Has anyone played Beat Saber? Since we’re not going anywhere this year, my husband decided to use his “going on holiday” money to buy a VR headset for his Playstation. It looks like a fun game, so I’d be interested in hearing any opinions.
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It is AMAZING! It’s Guitar Hero with drum sticks. It flips between being an air drum simulator and just general conductor type motions. Really intuitive and addictive. I’d prefer finer tuning of difficulty since the ramp is quite extreme, but the campaign does a good job of naturally instilling the ideas and skills to improve. You can use settings to adjust difficulty within each difficulty level too. With a couple of days practice I can get by with hard for most songs.
Song choice is very techno which suits the gameplay, but I’d like more band packages. The Linkin Park and Panic at the Disco packs are great fun.
Audica is also good fun. Similar rhythm game but with guns, from the studio who designed guitar hero. Guns aren’t quite as satisfying as drum sticks, but waving arms around is a slightly different kind of fun. I find it more challenging since there’s a lot more hand to eye coordination needed.
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I understand what you’re trying to say, but this is literally just Rock Band and later guitar hero games. 
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Fine. It’s fruit ninja plagiarizing guitar hero!
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Having not played Beat Sabre and seen very little of it that description is deeply concerning. 
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It’s Rock Band: Neil Pert Edition.
(There’s actually a 360 mode, and it’s a transcendent experience)
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From the videos I’ve watched on YouTube, that seems very apt.
I assume that the 360 mode isn’t available on the PS4, since the headset is wired…
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No idea! Probably available but inadvisable? It’s not available for all songs. It’s too powerful.
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Just played the Hive phone app, because I want to get Hive Pocket simply for the size but haven’t played it.
Then I did this horrified face at my phone screen as I realised the true complexity of it. Whaaaat. This is insane.
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But it is easy enough to teach it to seldom-gamers at the pub and watch them play. That’s what makes it so good. It only ever gets deeper.
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I started playing Middle-Earth: Shadow of War (aka Batman: Mordor Knight) recently. I really enjoyed the first one, and so far this one is not disappointing. I will admit, I am just crappy at taking advantage of the enemy captain weaknesses, maybe getting in one hit with stealth or a bow shot before everything devolves into a melee. But I am having fun. So much so, that I have not moved on in the storyline to go to Shelob’s lair, preferring to keep hunting orc captains. Which is essentially grinding, I suppose. Still, having fun!
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Played the Lords of Waterdeep app on Steam. Interesting, since I haven’t played the boardgame. I don’t hate it, although on game 2 I lost a 3-player game by one point (120 vs 121) on the easiest difficulty setting, which suggests I have a long way to go.
Then went back to Indian Summer (also on Steam) and immediately enjoyed it much more. I can thrash the medium bot, but get nowhere near the Hard AI yet.
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So I’m playing my way through Rise of the Tomb Raider, and I think I’m enjoying it. A few of the puzzles are satisfyingly tricky, the environments are neat… I’m not a huge fan of the Castlevania-style “You can’t get past this door without this highly specific tool and to get back here later will require enormous amounts of backtracking”, but still enjoying it.
I also purchased the new Star Wars Squadrons, and it’s beautiful but the fact that my flightstick (a humble one) has some super stupid original key bindings is frustrating, and the game uses terms that I’ve never seen used before (ie: “Button 1” is the trigger, despite it being called R1 on the stick itself… Button 2 is L1, Button 3 is L2, Button 4 is R2, Button 12 is… I don’t know? Button 5 seems to be Square…). I’m going to have to spend 20-30 minutes today rebinding all of them so they make sense, but it doesn’t help that not all of the bindings are described well (“Dumb-fire Left Auxillary” doesn’t really tell me what that does). AND, what idiot has the default keybinding for “Speed Up” and “Speed Down” not be the throttle!? That’s the whole POINT of the throttle! Idiotic. I can’t actually find the default buttons the game wants me to use (and couldn’t re-bind them during the tutorial missions) so had to use the keyboard for thrust for that one part of that initial mission.
ANYway, aside from joystick issues, the game seems pretty cool, but man, you need those button bindings down-pat by the time you play your first mission. The game is not forgiving about trying to figure things out as you fly (specifically, capital ships will vapourize your ship in two to three seconds if you’re sloppy). Not crazy about the power distribution toggles, but that’s a quite minor gripe, really.
I don’t know if my ranting above makes this clear, but the game is pretty fun. It’s been far, far too long since I stepped into the cockpit of a TIE or X-Wing, and the game does immediately bring up that sense of joy in flying. They did a good job (so far!), and so I think that’s what has me so frustrated with the niggly little bit of keybinding nonsense.
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I was wondering if I should be getting that one. But I haven’t owned a “flight stick” since the 90s…
But I sure have fond memories of flying around in space from then and the No Man’s Sky flying is not quite as satisfying as my memories seem to suggest those earlier experiences were…
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I play it in VR but not with my HOTAS setup and am enjoying it a great deal! This is mostly due to sheer laziness (it’s been put away, and I don’t feel like getting it out of its hiding place). For me, all I had to tweak on the PS4 Dual Shock was inverting the pitch controls, and exchanging the roll and yaw so that everything handles more like an actual aircraft.
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One of my little favourite gems from Steam to kill time. I found it hard initially, until you grock it. I still struggle to win more often than not on the hardest level, but mid level is tricky enough to give you a run for your money. I like how being an app, a game that could take a couple of hours can be solved quickly in 20, 30 mins max.
Also, I recommend the expansions, they are cheap, and they add a lot to the game. Specially the corruption one (sorry, I cannot remember the name for it)
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Scoundrels of Skullport is the name of the physical expansion which has both modules. Skullport has the Corruption mechanic.
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I’m looking for some more advice please. My son would like a new Xbox One controller for Xmas. The one he’s found is in the US only so I’m looking for one closer to home (UK).
The base wireless controller seems to be £45 - the elite controller or the tournament ones are £100+ which I’m not bloody spending! Something in the £30 - £55ish bracket? My N64 cost less than that!
Is there is a good quality 3rd party brand (his headset is 3rd party)? They prefer wireless. He’s not the most careful with things!
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Not sure if it’s relevant for you, but if you do pick up a £45 XBox One controller then it’s forward compatible with the new XBox Series S/Series X. So if you’re planning on upgrading the XBox within the next few years it might be worth getting the 1st party controller, I don’t believe there are any 3rd party controllers that can do the same since it sounds like it comes in the form of a firmware update.
On the other hand, Microsoft’s strategy is to keep the current XBox One as a viable choice for some time, since many of their new games (new Halo for example) are backwards compatible with the current XBox One models. Not sure how long this will last for though.
So that info might not be of any use if you’re not expecting to upgrade the machine, but if it’s a possibility then it’s probably a safer bet to pick up a first party controller so you don’t run into the same issue on the next console generation 
. The first party ones tend to be more reliable unless you’re looking at premium third party options.
PS. ignore the “pro”/“elite” models, they don’t offer anything unless you’re a particularly competitive online gamer IMO
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You know, putting away the HOTAS and using my Dual Shock has made the experience significantly better! Thanks for the recommendation!
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