VirtuaGrant

Nowadays I don't care what people think of what I like. I think it is a combination of getting a bit older (26) and the nerdier bits of culture having much wider mainstream acceptance than ever before. It also helps that I'm a physicist and, playing exactly into all the stereotypes, most of the people I know are into sci fi/ fantasy/ video games / board games etc., you know, cool stuff.

@kaos_cracker: Oh I didn't realise that would work. Would have made it much easier! Although the few times I tried to find a coop game there seemed to be none there, but whatever its done now.

Don't think I'll play much more of this except to show a few friends what it's like. The leaderboard stuff seems way beyond my skill level.

I just got it last night. My first platinum! Really found the 1CC trophy a pain, I got to the last boss and died in stupid ways 4 separate times, once having 4 lives at the start of the fight! The platinum wasn't as difficult as I expected overall though and the 1.2% is a bit surprising.

I thought Joel was ok but really whether the hosts were any good is moot when the whole thing is a shit show. Having the GOTY acceptance speech met with a smattering of half hearted applause was an embarrassment. Joel oftentimes being the only one applauding the people there was so cringe worthy. Not one of the developers looked even remotely comfortable being there and it's hard to blame them. The last few years haven't been great but at least it vaguely resembled an awards show, I really can't see how anyone looked at the plans for this thing and thought: 'Yeah, this is what people want.'

I don't actually ask, but I live in a different country for my family so its hard for them to know what I'm into without straight up asking, and that would spoil the surprise.
So I usually end up getting games as people know I'll probably get them myself anyway so it ends up a pretty decent gift.

God, that looks awful. I must admit I'm not that sensitive to resolution differences and while I hate frame rate drops, gaming on a crappy laptop for years has me pretty used to a choppy frame rate...but bad textures or texture pop-in is really the god damn worst. It's the one thing I was hoping never to see on new consoles.

PSN: VirtuaGrant

Timezone: GMT

Launch Games: Killzone and some downloadable stuff.

Shadow Fall, Contrast, Resogun, Flow, Flower and War Thunder will hold me over until around Christmas time. Might pick up something like Tiny Brains or Switch Galaxy Ultra to try out some of the downloadable stuff too.
Might pick up Black Flag, Ghosts, BF4 and Knack in the January sales if there is a price drop.

Definitely. This year I played FarCry 3, Assassin's Creed 3 and Tomb Raider around the same time. After that I tries to play Dead Island HATED it. I couldn't tell why but I realised it was the lack of direction and inherent quirks of open world games that I was burnt out on. I deliberately avoided open world stuff leading up to GTA V but I think the damage was done. I've got 100% completion in the game but that's because I want it to last for a while leading up to the new consoles.

I would really like the option to streamline the experience in open world games. Something that could run the missions together and make the whole thing a more directed, curated experience in open world games, while still allowing people who want to to run around and play tennis and dress up and do what ever else they want to do.

tl;dr I'm a bit sick of them yes, but I see why people wouldn't be. A balance between big ass open world and a more contained experience would be ideal for me.

I think the Letter Scraps actually has the most pay off out of all of the collectibles. At least there is some kind of story or something to go with it.

The other collectibles are almost completely pointless apart from trophies and completion: The Submarine parts just result in a short interaction with the lady at the dock, the nuclear waste gets nothing, the spaceship parts get the aforementioned buggy. That's it. All the stunt jumps, knife flights and under the bridge flights get trophies. I thought there might at least be a new vehicle or something.

Having said that doing everything has passed the time while GTAO hasn't been working.