Ewan

I feel like I have learned recently that its possible to score from anywhere on the pitch, and to be more aware of goal scoring opportunities earlier in attacks. Also I really struggle in normal games after playing so much doubles. Its seems to be a lot less about running back-and-forth loops of the pitch and more about having a territorial role, which I'm not very good at. Anyway, I'm still playing this game daily and loving it just the same as I did a few weeks back. Time to get working on a s1ck long shot and aerial m0ntage!

I just had my first encounter with a Veteran player. (I'm guessing since I went Semi-Pro at level 10 and Pro at 20 that Veteran happens at either levels 30 or 40). Anyway, within the first two minutes of the game the Vet (on the opposing side) scored four unassisted goals, his team-mate scored less than one hundred points for the entire match, he over one thousand. Frankly, I was a little gobsmacked but we managed to get it together and hold out the rest of the match without conceding though the thing that struck me was how the Vet was always thinking about how he could score, regardless of his position on the pitch. Where I would hit it up the side walls playing for territory he would attempt a shot, and many more than he scored came close. 0-4. The second match started and we went 1-0 up, 2-0 up, before dropping down to 2-3, another unassisted Hat-Trick for the Vet. Yay! It ended up at four all going in to overtime where I bundled in the ball for the win, nothing special but it felt so good! At this point the Vet left the lobby. 5-4. I haven't felt so good about playing an online game in a long time, going from a complete thrashing to winning in overtime! I love this game, it just keeps getting better and better. Instead of resorting to the same working tactics as I would normally do in an online game (recently Splatoon) Rocket League just keeps opening up into more advanced moves and tactics.

I don't think a TNT has happened since Ryan died in 2013 and Jeff has in the past said it won't ever return. I think the closest you get nowadays is when they happen to play an open online game on the Friday stream, like agar.io, or one of the Jackbox games in recent memory.

That update sounds pretty great. With the increased level cap and the additional stuff I have missed in past month I can definitely see myself getting back into this game.

Is it weird that watching good saves excites me more than good goals?

Playing a bunch of 2v2 matches in the last couple of days I can definitely see where people are getting smarter with regard to defensive awareness, looping back, clearances, and crosses etc, its getting so much more fun. You still get some people who race to the ball and sit under it falls on them but in 2v2 its so obvious when you make a mistake so people are usually pretty aware and apologize after a fault. I still really don't get that in 3v3 matches, there are too many people just racing in to everything and not understanding what they are doing poorly, its too easy to hide and blame teammates. The downside of 2v2 is that when someone is replaced by AI the match feels immediately irrelevant. If you are on the losing side with AI you blame the AI for the loss, and if you are on the losing side without the AI you blame it for being over powered in defeating you. Its bad for all parties. But the upside of 2v2 is that people stick around for a good half dozen matches at a time. For the first time in a long time I felt compelled to message another player on PSN after playing with them, I just had so much fun over the hour or so we played together. He was German and didn't have much English to type a reply but tried anyway, it was really cute.

I decided to try some 2v2 tonight and I think I have found the game I am looking for. The matches are much less chaotic, everyone has to think about defence and not just one poor guy (me) and you have to work for your chances more, not just appear in the goal mouth at the right time for a tap in. Even better is that people seem to hang around longer in that mode. I played for about a hour with the same three people this evening and had some excellent matches. I felt like I was able to communicate more without the chaos of the bigger match.

My love for this game is tumbling quite quickly after this weekend. My main problem is the way the points are disseminated. As a kid I played a lot of football and played mostly in goals or defense so I am inclined to play this game in the same way, but the game is crap at rewarding me for doing so. The detection of when I do things like clearances, saves, and centering the ball is really poor and because I naturally focus on these when it comes to the end of a game there is often a gulf in points rewarded between me and my teammates and that feels really crap. I think some of my disdain is coming off the bat of Splatoon which does an amazing job of rewarding players for different play styles and engaging in the busy work. I guess Rocket League actually is quite similar to real football then: The guy who gets the hat-trick gets the glory whereas the grunts in defense have to reassure themselves of their importance to the team. Unfortunately quantifying this through points makes me feel penalized by the game for playing the way I do as well as being unappreciated by teammates.

I am Rocket League's Lionel Messi.

I "finished" Batman Arkham Knight. I really didn't enjoy it early on, got into a groove somewhere in the middle but the last 5 hours or so way overdid it with the Batmobile and in Marvel movie style has about 6 different endings in the final third. It just kept...on...going. The parts are very well made but the sum of everything is a glut of nonsense and a far cry for the first game.

I haven't played the game in about 4/5 weeks and missed the Splatfest as I was away at the time. Other than more weapons and maps has there been anything added recently that warrant going back for? I loved the game for a few weeks but I kind of have that sick after eating too many sweets feeling.

I'm finally learning to like the Batmobile but I am still finding the game to have no focus at all. The switches to other characters during the story are really jarring, the stealth is underdeveloped, and the combat just doesn't feel that challenging anymore. I think the worst thing though is that the world, as pretty as it is, is a lot of wasted space. The main missions are structured around this as well requiring me to do a lot of hopping around, which is fine because the traversal and Batmobile control well but I find I'm flying over or driving through the city at brakeneck speeds from A to B and the side quest distractions the game offers up are just poor repetitive open world filler. This game reminds me a lot of L.A. Noire in its use of an open world.

2-3 hours in and not enjoying it at all yet. I feel like I'm used to the complexity of modern 3D games and how they control, but for the first time in a long time I am feeling overwhelmed by the amount of inputs on the controller, constantly hitting the wrong buttons. Every button does something in this game but I cant seem to internalize any of it. If I were an Arkham hoodlum I wouldn't be concerned at all, this Batman guy is one clumsy eejit.

Started the game this evening and wow, there is a lot going on in the screen. Lights, rain, lens flares, ruffling cape, lots of UI, pop-ups every few seconds, a bit more rain for good measure, crazy explosions of particles every time you destroy a tank, even more rain. Its all really pretty, I'm sure the effects and UI folks had a lot of fun making it but all put together I'm finding it really distracting. I also thought the beginning of the game was terrible. I guess they were trying to show "patient zero" at the first attack but it really didn't work for me. Forcing the start of the game to be the first person camera (not used after this point) of a random character (whom I will assume has no relevance past this opening) feels like a really weird attempt at simulating the way a film would have a cold open, then cut to news reel, then cut to hero starting his quest. It just kind of feels disorienting in a game though. And the bit with The Joker right at the beginning made me uncomfortable, which may have been the intention, but really its just more off-putting to me.

The stealth portions were actually my favorite parts of Asylum, its a shame that they were never really developed further after that as seemingly everyone loved the combat system, so that got most of the attention in City. Now you get a car! And that's fine...I guess but I would have loved more iteration of the stealth, which this game doesn't seem to be. Question for anyone playing this: What is the structure of the open world like? In the first two games it was mainly used as a hub for getting to your story missions, which involved you going into a building for a ~1 hour story section. I actually really liked that in Asylum, the story missions felt authored and controlled but they still had the open world for a bit of adventure and side stuff. Does it feel like this or are more sections of the game dependent on going back-and-forth in the open world?

Will probably pick this up on PS4 at some point but I'm interested to see what happens with the PC version. This could be the first big title to have a mass of players requesting refunds on Steam if it is as bad as it sounds.

Haven't touched the game since before last week. Often happens when E3 comes around, suddenly everything I was playing looks really old. Kind of curious to see if anything new brings me back in. It'd probably have to be a big update rather than the current trickle of content.

I tend to treat them more like radio nowadays, dip in and out over the course of the podcast, especially when I'm working. The Bombcast replaced Weekend Confirmed for me, I like it but miss the production Garnett Lee did on Weekend Confirmed. That was still quite long at 2 hours though.

I played on PC-only for a couple of years before getting my PS4 at the end of last year. PCs are great, I like Steam but I don't love playing all my games sitting upright at a desk (even with a controller), which is what I was doing. I needed somewhere separate from where I work to play games. Steam streaming is an interesting solution to that problem but no sufficient solution existed for me at the end of last year, so I bought a PS4. I still play a bunch on PC, but its reserved to "work-type" games that require a mouse and keyboard (Cities: Skylines recently), or games that aren't on PS4 (Dirt Rally, The Talos Principle recently).

Not dismissive at all! I'm excited for more Ratchet (and Uncharted for that matter) and I really like my PS4, I'm just saying that sequels and remakes from previous generations will always be less exciting to me than something new.

PS4 has been pretty shit for exclusive games but the promise of something new (and hopefully weird) from Guerrilla, Media Molecule, and their Japan studios next year is infinitely more exiting than more Gears (the start of a new trilogy apparently), more Halo (part two in a new trilogy), and more Forza (which has now been annualized). Yeah, there's another Uncharted, and another Ratchet but Playstation first party seem to finally be focusing on new stuff.

There are conflicting reports on this. Its seems its not quite like getting a full game then free DLC: So the game is download only, with seemingly not very many missions (but feature complete) at launch but then more free content throughout next year. It seems similar to the way Splatoon is set-up.

Don't get me wrong, Tom Clancy isn't exactly high brow but I think the thing that put me off MGS1 after a few hours are the weird tonal shifts between super serious and things like snake chatting up every girl on the other end of his radio, its weird. Maybe its a game of its time, and maybe if I don't like those shifts I'll never "get" Metal Gear but I kind of want to get it, because people like you describe it as "the wildest, most emotional, character-driven series of game plots ever". It sounds awesome when you put it like that, I wanna love it!

The Legacy Collection does indeed have Peace Walker though I didn't really know that was considered part of the main series, thought it was just a little PSP spin-off, I'll maybe take a look. When they played the demo for MGS1 on some stream, that was the impetuous for me buying the Legacy Collection. It interested me and I was going to play along, but that didn't pan out. I could watch their series, I like GiantBomb's stuff but there is still something about watching a full let's play for a game (especially one sitting on my shelf) that I'm not quite into. Though maybe I'm just taking it a little too seriously. After playing ~3 hours of MGS1 last summer the series tonally seems to lean more towards weird anime bullshit than a Tom Clancy novel, which is kind of what I was expecting.

Watching the latest gameplay makes me really want to play this game, but I have never completed any of the others in the series despite owning the legacy collection for nearly a year. I played a few hours of MGS1 but dropped off from there. Looking at the series chronology it seems that Snake Eater is the only main series game that precedes The Phantom Pain and Ground Zeroes (which I own through PS+). Is there any merit to just playing MGS3 before jumping into MGS5? There isn't a hope in hell of me playing all the other games as well before September!