The Unchartered series have a similar feel to the Tomb Raider series - definitely recommend

My wife won a PS5 in a raffle. Is it any good? Are these things readily available? Trying to figure out if we should sell it or just give it to our 25 year old son for Christmas.

It'll sell quickly if you sell it, but probably not for more than MSRP. Last Christmas these were scalper's paradise, but this year not so much.

Agreed. Once black Friday hit this year, it looked like big suppliers had these things back in stock in huge quantities.

Cool, thanks for info. about the availability.

So far I'm enjoying "The Last of Us". I put off playing this game for a long time, because I read that weapons/supplies were scarce.
I like that I get a break from constant attacks,and I have a chance to look for items to increase my health and weapons . I just found the bow and arrow, which is great for stealth kills !

My daughter and buddy at work keep pressuring me to play it. I have a feeling the PS5 remaster is under the tree waiting for me lol.

Get:
the last of us parts 1 and 2
Whole uncharted series. Should come as a bundle except for part 4

I just got an email from Sony congratulating me for beating God Of War Ragnorok. Apparently I put in 91 hours in beating the game, but it was so fun and addicting. Some of the those mini-bosses had me raging, but all in all I really enjoyed the game. I love exploring and finding hidden areas and this game gives you so much even after the end credits with extra kudos given to the voice actors. Great series to play IMO and never gets old.

This is the first game in awhile I actually felt like I got my money's worth in terms of longevity of gameplay. Well done Sony Studios!

Play a recent Assassin's Creed. Valhalla took me all summer to finish, and then it just said, "Now that you've conquered England, go explore everything else you missed!" or words to that effect. And I was, like...um...no.

Good timing with the show coming out next month as well. Trailers for that looking fantastic.

I have played all the Uncharted series (I misprinted and typed Departed ) and it’s my all time favorite .I’ll definitely look into the Last of Us thank you .

Uncharted is also one of my faves...but you can't like that and not think the recent Tomb Raider games aren't among the best out there.

There's supposed to be an IJ game in the works. I hope they don't screw it up.

https://www.gamesradar.com/indiana-jones-game-bethesda-guide/

I really wish Sony would announce some big surprises for PSVR2.

I would recommend Odyssey over Valhalla myself. Much better game overall IMO.

I agree, simply based on reviews. I fell behind in the AC games due to lack of time. Now I'm doubling back to hit all the ones I didn't start and/or finish. Doing Black Flag and Rogue now because they're shorter, then I'll finish Origins and play all of Odyssey, and that'll set me up nicely for the new game at the end of next year.

I am not a big AC fan, but Odyssey was one of my favorite games ever. Make sure you play as Kassandra tho and not Alexios, she is a much better character.

It's not a PS exclusive or PSVR2 specifically but Walking Dead Retribution is coming out in a few days. Saints & Sinners was one of my favorite VR experiences last year.

I tried Odyseey on Game Pass, and just couldn't get into it. I played as Kassandra probably around 6 hrs. It was my first foray into the AC series and I just couldn't connect with the story or characters. The accents just didn't sound good and I think that was a huge turnoff for me.

No kidding , that makes 2 of us ! please do it justice .

Having Indy as Harrison Ford is a must, I doubt he’ll do the voice work but I could live with that. Wouldn’t be interested if they use a generic looking Indy.

PlayStation 5’s available right now.

https://direct.playstation.com/en-us/ps5

I'm really struggling with GOW Ragnarok, it was super excited at the start. I wanted to step back into the world, characters and combat. Sadly it turns into a slog, its just the same thing over and over. The same little battles open a couple of chest. It all just starts to feel pointless. I have enjoyed a couple of sections that open up and let you do some exploring but apart from that I am super disengaged. There just doesn't seem to be any consequence how did this become so bland, it feels like your standard Ubisoft fetch quest. The first GOW felt on par with Naughty Dog. I can't remember the last time I felt challenged, far more often I just find myself anoyed by the combat.

How far along are you? The side missions don’t seem to really open up until the halfway point

I have to be pretty far in, Loki is in Asgard. There were two areas that I could explore by boat for sets of armour that I rather enjoyed. The part with Atreus and the girl was when it really started to go downhill, it took forver to get through that and it just hasn't recovered since. Even the skill trees and upgrades have been super weak. In the first game I ran into things and got my ass kicked and knew I had to go find some upgrade and new stuff before I try that again. In this one there has been some areas that I can't reach but the combat is just routine. None of the perks or different variations seem to make any difference. I have never bothered to change anything because I haven't needed too. I think I am playing one up from normal on the difficulty. It's not a bad game by any means but it just feels average.

That’s about the point it opened up for me, I’ve spent the last 10 hours or so doing side missions. The Berserkers are great battles.

Agreed, once you get to the crater there is a lot to do. I'm about 55 hours in a while it's not exactly the same "i can't stop playing and I've only had 3 hours of sleep" like the original, I think it's a great continuation of the story with some interesting twists and turns.

I played Gotham Knights...it was nice being back in the Gotham City universe... I really liked the Arkham games back in the day, but this game isn't as deep honestly, or have all the crazy side missions that Arkham Knight had.

Also started playing Calisto Protocol...it's a sort of space horror shooter game. It's very hard honestly, kind of surprised....not my usual sort of game, but it's interesting.

Callisto Protocol in a good game and graphically is one of the best on the PS5 now. I'm a HUGE Dead Space fan and this game satisfies my itch, but for some reason it's just missing something. I think my main complaint is the game is waaaayyyy too short, especially after playing GOW Ragnorok. I was hoping for a longer game, especially after the price hike. The game is really not that scary and relied more on jump scares than anything else. Never felt the dread of a creature stalking me like I felt with the Alien xenomorph in Alien Isolation or the Tyrant creature in the RE series.

The game is hard to me and I had to level down my challenge to easy. I wouldn't have done it, but most of the combat relies on you to dodge the hits and I couldn't get use to making the move. When I played the game for the second time thinking I got it down....NOPE....the enemies still got me. Word of advice. Level up the riot gun and purchase a lot of it's ammo. Love the shotgun blasts and the extra BOOM you get when you hit the R1 button while firing the gun. It acts like a 4 shell blast when you press the trigger and goes thru the ammo fast, but it will put the hurt on any of the boss characters. I tried the other weapons who had the same feature, but the riot gun shotgun is by far the best.

It was a good purchase and I did enjoy playing the game and glad it's in my collection. This game, along with God of War:Ragnorok kept me away from my pinball tables. Can't wait until the Dead Space remake comes out next month. Already ordered the special edition version of the game with steelbook and Isaac helmet.

Anyone else find god of war to be super difficult? I'm not a huge gamer but I'm getting pretty frustrated at the difficulty of the enemies and I have it on normal mode or whatever the standard difficulty level is. I can't imagine playing it on hardcore or whatever the mode is. I will say I love the controls on the game. It is one of the first games where I really enjoy fighting the enemies even though they kick my ass so many times.

Yes. I mentioned that above ^^^. Even on normal it's a pain in the ass.

I just came out of Elden ring, so actually found it pretty easy since I was so used to dodging just about everything that came at me. I also did a ton of side missions and many chests for the first 3/4 of the game, so that helps a lot. If found the easiest way to play is just continue to hit square while fighting with the axe, and also tie stun//binding arrows to your helper. Also, it took me many fights to figure out those extra life bars that are a different color mean to fight with a weapon of opposite color.

Like an earlier post says, it did become a bit monotonous, so just flew through the main missions towards the end of the game to finish it up. The main boss is a bit of a let down since so many other fights are large and impressive. I do like the after-game missions, though, and some of those berserkers are a nightmare.

Timing the block with the shield was critical for me getting over the hump. It leaves enemies open for massive attacks. Good defense is critical early on, roll away early and often.

Was just going to say, after coming from Elden Ring and dodge rolling everything, I had to get used to incorporating the Parry into my defense scheme. It's super satisfying when you nail it and hear the "Ding!" Also the visual indicator helps. ER didn't have that, but now it makes me want to go back into ER and Parry everything...only to be humbled back into dodge rolling again lol

This is probably what I'm missing. I know I was getting crushed in Rachet and Clank until I realized the trick is to just constantly move while attacking. I'll try this.

I gave up on Gotham Knight, it's a Batman game without Batman and any of his great skills that made them so much fun to play. There's really not much to do and exploring Gotham with that motorcycle is painfully tedious.

Yeah I think Elden Ring that just raised the bar, after that GOW hasn't posed much of a problem. I use the parry shield and I'm constantly dodging. I know for me the one thing that makes the difference is I never leave anything alive, once I hit you I finish you and then move on. With the tight camera if you leave anyone alive they end up behind you or overwhelming you and you get stuck in animation loops. Before your reaction animation from getting hit completes your getting hit by someone else and you end up dead. I do search and open every chest as I go so that could make you a little OP compared to if your just following the main story.

I haven't played the Assassins Creed games since PS3 and I remember finding riding the horse to be extremely boring. Outside of that I really enjoyed the gameplay but gave up on the series due to the horse riding. Are the newer ones worth checking out? If so, which ones?

You can open up fast travel via the map in different areas. Also, if you play Nightwing...eventually you can fly around with a drone...makes getting around much better. But yeah, just going everywhere via the motorcycle would take forever.

I had Mortal Shell in my digital library as a ps+ game from some point. It's not that great looking on ps5, but an interesting take on a soulslike. You switch between a few different bodies and can upgrade a few skills for each. The few available weapons are upgradeable.

An interesting ability your character has is the ability to harden. This ability has a cooldown timer before you can use it again. When you harden, you freeze in the middle of whatever action you're doing. You can sustain it until you are struck or voluntarily come out of it. So an enemy or boss is far away, but approaching and you can start a powerful attack and harden in the middle of it. The enemy closes in, strikes you out of it, you take no damage and your attack resumes, doing its full damage. It's an interesting way to anticipate a future defensive and offensive move.

Once I got the hang of it, it has ended up not being very difficult. I'm at what I think is the last boss and the difficulty for that one really spiked from everything that came before. Haven't beaten it yet, but it's a relatively short game.

Yeah, I need to try Mortal Shell again. Didn't really grab me the first time I tried it.

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Getting close to 100% completion on GoW:Ragnarok, looking for my next game, Ghost of Tsushima and Elden Ring are on my short list. Any thoughts or other suggestions?

Both are great, Elden Ring is amazing the only thing to consider with it is, it is digital crack and don't be surprised losing and insane amount of time to it. Elden Ring is one of those games that sucks you in and you look at the clock and are ashamed how long its been since you moved. Ghost is a great game I loved every minute of it as well but it didn't have that same addictive quality.

P.S. Gna and the Beserker King are some straight up bullshit.

Haha, you have to almost be perfect to beat them assholes.

Elden Ring is the better game between the two gameplay-wise. Story/cinematic-wise, Ghost is more rich and more liken to GOW vs ER. ER is about exploring, building your character and finding all the goodies to allow you to overcome the next big fight (and getting better as a player as you die and die and die). Ghost is more about story progression. A lot of the "side" things in Ghost were pretty pointless for me after a certain point. In ER, it feels like it's never-ending and just goes and goes and goes, but it ultimately has a purpose.

I've sunk more gameplay time in ER than I have for any other game, and after finishing GOW, and it being nearly a year, I'm itching to go back in on my current NG+ file and play it "as new".

Don't get me wrong, Ghost is still a great game, but ER is a masterpiece.

I posted a few pages back about my struggles and lack of enjoyment with Elden Ring. I ended up playing it a bit more, maybe 6-8 hours total, before deciding it wasn't worth it and sold my copy on Amazon. I'm probably not the target audience, I've had my PS5 for a year and only played that and Horizon Forbidden West. Not sure what to play next. I have a stack of about 10 unopened PS4 games I'll get to eventually. Tsushima was good though. Will probably try Ragnarok in a year when it gets down in the $20 range.

Not a new game, but I recently finished Days Gone and enjoyed it.

I just finished my third playthrough of Elden Ring tonight and honestly, this playthrough was the most fun so far. I did a Faith incantation build, which was very different from my first two runs both being melee (dex/strength). I have over 200 hours in the game now and I still found over a dozen areas I hadn't seen before in this run. Crazy.

The story is not in your face and you kind of have to work for it, but I am completely enamored with the lore and world. I have even been watching a lot of lore videos on YT and it is pretty incredible the amount of depth to the world and story. Every item, even down to the flowers you pick up have a specific meaning and purpose.

I need to make myself get in and play GoW:R, I like the game, but outside of the story the gameplay is so repetitive it is hard for me to keep my interest up. I am looking forward to the Horizon Forbidden West DLC coming out this spring.

Finished ragnorok. Loved it and I pretty much completed/collected everything except for half the berserkers, crucible, and the Valkyrie queen. I tried, but kept getting my ass kicked, even on easy mode. lol.

Think I’m going to start another play through of Grim Fandango for a change of pace.