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Post by Ex on Nov 28, 2021 0:58:02 GMT -5
December's theme is very simple and wide open. The theme is just "PlayStation Games". By that we mean, games which appeared on the original PlayStation (AKA PS1, AKA PSX). Yep that's it. So play whatever genre or game you like, insofar as it's a PlayStation title. The PlayStation appeared in 1994 and was supported by Sony until 2006. In its 12 years of official support, the PlayStation managed to accrue an incredibly huge and varied library. There's literally something for everybody and every taste on this highly influential, ground breaking platform. The sheer breadth of the library can be intimidating, so if you want recommendations, just let us know.
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 28, 2021 22:44:03 GMT -5
Put an hour or so into Shadow Tower the other day as I mentioned in the general Now Playing thread. Seems pretty solid but coming off Abyss, I'm not sure if I'll stick with it for now.
Sampled some of Tenchu and messed with the tutorial mission. Not sure what to make of it yet. Not being able to invert the Y-Axis in old 5th-6th gen 3D games is becoming one of my biggest pet peeves. I guess I just got over this as a kid, but somewhere around the Goldeneye/Halo era is probably when I mainly played inverted. Or heck, maybe also from playing Half-Life 1 on a flight stick too... at least I can maybe figure out a solution with emulation, but this is such a crazy oversight from the olden days. Some games will even mess with the X-Axis and not let you configure that either.
Beat the first level of Tomb Raider II and it seems awesome. You can officially save anywhere indefinitely in this one even on PSX. So I'll probably just slap down save states. I wonder if this will alter my perception of TR2 vs TR1, because I played TR1 on actual hardware and there were only a few save crystals per level. This will change the experience a lot.
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Post by Sarge on Nov 28, 2021 22:51:32 GMT -5
That's part of the reason I'd like to play on the PC version for the first. I have to wonder if they implemented it in the second game if they'd originally hoped to have save-anywhere in the first one.
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 28, 2021 22:59:22 GMT -5
It's back to "Save Crystals" in TR3 on PSX. I think you can use them anywhere you want unlike the set placement in TR1. But you can also save anywhere indefinitely in TR3 PC. It makes no sense to me across all the ports and stuff, so I'll just say I have big E-pen points for beating PSX TR1.
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Post by toei on Nov 29, 2021 0:58:22 GMT -5
Sampled some of Tenchu and messed with the tutorial mission. Not sure what to make of it yet. Not being able to invert the Y-Axis in old 5th-6th gen 3D games is becoming one of my biggest pet peeves. I guess I just got over this as a kid, but somewhere around the Goldeneye/Halo era is probably when I mainly played inverted. Or heck, maybe also from playing Half-Life 1 on a flight stick too... at least I can maybe figure out a solution with emulation, but this is such a crazy oversight from the olden days. Some games will even mess with the X-Axis and not let you configure that either.
I see you talk about that lately but I literally don't know what you mean or why you would want to invert anything in Tenchu. As for me, I won't have as much time for about two weeks, then the third week of December is when I should be able to get through a decent-sized PSX game. The three main candidates for me right now are Racing Lagoon, Tomb Raider and Tenchu 2.
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 29, 2021 10:07:25 GMT -5
Like flight controls I prefer pushing down on a joystick to look up, then vice versa to look down. Simple as that. When you've been playing 3D videogames like this for 20 some years, it's kind of what you know. So when I go back to old games or whatever that don't let you customize this, of course anyone would get annoyed.
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Post by Ex on Nov 29, 2021 10:20:13 GMT -5
Xeogred You can change the analog sticks' X/Y axis orientations in DuckStation: - I picked out a bunch of shorter PlayStation games for this theme. Between intending to main Dark Souls and all the vacation/holiday stuff this month (December I mean), it's not a good time for me to play PS1 JRPGs. Although I'm open to a PS1 JRPG month in 2022.
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 29, 2021 23:50:37 GMT -5
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4 / 17 - levels into TR2 so far and having a blast. I loved the first one enough and TR2 is still another fan favorite, so I always had a hunch this would be a safe bet enjoyable run. I don't think saving anywhere is changing my opinion in any way with this experience but no doubt it's speeding things up. That said, level 2-3 were both 43 minutes for me and level 4 was a 1h11m monster and this is just in game time. First level took me 15 minutes, so I've probably spent more like 5-6 hours on this so far. There's a lot of human enemies which can be impossible to dodge and you only have a few usable healing items you carry throughout the entire game, so it's kind of scary using them whenever. Kind of like Devil May Cry and stuff. You'll find more throughout the game or from killing enemies sometimes, but yeah. All more reason why the old TR's are kind of like survival horror games with limited resources haha. So I'll say the difficulty is pretty high but seems in line with the first game so far. I think it's TR3 that has a legacy for being really brutal. I wonder if I'll see a T-Rex or any supernatural stuff in this one...
One issue is that it can be extremely dark in spots. Google search this and you'll see it's a weird common issue brought up for the PSX versions of TR2-TR3. This game does have "Flares" it probably wants you to use, but then there's parts in water where you can't exactly do that and you can seriously almost not see a damn thing. Not exaggerating. So I wish I could find a way to bump up gamma in the emulator but I don't know if you can, nor do I want to mess with my monitor settings. Well I've been able to wing it so far but hopefully this isn't a weird roadblock at some point.
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Post by Ex on Nov 30, 2021 0:50:46 GMT -5
I wish I could find a way to bump up gamma in the emulator DuckStation has you covered, but it takes a few steps:
Go to Settings -> Post-Processing Settings -> Post-Processing Chain
Then you "Add" the shader you want. You could use "simple-gamma" or "simple-brightness", or combo them.
After you add the desired shader, then click on the name of the added shader in the Post Processing Chain box.
Once you click on the shader name, its corresponding settings will show up just below the Post Processing Chain box.
From there just adjust as desired, then hit the Close button to apply.
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 30, 2021 0:59:11 GMT -5
YES! Duckstation is the MVP. I'll give that a shot if I come across another absurdly dark area!
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