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Possible GotY?... here's hoping.

Possible GotY?... here's hoping.

Will wait for online impressions on Onimusha, wrt enemy aggression and combat. Also, that will help me not fall into the trap of juggling two games and getting immersed in neither of them.

Samurai time

Fuck it, it's a Toshiro Mifune weekend then

So I listen to a Lovecraft podcast and this week the host Tim talked about obscure Lovecraft themed videogames, including this DS Hidden Object Game / 3 Match Puzzle title, based around The Mountains of Madness (it's around 15:30 in the podcast) - so for £7 thought it was worth a pop. Especially as Tim says it's strangely addictive, and I'm seeing him in a few weeks time so if it sucks I can moan at him. https://innsmouth.buzzsprout.com/1982490/episodes/19715892-ibc132-unusual-lovecraftian-video-games

Didn't realise Clear River released that, might pick that one up, too. Anyway, I noticed the publisher tag for this switched to Compulsion Games, so...

Feel like I've not posted anything in here for ages, but these are my recent physical pick ups. Sega Classics Collection on the PS2 is a collection of their Japanese Simple 2000 remakes, so 3d Space Harrier, Outrun, Golden Axe and Monaco GP. Then an apparently pretty good port of Virtua Racing Halloween/ Ash Vs Evil Dead is a collection of 2 2d games based on the franchises. From what I could tell at the time they both looked pretty similar in how they played, maybe I'm doing them a disservice, but I suspect this is going to be hard to find soon. Akai Katana Shin looks like a cheap jrpg but it's actually a bullet he'll shmup. I don't think I've ever played this version, but I'm pretty sure I've played the original

Was really happy when this arrived. But then... I mean, what the hell? For starters I already have the game digitally and bought this just for the collection because I liked it. But it also came out two years ago, so the game files have been floating around in a complete state for a while. Plus it's kind of embarrassing for LRG to even ship something like this, 'physical forever' slogan and whatnot. Will send a very annoyed e-mail.

Bought with MS Points....

How on earth is there no thread for this already, why aren't you all playing this? Call yourself gamers?! 😉 We've been having incredible fun with this game. It's weird all sitting in separate rooms but we have poured hours and hours into it. Short sessions turn into really long ones as we discover one more thing to do, or just a bit more to unlock the next 'something'. Most of the puzzles are fantastic, forcing you to adapt and leverage the sign language you have invariably created between you all as you progressed. I highly recommend this game, really, just find a friend or two and jump right in. It is a gamers game! My only complaints are: It can be a bit annoying to get around, the jump sometimes doesn't seem to work so well to get over small rocks. It's too dark at night, although I think this is by design so you have to stay together. On the Switch 2 screen, it is literally just pitch black but I think this is a screen thing as Subnautica is the same.

I’m going to make a bold prediction and say it will be fucking shit. How specifically and how much, I dunno my crystal ball is currently disconnected from the wi-fi. But using my powers of deduction I think it’s going to be continuingly miserable. Somewhat glad I have a room full of games unopened and half played so I can weather the shit storm in my own way. It’s almost like it’s own fallout bunker

I just completed the prologue of this, which according to the game timer took like less than 2 hours or something, maybe 90 minutes. But steam says 3.8 hours. I don't know why games do this. Anyway it's a very Witcher 3 type of thing, maybe a bit more AA than Witcher 3. It's very hand-holdy in the opening and has a ton of dialogue to the point it almost feels like a TellTale game. Not necessarily a complaint. It's hard to get a grasp of what impact the time mechanic will have early on. The way it works is that a quest takes a 'chunk' of time, which you can see in the screenshot on the top right here. It seems like early on the time 'chunks' are always 1. Sometimes, you will have a dialogue option in a quest that will take some time, so you get more opportunities to talk to characters and do stuff, with that as a kind of trade off. What impact this will have in the main game, I'm not sure, but reviews indicate it's not as pressing as it might seem and is actually quite generous Either way, it adds an interesting dimension to the decision making economy, I think. Certain skill ups also cost time. None of this has been really pressing so far. One small thing I did like early on is when I turned a quest in, I got a dialogue option to ask the quest giver to follow up with another character instead of me doing it or going with him, cause I had other things to do. It's a little small touch that makes it feel a bit more immersive. Other people will find things like this annoying, but I like it What's the game actually about? It's about these motherfucking vampires who have asserted dominion over a 14 century central european town which was suffering the ravages of the Black Death, and the vampire's blood is the cure. So they've swept aside feudal structures and tithes, all that Kingdom Come Deliverance stuff and replaced it with thralldom to bloodsuckers. Every full moon, the village has 'Communion' at a church and well you can imagine how that goes. It's some pretty good world building so far My complaint is the main character. He ain't no Geralt and he suffers badly so far from that AAA issue of constantly talking to himself, but not in a cool Geralt way. It'll have to be seen how he develops. Other complaint might be that the combat is very parry heavy, like every other game nowadays. But I get the sense you could probably figure out how to trivialise it later on, I don't know. There's some interesting day/night mechanics, you can't use food to heal at night so you have to drink blood of your enemies. If your health falls too low, your dialogue options can randomly fail and you just succumb to hunger and devour who you're talking to. This sounds like it could be really crazy if you just embrace it and not try to save scum all the time.

Description from Steam: "A marriage between first person exploration and visual novel, blessed with a sprinkle of puzzle gameplay. Immerse yourself in a period drama that intertwines romance with murder mystery, as a young cleric who must resist or give in to the charms of a strikingly beautiful maid." So it's a very pretty looking walking sim, set across a handful of different locations, with the occasional puzzle (4x4 grid picture puzzles, and a few rotation lock type things) otherwise it's walk around click on some objects, interact with a few others, and make some dialogue choices. Disappointingly the voice narrative only occurs occasionally between scenes, in the main it's just therefore a lot of on screen reading, but not over lengthy - and there is a nice twist that I didn't see coming to add to the overall mystery (and I understand a few branched endings). Completed it in around 6 hrs, and it was quite charming overall.

Future Knight is cool as fuck, it might be my favourite looking game this year and there's been a few interesting looking games so far It's inspired by old LCD games, Tiger Electronics and Game & Watch etc. You control Future Knight, a robot that has a sentient benign tumor inside him that helps. Gameplay wise it's a 2d run and gun platformer, the Knight can shoot and dodge, a bit of jumping and a powerful melee. The tumor helps him glide, and can be ejected to go through small gaps, with a dash attack that can smash through certain obstacles and enemies. They're generally used for exploring and bonus items, although they are occasionally required to progress through a level, however they can only take 1 hit and have a limited amount of attack power they can use. They'll occasionally need to be ejected so that Future Knight can recharge his health pips, and they're auto ejected when the Knight dies, so if you survive long enough he'll come back. Enemies are the same LCD black lines you are, and sometimes you can tell wh re they're going to appear because they're already coloured on the background, same for the platforms. There's a hint of Akira about it all too. Oh, and the music is great

I think OoT will be December. Which would be quite fitting because it came out originally in the UK in December 1998 so it’s always felt like a Christmas game to me

This starts off with a bunch of rowdies entering the jungle and blasting loud music, so the three marsupilami decide to kick their butts to have some peace and quiet. As far as videogame backstories go, rarely have I seen one so relatable. This is a fun game to play because it reminds me of the classic videogame approach of building a game and using the foundation and assets to improve and elaborate on it with a sequel. You know, before studios got closed after their first game, that time period. So this feels both very familiar to the first but also drastically different in other ways. The most obvious change is that the three characters now have distinct tools, like in the big ape game that this has always been inspired by. One of them can glide, one can double jump and the third one can turn himself into a ball. The latter is quite unusual and has a bit of a learning curve to it – it turns him invulnerable to stage hazards and normal enemies while also increasing bounce effects, all at the cost of precision. Every stage sends you out with two predetermined characters and you can switch on the fly. You rarely have to though, so it doesn't really break the flow. In fact, most of the stages can be completed just sticking with one, though you might need to switch around for secrets or Salsa Mode*. The control scheme has also been reworked and attacking is no longer mapped to the same button as the roll, which takes a bit to get used to but is a net improvement. Another area of improvement are the stages, as they are way more elaborate than in the first game. It pretty much starts where they left off with the dino DLC, so there's no handholding island with baby levels and instead throws some neat ideas at you from the get-go, and regularly adds nice visual flourishes like slightly angled perspectives for chase sequences and such. It's still not an incredibly difficult game, but noticeably more challenging than the first, and also has proper boss battles this time around as well. As in most 2D platformers though, they are the weakest part of the package. The secrets I'm less convinced about. You now collect notes in a stage, but also receive some depending on the amount of fruits you collect (lives are gone). To get all the notes, you have to complete *Salsa Mode, which is unlocked after first beating a stage and is some kind of pseudo-time trial mode, in which collecting fruit fills a bar and continuously collecting them adds a multiplier to them, but if you fail to keep the streak going it goes down to x1. I don't really like this one because breaking the streak in the last third of the level basically means restarting to get the best result, so I think I might ditch the idea of going for 100%. There's unfortunately no gallery or extras menu this time around, so completionist stuff might only unlock achievements. Not sure on that yet though. There's also some challenges, solo and multiplayer, which I haven't looked into yet. Really good sequel though. It doesn't have that 'wait, this is really good' kind of moment because I knew better this time around, but it's a really solid sequel that improves in the right places but maybe stumbles a tiny bit here and there with the optional challenges. It doesn't seem to be much longer than the first, but the islands have more stages and the stages are bigger, so it might end up being a 4 hour game instead of a 3 hour one, at the very least. Music is also way better that in the first game as well, which was quite forgettable bar one or two exceptions.

Good news I'd say. The less attractive cloud gaming is, the better. Maybe a bit of a shame for edge cases like @shinymcshine but still, glad we pulled the handbrake on that one.

Given that Revelation is 70 euro, seems like a good deal https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/82650/FINAL_FANTASY_VII_Remake_Series_Trilogy_Edition/ Deal expires when part 3 releases

Cheapest yet if use a code https://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/marathon-pcsteam-4970504

Back to back State of Play presentations...

Where did this game come from? It was announced 5 months ago but I don’t remember this and couldn’t find it on the forum. The colour palette and constant variety of gameplay mechanics makes it look like a Double Fine game via Japan.

A first person, time manipulating Metroidvania game. I think I would like it if the art style was darker/moodier. Maybe a bit colourful/bright. But mechanically impressive. Some nice looking action and puzzles with intricate uses of the time swap power People in the YT comments are like “It’s that one Titanfall 2 mission” lol. They’re not wrong and it’s hard to unsee. I would still play this, though

I could've swore we'd made a thread on this but I can't find it... Still looks batshit crazy and still can't really tell what the game is...

Looks beautiful. It also does look a lot like Hogwarts Legacy (not to mention the stilted dialogue scenes) but that might be unavoidable given the similarities between the two franchises. We might be finally entering a true generational leap that it seems like we haven’t really had for a while?

These featured on the extended view...

Yeah definitely getting this, not sure which version though as apparently it supports older instruments so might already have compatible ones, hopefully they will have a list of supported ones. If I had loads of space though would definitely get the full bundle thing like DANGERMAN says

First proper trailer. I'm not blown away, but still intrigued. At first I thought it was a roguelike, but they say it's rather designed around new game+, so maybe more like the progression with multiple routes/ending from a Nier game? Visually it looks quite nice, even if not particularly unique, and the style unfortunately kind of drowns Madureira's art, at least until the cool character artworks pop up for dialogue scenes: As mentioned they're doing a Kickstarter, in case you want to check it out: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dustorigins/dust-origins/description It's only PC right now, so I'll probably just back the minimum and give my copy away or something. Hopefully it'll do well enough for a console port.

https://www.gematsu.com/2026/08/mega-man-dual-override-first-trailer-screenshots

Terratech Legion is one of those Bullet Heaven/Survivors type roguelites, where you're driving a little vehicle against hoards of robot enemies. It's the first one of these kind of games to really grab me since Vampire Survivors (and to a lesser extent Ball X Pit). I'm having a great time with it, I feel it's destined for my Steam top 20 most played quite soon at this rate. The hook is the vehicle building mechanic. You pick up parts crates by killing enemies carrying them, and each time you level up an upgrade station drops onto the map near you which you drive into to open your parts crates, and select a new weapon. The building part in fun and very flexible, you can strip everything down to the cab and rebuild your vehicle from scratch if you wanted to, and can end up with some really outlandish looking machines. As for content - there are 4 biomes with three difficulty levels and a survival mode for each, unlocked as you progress. There are 4 characters each with a different vehicle, which have different abilities. Each vehicle also has an individual upgrade tree, and some unique blocks in the parts crates. I think my favourite is the one which gets shields when you boost. One run I went all in on impact damage and turned it into a battering ram which killed the stage boss in less than 60 seconds.

least I could do

Kicking arse and taking names.

Apparently I didn't start a thread for this, I was sure I did. I finished it last week and it sounds like the studio may have closed down, so a bit late. Crisol is easy to describe but hard to accurately describe. It's like slow Bioshock, only incredibly Catholic and without plasmids. You're Gabriel and you've arrived at a place that seems Spanish infused in the names of the characters, if not their performances. You're a soldier who worships the sun god and you're there to put an end to the sea god. As you go through more and more of the story opens up, it's quite interesting at points, if easy to lose the thread of. In terms of structure you're actually leaving a hub area to go and assassinate one of the 4 key people of the area, collect their blade, or their blood that becomes a blade, I honestly can't remember, but this will let you kill the god. As an FPS it's very slow, you move slowly, you fire slowly, the only time it's frantic is when enemies get close and you can parry them with your knife. To reload you have to use your own blood to make bullets, so your health. Healing items swing from abundant to scarce, so maybe you aren't supposed to kill everything but I did. The enemies are wooden statues come to life, they creak and stagger, and it's possible to shoot off parts of them and have them still come at you The slow pace means it doesn't feel like a shooter, nor is it constantly throwing enemies at you. There's a few puzzles, not loads and loads but usually something in each area. These are usually pretty meaty, but suffer from a couple of them not explaining what's expected of you. There's one I've solved, watched a couple of videos about, and edited my own gameplay video where I solved it, and I still don't understand it . The other big gameplay element is the hunted scenes. At various points a giant statue/mannequin thing called Delores starts hunting you. Initially this is really tense, you can't hurt her, and at points all you can do is run and hope for the best. When it's like that it's great. When you get stuck in an area with her it kind of neuters her, or the waiting around for her to move on gets really boring. All in all I enjoyed Crisol, it's not what I was expecting, but it's a solid game. My main complaints were things like the spot effects of the sounds being all over the place, leaking through rooms and sounding closer than they were. The other that there's a lot of nooks and corners in the game that have nothing in them. It's a shame there wasn't more reason to explore, or at least more interesting things to find than money

I've had a single play through (which embarrassingly, I didn't complete. Fuck that 4 vs 4 level!). It looks amazing, plays really nicely and I'll definitely go back to it. Isaac and I had a go at the multiplayer last night using Gameshare, it works smoothly (although I was a bit disappointed with the graphical hit) and we had tons of fun! It is a super nice dog fighting game We need more levels though, just the 3 aren't going to last us too long. You also can't mix and match game types with location so there are really just 3 options to choose from and that's it.

There's one good joke in there, when Henry Cavill Wolverine brings out the claws, he "reloads" them like that scene in The Man From Uncle. Blink and you miss it visual reference, unlike a lot of the other jokes where they try too hard to make sure you are getting the reference

Not yet, I'm on the 6th (The Eye of the Bedlam Bride). I'm trying not to rush it as I don't want them to be over!

I struggle with audio cause my concentration breaks a lot, so I have to rewind. tbh, my concentration breaks a lot in writing as well, but easier to pick the thread back up with that. I told myself I'd stop buying books for a bit, and especially long ones as I'm crawling through David Copperfield at this point. So on Saturday I went and got 2666, which is 1000 pages long. I'm on page 18

Yeah same. I read at least a few pages every day. Currently working through a popcorn read series called Leveling Up. It's a very woman-coded series in the concept and writing, but it's stupid in the same way the Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood series was. There are shifters, gargoyles, all that malarkey. The main character is a woman in her 40s, and there are plenty of men with rippling muscles and raw, animalistic sides. Who all seem to want a piece of the main character. But it never devolves into smut. It's all a nod and wink. It's so dumb, but so fun.

Super Rare or doing a physical release for this for Switch 2: https://superraregames.com/collections/the-midnight-walk It's a really good port (targeting 60fps), I'm playing it at the moment.

Finished watching Wonder Man. Excellent. I’m not one for noticing acting normally, but as the whole show is about it, and Kingsley is so good in it, it’s hard not think about it and really enjoy the way the guys work with each other. Unlike most marvel TV it feels like a proper tv show as well. Not an MCU-lite or movie spin-off, it feels like a genuine TV show with writing and personality and all good things. The story just drifts off at the end. Hopefully they reverse their decision and make a season 2. Because I ended up enjoying that a lot and would watch more

Capcom... if they did the unthinkable and became Switch 2 exclusive... shudder.

I had my first playthrough of this earlier today, after only having played bits and pieces over the years. I thought this was excellent for the most part, still plays really well, huge amount of variety cramped into it. Some stuff I found a beat unclear but that's were the multiple playthroughs come in I suppose. The dogfight mission against Star Wolf was the most difficult for me as well, especially as I have a very subjective issue with the controls (I play railshooters with normal controls but free-roam flight combat games with an inverted Y axis – probably should have just switched in the options midway). For me this also blows every new Switch 2 game they made out of the water, though whether this is due to them slowly angling their shots past my personal tastes or missing the mark more often, I can't really say. It might be a mix of both though, looking at stuff like Bananza and MK World specifically. In any case it made me more interested in Ocarina of Time, because I'd rather replay a game I enjoy than have another feature-creep sequel that misses the point. Going back to Star Fox, an interesting part of this that it's also a look back at a time when Nintendo was still pushing visuals, because this looks absolutely stellar. I wouldn't have given it a second though if it had come out on PS5 instead of Switch 2, it's a really visually accomplished game. I'm of two minds about the cutscenes, because some of them are quite good (mostly the out-of-cockpit action sequence), but the dialogue scenes are very wooden and are trying to carry a script that was previously told in short tidbits during missions. It doesn't really work as a result and the pacing is completely at odds with the presentation – Andross comes and goes without much bravado, because the game was never supposed to have any. Or rather it was meant to be build in your mind, not by a cutscene director. But shove it in a cinematic corset, and there's an unavoidable clash of styles. Anyway, this was my first endgame report card: I thought 999 was an odd maximum if I could reach it on my first try, but it turns out I did indeed get exactly 999 hits

https://www.amazon.co.uk/PlayStation-Marvels-Wolverine/dp/B0H3PCN9Y1/ £55 and no delivery charge if prime member

I really wanted to like this. But at the moment it’s just too much of a mess. Ive got a month left of Gamepass so played it on XSX but it’s just so visually messy on there (don’t know about elsewhere) I’ve had to bow out after 4 hours. It reminds me of FFVII Rebirth was at launch. It’s not quite the headache inducing blurry mess as that but it all just looks so low resolution it’s hard to look at. I’m usually fine with that as long as the framerate is good but the screen is too visually busy it just becomes really unpleasant. I was expecting a linear action game too, but this is one of those ‘open zone’ Action RPG games. With the usual generic shit that involves. Open bland environment with a couple of elite enemies and a bunch of useless shit to collect. But without any interesting characters or stories within it which you’d normally expect from an ARPG. However there is some good. I like the combat. Imagine Nier Automata mixed with FFVII Remake lite way of activating special attacks. Traversal doesn’t have the best feel but the way you can create a small bridge platform using your hair anywhere you want and the double jump hover are unique enough gimmicks to make it interesting. Im already a fan of my dog companion. I also like how nature plays into so many of the enemies and your abilities. There’s still something here to where I want to play more thanks to the combat and abilities but the technical issues are just too much for me at the moment. I need to be in a better headspace for the open area busy work crap too. For anyone else interested I’d definitely wait for a few patches first. I’m planning to pick it up when it’s a lot cheaper on the PS5, hopefully the Pro can brute force it a bit more.

Stuck at normal yea. It’s not punishing at all. It definitely has Souls elements - the respawn (you & enemies) at bonfire type thing but you don’t lose anything as far as I’m aware. I did a couple of bosses, including one main that had a 2nd phase and only died once. Normal enemies are easy unless you start mashing & being careless. They’re not difficult but you die quicker than you’d expect.

I thought that was weird as well, but think about it. Netflix will broadcast something that everyone wants to see, it's so anticipated that one it drops even if it's shite it's all we will heard about for a good few months. Also the first time I think a trailer has been paywalled. For R* they have their game featured front and centre in a lot of homes that might not be gamers at all. GTA is one of the household names that even non gamers know about, so seeing it in this every day aspect of their life will reinforce what a monumental step this is. Even if they, the viewer, only mouse over the tile for it and see it in motion, they won't believe how far games have come. R* also see themselves above the rest and this distinction adds prestige to the showing. I am sure a lot of money exchanged hands here, I am not sure in which direction, but it's good optically to distinguish themselves over all the other "lesser" games. What I do think is interesting is that people are paying to watch an advert. You can use all the terms you like "extended look", "showcase", "gameplay reveal", it doesn't really matter what words they use, this is an advert. The other thing is all those channels that break down trailers and such after they have released breaking things now. Are R* and Netflix going to allow them to editorialise those? You think they would, because R* want to saturate all your feeds with Vice City. Vice City is so big right now that even stuff like WWE is trying to copyright the phrase "Vice City" in the vain hopes they get some of the rub from it for one of their talents. We're heading into a cultural phenomenon here with GTA6. Like it or lump it, it's close, you're going to be sick of seeing it even if you play it, and every opportunity they get they will try and spin the game in a positive light. A lot of investment and anticipation went into this. They won't stop until they feel it's no longer worth putting the whole PR division behind.

Watched Deadpool vs Wolverine. Glorious nonsense and a genuinely lovely ending to the Fox-verse. It probably won’t be, but if none of these actors ever played these roles again it would be a pretty much perfect ending. The story is kind of whatever. But I also think that’s kind of whatever. After a decade of superhero franchise cinema and Deadpool’s meta and 4th wall jokes and him being apart of the Fox movies now being swallowed up by Disney, to bring all these things together as an ending to an era of these films is very smart, fitting and fun. Sometimes knowing comic book material helps get more enjoyment out of comic book movies, but brilliantly this is not about comics, it’s about all these Fox films. It is putting a capper on even Fox movies that didn’t get made. This isn’t for hardcore comic fans, it’s for hardcore comic book movie fans. And the fact it’s so expensive, so over the top, and still it’s making a 1000 rapid fire jokes about everything from the films you saw, to the films you didn’t, to public celebrity disputes, to behind the scenes drama, to the box office flops to the lack of continuity and Wolverine finally getting the costume Sometimes it feels like a bunch of sketches based around Fox’s Marvel movies then strung together by Deadpool’s chatter more than a story. It’s dysfunctional. But the whole Fox/X-Men/Fantastic Four has been a messy, up and down dysfunctional fiasco as well. So for this movie to not care and just tie it all up, it’s very fitting and I really enjoyed it I think my only negative is the film starts really slowly. Basically because it’s about the MCU and 2 immortal action figures punching each other, but the more it goes on and over time crosses over to be about all this Fox stuff. It can’t be Fox’s Endgame because that universe was so fragmented and inconsistent. But having Deadpool joke and celebrate it all is probably as close as you could get and for that I really enjoyed this film