localization still is amazing tô this day, but MAN, there are some serious flaws in the game that I didn’t notice at the time.
I’m on PS4. I think the way it works, all my stuff would transfer over to the PC version if I played it there? It’s all in the Epic account. I’ll look into that. It’s all just cosmetics anyway. I have a handful of friends that play on PS4 so that’s where I started out.
Not sure, probably though
I’m still playing Doom on Switch, whenever I can pry myself away from Splatoon. Would love to make it to S+10 so I can get into Rank X when it launches! But I can’t get past S+2 in any mode. 
Being old(ish) and at work most of the day may have something to do with it, as might just not being good enough and maining a weapon that is often ranked as dead last in the entire game.
Also playing Castlevania: Circle of the Moon on emulator whenever I can. I have a couple of copies on GBA (and a GBA Everdrive) but wanted to try something a little different. I’m using a Wii Classic Controller Pro with the Raphnet Wii-to-USB adapter (lowest input lag solution on the market for PC USB) and recommended low lag settings for Retroarch. I enabled a shader that imitates the look of the GBA screen. Looks and feels great to play. 
I love Circle of the Moon. There are better Castlevanias in that style, but that one really resonates with me for some reason. Super cool game. Enjoy!
Mega, that shader looks excellent, it definitely looks very similar to my GBA screen (AGS-101 modded into an OG Shell).
Have you played around at all with that new feature in Retroarch that removes input lag by actually emulating a few frames ahead then retroactively applying your inputs? Apparently it’s really impressive.
@DaveLong Thanks. I have played through it a couple of times, although not in at least a 10+ years!
@BTails I haven’t yet… need to update Retroarch. I want to try it for the best possible performance, but I don’t technically need it. As is, I should have input lag that’s a minuscule amount higher than native hardware… it’s imperceptible to me with every platformer or shooter I tried so far. But hey, it may be the sort of thing where the difference is noticed only once you try it and compare on/off. I wonder if it’s true that it can achieve better than original hardware responsiveness!
That looks great. What’s the shader called?
I spent some time with it last night and whilst I didn’t notice any difference in NES games that only have a single frame of lag on the SNES it felt way more responsive. Especially on Yoshi’s Island that has 3 frames that you can remove. Overall the effect was most pronounced on my HDTV, I didn’t notice as much difference when playing on my 4ms monitor.
Finally completed the human campaign in the original Warcraft - and instantly started the orc one. Guess this way of playing explains why i progress so slow through games these days. Anyways, i really like to play a mission or two each week in this game, so guess im now completing the orc campaign as well before starting my next project - which is either Ultima 7 or Illusion of Gaia.
It’s lcd-grid-v2-gba-color which should already be in the GLSL shaders folder.
