bellow

3 hours ago, AndyKurosaki said:

(read the books, seen the films, that’s it).

I think that qualifies u as a pro!

I'm certainly looking forward to grabbing this. Need to close out Tales of Arise first. 

Not that it's my favourite RPG or anything (although it's high on the list) but Microsoft deals page was selling the Witcher 3 for about 3 quid last year even after everyone knew about the upcoming free upgrade. 

I've already done dozens of hours but, since I'm doing a slow 'do everything' playthru I'm expecting hundreds of hours out of it eventually. 

9 hours ago, AndyKurosaki said:

This reviewed well, but I don’t think it sold brilliantly.

What do shooter fans want? The Devs must have thought they had a monster on their hands, the way they set it up at the end for a follow up. 

A proper bump, this!

Just finished the full clip edition on the Xbox and I can truly say, for a 12 year old game, it's worn exceptionally well. It's super smooth and it's cartoon/realism pallette is basically timeless. I did play the original back in the day, and I suppose the best thing I can say is, yeah, that's how I remember it.

Strange it never got a sequel. Or was it not a success? I'm not sure.

Bloody great shooter though, probably my favourite after Titanfall 2.

Had a spare hour so I saw this one out. 

Helluva last boss. What's the matter with these people. It's like they spend more time on learning insane combat moves than actually running the company. No wonder the economy is going down the pan.

Anyway, got to the credits on normal and my rankings weren't too bad (well, not as bad as they can sometimes be on DMC). Went back to find some of the hidden rooms, but, as usual, not being an 'achiever' as such, I got bored and will leave these rooms for an inevitable replay in the future.

Excellent experience.

My little team on this has started talking as though I've reach a virtual point of no return. Just beat a

boss so I'm assuming I'm about to enter the endgame.

Been very impressive throughout. A very full experience for a first outing. I don't have many complaints. Think I might have preferred the three companions mapped to the D-pad, and sometimes the particular way your supposed to approach a boss just isn't clear, and death can come before enlightenment. But that's about it.

I'll try to finish it out on Monday, but I'm interested in at least unlocking some of the secret areas in the early levels. And maybe upping my grade on some of the bosses. Yes, Mimosa, I'm looking at you😡

4 minutes ago, mmmark said:

When will someone tackle the mastery that is re-boxing. Anyone can unbox. Putting it all back in is the real challenge. 

Dammit. This post has completed ruined my adoration of the unboxing community. 

Now I think they're all talentless chancers. Thanks mmmark!

9 hours ago, mmmark said:

What beat? When is this beat? What does it sound like? Nothing stands out to me. 

9 hours ago, mfnick said:

Just tap attack when your hits land & don’t worry about it. 

Fair enough. Personally I'd say if you can't hear the beat at all you're gonna struggle with this. Maybe not beating it, but perhaps enjoying it.

Think I'm up to chapter 10 on this now. Just done a boss and suffered multiple game overs for the first time in combat. The difficulty has definitely cranked up lately but I think my failure was due to just not knowing what the game was asking of me in this particular scenario. Managed in the end, but with more button mashing than musical finesse, and grudgingly accepted my meagre D ranking😞.

The game definitely comes across as a sort of rhythmic DMC. Not in narrative feel, but in the way it presents its levels and bosses, and the way it scores the players performance. Would have been nice to be able to replay a level during the initial playthru (I know you get to do this after beating the game). You can always do that in DMC to build your skills and grab a bit more currency. Here, I feel you're never given enough time to really get a new technique under your fingers before the game is throwing all kinds of robotic hell at you. 

Not that it's unfair. In fact I'd say it's one of those games that's sort of easy and hard at the same time. A bit like DMC.

I watched their review and haven't a clue what this tweet is on about. 

More or less said he'd been waiting for this game for 20 years.

Oh dear. Read some of those reviews and I don't know whether I'll be able to hold true to my 20 quid limit on this one. Sounds like something I could play for 100 hours.

Wonder if there's a cheaper edition where you have to play as a filthy mud blood.

Just did level 4 (I think it was level 4, the one where u depleat the bosses budget😄)

Fucking hell, there was a mad little sequence at the end that tripped me up badly,

Died 9 times on that and got a D for the level when all my combat and platforming were As or Bs.

I now hate this game and will no longer play it. (until 9 tonight when I get home from work).

Peppermint finish you say. But yes @mfnick, it's the xx3y, and it only seems polite to hit them with a juggle and smackdown afterwards.

Did the parry chapter today. For most of the time I decided it was a good idea to just get in amongst them and then just pulse the B button until I'd parried something, then unleash fretted hell! Seemed to work, and I A ranked the chapter, so the game seemed happy with my strategy.

Starting to fall in love with the game.

Second level on this took me an epic 84 minutes. I did spend a good few of those minutes checking every nook and cranny for currency and collectibles, but it was still a hell of a session to get to the end, with plenty of new toys and combat options thrown into the mix. Best thing I can say is that it pretty much flew by. I really didn't feel I'd played so long.

B ranked the boss but didn't really like the encounter. I couldn't get a grip on her attacks, fathom why I was getting hit, why my dodges weren't really working, or even what I was doing to put her in a stun state. Some videogame bosses can be like that tho, you feel like you don't know what you're doing, and then they keel over for no apparent reason.😃

Looking forward to my next session. And now I've got myself a launch combo. I love a good launch combo, me. Always feel that dishing out the damage while hanging in the air limits your enemies options somewhat.

10 hours ago, mfnick said:

if it wasn’t for Game Pass I may have never played it.

That's true for me for a lot of games, even some AAA ones to be honest, like Gears and Halo.

I have drifted into the category of using the service to virtually 'buy' a new game for a shady 8 quid then leave thru the back door. As soon as I payed for the month to play this I cancelled recurring payments. Not really what Microsoft was hoping for I reckon.

As for the game, I feel it's something that I'll enjoy. I played the opening level and was pretty tuned in to the beat by the time the level boss reared his ugly steel bonce. Even managed an S rank (an unachievable dream for me in the likes of DMC) so at least I feel I know what's expected of me. Yeah, I dig it.

That depends on the games you're used to.

Reached the halfway mark in this, (you get a full song and animation to tell you). Really enjoyed it, but I'm of the opinion that if I don't take a break from the game the second half will drag somewhat. But hey, 45 hours in, that's true of most games for me.

Interested in doing a couple of short games to refresh my RPG circuits, so I've fired up gamepass for a month and hope to tackle the flavour of the month, Hifi rush, then my last Gears game, Judgement, and also finish my playthru of Bulletstorm. It's bloodbath February!

If that's 

then yeah, that was definitely the scariest bastard in that game. If I remember rightly he returned in 2 and was even worse.

Devs are often of the contrary opinion to that expressed by the forum. I'll bet everyone here has, at some time, cursed the amount of time and resources that a team has poured onto making their game beautiful while their enemy AI perform like lobotomized pigeons.

I've only played RDR2 on this entire list of games😟. And my most anticipated game isn't there either.

I'm not even bothering with the new one as I've spent most of the last year playing assassin's creed and far cry games. 

Should be a separate category if you ask me. 'Best game that bellow waited to play until it was less than 20 quid.'

You also need the machine gun type tool for those little crawling horde type enemies. But my favourite was the one with the huge blade. I used to save that one for the big guys.

No reason for me to get too excited about this. I have a too recent playthru on the still fab original.

Level 26ish in this and still loving the bugger. Feck me tho, I've never encountered this many options in combat in any RPG before. First of all there's six characters you can choose from, all with completely different styles - martial arts, swordplay, magic, guns etc - and then they have access to 12 special moves each, plus the ability to combo thru the entire roster (even the sidelined ones) to build up ultra finishers. It's insane. It's a big explosion of light and noise, and yet you never get lost in the fireworks. Somehow the whole visual insanity of it makes perfect sense.

And then, when you've completely burnt out your eyeballs, you can go fishing, with the best fishing game I've played in a game yet. And I never fish in a game. But I am here. It's great.

Starfield for me.

Harry potter possibly as it's looking very open rpg-ish, and the franchise has great nostalgia for me as my kids sort of grew up with it, and it's still a custom to watch one of the films on Christmas day even though they're now grown (and I use the term loosely) men.

It's also a possibility that I might get a ps5 to play the new final fantasy. That depends on reviews.

I love Zelda but I'm loathe to play anything new on the switch as everything with more graphical complexity than their cartoony stuff like mario just looks shite on my TV. I need that 4k upgrade from Ninty and I don't mind waiting.

Ten hours into this and I love it. Definitely the best action combat I've experienced in a jrpg. I do like a bit of turn based usually but here it's so well done, with all the stuff you're used to in proper action games - parries, dodges, counters, combos, and then the Tales usual special moves and team combos (arte's) - it's well above what you can usually expect when jrpgs go the action route.

Plus there's tons of arte's to experiment with and different characters to learn. I reckon I'll learn three here and save the other 3 for a later replay. There all so different.

Yeah it's pretty good. And I've noticed it's a game that has me thinking about it while not actually playing. And only a few games get that from me.

Maybe it's an in joke with the Devs to see who can come up with the most annoying conversation in a game.

By the end of Vesperia I was actively pining for the restraint and economy of Kojima.