I hopped in to unlock all the gear and achievements (all except for “Speed runner” since I can’t be bothered with downgrading the game just to unlock it). Went pretty fast since levels are small and requirements simple but it was fun nonetheless.
I’ll have to jump back in to do some proper photos of the DLC stages but that’ll have to wait a bit.
Persona 3 Portable
Progressing pretty slowly with this one as I treat it like a “play before bed” type of game. I really like Kotone and enjoy the new events written for her, hopefully they keep their quality throughout. Social links seem to have the same problem as the original ones for the most part (agree with people to make them like you) but whatever.
There’s one thing that’s bothering me and that’s lack of audio settings - the sound effects (especially crit hits) during combat tend to be slightly louder than everything else and quickly become rather grating to hear.
All in all, it’s pretty fun so far. While I don’t expect much differences in terms of the main story I’m curious where the rest of the writing ends up.
Project Wingman
I’ve decided to take another stab at playing this thing in VR. My initial attempt was a bit weird as even though my PC is close to being bare minimum to run the thing in VR it didn’t seem to use all of the available resources during gameplay. After some searching I found multiple claims that VR performance got kinda wrecked with the release of patch 2.0 so I decided to give the old version a shot. Boy was it worth it! Well, kind of.
Both performance and hardware utilisation are definitely better, giving the speed and smoothness I didn’t see during my previous session. It’s super fun to play and gives me hope I might be able to finish the campaign before I finally manage to upgrade my PC. It’s also has a functional menu controls in VR unlike the 2.0 version.
It’s really fun and being able to look around makes planning your moves way easier (I should look into non-VR head tracking for my normal playthrough).
At the same time, 1.0 is 1.0. The anniversary update brought with it various improvements, including: better control of cloud settings, visual improvements to stages and updated HUD. It’s also the only version of the game you can play the DLC with which is unfortunate since I really want to play the “Express Lane” in VR.
It’s an acceptable compromise overall but far from ideal way to experience the game. Oh well…
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
I honestly didn’t expect to play this game any time soon due to price but it’s currently 90% off (or 84% directly on Steam) so I decided to take this opportunity and compare it with Project Wingman while it’s still fresh in my mind.
I haven’t played much yet (only 5 missions so far) so I’ll stick to first impressions, with more thought out writeup probably next week. Here are the things that stood out the most so far:
Not being able to rebind HOTAS controls in game is a terrible choice and whoever decided on that should feel bad. It can be done by editing an ini file but that shouldn’t be necessary in this day and age. Also, no mouse support for menus - seriously?
Speed control doesn’t feel right yet, I’m sure I’ll get used to it though.
Flares are so limited you might as well not have them. Not that they’re as necessary as in PW but still.
Not yet sold on voice acting, prefer Project Wingman on that front so far. It feels a bit too… clinical (or slightly less natural), I guess?
I have similar feelings towards writing in general. It feels a bit too sterile, corporate and unnatural, with lots of “lordumpy” narration. Not the worst thing ever but it’s definitely noticeable.
Game looks great, more dynamic elements in the cockpit are always a plus.
The idea of music fading out when flying through clouds is cool but gets annoying really fast. Decent way to push people away from flying into them, I guess.
I’m playing on hard but it’s not particularly challenging so far. I hope things pick up or there’s an unlockable higher difficulty after completing the game.
All in all, I think PW is a better game for me at the moment - not because AC7 is bad, but rather because it’s a bit more “safe” in comparison. I still like it and hope to warm up to it as I play but so far it kinda makes me want to go back to PW, not gonna lie.
Umurangi Generation
I hopped in to unlock all the gear and achievements (all except for “Speed runner” since I can’t be bothered with downgrading the game just to unlock it). Went pretty fast since levels are small and requirements simple but it was fun nonetheless.
I’ll have to jump back in to do some proper photos of the DLC stages but that’ll have to wait a bit.
Persona 3 Portable
Progressing pretty slowly with this one as I treat it like a “play before bed” type of game. I really like Kotone and enjoy the new events written for her, hopefully they keep their quality throughout. Social links seem to have the same problem as the original ones for the most part (agree with people to make them like you) but whatever.
There’s one thing that’s bothering me and that’s lack of audio settings - the sound effects (especially crit hits) during combat tend to be slightly louder than everything else and quickly become rather grating to hear.
All in all, it’s pretty fun so far. While I don’t expect much differences in terms of the main story I’m curious where the rest of the writing ends up.
Project Wingman
I’ve decided to take another stab at playing this thing in VR. My initial attempt was a bit weird as even though my PC is close to being bare minimum to run the thing in VR it didn’t seem to use all of the available resources during gameplay. After some searching I found multiple claims that VR performance got kinda wrecked with the release of patch 2.0 so I decided to give the old version a shot. Boy was it worth it! Well, kind of.
Both performance and hardware utilisation are definitely better, giving the speed and smoothness I didn’t see during my previous session. It’s super fun to play and gives me hope I might be able to finish the campaign before I finally manage to upgrade my PC. It’s also has a functional menu controls in VR unlike the 2.0 version.
It’s really fun and being able to look around makes planning your moves way easier (I should look into non-VR head tracking for my normal playthrough).
At the same time, 1.0 is 1.0. The anniversary update brought with it various improvements, including: better control of cloud settings, visual improvements to stages and updated HUD. It’s also the only version of the game you can play the DLC with which is unfortunate since I really want to play the “Express Lane” in VR.
It’s an acceptable compromise overall but far from ideal way to experience the game. Oh well…
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
I honestly didn’t expect to play this game any time soon due to price but it’s currently 90% off (or 84% directly on Steam) so I decided to take this opportunity and compare it with Project Wingman while it’s still fresh in my mind.
I haven’t played much yet (only 5 missions so far) so I’ll stick to first impressions, with more thought out writeup probably next week. Here are the things that stood out the most so far:
All in all, I think PW is a better game for me at the moment - not because AC7 is bad, but rather because it’s a bit more “safe” in comparison. I still like it and hope to warm up to it as I play but so far it kinda makes me want to go back to PW, not gonna lie.