Blakey

I've put around 12 hours into this since starting it Tuesday morning. I'm mainly going to focus on the additions and changes to the formula since Origins as I feel like there's many posts of mine already extolling the virtues of that game. Exploration mode is one of the major new additions. It lets you strip away a lot of quest markers and gives you clues as to a place/person etc. you have to find, so instead of just pointing you towards your target and placing a marker down for you it'll say 'South of Mount Apollo', 'West of Athens', 'near Fort Marmaris' or something like that and you'll have to use your own deductions to find your way there, sometimes having to speak to someone who will then point you in the direction of your destination or having to investigate an area to find where a certain person of interest went next. As soon as you get close to your destination it'll pop up with 'you're close, use Icarus - fucking eagle - to find target' which takes away a bit of the mystery but it still remains more satisfying and engaging to play this way, I was sceptical and didn't think I'd bother with it but it's the intended way to play the game and I can't recommend it enough, just helps immerse you in the world that little bit more. They've also added a dialogue tree to almost every conversation you can engage in. Almost straight away the game starts you off engaged in conversation and you have to choose your responses for the first time ever in an AC game - which as a long time fan I was genuinely exhilarated about. On the surface of it it's a small detail but having that ability to pick your own choices deeply enhances your engagement to certain quest-lines and conversations, instead of sitting passively by and waiting for a conversation to be over so you can get on with the quest at hand you feel more proactive and engaged every step of the way so when you finish the conversation. It also means you've got more agency to make your own choices, I've had one mission where I saved some villagers from some enemy soldiers and they thanked me by giving me their life savings in Gold - you can either take it or tell them to keep their money and go on your way. There was another mission where some villagers stole some supplies from a Spartan caravan, I found them in a cave and could've slaughtered the lot of them but I decided to let them live and went back to my Spartan soldier quest giver only to end up empty handed, save for a 'Sparta thanks you' as a reward. Certain quests that have you finding select treasure you can lie about and say you found nothing, pocketing the trinket yourself and things like this. Granted, none of this is new in the RPG-sphere but it feels very new and fresh when implemented so superbly in an AC game. The new romance options are sure to delight too, so far I've only managed to sleep with one lady but I had to work to get her to that point! Complimenting the new dialogue tree is a brand new quest structure which I've not really seen before in an AC game. It kind of makes everything meld into one, even the main story quests aren't given particular gravitas at all, they're just on your quest menu and have you doing small tasks which will eventually add up to something bigger later on, they can also run into a variety of side quests and overlap. Again, other RPGs have done this before so it isn't anything special per se but to see them overlap to such an expert degree that it feels incredibly organic is a real triumph. Origins had a similar idea but everything still felt a little disjointed at times but here everything feels seamless. Full fat Naval Combat returns from AC4. In Origins there were brief sections of Naval combat but most of your time on the seas was spent in rafts and basic sail boats. Within the first 5 hours of this you're given your own boat and free reign to go wherever you'd like on the high seas complete with Naval missions like sinking x number of ships and being able to board enemy ships and slaughter their crew - just like you could in AC4. Another return from AC4 are the sea shanty's, which just are a delight and help add to the tranquillity when you're sailing around on the open seas. I don't yet know whether other AC4 naval options like hunting down legendary ships, taking over Naval forts etc. are going to be in the game but I hope they are. You can also fully upgrade your ship by picking up supplies floating in the sea and sinking ships. Making it stronger and stronger by upgrading the Hull, archer capacity, adding new weapons like a flaming pot and things like that. Along your travels you can recruit lieutenants who work on the ship and give various perks to you and your crew along the way. The Phylakes system in Origins - where certain actions would make a strong enemy hunt you down throughout the world - has been expanded into the new 'mercenary' system which acts quite similarly to the Nemesis system in the Middle-Earth games. You start off on the bottom tier and work your way up hunting down - and being hunted - by stronger mercenaries eventually working your way up to the top. I really liked the Phylakes in Origins and I like the system again in this, it definitely feels more fleshed out this time around and the incentives for working your way up the leaderboard to be a legendary mercenary make the whole system more compelling. Without giving anything away about the story, it is already quite a bit better than Origins’ so far. Whilst I did like Origins’ freeform mission structure (and the way you could pick and choose which targets you want to take down and when) the story feels much more focused in this - at the moment anyway - with a lot of cutscenes, flashbacks and interesting, intriguing characters who you can’t quite tell their motivations. The dialogue tree plays its hand in the story missions too with you being able to make key decisions about whether you want to let a certain person live or die and the narrative shifting based on your decision, I’m sure there will be many more like this as the game goes on as well. This helps keep you invested in Alexios/Kassandra’s story quite a bit more, and it took me a good minute or two to make my first key decision and was an unusually emotional for an AC game. The combat and upgrade system is largely the same as Origins but you seem to be a bit more limited in the abilities you can equip at any one time which means you can’t just spam special attacks over and over until an enemy is defeated. If you liked the combat system in Origins you’ll like it here, it is still very satisfying to take down a difficult enemy and the new abilities help you feel like more of a badass, especially the Spartan Kick which feels amazing to kick some high level fort boss off a cliff. The ability tree itself seems to be much more toned down compared to Origins as well with far less clutter and superfluity, you can only equip 4 melee and 4 ranged abilities at one time as well which helps you not get overpowered too quickly in the game. The Greek setting itself I haven’t found quite as fascinating to explore as Egypt so far. Egypt felt so distinct and different in its art styles and environment whereas this can feel at times like a lot of other RPGs with European settings. Nevertheless, it is still incredibly beautiful and walking through a town and watching the inhabitants go about their daily routines or seeing the sun go down over the Mediterranean is spellbinding, it is still such an incredibly easy game to get utterly lost in. I’m sure once I experience more of the Aegean Islands and Athens things will begin to feel more distinctly Greek. Safe to say I’m besotted with it so far, it's maybe got a little less of the evocative magic that made Egypt feel so vivid and memorable in Origins but it makes up for it in pretty much every other way. I’d put it on the same level as Witcher 3 so far and it’s probably one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played.

Started this last night, have probably put around 6-7 hours into it so far. I'm not going to go into too much detail as folks have already put up detailed impressions of their time with the demos. But, yeah, seeing as my expectations for this were pretty much 0 and I'd not played any of the pre-release demos, alphas etc. I have been pleasantly surprised. The graphics are what I noticed first really, it looks absolutely phenomenal. The voice acting and motion capture for all the characters just feels so incredibly lavish as well, all the performances are amazing and the motion capture just looks and sounds like one of the most realistic I've ever experienced. The hub world is reminiscent of Destiny's Tower but it feels much more Biowarey than I expected it too, it feels like much more of a real, living, breathing place than the lobby-esque workmanlike aesthetic of the Tower. Throughout the first few missions more and more areas of the Fort are introduced to you and you discover new people and places to see like a lovely plaza and bar. What has surprised me the most about the base is probably the NPC conversations though, you have multiple people to speak to after pretty much every mission you finish and talking to these different people to get to know them is a real joy, it doesn't feel like some throwaway exposition dump like in Destiny and other GaaS shooters, you do feel these folks have personalities. The 'action' part of the game I just felt like I was playing an Iron Man game really, there's not really any other way I can describe it. It felt fucking amazing to jump of of the cliff face outside the fort and just engage the thrusters for the first time. Combat itself feels way better than I expected too, although it has been very easy so far with me dying once and my shield being depleted on only 1 other occasion, all the other missions I've played have been a breeze. I have had quite a few bugs. Textures popping in some places - one time I was flying around and a whole environment was pretty much white and then spawned in around me making me crash -the helmet of your character not appearing on the cutscene that plays just before you go on a mission, a weird one where the subtitle box from previous dialogue stays on the screen and won't go away. I've also had quite a struggle getting it to run smoothly on my PC - which is surprising - I had to lookup a guide to get the settings right earlier and have actually managed to get a mostly stable 60fps with few dropped frames - before I was getting as low as 30fps in firefights. I actually haven't had the game kick me out at all though which is surprising, the servers and matchmaking side of things has seemed uber stable so far apart from the long loading times to get into a mission. So yeah. I like it and I want to play more. Apparently after 10 missions there's some kind of Wall that you have to grind to get up, but I'm not there yet so just enjoying the journey so far. It definitely feels way more Bioware than I was expecting and way more distinct thanks to the flight aspect. Lots of pics:

Yeah, you can kill the person or persons that have set the bounty and that’ll zero the bounty. They should be marked on your map nearby. If you go to kill them and make a pigs ear of it, alert the whole base or village then it can make the situation worse though 😂 but that’s part of the fun.

Da fuq?

You can pay off the bounty @smallofbooty in the menu and they’ll go away. You’ll be seeing an awful lot of the Mercenaries throughout the game, but, if you can’t be arsed with them then stay stealthy and keep paying off the bounties.

MGS was good fun too, you just had to open your heart to it @Hendo. Both have got roughly the same score on Metacritic 🤷‍♀️ I'm just saying, for the fellow 'shit game' enthusiasts, MGSU is worth a go.

Agents of Mayhem actually has a higher MC average than this 🤯 Can you add PC to the OP tags as well @illdog please

I think all of you would really enjoy Metal Gear Survive.

I haven’t tried the demo yet but I think with when this is coming out and not enjoying Woolly World much at all I’m going to give this a pass.

Play Metal Gear Survive next @illdog I have this downloaded on my PC but not sure when I’m gonna get round to playing it.

Found this from Eurogamer @Whiskey_chaser

Well, this is officially out now, I got my code from CD Keys around 7:30pm yesterday. Pre-loaded straight away after that on GOG Galaxy (28gb install), and after I'd watched this week's Game of Thrones I fired her up, played the first hour or so (headphones ran out of juice otherwise I would've played more) can't really give any thorough impressions just yet but the combat still seems a bit shithouse to me (never liked it in The Witcher 2) and the graphics look pretty incredible (despite the downgrade) in almost fully-Ultra settings on PC. Just within that opening hour I've found myself wandering away from the main quest, exploring little villages and cubby holes so it bodes well for the rest of the game, shall give it a proper run-through later today.

Apex beats Fortnite record for single day viewing on Twitch

I think that enthusiasm was purely contained within Corona @illdog I haven't had that same connection or jubilation with it since really. I'm 29 hours in now. I finished off Monstropolis, dossed around a bit going back and doing some of the picture missions and then made my way to Twilight Town to cook some food with Little Chef. Accidently triggered the Pooh world so ventured into here after I was done with the Bistro. How pointless is 100 Acre Wood? Honestly, I don't really know why they bothered, it's just a tiny world with 3 mini-games really, I guess you can't even really call it a world to be fair but even then it was just so small and pointless really. It was cool seeing Pooh, Tigger and co. I guess but it just felt like such a wasted opportunity really. I didn't really know what to make of Arendelle either - it is fucking huge I know that much, and long. It must be the longest World so far - although Corona was pretty damn long too I guess - I thought the strange generic JRPG dungeon right in the middle of it was a really odd addition, made me think I'd accidentally been temporarily transported into Dragon Quest or something and then I finally reached the end of the fucker and it went back to somewhat normalcy really. It was cool feeling like such a key part of Elsa and Anna's story and feeling like Sora and co. made a difference to them and I was actually pleasantly surprised that they put the whole fucking version of Let it Go in there as well (not so much the other songs) it just made me go 'whoa, they actually went there' really. It has tons of charm and I love the little ditties that play whilst you're traversing the world. Also, they got all the OG voice actors from the film to do the lines unlike Toy Story, very cool! The big issue though is that the world just isn't that interesting really. If we'd of got to go to the town or got to explore some different kind of areas it would've been better but having a load of snowy forest, a generic JRPG dungeon followed by more snowy forest wasn't a winner with me. I did like the sledging, the mini-boss and boss battles too though and I fucking love - that girl has sass to spare. So yeah I just unlocked Caribbean and San Fransokyo so we'll see how one of those goes tomorrow. After that I've absolutely no idea what worlds are left and how many more there are. Lots more pics:

So yeah, I imagine this thread will bore quite a few of y'all but I love seeing the new sales charts every week/month that come out, and how certain games and consoles did sales-wise in that particular week/month. This thread will mostly deal with the UK & US sales charts, possibly the Japanese from time-to-time after a big game releases over there or something. GFK Chart Track publishes the UK video game charts every week, the NPD Group in the US publishes console and games charts every month. So without further ado: June 2017 NPD (US) Sales: UK Top 40 Chart for week ending June 16th, 2017:

I am awful at this, think the best I’ve managed was 53rd 😂 Never really played Tetris before though...😱 so that could be why. Also, @Maf where you at?