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The Wii purchases continue. £8 on eBay.

There is a point and click adventure game on Steam called “If on a Winter’s Night, Four Travellers” that has been released for free and is apparently very good. Might be one for @Craymen Edge or @DANGERMAN

It's announced and coming in November, with a few extras, too:

Just finished this, overall really enjoyed it. 34 hours it took. Im sure it could be done a lot faster, i went slowly be because i was trying to do it stealthy, which often failed, so it could have taken much longer as well. I did quite a bit of optional stuff too, but not everything. its a bit like dishonoured crossed with the outer wilds, but you dont have to really work anything out yourself, well not in the main story, and the stealth is maybe a little broken. I dont like it as much as dishonoured but its cool that its different and that isnt a big put down because i really really like dishonoured. i really enjoyed creeping around taking people out without being spotted, and sometimes everything went to plan and it was great. More often it does not go to plan, sometimes because i havent been careful enough, and sometimes the game does odd things, like an enemy spots you from miles away or through a wall or whatever. And it can be pretty easy to die if theres a lot of people around when you get spotted as you die pretty quick, but you have to die 3 times in one stage to die properly which was quite easy to avoid, you can get upgrades to make you harder to kill but i was using stealth upgrades instead. And the combat could be pretty fun too so its not all bad when you get spotted. I didnt really like the aiming controls on a pad but it has snap to aim stuff which makes the aiming a lot easier so that was good. You can get some cool guns too like a sniper the roguelike nature of it doesnt come into play very often really, i dont think i was very good at it but i only died properly once or twice. And if you die you go back to the start of the day but im pretty sure you dont lose any progress on objectives and so can just skip back to the time of the day/location you died at, or if youd already done the objective there you can skip past it. the timeloop stuff was pretty cool how everything fits together, its all laid out what to do next in missions so you dont have to work anything out, i think in a way thats good but also would have been cool to work some stuff out myself, but its a fine line where that could be annoying though and i think the way its done here is fine. Some of the optional stuff youre left to work out yourself. Ive still not used a delivery point thing - read a spoiler though and think theyre for theres some stuff i might go back to do so might not be finished with it yet. i got a trinket that lets me hack But accidentally scrapped it and never saw another one so maybe theyre rare? They could have made the infusion stuff easier by marking duplicate trinkets (duplicates are useful for the gun ones mind) a good tip is when youre hacking something you only need to be looking at it to start the hack, you can hide for the rest. no more crashes since the first day playing it, so thats good. as ive already said i really like the graphics. And the music is great too. oh and i havent tried playing the invasion mode, and turned the online off in my game so was only ever invaded by AI. It sounds interesting though so might give it a go.

There wasn’t an old thread as far as I could tell so starting this one. Right off the bat, no HDR?! The game is called COLOURS why would it not Apart from the cutscenes though the game does look really good. Nice and smooth One thing I like about this game that no one talks about is the humour and the set up. It’s very silly and childish. But the jokes make me laugh in the cutscene and I much prefer seeing sonic in weird, fantastical settings than in cities and around humans. I’ve never really liked that about the Sonic Adventure games. Anyway. Just beat world 1 and this game is cool. It actually starts a bit slow because you have to unlock the Wisps, the buttons are also reversed. I’m used to X make you go fast and B is slide/ground pound. In this game it’s reverse. But it’s alright I get used to it. I like this so far this game is fun.

I've put a few hours into this now and thought i'd post my initial impressions. First up, can't comment on the PS4 version but on PS5 this game is absolutely gorgeous. It starts you off in a dark cave and the moment you step outside it's a real 'wow' moment. The vistas in this game are gorgeous, and the in-game cut scenes could be straight out of a Pixar film. Gameplay wise, i'd echo what some of the reviews say in that it doesn't bring anything new to the table. It almost feels like a PS2 game, but I mean that in a complimentary way. The in-game tutorial is incredibly brief and they seem to have taken a 'figure it our for yourself' approach. The puzzles so far have been pretty basic and involve the use of the 'Rot' - the cute little black blob things that you collect which then follow you around and allow you to interact with certain elements of the level a la Pikmin. Combat is standard Zelda 'lock on' fare, with a basic ability system that lets you unlock new moves and attacks by spending one of the in-game currencies. You can also buy and equip hats for your Rot to wear, which just adds to the games charm. One of my favourite things about it so far has been the music. It could have been lifted from a Ghibli film. So for a first game from a new studio it's not doing too badly. I can't imagine it being a game that lodges itself in my memory for long after beating it, but it's a lovely game that's packed full of charm which is a nice change of pace from the hyper-intense shooters i've been playing a lot of recently.

New thread in case the news is really good and there’s a lot to talk about

The thing stands out to me most in this game is that the level design is shit. I always remembered that being true for the Planet Wisp levels, ironic to me because they are the most favourably remembered world of the 6. But I’m starting to realise this is a lot of the game. I really don’t know where to begin. I keep writing paragraph upon paragraph about very specific bits of the game or the game mechanics, but I don’t want to get too bogged down in such detail because if you haven’t seen it it’s not going to be interesting. I think out of everything, and there’s quite a lot to talk about, but too keep it short the biggest problem by far is the flow of the levels. With other Sonic games the reason why they work is because it’s about high speed execution. I think in video games that kind of action is inherently fun. People have complained that a lot of modern Sonic games are trial and error. But I think Sonic games are about execution, so I understand the complaint, but they’re about practice and getting higher scores and faster times. It might be irritating zooming into a hole or running by something too fast, but the trial and error, learning and trying stuff, is part of the fun. Sonic the Hedgehog at it’s core should be the extreme sports equivalent of a platformer. Playing Sonic Colours… just racing through levels and going straight. It’s still the same for the most part. I will say the first 3 worlds are generally fine, I don’t think there’s a level in this game that is super good, but it’s cool enough, it’s ok. There are some creative set pieces, the worlds are mostly interesting to look at. But because of the power up system in play (The Wisps) it means there’s a lot heavier focus on exploration, and the flow of the levels gets all fucked up. Sometimes different levels suffer from completely different problems. A level can have you run forward, and if you decide to go back it stops you. Sometimes as unimaginatively as an invisible wall is now behind you despite the fact you just ran through it. At the other end of the scale some levels are so big but filled with nothing it’s like why didn’t the designers put invisible walls here if there’s no point in this part of the level existing? Generally this second problem comes with vertical levels. It sounds like an oxymoron but some of the vertical levels have a lot of spaces I would describe as open ended dead ends. It’s like they forgot to put a ceiling in some places or something. Sometimes levels fail on a conceptual level. There’s one side mission which is about 30 seconds long and it’s Sonic pushing boxes around. It’s like why? Sometimes it’s a specific gimmick. An early level has Sonic hit 3 springs, the game takes control away, Sonic springs up and down, and after 3 it stops and Sonic is about 10 feet forward from where the springs started. It’s like why? (you can probably skip these but still) A huge problem is the game failing on an intuitive level. Where you get a power up but never sure where to use it. Or it gives you multiple power ups and clearly one branch of the level, only accessed by the power up, has nothing in it. It’s like why? Sometimes the game fails on a fundamental level. Like why is there a power up that turns Sonic in to a spiked ball? He is a spiked ball. It’s honestly head scratching. I dunno. To be clear, I still like this game and have fun with it. But it’s definitely dropped in my estimation. Before I was like Sonic Colours is a 8/10 video game for sure. Err, we’re definitely at around a 7. Maybe even slightly lower. At it’s core it still has what I like about these games. Going really fast and looking cool. But not only does it not do that as good as other Sonic games, the general flow and ideas in these levels have me so confused. I can’t understand the thinking behind a lot of this game at all.

@Whiskey_chaser This game is also on PC, on the EGS.

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Spent a bit more time with it (edit: Razion EX, new page). I think it's really good, the fact that you have a bullet-clearing move that's not limited by a resource, except for the charge-up time, makes the higher difficulties more approachable than usual (though I presume the hardcore sneer at that idea). On normal bosses get extra attack pattern and on maniac there are extra enemies moving around the stages though, so it's no cacewalk still. The only downside I think is that it's just so very barebones. That doesn't affect the actual gameplay but I like having some flourish around the experience, like galleries and such. There's not even a general settings tab, so they put "rumble on/off" in the sound settings. The credits only show three people, so I guess they were just laser-focused on making the game as good as they could and everything else had to play second fiddle.

Oof. Deadnamed. I've not had access to a laptop for a long time so typing out something like that on my phone / tablet isn't very appealing. It would probably need updated, I've learned more since then. But I'm not surprised Strive didn't just come and go. It was getting pretty hyped up by the FGC as the next main fighting game since SFV and Tekken 7 had been around a while and some new blood was needed. As for the forum specifically it's what Mary said and I'd also add it's been a place for learning and sharing since Maf and Dwarf are pretty new to this.

Had a bit of a mad month. Luckily NMH 3 is done so can sell that for some money back. Managed to get all for less than £50 so not too bad.