Phoenix654

I've kind of shied away from playing online games in the past few years because of this kind of feeling... playing co-operative games with friends is something I can handle, but something competitive like Rocket League or Apex Legends just makes me feel so stressed out anymore. You're certainly not alone in this and I do not have a good fix for it, unfortunately. I've put hundreds of hours into RL and AL, but I don't know if I'll ever play either again.

I subscribe to Mr. Manley for my updates on the field in general, and enjoy watching the progress of SpaceX insanity. Despite the fact they've done it over 100 times, it's still thrilling to see a booster rocket land on a barge with precision. It's almost so routine it's dull, until you think about landing something as tall as a 10 story building on a boat... from the edge of space. The recent Starship test flight was kind of amazing, fiery crash included. Can't wait until the roll the next prototype out and give it a go.

@toughshed: the most recent patch has fixed this, I edited the initial comment and title of the thread to reflect it.

@ulfhedinn: Yeah, basically what you learn by reading about Greek myths is that if you stand out, in any way, for any reason as a human being who is exceptional at just about anything (athleticism, battle, music, attractiveness, prosperity, etc.) you are deeply, deeply screwed because the gods will fuck up your life in creative and disturbing ways. GoW felt very accurate in that way.

@bisonhero said:

I kind of figured it would. Nothing can be a straight up translation of the source material, especially with sources this old. It'd probably be even weirder if they used the actual character in question as a boss, since she's kind of a non-character, fridged girlfriend/wife in most non-Disney versions of the story I've heard. Good to know in any case.

I'll have to look it up and see if an audio version exists. Dry doesn't bother me if it's a bit more academic, Mythos and Heroes are more oral tradition-like in their style. I guess this is kind of a trend with a certain kind of author lately because Neil Gaiman did his take on Norse mythology a while back. Much shorter than Stephen Fry's books, but also a good read. Now I just need someone to do Egyptian mythology...

Just picked Hades up and started playing. Been holding off for full release and saw it was on sale today. I must say it lives up to everyone's hype of the game, fantastic feel, satisfying mechanics, and the dialogue makes the runs feel like you're actually progressing the story each time, blah blah blah. Wouldn't be surprised to see it on Game of the Year lists and I'm only 4 hours in.

Anyway, I think something that helped deepen my appreciation of it is I've been listening to a couple of audiobooks recently. I've always loved Greek mythology and was kind of a nerd for it back in school, even before we studied it in some version of English class. Blame Clash of the Titans for getting me into it, but it was kind of my first view into a connected universe, even before comics. Turns out, Stephen Fry is also a Greek mythology nut and has written (and most importantly, narrated) two books about the gods and heroes, entitled Mythos and Heroes respectively. Obviously, listening to Stephen Fry read anything is a delightful experience, but the way he's retold the stories of Greek myth make them feel far more contemporary than other sources. I can highly recommend them if you have some Audible credits burning a hole in your digital wallet. It led to the first hour of meeting gods and mythological characters making me go "Ohhh, them! Cool!" I'm sure the actual books would give a similar effect, sans Mr. Fry's lovely reading voice, but let's be honest, it's damn hard to pronounce some Greek names and terms, so it's nice to have him to do it for you.

Also, one interesting note that might be a spoiler for the first boss - Megara, the first fury you encounter, is also the name of Heracles' (Romanized version, Hercules) first wife. She is tragically killed by the hero when he is given a hallucination by the goddess Hera making him believe his wife and children are monsters or wolves or similar (varies from telling to telling). This is what leads to him having to do his famous 12 labors to expunge his soul of the crime of killing family members (Should sound familiar if you've ever played God of War, a similar event happens to Kratos). Not sure if that's revealed later in the game or if they just used the name, I'm only a few hours in, just thought I'd mention it here.

@skienbaum: Glad to hear your digging it still. The past games have always been good for going back and picking at things, so it's nice to hear the new update follows in that tradition. Landed on any favorite tricks or any that you simply can't stand? I usually get the Madonna grab swapped for a Crossbone or Mute Weddle, it's just a pain to try and land.

I'm slowly going through and getting everyone's stat points up and sniping challenges here and there. There are a few that are totally crazy hard that have me scratching my head about how to even do, but they're fun nonetheless.

Real curious to see what you think of it. I've been playing THPS games since the first one (I literally bought an OG Xbox to have a system to play THPS4 on), so it's hard for me to judge it without nostalgia. I tore through the goals in a weekend and am hacking away at the challenges and other secrets slowly, but I have to say it is a very impressive piece of remake. The lack of goal replay is a bummer (Jeff even mentioned it on the Bombcast this week), but having spent more time with the game, there's still tons to do in it.

Hope you enjoy it, it's a fun thing to get the hang of and allows for a level of expression similar to actual skating (Obviously taken to an arcade-y extreme, but still). You can tailor your skaters to handle just how you like, you can elect to do the most complicated laserflips or a simple grab over gaps, and the depth of the trick system means there are always new plateaus to climb.

I have never bought a console at launch, and this time will probably be no different. Not least of the reasons is the lack of unique games at launch (for PlayStation 5 as well, not just Xbox), the fact that I don't have any 4k displays in my house, and I own a decent gaming rig. I'll wait and see how these are received and probably get the higher end models (X and disc-ful PS5) if/when they get their prices reduced.

All that having been said, if I knew someone who wanted to get into the Xbox landscape and wanted to buy my XBone S from me, I would happily sell it to them to fund me getting an Xbox Series S. I own very few games on disc and see little downside to the upgrade aside from halving my storage space, but I don't see it happening any time soon.

@shindig: To be fair, having spent more time with it, they do have a lot of challenges for each skater to accomplish. All you get for doing them is experience points, special trick slots, and more board designs for them, but yeah. If it's a sticking point, maybe hold off. I should say the game does feel fantastic, 10/10 on that front, absolutely nailed it. That's what made this design choice all the harder to swallow for me at least.