MyNameIsAtticus

Today's game is Halo Reach. Me and a friend were going to play Halo 2 but for some reason MCC on steam only downloaded Reach, so we played that instead. We found a pair of forklifts and while the NPCs handled the fighting we drove them around and crashed into eachother. You can see the battle above taking place. finally after a while we progressed through the mission.

The whole game gives me kind of skyrim vibes, and also Half Life 2. I think it's the car and the highway like infrastructure remind me of HL2 and the environment reminding me of Skyrim. There's a lot of snow everywhere and there were even some glaciers we drove past.

The game also gave me a great chance to test out my new gaming rig. I am proud to say it handled it at 4k, at max settings at a stable 60 fps. I was going to push for 120 but for some reason i guess my monitor can't do that despite me being 100% sure it could. I even had it hooked up via DP.

The game is really pretty. I really liked this mountain region. It reminded me of Far Cry 4, with all those high up peaks and things you could climb. That game was also really pretty when i played through it.

Overall i really like reach. The powerup system has been fun to play with and it looks really pretty. After Halo 2 i might go back and finish it.

Today's game is No Man's Sky. It recently got a new update with some really cool features. One of these is oceans that are cool as hell and super fucking deep. Me and My friend spent all evening searching for one of these. The main screenshot is the result of this. I found this weird tentacle thing. It apparently lives on a diet of fresh stalks of plants and they are very friendly. I wanted to tame one but i didn't have enough Nanites for another pet slot and couldn't bear to part with my beloved Orbo The Rotund (a big glorious sphere i found).

One of the best planets I found in my search was this one. The surface was kind of plain, but up in the air it was gorgeous. It had a sort of nebula thing going on at night that I would kill for.

Neighboring it was this awesome noxious planet with tons of dangerous plants and these cool but weird palm fan plants that would thrust up and down.

finally, after all my searching though. And in one last ditch effort after my friend got off for the night, i hopped over three galaxies (which also took me 200 LY closer to the center of the galaxy) and found this planet. It's covered head to toe in violent ice storms and lightning. And the waves were really violent. There was even a few times i wondered if it would swallow up my ship.

It was really pretty to see though, because one part of this new update, is that ships interact with waves (which are also a new feature). So I got to see this awesome effect of my Ship dragging waves behind it. I couldn’t really capture it in a photo, but I was able to capture a photo of the waves up above to give an idea of what they looked like. I think I want build a Base here because it is pretty.

All the parts for my fancy gaming PC except my SSD got here today. It will be arriving tomorrow but i'm impatient. So i decided to slap a 2.5 HDD in there that i think was either harvested from an iPod Classic or my old PS3 Super Slim and try it out with Lego Star Wars TCS. It wasn't really a benchmark (it wouldnt work well with this game anyways with how old it is lol), but i wanted to play with it a bit. Overall, it performed how i expected it too. 60 fps (i cant get it to output to 120 for some reason despite my display supporting it), and 4k. Honestly the HDD was a bottleneck in scenes where it needed to load in assets, as it would stutter then.

The water in this game is very charming. there's something about just being a slightly opaque 2D image that is really mesmerizing to me. I think it's because of a level in Lego Star Wars 3 that it reminds me of. Speaking of Lego Star Wars 3, TCS gave me flashbacks to it. I never really played TCS growing up. I was always more of a Lego Star Wars 3 person.

Maybe it was just because it was late at night, but it gave me vivid memories of staying up with my sister and drinking Jones Soda while trying to 100% Lego Star Wars 3.

while playing this i also noticed that personally, the first level is the closest i feel like a lego game has looked to being made out of legos (excluding bonus levels). The patterns on the bricks have that same kind of rough patterns that legos do.

I had a lot of fun experiencing this game for the first time. Hopefully tomorrow my m.2 SSD arrives, because i have more than a few large titles i want to break in this system with. i think after it arrives i'll retire the 250 gb HDD to being used to store ROM backups to emulate. I'd love to have the storage space to keep a larger collection than what my Steam Deck allowed.

Today's game is Uncharted 1. I played through some more of this after finishing LittleBigPlanet 2 yesterday. I actually found myself booting LBP 2 up out of habit.

I made it through another good few chapters of the story and stopped at around chapter 12 due to the time. While playing through this I noticed a lot of it felt similar to the 4th one. From the setting of an abandoned city on an island, to the involvement of pirates. I don't know if it was intentional but it was really cool to notice. Almost kind of like things came full circle.

a good chunk of the chapters revolved around this bay. As pretty as it is, I can't say I'm sad to see it go. The fights in this one were brutal and I felt like enemies were shooting me through surfaces. I think I definitely took 4's Stealth and Melee combat mechanics for granted because this one can be ruthless sometimes (but very satisfying to pull of a good run of combat).

While going up stream and dodging some explosive barrels that some lunatic keeps tossing in the river, I came across this beautiful waterfall. I don't know what it is but something about waterfalls has always been interesting to me. They've always been kind of mesmerizing in a way.

There was also a second one that I drove past, but wasn't able to get a good picture of due to the stream actively pushing me away. You'll have to take my word for it that it was pretty.

I feel like overall I'm progressing through this one way faster, it may just be me though. Something I noticed while playing is that all the characters have kind of oily looking skin, and that got me wondering what it might have looked like on a CRT. I know they have a sort of natural AA effect, so I'm wondering if it might look better for me if I break one out. Though, I suppose in the end all the screenshots will come out looking the same lol.

Today’s game is LittleBigPlanet2. I beat the main story today and I even went back and Aced (beat a level without dying) the entirety of the first World. After beating the main boss I went ahead and played some more community levels. This screenshot is from a one made entirely of Cheese. I think this funky looking thing is supposed to be a mouse? I don’t really know what it is but it creeped me out kind of.

I also did a level where I had to climb a mountain. It was fun, though I think it was either a bit busted or I’m missing something because to had to spam the grappling hook to ascend it. The dogs were chilling right outside the base of the mountain. I ran past them quite a few times trying to figure out where to go.

I also got these two while (trying) to ace a level in the Factory of tomorrow. The whole level is one of my favorite areas with the music and design. Plus Clive Handforth was one of my favorite characters in the game growing up:

After this I think I’ll let LittleBigPlanet 2 take a backseat. I might pop in for some community levels and I eventually want to clear the Level Packs too, but I want to clear the other two games I started first on my PS3 before I start another game.

I have spent all day flip flopping from Uncharted (what the screenshot is of), to LittleBigPlanet 2, and Ghostbusters. I ended up settling on Uncharted. It's nice to be able to play the first one again. There's a lot I don't remember from my first play through. It's also way harder than I remember. I think a lot of these can be chalked up to the time gap and the fact that I played on the Nathan Drake Collection on PS4 instead of the Original. It's still the same old uncharted I know and love though. The platforming feels a bit more challenging then what I'm used too though. Specifically this part:

There were these vines and I had to time the jump right before I hit the peak of the swing in order to make the full distance. it took me way longer than I'd like to admit to figure that out.

Shortly after this I got a wonderful sunset that I could watch. Maybe the real treasure was this gorgeous view?

After that, There was also a section with a turret in a water canal that I spent a bit running around trying to figure out where to go. turns out I had to run into it's fire and climb a ledge to get a grenade and chuck it at the guy. As confusing as it was, it was a pretty section:

Shortly after it there was this room that had a gun fight, then I had to parkour and use some pulleys to raise the water level. The whole thing gave me OoT water temple vibes. it was a lot of fun:

Today's game is Ghostbuster's the Video Game (and is in fact not a sponsorship from Doritos). I've had this game on disk after getting it a yard sale (which as a side note is such a fun way of finding games. If you collect retro games I'd highly recommend looking for them. It makes me a bit sad that physical games have been dying). It also got it along with a Japanese copy of Okami, Mortal Kombat, and the God of War collection all for around $10. Since I got my PS3, and I'm still waiting on my PC parts before playing anymore PC games. I'm just waiting on my Motherboard. My CPU arrived today. it's used (but was promised to work), and a few pins were bent it seems, not too badly though. I'm going to try it, and if it doesn't work seek a refund. fingers crossed it works though. I'm really excited to put this thing together. I'd really like to christen this PC with Alan Wake II as that was the target game. It would only seem appropriate.

Moving back to the game, I took this screenshot in the lobby of the first level. The Dorito advertisement caught me by surprise, but it's also kind of fun. I find a sort of joy in the era of video games with odd product placement. Alan Wake had it with its Energizer and Verizion ads and it was fun to see (for me personally, it also made the world feel a bit more realistic too. That's not to say it's a bad thing the practice was stopped or anything though.) Looking it up, this design looks to be accurate the design used in there time the game is supposed to take place in (1991 I think?). It's a really cool detail.

The game looks really good in some spots. It has full on reflections in some places, such as the hotel. It looked surprisingly good, though I don't know if it was my PS3 just needing the thermal Paste/Pads replaced (it runs at around 70º in game, which sounds healthy, especially for it's age) or the game was just that intensive, but my PS3 kept randomly starting to ramp the fans up to max and it sounded like a jet engine.

I also had this humorous bug in a room where I broke a table but the glasses were floating. I like to imagine it's the work of a ghost.

This game also, surprisingly, had water for me to rate. Rating water in video games is something I love doing. The game has a section where a torrent of water comes rushing at you. I give this spectral water a solid 7.5/10. I would be willing to drink it.

After it floods though, I probably wouldn't be willing to drink it. Still, it looks pretty and is still a 7.5/10 for me:

While exploring the station, I also found the Painting from the second film. I say "found" but really it's in plain sight. I just walked past it like 12 times while exploring:

Furthermore, it felt like the station was really fleshed out. It had a lot of pieces of artwork and things that made it really just feel like it was lived in, like these drawings of slime:

or this thank you board-note-thingy(?) from a class:

There was also this back alley you can see from a window that gave me heavy Max Payne flashbacks. it looks like an area that would be in the game:

Overall it's a really interesting game. I don't know much about it, I have heard it's kind of short though. I also heard there's a multiplayer mode, though idk if the servers are still up on PS3. There's the remaster, but last I heard they scrapped multiplayer which was disappointing, but the single player is really fun, especially if you were raised on Ghostbusters religiously like I was growing up lol.

This is McFlurry (we call him Flurry for short though). We call him this because we found him in a McDonald’s parking lot with a McFlurry lid stuck on his head. His favorite activities include play fighting with his roommate Link, laying on his back like in the picture, and playing with a string toy I have strung up for him

I backed up my copy of Little Big Planet Karting and played that along with 2 today. Ive been so in love with my PS3 that my Steam Deck hasn’t been turned on the past few days. I’ve been playing through 2 and booted up an online map I played through. There was this one, which was like an Alice in Wonderland thing. It was trippy. I had to grab this caterpillar to move around the map.

Looking at this screenshot I didn’t realize how good LittleBigPlanet’s reflections were.

I also did this map where I was on a train that was getting blown up and I had to last as long as possible without getting blown up or bucked off. I played it a few times just because there was a section where the train would just jump in the air and send Sackboy flying.

I also did this fun Bowling recreation. I don’t know how the guy did it but he got a full version of the Wii Sports Bowling theme in there. It was really cool to hear (and fun to play as well). I took this section of Sackboy looking pissed off while getting ready for some hardcore bowling action.

Finally, I have been using Sackboy to make fun reaction images too. Currently this one is my PFP on LittleBigRefresh and Discord.

Being able to relive this nostalgia is nice, it does make me wish Sony would make a PC port or at least give LittleBigPlanet itself another shot though.

I continued to break my CFW PS3 Slim in today with LittleBigPlanet 2 (and a little bit of Uncharted). I bought it completely on a whim but I love this thing. For only $90 it’s a powerhouse. I connected to my Jellyfin server with it and used it to stream a movie today, and I installed LittleBigRefresh to reconnect to some online servers and even popped into a public game with someone. It’s so much fun being able to play online again after the servers shut down. My only complaint is that all the Applications it came with fill up my home screen, I’d much rather if it had its own bar on XMB.

I have a friend I setup on RPCS3 with LBP2, I need to see if I can somehow set it up where we both can play together. I don’t know if it’s possible though due to LittleBigRefresh not having its own friend system from what I can tell.

I went through the entire first world, and started on the second one. I only just figured out there was a fancy photo mode though at the very end after I was shutting it off for the day (that’s what the main picture is of).

I had forgotten how good the game looked. It’s really simple but it’s a really good looking PS3 game.

I didn’t get many screenshots of LBP2 due to not realizing there was a photo tool until way later. But I did grab some of Uncharted 1 in all its 480p glory, so I’m going to share those with it. I have to say, it looks really good in some places for an early PS3 game.

Namely the Waterful in the above picture. The Water in this game is really pretty. Idk if it’s because I first played it on PS4 or if I just remember wrong but I really like the water. It’s one of my favorite next to OOT and Mario Galaxy’s.

I also got this picture of the sunset(?) as I was leaving the U-Boat. It was a surprisingly good picture, especially considering how oily everyone’s faces look in the game.

Right now I have the PS3 backing up my copy of LittleBigPlanet Karting. I might play a bit of that tomorrow and maybe try my Japanese version of Okami, or maybe my Genesis Collection copy too. I wish I knew where my copy of assassin’s creed Black Flag and Rogue went. I have them on Steam but I’d love to have my PS3 copies backed up due to the sentimental value behind them (and also for preservation).

I got a new PS3 I've been waiting on for a week in the mail today. I installed CFW on it and decided to break it in with my Childhood copy of Minecraft PS3 edition while I had LittleBigPlanet 2 installing. I grew up on Xbox 360 edition for half of my childhood, but PS3 edition was what kept me hooked for most of the later half of my childhood. I booted into the tutorial world and just ran around in it reliving my childhood. My first stop was the Chest with the Flame bow:

after this I went by the hotel area to check it out (I built the iron golem too, which will be relevant later). Growing up I had memories of this area because a creeper spawned on the lip on the back and blew me up when I went to sleep:

Leaving the main castle, I went out towards the village and found this guy just chilling in the field like he belonged there:

Moving past him wrapped back around too the Animal Pens to swipe some food and snapped a picture of the wolves:

After that night started to fall and I went back, and found the iron Golem chilling on the roof like a Brahmin from Fallout 4:

After stopping by the Hotel on more time to sleep, I did one last lap around and got these screenshots before calling it quits for the night:

I picked up Slime Rancher 2 along with the Entire Assassin's Creed Bundle (it was only $70 for me, so why not?) today. I wanted to give it a try after first playing the earliest version on Xbox Cloud Gaming. I have to say, this one feels a lot more forgiving. I feel like i'm drowning in Chickens within days. For context this is my Stony Hen Coop after a day:

I also kept getting a ton of the rare slimes in the game. I saw two golden slimes in the 2 hours i played and the lucky slime too:

This game has a new weather system which I really like. I had a twister spawn in and some Dervish slimes showed up. That's what the main screenshot is of. A dervish slim popped up right as Lightning Struck. I'm hoping there will be new Weather specific slimes, because i love the idea of them being specific to certain weather types.

I also have been collecting the tabby slimes (my favorites), i have 4 right now and an exclusive coop for them:

On top of that i made most of my fortune so far from cotton slimes. They've been really easy to keep fed which is nice. I have a garden that produces their favorite vegetable. I get about 25 a harvest:

Overall i'm really liking this one. It feels like a much more refined version of the first one. I'm really excited to see where this goes during the final release (whenever that is)