Phaseknox

It’s a good third person action RPG that still holds up fairly well today mainly due to its impressive cel-shaded art style. It’s available digitally for PS4, so I would recommend checking it out if you still have an interest in it. BTW it’s rogue, not rouge. You wrote it as rouge in the thread title as well.

I got the new album by The Pretty Reckless, and it’s really good. It’s better than their previous album IMO, which I found to be a little disappointing compared to their first two albums. If you like female fronted rock music, you should check it out. The Pretty Reckless - Death By Rock and Roll

Yeah, I really liked the SNES game back in the day which was a sequel to the arcade game and improved in a lot of ways. The remaster is the same game but with better graphics, and two new unlockable characters. I grew up in the arcades (I’m 51), and remember seeing the arcade version of The Ninja Warriors for the first time and how cool it was being in ultra widescreen with three screens. But that really was the best aspect of it as it was a fairly basic side scrolling action game at its core. I liked the arcade versions of Ninja Gaiden and Shinobi a lot more at the time. But the SNES version of The Ninja Warriors had three selectable characters, and better levels and combat. Playing the remastered version now was a nostalgic trip down memory lane that I really enjoyed. As I get older I find myself enjoying retro style 2D pixel art games more than I have in a while since they bring me back to my earlier days of gaming. Hanging out in arcades are some of my fondest memories as a kid/teenager, and playing games on my NES/SNES and Master System/Genesis were some of my favorite gaming times.

I played and finished The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors which is a great retro 2D side scrolling beat-em-up with colorful pixel art/sprite graphics, fun combat and cool music. I think that I will play through it again with a different character, and then move onto something else.

I just finished The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors in one sitting. It’s a remaster of the SNES classic The Ninja Warriors, they apparently had to change the name for legal reasons. It’s an entertaining old school 2D side scrolling beat-em-up with colorful pixel art/sprite graphics, fun combat and cool music. 2021 games Cyberpunk 2077 The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors

Happy birthday. You’re still young, I turned 51 this month.

Good choice, She Wants Revenge were great. I still often listen to their albums. It’s a shame that they broke up.

I’m a big fan of Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, and while My Time At Portia is a similar style of game it failed to engage me for very long. It’s charming and cute with some fun aspects, but gets repetitive fast. Too much time is spent mining and crafting, and not much else. There wasn’t enough incentive for me to continue its redundant grind/loop.

It’s 8 year old hardware, and Cyberpunk 2077 ran acceptable for me on my PS4 Slim. The bugs and glitches were the main problem, not the graphics and performance. The PS4 and Xbox One might be 8 years old, but they’re not shitty.

I agree. I have all three games for Xbox 360 and they still look and play good to me, so I don’t really have an interest in the upcoming Legendary Edition.

I personally feel that God of War (2018) starts off really strong with a tightly focused narrative, directed linear levels and great pacing with a few fun puzzles to figure out just enough to break up the combat. After playing so many bloated games with optional filler content I liked that it was a little more directed and focused, but several hours in it becomes bloated with optional filler content as well and basically starts to feel like a Ubisoft game. It goes overboard with collectables, items, lore, puzzles, realms, unlockables, upgrades, etc. Most of it feels like filler to me, and the game would have been better just sticking to what it originally started out as IMO. One of the things that I like so much about The Last of Us is its organic feel. The environments, puzzles, situations, etc. are realistic instead of like they were made to be video game levels. There's not a ton of collectibles floating/glowing in the areas, or optional side stuff that doesn't really fit in the world reminding you that you're playing a video game every step of the way. You feel like you're playing out a real situation with real people in a real world. And that's how God of War (2018) starts out, but when it opens up the world turns into a somewhat artificial feeling video game one with optional side things to do everywhere. It basically becomes another "modern" action adventure game that sort of wants to be an RPG too but ultimately feels like a mismatch of the two. This is God of War, I just want to traverse somewhat linear environments slaughtering waves of enemies and solve the occasional environment based puzzle. I don't want an open map to explore with tons of little objective icons scattered all over it taking me away from the set pieces, scripted events and brutal combat. Most of the side stuff seems like filler to me, and feels somewhat out of place IMO. I don't think that it needs half of the optional collectables, enhancement items, lore and side content that it has. And there's way too much time spent tinkering with stuff in the menus and at shops IMO. I think that I spent more time in menus in this game than I have in RPGs. The story, characters and combat are its strongest aspects. Mixing in open world and RPG elements felt like an afterthought to me. It's like they included that stuff just because they felt like it's what every game needs these days. It's not, The Last of Us proved that. Sometimes a game works better as a directed linear experience that doesn't stray from the story and characters. I feel that the game would have worked better if it stuck to the basics instead of trying to be something that it's really not. And like I stated before, they went overboard with collectibles, items and upgrades. Half of the stuff in the game is throwaway, and just makes you spend way too much time in menus for slight variations to everything. RPGs aren't even as bloated as this game is with useless enhancements, items and upgrades. But despite my complaints, I still really enjoyed the game. The good definitely outweighs the bad, and it stands out as a memorable experience. I plan on playing it again since I enjoyed it so much the first time, and I’m really looking forward to the next game.

I would describe it as an interactive story, it’s less involved than an adventure game but more involved than a walking sim IMO. While there’s no combat or puzzles, you do interact with the environment and things in general quite a bit. I found the story engaging and the graphics appealing, I definitely enjoyed my time with it. Why did you have nearly minus zero interest in it? It’s one of my favorite PS4 games, it has a great story, cast of characters, open world and gameplay/combat. While it does have a bit of The Last of Us vibe to it, I wouldn’t call it a clone. It’s a different game in a lot of ways.

I just got these new releases from a couple of my favorite artists, and they’re both excellent: Front Line Assembly - Mechanical Soul Imperative Reaction - Mirror

My top 23 albums of 2020 (in alphabetical order): Absurd Minds - Sapta Ad Infinitum - Chapter I: Monarchy Amaranthe - Manifest Assemblage 23 - Mourn Beyond the Black - Horizons The Birthday Massacre - Diamonds Clan of Xymox - Spider on the Wall Delain - Apocalypse & Chill Diabulus in Musica - Euphonic Entropy In This Moment - Mother Leaves’ Eyes - The Last Viking Marilyn Manson - We Are Chaos Mono Inc. - The Book of Fire Nightwish - Human Nature Pig - Pain is God Rotersand - How Do You Feel Today? Secret Rule - Against Semblant - Obscura Seven Spires - Emerald Seas Stitched Up Heart - Darkness Trivium - What the Dead Men Say Unleash the Archers - Abyss Volturian - Crimson

They’re not Microsoft games, are they? They’re on Switch, so I figured that they could be on PS4 as well.

Why aren’t these games on PS4?

As much as I like Horizon Zero Dawn, I do feel that it’s a tad bit overrated. The story, characters and world are all great, but it leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to actual gameplay especially combat. There’s too much of an emphasis on being stealthy/strategic using gadgets and traps which I personally find dull, I want to actually engage in combat with cool weapons, blocks, parries, dodges, etc. And that’s why I like Ghost of Tsushima so much, because the combat is really good. It might not reinvent the wheel when it comes to open world action adventure games, but everything that it does it does well. It deserves the praise that it gets IMO. Not for its gimmicky wind guide, but for how good of a game that it is in general including its story, characters, world and gameplay. I really liked Murdered: Soul Suspect (I thought that I was the only one ), and I would like a sequel too.

Looks fun.

I do. The Sims Bustin’ Out is my favorite in the series. I have The Sims 4 for PS4, but I haven’t played it yet. I preordered Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean back in the day for GameCube, and I still have the wall scroll that I got for preordering it. Lost Osyssey is one of my favorite JRPGs, and I’ve played all of the Suikoden games - Suikoden V is my favorite in the series. I’m a JRPG junkie.

Is that still in development, it seems like ages since anything was mentioned about it. The ones that I listed. Of course not all of them will probably come out this year, but most of them are scheduled to. I love indies, my backlog is full of them. I was already interested in some of the ones that you posted, but I didn’t know about a lot of them. So many are constantly coming out that it’s hard to keep up with them all. I’ve got plenty to play as well, I have hundreds of games in my backlog. All of the games that I’m interested in this year I’m getting for PS4, and it’s unlikely that I will buy any of them on day one due to having a sizable backlog. I won’t be getting a PS5 or Xbox Series X for quite a while. I’ll be getting it for PS4 along with every other cross-gen game coming out this year as I don’t plan on getting a PS5 or Xbox Series X anytime soon. I expect the cross-gen games to still be pretty good on PS4, I enjoyed Cyberpunk 2077 on it so I’m sure that I’ll enjoy all of the games still coming out for it as well.

Tales of Zestiria is pretty good, I like the story and characters for the most part. But Tales of Berseria is even better, check it out if you haven’t already.

While it’s not my favorite style, I still find retro charm to it reminiscent of Commodore 64 games. But I admittedly usually prefer more colorful and detailed 16-bit+ style pixel art, or hand drawn art for these throwback type games.

The following are the games that I’m looking forward to the most this year (in alphabetical order): Biomutant Crimson Desert Dying Light 2 Edge of Eternity Elden Ring Far Cry 6 God of War Ragnarok Gotham Knights Horizon Forbidden West Kena: Bridge of Spirits Little Nightmares II NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... Psychonauts 2 Resident Evil Village Stray Tales of Arise Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2 Ys IX: Monstrum Nox What game(s) are you looking forward to the most this year?

I agree. What’s weird about them? A lot of indie games use a similar 2D pixel art style.

Yeah, that mission is great and there’s more to come. Such a good game throughout.