wholehole

Cheers Sly, excellent article, especially for someone just starting out like me. This game has the same mind hooks Dark Souls has. You start reading about it and all you want to do is spend a bunch of time playing it

I've been playing quite a few different games recently. Still levelling up through Guild Wars 2, nearly level 50 on my Charr Ranger now. It's such a refreshing change of pace from other MMO's like WoW as there's no pressure to level up in any particular way. Pretty much anything you decide to do will net you XP and the massive World Events that happen periodically are excellent fun when there's loads of players participating. I dipped a toe into the Dark Souls DLC, promptly got pwned, then decided to level up a bit more and come back. Steamrolled my way through the Undead Asylum and Painted World of Ariamis for more souls and goodies. Also upgraded the Butcher Knife as I found out that the enemies in Oolacile are resistant to magic and elemental damage. Doh. I don't have a Wii U and really wanted to play Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate so decided to play Monster Hunter 3 Tri on the Wii instead. I've never really gotten very deep into previous MH titles before, I think the last one I played was the PSP version , which felt janky as hell. It's awesome heading out to fight the bigger monsters and all the prep that goes into it, just going to gather some materials for an hour can be a lot of fun. I bought FEZ on Steam last night and fell straight back in love with it. If it's possible, it looks even better on PC because of the higher resolutions. The music is just amazing and fits the world perfectly. I even pulled my old notebook with all my scribblings and translations from it's original release. Say what you like about Phil Fish, I'll always love the man for having the vision to craft this so perfectly. Played an hour or so of Catherine as it's free this month on PS+. I think I'm really going to enjoy this game, kind of annoyed I never made time for it when it was released. Last but not least is Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. If you cut this game it would bleed cheesy one liners from 80's action movies. It's brilliant.

Very much looking forward to playing through this again. I really hope the new PC players can create a similar community around this game as that was a big part of the overall experience for me last time.

Thomas Was Alone - A fun little platformer, some light puzzling, not very challenging. It's Danny Wallace's narration that really lifts this, if not for that it'd just be a pretty standard platformer.

They make a point at the end of the trailer that it's "Also coming to current generation consoles", so I'd have thought this date relates to those. I'd be surprised if it wasn't a launch day title for the new systems though. It looks excellent, although it'll be interesting to see what the difference in fidelity is between old and new, and whether it's as big a gap as everyone is expecting.

So does this release include the full game and the new stuff, or just the new content on it's own?

Injustice: Gods Among Us - Finished in one sitting this afternoon. Not a very long story, but enjoyable enough if you're a DC fan. One problem I did notice towards the end of the game is the CPU completely trashing you, then when you retry they basically put up no fight at all. Bit weird.

My apololgies Hendo, didn't realise you hadn't done Anor Londo yet. You don't actually need to touch Darkroot Garden/Basin at all so most players completely miss it or go a lot later on due to both routes in being guarded by a couple of strong enemies. The summoning is just a big letdown at this point in the game's life. There's not actually that many playing and those that do are only there for the high-level PvP stuff. Floyd's correct in saying that there's an approximat 10 level threshold both ways to where your summoning sign will appear. So someone has to be within that range and be around the exact spot you've dropped your sign. Very rare you'll get someone at this point. You're best off just summoning in the NPC's if you need some help at this point. Some of them can even take bosses down by themselves without you having to lift a finger which is always fun.

There's just one normal dude standing to the right. Even the minister made an effort but this guy still got in the front row of the picture. Also, all the fucking advertising...

At any point after you return the Lordvessel. You have to rescue Princess Dusk from Darkroot Basin and then pick up the Broken Pendant from the Duke's Archives which will give you access to Oolacile. I've blitzed through the bits I needed to do and I just started the new content last night. It really throws you in at the deep end. You'll no doubt fare much better as I'm probably a bit under-leveled to be doing it, but I don't know if I can bothered to go through the latter third of the game again.

Horn on iOS is IGN's free game of the month for April. You can grab a free code here: http://uk.ign.com/prime/promo/free-horn - No login or sign up required, just click the button and the code appears. It's a wonderful little action adventure game that looks and sounds beautiful. The combat is similar to Infinity Blade, with a bit of exploration and some puzzles thrown in as well. Can't recommend it highly enough if you have a Apple device.

Thought I'd spent more time playing Dark Souls:PTD than that, certainly felt like it. I had to start over from scratch on the PC and I'm trying to get to the new content as quickly as possible. It's been a strange experience on the PC as I'm having to play offline which is not something I'd usually do or advocate when playing a Souls game. Cheating and the use of trainers still appears to be rife in the PC community and after being invaded a number of times by phantoms with infinite health and impossibly high movement speeds for the armor and weapons they wield, I had to call it a day with the online mode. I've been playing through with series in the background and following the path he takes. I've veered off at points though as I had to get my Furysword back again. I'd recommend watching his stuff if you ever play Dark Souls again, he really knows his shit.I hit a massive brick wall last night in the guise of Ornstein & Smough. I'd forgotten just how big a pair of cocks those two are

I keep a similar list on my Evernote. There's a lot on it but I've managed to cross a couple of titles off this year such as Bayonetta and the two Blendo games. Left them waiting far too long, especially Bayonetta. The main game I want to concentrate on is the Dark Souls DLC, Artorias of the Abyss, which I'm playing at the moment, although I'm having to plough through the PC version from scratch to get to the new stuff. Also the two Skyrim DLCs, Dawnguard and Dragonborn are a pretty high priority. Mark of the Ninja, didn't get around to playing much of this last year and I know I'm really going to enjoy it so I definitely want to get it finished soon. Anna, which I've heard is apparently on par with Amnesia in the horror stakes. Bought it cheap on Steam then forgot about it but I don't want to leave it unplayed for much longer. There are a few other titles like Rayman Origins, Halo 4, The Darkness 2 and I Am Alive which I've played a bit of then left for something more shiny that I really want to get back to at some point. These games are what I'm looking forward to finishing the most. The rest on the list I'm marking as backlog games and I'll just get around to them as and when.

Sort of. I love Landstalker also, I still remember buying it and playing it for the first time vividly, but it really hasn't aged well at all. I played it again just before Christmas and it was really only my nostalgia for the game pulling me through.

Both Portal games are 75% off this weekend: http://store.steampowered.com/sub/7932/ - £4.49 for both games. Most will have already played them but Portal 2 especially is worth picking up on the PC for the wealth of user created levels on the Steam Workshop.