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I need more hours in the day. 🫠

No pics as I haven't got my Switch to hand but: Inside: £1.69 Limbo: 89p I think I finished Limbo some time ago? Inside, I never got around to. But at those prices I'm more than happy to jump back into both.

JRPG season is back

Been looking forward to this all year

The boys are back in town

Loco Motive is a really well made homage to classic LucasArts style point&click games. I played the original game jam version which was great, this new retail version is bigger, has new art and is fully voice acted. Nodebuster is an addictive incremental game that I'm enjoying a lot for only £2.50

Dragon Quest, yo

^ great choice! got some n64 games off ebay/cex and a flash cart innit

Just saw a 1tb OLED Steamdeck for £570 so bought it

Leaving Gamepass soon so finally played it. 4 levels later I bought it, only £7 at the minute too. Seems really damn good.

Mandatory image sorry

My 20th anniversary joypad has developed stick drift, and I've been playing a lot of Black Ops 6 online. Amazon had pads on offer for £39.95 yesterday, so I treated myself to a new one in green.

Saw that this is getting sold for 15-20 bucks, so I decided to unwrap my full price release day copy and give it a go. Only played the first hour so far, which is the usual prologue/tutorial affair, pairing your player character up with her mentor while she explains both game features and a bit of the lore. I'm rather lost on the latter to be honest – the titular Unknown 9 are a group of knowledge keepers who fell victim to their own hubris or something, but the intro sequence only showed eight of them, so I predict a 'chosen one' plot twist at some point. The gameplay is probably best described as low-budget Last of Us/Uncharted hybrid without guns. You go through linear levels, do some easy-mode platforming and climbing and some areas are filled with enemy goons you then have to dispose of, either in hand-to-hand combat or stealth. The game seems to nudge you towards stealth, which I've been following so far. It's very by the books: tall grass makes you borderline invisible, you can take down enemies from behind, get a one-off chance to disappear again if you cross LOS. Where it tries to differentiate itself a little bit is through the player's supernatural powers, which allow her to use some sort of spirit world wallhack, affect pre-determined objects around the map or take control of an enemy for a short time, Geist-style. Conceptually it's all very cool, and I quite enjoy watching the takedown animation, which sees her pull out the soul of an enemy and knock it out, as she lacks the physical strength to do so with their material bodies. But in terms of how it plays you can tell that while this wants to align itself with the TLOU style, it only had a fraction of its budget to pull it off, and it shows (and feels). As mentioned, there's also combat, which seems more of a last resort if stealth should fail. So far it seems very basic, with one standard attack and one stronger attack activated by holding the same button. You can also use your special powers here, though, and there's a skill tree which I haven't looked at in detail yet, so maybe it'll be more open later on. So far I can see why this hasn't really lit the world on fire, because it's about as janky as your average Piranha Bytes game. Considering they went through the effort of hiring a proper actress for the main role (she's played by Anya Chalotra from the Witcher series), it's rather jarring how bad facial animations have turned out, with the protagonist in particular having severe dead-eye-syndrome. Visually it's also rather low-end and doesn't even run that well with a wonky 30fps target, though I might have to get back to this because I was playing it in its 'ready to play' state but not after the installation was fully complete. Didn't find any fidelity settings either, so I actually might have been playing the Xbox One build (speaking of: for such a small studio to be forced to build last-gen versions still is a bit nonsensical IMO). One really cool thing about this is its setting though. There's only so many dieselpunk games taking place in India out there and while I haven't seen too much of it yet, this might end up being its biggest strength. But yeah, really janky, low-budget stuff that was probably too ambitious for the amount of experience and money involved. I don't know if anyone here played Velvet Assassin on Xbox360 but it sort of reminds me of that game, in the sense that it's similarly janky and out-of-date compared to its contemporaries but wraps a stealth game into a somewhat unique package.

A couple of things from the sales Jedi Survivor was £16 from Smyths I've been after a new laptop for years and never justified it. My last one was basically used to rip cds, before it just stopped turning on at all earlier this year. It feels a bit of a waste buying something really powerful, given I have a desktop I sit at most days. However, it's pretty capable, enough so I can go and edit video in a coffee shop at the weekend, play something if I'm away from home or something, but it was £650 and is a really nice machine apart from the early impressions of Windows 11 Intel Core i5 - 12500H RTX 3050 16gb ram 1tb ssd The screen's nice, it's got a nice shell to it, 144hz with VRR. Ran Control with the RT on, Forza Horizon 5, and the less demanding Slitterhead ran really well

Got a PS5 digital for £309 from Argos 😊 With pay in 3 0% interest using klarna. Just need to pluck up the courage to pick it up now it’s so bloody cold.

Elder Ring shouldn't even be there...

I'd resisted the urge to double dip for far too long...😂

Weird they have a 7 year old who already played GTA... We have a 10 year old and he hasn't... Sounds to me like they can't parent well and are looking at others to help them do better rather than look at themselves 😅 Our son chooses not to engage with things rated higher than a 12 (we watch some 12 films together). As an example, he wants to watch My Hero Academy but it's a 15 and he's waiting for me to check it out for him beforehand, even though he's actually free to choose... I hate to say it but... I blame the parent(s) 😅 I am also FAR more worried about social media. This is designed to be influential and dangerous.

I will never tell anyone in the real world about Slitterhead because I am not saying that in public I've played an hour or so, and it's very tutorial heavy to start, if anyone does play this, get yourself a drink, get comfy, and only start it if you've got the time spare to pay attention The broad strokes version is that you're a spirit who can leap in to people's bodies to fight Slitterheads. Human's are brittle as fuck, and against stronger enemies we don't do a lot of damage. So, in combat you need to leap from body to body, as each time you do that human gets a stat boost for a few seconds, so they can take a bit more damage and deal a bit more damage. There's also special humans who kind of mutate a little when you control them, there are 'Rarities' and they the one I've encountered so far has Wolverine style blood claws. She also stays around, I'm controlling her most of the time, whereas previously I was leaping constantly because it's quicker than walking. The Rarity can also do things like super jump, so traversing gets easier, whereas prior, again, you'd have been jacking from one person to the next The main difficulty in the combat, besides it being a bit unreadable in terms of skills etc (this will improve as you get used to the game I think), is the parry system. I had it down ok when I was playing as standard humans, you hold to block, then at the right time tilt the right stick in the direction indicated to parry. Do this enough and you'll get bullet/witch time and be able to deal damage while the enemy is slowed I'm still getting used to it, and it is kind of hard going initially because it's just not as snappy and arcadey as I feel like it should be, it's not Bayonetta, but I am enjoying it. Special mention to the music which is genuinely really good

Why would that be a tin foil hat thing?... of course Sony want people to go digital.

That is '1000 times resist', according to one of the creators I think. I put this on hiatus a week or so back, but wanted to write down my thoughts on the first half anyway. I think some of us have this on our backlog It is a sort of 'walking sim' type deal set in a very Yoko Taro-coded version of the future. A mass extinction event occurred, aliens invaded and spread a virus. The game jumps back and forth through time via a sort of memory technology called 'communion'. You're playing as this character called 'Watcher' and you live in this enclosed, somewhat infantilised sisterhood where everyone's names is their role. Nobody can ever take off their mask. There's a sort of COVID allegory to some of it, but also as the name suggests there's a theme of resistance and cycles which gets into slightly more interesting real world allegories, which I'll leave out here but they're mentioned in reviews if you're curious. Put in simple terms, it's an interesting sci fi story with lots of overlapping layers that develop its themes in interesting ways and are successful at generating empathy for their characters. Playing the game is a real struggle though, which is why I put it on break. You just talk to people in it, and you navigate these really confusing environments. It all sort of looks a bit like a second life level, or a custom map from VR chat or something like that. In a way the aesthetic is kinda refreshing or maybe nostalgic if you've ever played F2P MMOs from the noughties or something. The game does find some neat tricks with perspective, how it changes camera angles from third person free form to first person to fixed angles, trying to inject things with a cinematic flair. But it is a bit like doing the fetch quests in FFXIV or FFXVI and having being a bit traumatised by that design it makes it very hard to recommend. You'll see a few articles on some gaming sites praising the story, like massive praise calling it the greatest of all time. I'm not on that level with it, but I do think it's doing something interesting but in a way that's kind of draining to interact with, personally speaking. So I'm very mixed on it, but I'll probably try to see through the second half over Christmas. It seems like the kind of story where you can take an intermission cause of how it's structured

Started this a few days ago and love it so far. I actually played through the beginning twice because my first go I immediately said "no" to going to see the king, wandered around on my own for a bit, read a book that permanently changed my character's personality to a "tough-guy-that-will-never-get-smarter" or something. I wandered around the first island solo, eventually went back to see the king and (I know from playing this twice) he's dialogue changed and mentioned "You finally decided to turn up" or something. With that I started a new save and went and saw him straight away and didn't read the book. It's hard to tell how much affect any of these decisions can change the game but even in the beginning it's possible to really play this in different ways and change your character's personality. If the outcomes are meaningfully different, I don't know, but it's interesting. I've now reached Romaria on save file 2 and have 3 books saved up. I've saved the game and when I play next I'm going to try them on my party members and see what happens One thing I've found disappointing with this game is that the party system is like DQ9 where you hire stock party members or create your own from a menu and that's who you play with. I like my JRPG's to actually have characters in them, opposed to stock cardboard cut-out's who follow you around and are basically mannequins. I've only played DQ 5, 8, 9 and 11 before and I thought this system was unique to DQ9. Bit disappointed it's in this one. Speaking of party members, though. One thing I have learned is that XP is shared between how many party members you have. On my first save I played for 1.5 hours and my guy was level 10. On my second save I'm closer to 3 hours and my characters are level 7-8. Makes me wonder if you could play this solo? As of now I went with Monster Wrangler, Thief and Healer. It's very easy so far and just put everyone on auto attack and haven't come close to danger even once (Normal difficulty). The graphics, dialogue and in particular the music are wonderful in this game. I'm playing on Switch handheld with headphones and the music is nice, classical and relaxing. The adventure is very whimsical and everyone is pleasantly quirky. The game looks amazing - however the Swich version can really chug in certain areas. I'd say 80% of the time it's fine with small slowdown. But I've been to a few places where god knows how hard the FPS is dropping. It doesn't make that big a of a difference most of the time. Just a shame when reaching a town, the camera tries to pan over it to show how glorious it is. But is so choppy it distracts from the scene So far I'm absolutely loving it, though. The ideal game for me right now where just relax, it plays itself, and enjoy the exploring, finding things*, the music and steady progress. *That's another thing I found on my second playthrough. When exploring the overworld always walk in to any standalone trees or rocks. They can be hidden areas with really good armour, weapons, seeds, etc

Today was a good day.

Here's the nominees Predicted 5 out of these 6, did not anticipate Le Monke game cause I feel it sort of fell out of people's minds a bit but there you go, shouldn't count out one of the biggest financial successes of the year like that Great to see Balatro on there, I'd guess it will come down to Astro or Metaphor in the end, or Erdtree could usurp expectations as an expansion winner Rest of the noms here, nothing for 1000xResist in is interesting when that's been such a highly praised game in that specific category. https://variety.com/2024/gaming/news/game-awards-nominations-list-2024-1236213137/

Seems a good deal, haven't seen this drop this low before. https://amzn.eu/d/04cCxPH

Leaving November 30 Conan Exiles (Cloud, Console, and PC) Coral Island (PC) Hello Neighbor 2 (Cloud, Console, and PC) Remnant: From The Ashes (Cloud, Console, and PC) Rollerdrome (Cloud, Console, and PC) Soccer Story (Cloud, Console, and PC) Spirit of the North (Cloud, Console, and PC) The Walking Dead: The Final Season (PC) While the Iron’s Hot (Cloud, Console, and PC)

This. I was too blinded by ‘woo X-Men in the MCU’ with the Disney merger at the time, but can see clear as day it was not a good idea and has made the movie industry worse.

The Nier Automata update drops on the 20th... A couple of good reasons to maybe replay this....

Somehow I was convinced radiofloyd played this when it came out in Japan and made a topic. I played it for about five hours over the weekend, which is roughly the length of the tutorial/prologue. Origins and VIII are the only Ys games I've played, so I'm not an expert on the matter. Chronologically this seems to take place almost at the very beginning of Adol's adventures (after 1 & 2 to be exact), but in classic fashion it's not really necessary to be aware of those other games. Characters hint at certain things early on, but it's very much self-contained otherwise. So in Nordics you end up in a very cartoonish, pop-culture version of northern Europe with Vikings Normans who have claimed the northern seas for their own. After some exposition and the game introducing major NPCs, stuff happens, magic happens, and you then sail around the archipelago with a young Norman princess, Karja, in tow. While the whole Norse/Viking theme has been a bit overdone in the west in recent years, it's nonetheless interesting and refreshing to see it through the anime/Japanese lens for a change. I'm definitely quite enjoying the setting, and Karja is a surprisingly likeable sidekick, a bit of a tsundere voiced in a very bratty tone, but with a reasonable side to her as well. I remember some people, myself included, being a bit disappointed when they announced it would only feature a party of two, but after experiencing the battle system for a bit I can see that any more would easily have overwhelmed the player. There's a couple of ways in which you can fight: the basic one is just running around as either Adol or Karja, attacking by yourself and letting the AI take over the other character. I find this relatively useful when engaging groups of smaller enemies, in a 'divide and conquer' kind of way, as the AI draws some aggro, too. While playing like that, however, you can always change to the other character by pressing a button, which happens instantly and also works mid-combo. There's not much use for that early on, but I can see maybe casting special attacks with longer durations and then immediately switching to keep the pressure on as an option when unlocked. There's a second Duo mode for combat which activates while holding the right trigger and it's here where it becomes a bit much to wrap your head around early on. In this mode, both characters are linked by a magic chain and can't move, but they can block and parry (with very forgiving timing) and attack in unison while also having access to a different set of special attacks fueled by their combined Mana pools (in a funny twist, you can also use these if one character can make up the cost with their mana bar in case the other doesn't have enough – no idea how the developers expect you to properly gauge all that mid fight while parrying and dodging). But all this is only the very baseline as the game keeps giving you tools upon tools in rather quick succession. Early on you unlock a grappling hook for traversal, but it can also be attached to enemies, you unlock launchers for air combos or a unique move activated by holding the attack button which lets Adol cast a burst of fire and Karja a pillar of ice, affecting certain elements in the area (plants, water etc.). And that's just the feature handed to you in the first 5 hours. I find it a bit overwhelming at the moment, but it's cool to see so much depth and potential – I did really liked VIII, but combat in that game mostly revolved around last-minute dodges and not much more. The other big part of the gameplay, outside the usual traversal and exploration, is naval combat, which I think is a first for the series. So far this feels like its weakest link, as the ship is rather unwieldy – but not in a physically realistic, but rather a 'that's an odd control scheme' kind of way. In the early game you have two options to attack, a long-range cannonball to slightly damage and stun ships, and a short-range barrage which does enormous amounts of damage. So you use A until you get close, use B to finish them off, rinse repeat. It does suggest a lot of upgrades to you ship which I'm hopeful will make these encounters more fun and engaging the further along you get, so I don't want to judge that aspect too harshly as of yet. It's not as immediately gripping as the ship combat in AC Black Flag for example though, just to set expectations. I'm playing it on Switch, and compared to VIII, which suffered from severe aliasing or IX with its wonky framerate (at least going by its demo), this feels like a more polished product all-around, with clean visuals and an almost rock-solid 30fps with good frame-timing. The downside of this is that a lot of objects and NPCs pop in very close to the character, which I'm not too bothered about, but not everyone is as forgiving. I suspect the PS5, or I guess even the PS4 version, to have none of these issues, but in any case there's a demo on every platform to check for yourself. As always, can't do screenshots on Switch anymore, so here's a Karja plushie:

Was a cool little place to spend a few hours, some good cabs. Some needed their buttons replacing. But nothing was at the poibt of being unplayable. Good way to spend a few hours.

I said this when they did their podcast officially talking about games going to PS. When asked what is a big selling point of Xbox they talk about cross play, cross save, play anywhere. But it’s only on select titles and not a blanket, dependable feature. This new marketing they have is bullshit. Trying to say all these devices are an Xbox, what they should say is all these devices can play Gamepass on the cloud But it doesn’t sound good and is again, not a great way to play most games The worst thing about all this Xbox marketing is that the Series X is a fantastic console. Not as good as the 360 (respective of that time) but it’s still awesome and fun to play on. Xbox has too many goals or shift strategy too quickly. They should just focus on the Xbox.

Surprised me how many games didn't go over to pc from my Xbox collection, especially with this play anywhere nonsense. I basically got tomb raider 2013, and psychonauts. Load of bollocks

Half Life 2 is 20 years old so now it's free https://store.steampowered.com/app/220/HalfLife_2/ They also updated some stuff, they did similar with HL1 when that reached a significant anniversary

Another Arcade trip planned this weekend. Going to Heart of Gaming in Croydon, not as big as Arcade club but still looks great

I won’t get deep in to it here but in the summer our account’s assistant was let go because she needed extra support for childcare and the company said no. And I was in between. Someone I work with everyday, and my manager who is saying we talked about it and just can’t do it. So she left. It sucks, I really liked her. I fought with our manager for her job and support. But what can you do. Sometimes it just doesn’t work I’m not full raging capitalist all hail the numbers. I think CEO’s of game companies get paid too much, are not penalised enough when making bad decisions, I hate seeing the creative teams get shafted and shuttered and coming back to MS, things like Tango just make me go what the fuck are you doing. I’m not trying to sit here and say swallow it and be grateful I am saying everyone, from bottom to top, their job is to make the business successful. Work satisfaction, employee care, all imo vital to that business success. But ultimately. It is for that success of the business. And speaking of trickle down hopefully people get pay rises out of it (like me, somehow…sitting here writing on the phone) But the business is just a thing that exists on paper and the bank. Even a business owner, their job it to own it and keep it afloat or expand it If they analyse it and say the answer for the next step of this company is to be acquired or make an acquisition, I’m not saying you have to like it, but I don’t see anything morally wrong with it

I heard they're buying the Job Centre as a support studio

I can understand not wanting your kids playing/watching something, and I can understand that despite your best efforts fearing it'll happen anyway. However, the world doesn't revolve around your child, something I think parents should be told more often if I'm being honest, and nor should it revolve around children. Do your best, that's all you can do, no matter what age they are when they get in to violent games, films and tv, smoking, drinking, sex, whatever, you're always going to think it's too young because they're your kid. Banning something like GTA is just stupid, even if I do think there's a conversation to be had about society's glamourisation of violence also, as an aside, that's a terrible fucking letter. It starts with "IGTA has been banned, I haven't looked in to why but here's why I agree with it", then ends with "I'm not for a ban". It's not a good letter, Metro should have just replied back to him saying that

I don’t have kids so it’s easy for me to say but fuck that stance. Stopping me and millions of other adults from playing a game because little Timmy might play it at some point can fuck all the way off. I know he says he wouldn’t actually lobby for that himself anyway but the fact he’d be happy about it is enough. Spend the time with your child, be a good parent and talk to them about this stuff rather than banning it. When there’re older, even play it with them & discuss it during. I also just hate censorship of any kind in art too to be honest. Put warnings at the beginning or whatever but don’t change or censor stuff.

I picked up three games on the sale: 10-Day Champion, MDMA and Dolphin Splash. 10-Day Champion is a mini-RPG in which you have ten days to get ready for a tournament. Preparing for it means fighting enemies, working to earn money, using XP and money to acquire skills and equipment etc. Everything is presented via background images and text, but battles are a bit more visualised and through its nice soundtrack it does evoke a certain atmosphere. There's no save states, so if you die towards the latter part you have to start all over again, which feels a bit deflating considering you have to rebuild your character from scratch again. I think it's because of this last part that I won't stick with it for too long, but I do want to see it through with at least one of the characters. Mega Dystopia Micro Architect (MDMA) I think came out relatively early in the system's lifespan. It looks like a city builder, but it's actually closer to something like Carcassone. You have a deck with blueprints of certain building types that you then can freely place on a grid. Buildings either increase or decrease your point total depending on what you put them next to and at certain point thresholds you can pick a modifier like increasing the grid size or adding more blueprints to your current deck. Every time you play you receive some points you can then spend to start off with a larger grid, more blueprints etc. to make longer plays possible. While this is technically a roguelike feature, the game itself doesn't really feel like one and has more in common with classic highscore puzzle games like Tetris. Really enjoying this one, nice soundtrack here, too. Dolphin Splash! I've only just tried out, but it's a 2D arcade game in which you control a dolphin with the crank. Wiggling it makes you go a bit faster, but otherwise it's rather straightforward and each level seems to mix things up a bit (collect all the thingies, beat the time limit etc.). It's pretty cute and probably the first time since Ecco that I've seen a Dolphin being the hero of a game. I've not yet entirely gotten used to the controls, but the first impression is pretty good. Some nice parallax scrolling going on in the background, too.

Yeah last year, was bloody amazing.

In fairness he is correct

Finished yesterday. Phenomenal from start to finish, a game for the ages perfectly remade under a 2024 lens but still retaining its identity and uniqueness throughout. There is nothing quite like Silent Hill. Got Maria’s ending first go round which was a surprised, looked up the others after I’d finished. Reloaded a save and got the other 2 (leave and water). That Water ending…Jesus Christ.

Ended up playing this for 7 hours today! From the beginning right up to the Minotaur boss fight in the first optional dungeon. I did it in 1 go and before the mausoleum dungeon as well. The game was warning me over and over hey you might not want to do this yet. But then was a dragon mini-boss earlier it said I shouldn’t try and whooped it so I was like ah, it’ll be fine. The Minotaur kicked the shit out of me so hard. It took about 15 attempts swapping classes, trying to mix and match through inheritance skills, etc. The only strategy I found was to have MC as Seeker, Strohl as Warrior and Hulkenberg as Knight. I also had to unlock the blizzard spell on both the MC and Strohl and spam that until it was the Knight’s turn and use the Synthesis jump attack which does mega weak damage and lowers defence. And every few turns heal the fuck up. Lucky I found an item in my inventory which gave 250hp to all the party. God damn and at the end of 7 hours I’m exhausted. I need a break and food now before talking about it more but, I really like this game. This very cool so far

This is tough as there’s a difference between sequels which actually drop in quality and ones which haven’t technically dropped in quality but have dropped for me personally. In the original sense it’s the ones we all know about - DMC 2, Driver 3, Resi 6, Paper Mario series etc. so a bit of a dull, well known answer pool. However I do have a couple to add. Super Meat Boy Forever is possibly the biggest drop in quality for a sequel for me ever. To go from what is my favourite game ever with the best most precise controls and level design to an auto runner which feels bad and has boring badly stitched together level design just killed me. Forza Motorsport 5 - After 4 which is one of the greatest and most fully featured console simulation racers came this shit. Basically had no content and was just dull in comparison. I bought a One for this and it couldn’t have been worse. But if we cast a wider net for games which didn’t really drop in quality technically but dropped for me personally - as in they’re still liked and well made games but not for me - there’s a lot! Remember this is my opinion and I know most don’t agree God of War 2018 and Ragnarok - in particular Ragnarok. I just don’t like the direction they’ve taken it at all and the open world shit is so boring. The Atreus sections are shit. 2018 is still decent enough but nothing compared to 2 & 3 for me. Zelda Majoras Mask & Wind Waker. OoT is one of the greatest games of all time. To be followed up by these 2 was a huge miss step for me. I detested the time mechanic in MM & I detested the sailing and boring open water bullshit in WW. Burnout Paradise - Open world just didn’t work for me at all in this series. Burnout 3 is still to me the greatest arcade racer ever. This is I give 5/10. FFVII Rebirth - Another killed by filler and open worlds/zones for me. Remake is sensational IMO. Just a brilliant fun filled time with little filler. This is all filler with the awesome set pieces and character moments of Remake spread so thin it lost all excitement for me. Most, if not all of these went from 9-10/10s to 5-6/10s. So huge drops personally. I’ve got loads more too but I’ll leave it at that for now.

October stuff. Unknown 9 got rather bad reviews but it wouldn't be the first 6/10 game I've enjoyed. Potionomics was one of those dumb 'for the collection' purchases because the box looks nice. TR is for the backlog and Ys I've started yesterday as I've been looking forward to that quite a bit. Edit: wow, the picture is awful, no idea what happened there.