Ok, I figured it was something like that. So if (big if) they’re using the more traditional team here, minus Casey Hudson I guess, I’ll be cautiously optimistic.

A new Mass Effect... I want to be excited but Andromeda was so.... milquetoast. I think that was a slightly different team/division of BioWare though? So I dunno. Fingers crossed.

You’re exactly right about Valhalla. I like the pledge/region idea because yes, it makes it easier to limit/balance my roaming. So far I’ve basically stuck to the story missions, getting nearby wealth/mysteries/etc. on my way, then doing a little more exploring at the end of the arc. It’s allowed to feel like I’m on a…

I always have a particular way I play any open-world game, especially when there’s lots of side activities. I am fairly consistent with tackling them this way. I like to keep the momentum of the story going, that’s important to me, so I try to lightly balance a healthy amount of side activities between them where it…

Dang I need to get Brush with Death soon. I mentioned in a separate post I fought my first zealot with just parries and melee abilities and it was difficult but satisfying. Would love something like that to even the odds a bit but not make it too easy.

A small part of me misses the bounty hunter system from Odyssey. There was that thrill of being hunted down and having like a mini boss fight every 10 minutes. After 150+ hours with the game though, I got really tired of it and how it exposed an annoying weakness in the stealth system, which you are alluding to here.…

I fought my first zealot the other day and was definitely a bit underleveled but almost pulled it off. A buddy suggested I use this ability and I wanted to, but boring old me wanted the satisfaction of beating the zealot in a more traditional duel. I used only melee abilities and with a little more leveling, was…

Oh, you wrote an afee-david did you? *pats head* Good for you.

Yeah, that’s actually a great point and I think more relevant than ever at this stage. The jump from PS4 to PS5, while impressive, is not quite the leap it was from PS3 to PS4 and so on. It’s hard to push it any further.

It’ll be interesting to see how PS5/Xbox Series X games 3-4 years from now are handled.

I mean, I might not look back on my PS4 in that semi-disdainful way (junk), but I otherwise can understand and had some of those problems myself. It felt like the last 4 years of major titles really brought more out of the system performance, because I had so many loud-fan games. Sometimes it was getting a bit too…

Don’t blame ya. I was doing the same thing for the first few days, but have been using Rest Mode (with games closed) since. But that’s just my own individual account; I don’t blame anyone for being extra cautious!

I remembered playing Maximum Carnage as a kid. I tried playing it on an emulator not super long ago, and yup, it’s still pretty darn hard. But yeah, feels like what it is, a Spider-Man flavored beat-’em-up.

This wasn’t rest mode charging though. Unless there’s a setting that says it stops charging--period--through that port (I’ll double check), then I think there’s definitely something weird going on. This was when the system was turned on and being used. 

Yeah I bought an Anker brand cable off amazon to use and it works perfectly fine. It’s definitely odd.

And yeah, I’m refraining from using anything external for now. Just gonna play it by ear and see how it goes.

Was a little wary of the Rest Mode problems but noticed a lot of the topics I see about it are just people spreading word. I don’t see a ton of reports of bricked consoles, etc. So I finally tried it myself a few days in and it works fine. I have not put it in rest mode while a game is playing though, not yet.

Neither do I for the most part, and yeah, I think her middle tree was fine for solo play for me. And yes, I forgot about the Doppelganger, that was actually the second character I got to max level on TPS. Fun times.

Wow, it was intentional? What the hell could they be thinking? They should know a lot of people like playing multiple characters and that it obviously adds to replay value. This was so simple on the Handsome Collection. It worked perfectly.

And oh yeah, I heard about the Guardian Rank thing. I had not heard about the…

1) I agree on the no extra vault hunter thing. It really was a letdown that pretty much from the get go they said it wouldn’t be happening. Gaige, Krieg, and Aurelia were some of the most fun characters I used in this franchise. Why look the other way from that kind of magic?

2) I’m hearing a lot of reports on…

That’s fair. It’s good to remember everyone has different tastes. Plus it’s not like I “hate” it (like I said, low priority in the grand scheme of things). That said, I love your suggestion on the custom sound. I would totally go for that!

Also trophy related (yes, I know it’s a low priority and not many people care), but I hope they give the option to change back the trophy ding! sound, or even better, let us customize it maybe. The new sound is a bland generic beep boop sound. It just doesn’t really convey that feeling of “you did a thing!!!!!”that…