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I've put quite a lot of time into this, at some sort of castle now. It's kind of not what I expected, in that I imagined a very DMC5-style linear parrying action game. It's a parry game for sure, with lots of defense mechanics that have different reasons to use them. But it's not linear, it's this kind of hub 'wide-linear' type of thing. Almost reminds me of Alan Wake II in a weird way, or a less polished GoW 2018. Storywise, I'm not too into it, but I really like Musashi. One thing Onimusha has always been really really good at are cutscenes. They had these really cinematic ambitions in Onimusha 1's opening cutscene, it was almost like they were shooting an arthouse film with that. Onimusha 3 has this awesome martial arts action magic thing going on. This is also more on the action side, and the cutscenes are the type of thing you watch and go 'I would watch this if it was a film'. They're these really well shot, slapstick samurai action type of things. Kind of forgot that Capcom used to be renowned for this sort of thing, back in the PS2 days. We don't see this as often now. Not every cutscene is like that though, and the story can be pretty boring for long stretches in the hub area, and it all feels really loose and disconnected. It's super weird, and I've forgotten what the story is even about tbh. I'm not going to get into things like how the combat and action feels. It does get harder than the demo, but it takes a very long time to get there. There is a lot to study in the issen, parry and reflex dodge mechanics. Issen is the strongest but least safe option, but it's the classic skill flex in Onimusha, doing a critical attack with parry timing but without parrying, maximum risk maximum reward, and you can chain it to different enemies. They really dripfeed this stuff though so it takes a very long time for these systems to really amount to much, which is why I want to give it the benefit of the doubt. I already know that parry-focused combat isn't really my thing, but I'm fond of those PS2 games and ultimately, it's Issen you want to eventually master, which is a level above the parry. One thing I ended up doing was setting the whole game to 21:9 even on a TV, because the FOV is way too tight and was making me sick but in ultrawide it gives more horizontal room, which makes putting up with borders worth it. I think it works though, looks proper Kurosawa (ok, not proper, he would never compose an image this badly, but fuck it)

I'll just put a thread here, rather than chat in twitch thread. Anyway, for all the stuff about fighting games being easy/hard, I think I find this a substantially harder game to get comfortable with than Avatar cause of how chaotic it is. The tags/assists/extending pressure/looping them in combos and all the universal mechanics make it a bit much at times It's easy to see that if you are into comics, then this is a cool and stylish take on them. Has a similar vibe to Marvel Rivals, but while that game felt like it was duck taped together and had a mobile game vibe, this feels properly AAA and expensive and is pretty much guaranteed to be a massive hit cause of how full a package it is and how great it looks. Also it helps that the skill floor relies on powerful autocombos and defensive counters. So you can find big, explosive looking combos that just automatically go into your level 3 super or whatever. Me though, I like to start things off gentle I'm going to spend a bit of time trying to understand the combo building, cause you're supposed to combine some autocombo gatlings with your regular normals/specials and assist to bridge it all together. The combo building is a bit hard for me to get used to, but I saw a relatively straightforward BnB with Magik with wall carry. I'd like to learn one clever setup with the portals, some sort of anti-air (you can combo from her DP, and assist can always extend things), and that will be my project for the open beta.

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.

Played 2 hours of it earlier, after it finished unpacking on Steam just after 11. Initial impressions are very positive I have to say, despite my protestations earlier in the year about this coming only a year after Bloodborne and 2 years after DS2 - and thinking I was a little tired of the format and style - it turns out that I was wrong, and I'm definitely not tired of the format or style of these games and had an absolute whale of a time with it I have to say. Surprisingly I actually felt happy to be back in this world, it felt like returning home after a brief sojourn out the Country to find somebodies slightly moved all your furniture around and re-decorated the house. The introduction to the game is definitely the easiest and most genteel of all the SoulsBorne games, there is an actual dedicated Tutorial area right at the beginning, with enemies set up in exact positions for you to practice your moves on (just don't ignore the 'turn back' note on the floor ) with no real danger of being obliterated from behind by some ridiculously overpowered enemy. This carries on into the next area and the first boss, which feels like a 'Souls tutorial boss' rather than something daunting or difficult, it teaches you how to defeat a boss, how to block/roll out the way of a bosses moves, strategise Estus Flasks, when to use an opening etc. It's a far cry from the soul-crushing first-boss in the original Dark Souls that's for sure, and easier than the Cleric Beast in BB, it's by far and away the easiest Souls game to get into. The hardest thing for me to get used to though, was the XB1 controller, I'm just so used to playing the SoulsBorne series with a DS3/DS4 Controller that I was completely bewildered by the stick placements, button placements and how annoying the Bumpers are considering you use them A LOT, I may have to switch over to my DS4 tomorrow, but I'm not sure if the game will have the correct PS buttons on display or not. I was also incredibly rusty as well, having not played Bloodborne since this time last year which didn't help, I must've died about 5 times on the first boss by doing incredible stupid shit like parrying my shield instead of blocking, using an Estus Flask instead of rolling, shit like that slightly embarassing really, but as time goes on I'll eventually re-learn everything and it'll be second nature like it was on BB and DS2 before. It really is fantastic to play it at 60FPS as well, I know people don't like talking frame-rates etc. but it makes such a huge difference, if I went back to play BB on PS4 right now it would feel like walking through sludge, it's crazy how much snappier it makes everything, and the combat is just incredible in 60 frames. The game looks pretty good, it hasn't floored me as such, but it has its moments (God Rays, Dragons etc.) where it's a pretty amazing sight to behold, that melancholy and haunting beauty the SoulsBorne series is known for really comes through in the art design, bits of scenery don't look as polished as perhaps they should be however. The enemy designs are all pretty familiar though really, I've just been facing the usual Zombie-like creatures you face at the start of most SoulsBorne games really, but the 'Venom' transforming creatures definitely give you something to think about and keep you on your toes. A mention must go to the music as well, even when I just turned the game on and heard it bellowing out through my headphones I got slightly overcome by it, it is just an absolutely fantastic orchestral choir score that really helps the games ambience and made the one Boss Fight I've had so far feel incredible unique and powerful. So yeah, it's a SoulsBorne game pretty much, but it's more accessible than ever, the combat feels great and the Boss Fights get your blood-pumping like only a SoulsBorne boss-fight can. And a few pics:

Ok, I don't know if anyone else got it yet. I'll start off. Wanted to wait cause my thoughts are pretty negative on this and I didn't want to just moan about another game, but oh well I'm really trying to like this but I don't think it's very good, but it's got some neat things. It's not really an 'open world' game in the way it might seem in reviews and footage. It's still got a bit of a Metroidvania thing and it gates the rest of the city off from you until you unlock traversal powers. The exploration and level of detail in the world is still more or less how Remedy has being doing it in their modern games. That side of things is good and I think it's mostly on form with Remedy, save for a few pointless activities on the map like taking a picture of a cat picnic or whatever What isn't good is the combat. It's very basic, repetitive and sluggish. Very floaty, very mashy with very little intention behind the buttons you press. It's got systems and mechanics but no sauce is what I'd say. There's no real combo building, just your primary attack, secondary and 'powers'. The main gameplay mechanics seem to be about spot dodging for increased damage/launchers (you have to dodge to launch in this) and this system called 'faltering' which is breaking posture and doing a glory kill for more enhanced damage. It's kinda taking things from Doom Eternal, but lacks the punchy flow of that game as well as the hugely rewarding loop of incentivising mechanics that it uses to drive its shooting. If I wanted to be mean, I'd just say that it feels like Remedy designed a character action game without understanding the genre Usually, I could make excuses for weak combat in a Remedy game cause they make up for it in other areas. But this game lacks the kind of uncanny weirdness that those games do well. This doesn't have that perfectly calibrated ambient strangeness that Control had, or the penchant for post-modern playfulness that Alan Wake II had. Control was never weird for the sake of being weird, it was more like there are these things behind the curtain that you can't look directly at and so you have the FBC to monitor and manage that. You didn't need more than this In Resonant, this setting feels totally demystified and very 'AAA'. You lose the weird internal monologues and it's replaced by radio chat about mission objectives, like that Focus M meme. and you do so much fighting and the combat is nowhere near as deep or expressive as it needs to be the whole focus as it is in here. It looks great though, I guess Hope things turn around later on. Online reviews seem pretty split so maybe something unlocks later on

Quick thread to kick it off. I'm 2 chapters in, trying it on hard mode (you cant change after selecting, warning for that upfront). Beat a boss fight It's got some cool visual stylings, but it's a game I'm not sure I have calibrated correctly. It's extremely dark and grey, have went back and forth on what the intent is here. If I set the HDR brightness high it improves things but washes out many of the darker scenes. I think they really want you to play in pitch blackness. I don't want to dunk on the game too early in, it's one I was looking forward to. But I'm finding it a bit boring. It's got some interesting setup, very Twin Peaks. I guess even similar to season 3 in a sense, given the time gap. But I don't really feel like I'm investigating stuff, I'm just sort of running through mazes and corridors unlocking the next exposition dump, and a samey FMV jump scare happens now and then. Then you go into the 'mind palace' and stick photos on a wall by pressing A a lot. I read a review which says it gets off to a very slow start though, so maybe I'll turn around on it. I hope so anyway. By this point with Control though I was completely bought into it. This in comparison is feeling very standard, at least in these early hours

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.

Balatro. What can I say about Balatro that will do it any justice...? For the uninitiated, this presents as roguelike poker. You're dealt a hand of cards and use your card counting skills, or your natural-borne luck, to build a game-winning combination. Everything from high card draws to the fabled royal flush will score points, and it's your job to work through eight rounds of three games. I've managed to get half way through a game up to now - ante 5/8 - before crashing out horribly. Like I said, though, it presents as poker. Realistically, it takes poker to a whole new place, and this is thanks to the store between rounds. You can buy a range of bonuses to increase your chances of reaching the end. Tarot cards apply specific bonuses to individual cards from your deck (this could be anything from giving you an extra $3 if it's not used by the end of a round to a multiplier if it's played and scores). Planet cards provide bonuses to specific hands - I'm a fan of bumping up my two-pair bonus, as it's one of the most common hands I play, and it can become especially prolific for points the more you increase its level. You can get packs that add more cards to your deck, and then there are Joker cards (that's Poker with a J... Coincidence?) that give you overall bonuses. The key to the game right now seems to be the Joker Cards. A two pair hand with two 10s and two 5s can score around 50 points as a base. But add in a Joker card that adds 4 to your multiplier if you play clubs, as well as the joker that adds 30 chips if you play a 10, AND a +4 multiplier for the same numbers, and that two pair hand quickly shoots up to almost 10,000 points. Skipping some rounds is an option, and will present you with a bonus if you do so, but this comes at the cost of making more money to go into the store with. Is that card pack, which is usually $6 worth accepting, rather than playing the round and getting to $10 so you can buy a new bonus card or a couple of new Jokers? In each round of three games, there's also a 'boss' match. This will add further complications to the gameplay. Some of the ones I've encountered include all face cards being dealt face down, specific suits being debuffed (so those awesome bonuses are completely negated) and even ALL dealt cards being handed out face down. These are super tough at times, and if you hit a bad run, you're essentially screwed. I'm under no illusions that I'm not great at this game, but it has a fantastic 'one more go' quality that makes you hop in for another round. I honestly can't express how much I'm enjoying it right now. I'm determined to figure out a way to get through all 8 rounds.

I don't know how to give impressions on this without getting in the weeds. In terms of features it's an old fashioned 2D fighting game. You have an arcade mode (which is kinda interesting in that the better you do the harder the end boss gets) and there is a story that is literally an anime that you just watch, which is what the last game did too but it's still wild to me. There's also a pretty intense Mission Mode that does it's best to teach you the deeper mechanics of the game which if you're the studious type could work pretty well. I could do with spending more time in it myself but getting wrecked by someone using my character then trying to rip them off in the next match is more fun for me. It's the good netcode that saves it though. Well, the matchmaking is pretty rough at the mo but it plays really well in game. It just means there's always people to play with. This came online at midnight and I was ready to play it so I went to the east coast of USA since it was a more sensible time there and while it was a little choppy visually my inputs were barely delayed, if at all. I really hope they put this in a DBFZ2, in fact it would be shocking if they didn't. I've not saved many fights yet since I think I'm still pretty scrubby but my Gio is coming along a little. And this fight with Zato was fun when I wasn't put in the corner with all his nonsense:

No threads for the old games. Well I'm doing a run through with Chris on the first one cause the film put me in the mood. I generally play the 2002 game but I've been feeling more and more like you lose a little something in the remake version. There's something about the brightly lit mansion from the first game, and I never really was into the Lisa Trevor stuff. Always felt like a detour that detracts more than it adds. I do miss the crimson head mechanic in this though, I think it's cool and makes progressing through the mansion feel way more fraught. The last time I played this was in 2012, which was also the first time I played it. I remember it being a lot harder but I've got quite a lot of herbs and bullets. There's so many herbs that I couldn't pick them all up with Chris, there's a shitload of them near the second area you go to, with the big plant thing. I'm just going to leave those and use them if I get bit by the dogs. I think when you know what these games are about and you get the shotgun, a lot of the difficulty evaporates. At least in this version, without the crimson head mechanic. Also, the hunters haven't arrived yet. RE is so moreish. I don't find the inventory limit too harsh with Chris either. You just get into a habit of not carrying around healing unless you are already damaged, and only carrying the gun that you need. A fully loaded (7 shells) shotgun and a beretta with a spare clip is more than enough, maybe even leave the beretta in the safe room Definitely wish the map shows you where you were in a specific room though This version on PC also has the uncensored FMV, in colour. I kinda like the B&W version as it reminds me of NOTLD a bit, but it's cool to see it as intended. Though it does make the dog effects look way more stupid Edit not so easy, these hunters jump over you after you knock them down. I don't even think they have this behavior in the other games. You have to get them on wakeup, hit them with the shotgun oki or your head gets ripped off 🙃 All my 30 something shotgun rounds are getting used up, and I missed twice with the magnum cause of the fuckers jumping over me. Which means I'm alright about not having a head, missing with the magnum stings that much

Hi, fellow nerds. Some people here are familiar with this series I think. It's borderline ancient at this point and started off 30 years ago on the Saturn – and only in Japan – though that first game recently got localised and ported to modern systems. I didn't have the courage yet to check that one out, but I did play the 3DS one for a bit until it became impenetrable, so when they said Begins would be made for noobs I felt heard. For those unaware, the easiest way to describe this is Monopoly X Magic The Gathering, and it kind of brings with it the positives and negatives of both games as well. Structurally it's designed a bit like tactic RPGs, in that you pick main and side mission on a world map, proceed to read through dialogue that tell a very basic fantasy plot and then have to 'fight' against somebody, which in this world means running around on a magic playing board, apparently. It's a bit like the Yu-Gi-Oh! conundrum – yes, the bullies could just knock him out, but they obey the rules and play cards with him regardless. The Monopoly part is that you throw dice, run around the board, claim fields for yourself (by summoning monsters on top, not by buying streets) and most of these actions increase your mana pool (basically just a currency) which determines who wins and loses depending on who reaches the target goal first. The TCG part is that you hold a hand with monsters, items and spells – monsters for claiming territory and fighting, items to strengthen them during the latter and spells for all sorts of things. I'm not going to over-explain it because I'd be sitting here until tomorrow, but it's a very intriguing and super unique combination that I find quite fun, though it's not without its problems. One issue it shares with Monopoly is that, while it can be possible to make a comeback, it's very unlikely, so when you're tailing your opponent at the halfway point of a match – which can go for over 20 minutes – you have to make a conscious choice as to whether you want to grind it out and risk losing regardless or just withdraw. It does give you some XP and new cards either way, but it can be a bit of a draining experience if things don't go your way. Another problem I have is that despite its gentle introduction it doesn't shy away from introducing new abilities and such at a rather quick pace, so after a while it happens quite often that I overlook a specific tool from a monster, like attacking twice, completely ruining my play. This is a me problem of course and the more familiar you get with its 400-strong card roster, the less of a problem and more of a boon this becomes (I hope). In an effort to not overly add to the RNG element you can, at all times, consult the opponent's hand, which I think is a neat idea to have it retain an element of strategy. So yeah, that's basically it. They key mode here is, of course, multiplayer, but you can bet I will never in this lifetime hop online to play a game in a 30-year old niche series. Nope. So I'll just play my little basic story, enjoy its unusual but very accomplished art style – which looks super clean on Switch 2 and, presumably, even more so on an OLED Steam Deck – and have a good time. The physical version comes with a manual btw., if you need any more reasons to get this. One of the many boards early in a round, without monster infestation. My shitty deck.

Managed to resist just buying MGS4 on PC and not playing it, and want to see how far I can get in a series marathon instead. Skipping MG1 and Peacewalker, cause both those games are ass imo. But MG2 is one I've always been curious about cause I heard it's where the formula all comes together. So I installed it on the steam deck last night and am going to try and complete it. Tbh I might not bother with the marathon and just play this game, cause it's all relatively new to me. I always heard that MGS1 was a sort of spiritual remake of it, and I can kinda see it. The bit at the beginning where you have to crawl into a vent instead of going in the front door of the base, the prison section in the basement with floors that open up. Some of the visual language feels a lot like Metal Gear Solid, the alert sequences and such. Visually, I think it looks great in spite of its age, much better than MG1 Also, Colonel Campbell giving completely useless advice. He tells me what the speed of sound is, and how to arch your foot in order to sneak quietly. What? Don't call this motherfucker for tips ever, call not-Meryl (Holly), she actually tells you useful things about the base. Metal Gear Solid is basically a 2D game with 3D graphics, but the game design makes more sense in this one I think by being fully 2D. It feels much more like Pacman and some of the 3D flourishes that MGS adds to the formula don't really add a lot, other than a spider rifle and rocket launcher mechanic. You spend a lot of time looking at the radar, seeing where the white dots are cause they are the guards. The thing that fucks you in this is you don't have vision cones and you need to remember that just cause an enemy is on another screen doesn't mean that they can't go into the one you're on. At least they can't see you until you can see them

Another week, another incremental game. So, first things first, this is only about £4 at full price, so don't go in expecting hours and hours of deep content. It's a single-player, low-budget, small-team indie title. Your role, as the shelldiving turtle in question, is to repair your hammock for a nice, comfortable rest on your island home. You do this by plunging into the ocean depths and harvesting both jellyfish and materials, then selling said jellyfish to earn money, and using both your cash and materials to upgrade your turtle with atti-tide. As you progress, the bubble gun you use to capture jellyfish increases in strength, and your oxygen tank gets bigger, meaning you can head to deeper and deeper environments. Other upgrades have other effects, but the end goal is to absolutely work towards that lovely little hammock snooze. It's a basic incremental wrapped up in absolutely charming, SNES-era visuals, and I adored the 7 or so hours it took me to get through it. Available on Game Pass at the minute, too. So it didn't even cost. Was tons of brainless fun, though.

This is the Avatar Game where you Fight. I ran online and I guess I did around 15-20 matches altogether. So I have gotten the day 1 humiliation ritual out of the way of getting my ass beat, after trying to lab some stuff on Katara. I did manage to win one fight, but couldn't tell you why. The big thing that stands out about it is this 'flow' thing. You press A and push in a direction and scoot around the place, with a powered up version of your dash (at least on Katara, but I think this is a general thing with other characters). You can cancel that dash into flips and back dashes (again, on this character) and out of that you get buffs to your other moves, which will set up other combo routes and options I suppose. I guess it's like drive rush, but non-linear in its applications, and it can also be used for defense (Katara has a flow that ducks under overheads). It also shares a meter with your super, so I guess you have to choose schmovement or anime attacks. The combos I've gotten done to me definitely make me feel out of my depth in some of these beta matches, but that's cause I think there's either no skill based matchmaking in the beta, or it's taking a while to get me into the shitter leagues. Katara's whole thing is her water whip. You can do specials and do a stance cancel into your whip stance, which sets up midscreen lows and mids, or close range launchers. You can also use flow during her whip stance and hit people with attacks that feel like EX attacks. She can also do some light screen control with icicles and clouds. But the more crazy thing in this game is that each character has three 'supports', which buff certain parts of the character. The default one I'm on with Katara is faster whip cancels, which lets you craft pressure concepts with how quickly you can threaten the whip, and you have all these combo extensions. For some reason, the whip cancelling archetype is represented by an old lady, I don't know why, I don't watch the cartoon, maybe she beats the shit out of people with a whip in it. There's another archetype that's all about faster dashing (maybe this is where you should start with her tbh), and another that lets you do her icicle zoning more quickly. There's other things going on in the game where certain characters have certain buffs or states if certain things happen in fights, but I don't understand this aspect yet. I'm just trying to get my light light medium heavy forward heavy forward quarter circle light back stance cancel medium BnB down. Also if I can learn a cool conversion out of her heavy forward heavy launcher, that would feel cool. It seems like a deep game with really high execution, but it will be nice when it launches proper and matchmaking is working a bit better. Lots of high ping matches out there right now. I did see online that the PS5 beta seems broken, so probably not worth pre-ordering on that (maybe they might extend the beta though...) One complaint I have is the animations are pretty choppy. My other complaint is this Azula asshole. Play this character if you are looking for the annoying character, it's important to know who the annoying character is.

I only put in about an hour, as I'm still pretty deep into STS and context switching into another roguelike while learning another is a bit much. But the gist is it's kind of a Final Fantasy Tactics type of thing, but with cats. You go on a run, you level up your cats and then retire them after a run, at which point they become use for cross-breeding certain traits into cats that you bring on future runs. Your cats can die, and stay dead. Retired cats can also be thrown into a bin and given to other NPCs in the game, but I'm not sure for what at this point. You can also get new cats by waiting a day or two and some strays will wander in, but you need to have enough food if you wait around (which you get on runs) The combat is a grid based type of thing where you have movement and mana resources and cats have different roles like mage, tank, dps or ranged and there seems to be quite a lot of interactions and combinations of buffs, tile effects and side effects from attacks to consider. I'm very far from understanding any of this, as my tank cat went crazy and farted everyone to death cause of a passive trait it had that means it can't distinguish friend from foe, all felines get farted on. I still won that fight cause of how tanky he was, but I quit afterwards cause all my other cats died and then I was left with only my original two, so I put it down to come back to later. It seems pretty deep, and its sense of humour is very 2005 Newgrounds-coded (I saw online that Chris Chan of all people provides a voice-credit to the game, which is fucking weird, but anyway). I'm not quite hooked yet and the type of humour it goes for is something that stopped really appealing to me a long time ago, it's just a bit mean, but I think the breeding and chaotic strategy of fights is where all the intricate parts of the game will be. I think this is just on PC currently, but I imagine it will run on anything that runs windows/linux. I'll say that the Steam Deck controls are a bit rough, you have to use the stick or the trackpads to move the cursor around and it doesn't really feel suitable for it yet, which might explain why Switch and other consoles aren't ready yet. But you can make it work I'm sure, but I think a dedicated mouse is the way to go here. Visually it's pretty much perfect on steam deck, no compromise whatsoever and the UI scales purrfectly (I'm so fucking sorry)

Got Ubisoft+ to play this and 3 days early. I’ve put about 7 hours into this now and I’m quite enjoying it but some of the bad does come in dribs and drabs. Too much of the game so far has been stealth sections in which you cannot use weapons and if caught you surrender and are pushed to the beginning to have to do it all again. Someone at Ubisoft must have thought the stealth section of Ocarina of Time was the best bit 😆 When not doing this though and playing along at a leisurely pace in cities or travelling the large gorgeous world it’s quite a blast and I look forward to getting more into it.

Couldnt see a post for this, feel free to delete if there is one. So, this is my first Metro game and the first thing I will say is that the story/setting is so immersive that its made me want to go through the other ones. As a game its not the most polished although its really good, solid 7 out of 10, theres just a few little things here and there and it sort of reminds me of Elder scrolls Oblivion at points which is a weird comparison but its what it reminds me of, its just got a bit of a clunkyness to it. The load times are absolutely ridiculous at times, 2 minutes to load up the game. The first time it happened I genuinely thought my PS4 had just given up but apparently its standard. It would be interesting to see what people who have played the series think of this one, mainly @DANGERMAN because I seem to remember him being a long time fan. I get the impression that its a massive departure from the series traditional feel, and I dont know if they decided to just do something different because they wanted to make a kind of open world game. The reason I say that is because it definitely feels like an early PS4/late PS3 game in terms of its open world approach, it gives me some slight Half Life 3 vibes.

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.

Berry Bury Berry... Honestly, words probably won't do the description of this game justice. I'll start with the trailer. So, it's a first-person incremental game set in a saccharine sweet, incredibly bright game world. Berries are generated from the plant in the area near you, and you're tasked with popping said berries into the bottomless pit in the ground. Your character's name is Berry. So Berry buries berries. Hence the name. Anyway, each cycle is timed, and you get around 70 seconds to stuff as many berries as you can into said pit. After the timer ends, the lights go off, and you go to bed. Before starting the next day, you get an upgrade screen. So far, so incremental. As you progress, you gain access to Berry Buddies, which are little plant pots that toddle about popping off berries from time to time. There is a story attached, but to say anything on that would render most of the game pointless. I've seen two YouTubers play it from start to finish, so I already knew the story, but what's there is really cool in my opinion. It's all revealed via cassette tapes around the world, which add to context to the wider concept. So you get this drip, drip, drip of information that pulls things along beautifully. It didn't hamper my experience, though, because I knew what I wanted to play this for, for ages. Numbers go up. Back to incremental stuff. It has all the usual suspects. Rebirth/Rewinds make progress significantly easier. The hole gets bigger the more you shove in there. You can eventually escape the confines of the starting area to discover what's scattered about. It's not a huge game, I managed to get the Platinum in about 12 hours, but if you want to switch your brain off for a few hours and discover a story that's slowly revealed as you get more power-ups, it's definitely worth a look.

It's finally here and I've been playing it... 😁 Off the bat it looks and feels fantastic, I've really gotten used to these games feeling fairly heavy to play and this feels no different... it's got a nice sense of inertia on the characters and if you've played any of the remakes I think you'll feel right at home. Grace seems like a cool character, I really like the small touch with her hands shaking as she aims due to her being terrified... whereas Leon is just a bad ass from the start, I've never been a Leon fanboy but I already like him in this much more... maybe it's the age thing. Probably played for around four hours so far but I've not made too much progress due to deaths/reloads... I'm playing standard difficulty with modern saving on my first playthrough... just picked up the level one wristband. Also stuck with third person views for both characters. Rhodes Hill seems like the closest thing we've had to that classic Resident Evil mansion or police station we've had in years... the zombies are amazing and there's more things to avoid in this place as Grace than we've ever had... it's constant cat and mouse. I can't wait to pile hours in to this...

That is '1000 times resist', according to one of the creators I think. I put this on hiatus a week or so back, but wanted to write down my thoughts on the first half anyway. I think some of us have this on our backlog It is a sort of 'walking sim' type deal set in a very Yoko Taro-coded version of the future. A mass extinction event occurred, aliens invaded and spread a virus. The game jumps back and forth through time via a sort of memory technology called 'communion'. You're playing as this character called 'Watcher' and you live in this enclosed, somewhat infantilised sisterhood where everyone's names is their role. Nobody can ever take off their mask. There's a sort of COVID allegory to some of it, but also as the name suggests there's a theme of resistance and cycles which gets into slightly more interesting real world allegories, which I'll leave out here but they're mentioned in reviews if you're curious. Put in simple terms, it's an interesting sci fi story with lots of overlapping layers that develop its themes in interesting ways and are successful at generating empathy for their characters. Playing the game is a real struggle though, which is why I put it on break. You just talk to people in it, and you navigate these really confusing environments. It all sort of looks a bit like a second life level, or a custom map from VR chat or something like that. In a way the aesthetic is kinda refreshing or maybe nostalgic if you've ever played F2P MMOs from the noughties or something. The game does find some neat tricks with perspective, how it changes camera angles from third person free form to first person to fixed angles, trying to inject things with a cinematic flair. But it is a bit like doing the fetch quests in FFXIV or FFXVI and having being a bit traumatised by that design it makes it very hard to recommend. You'll see a few articles on some gaming sites praising the story, like massive praise calling it the greatest of all time. I'm not on that level with it, but I do think it's doing something interesting but in a way that's kind of draining to interact with, personally speaking. So I'm very mixed on it, but I'll probably try to see through the second half over Christmas. It seems like the kind of story where you can take an intermission cause of how it's structured

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.

Thought of dumping this in the PC bucket, but I'll put it here. I don't think we have a thread for it yet. Quit my Eternal playthrough cause that mod I downloaded is too much for me, so I'm trying this again. If you haven't played Ultrakill, it's this PSX-styled very intense FPS game that sorta looks like a roguelike, but it isn't. It's more like Devil May Cry, when you die on a mission you just get a worse rating and can reload from a checkpoint, but that's part of the learning curve as you push for higher difficulties and ratings. You kill things with skill, you heal more health the more variety you use in combat. You have to get up in the enemies face when you kill them, to drink their blood and get healed. So it promotes this very in-and-out risky and varied gameplay, and you have dashes, wall jumps and ground slams to complement your guns It's very heavy on parrying though, my kryptonite. Feels like you're meant to punch motherfuckers a lot. You have one really cool gimmick weapon in it, which is a gun where you toss a coin in a random direction and shoot the coin to do extra damage. It's a great way to get killed by ignoring all the enemies, trying to shoot this fecking coin when a shotgun to the face would get the job done. Actually, a lot of the weapons seem to have a drawback, like overcharging the shotgun blows you up, things like that You can tell by the graphics that this is a PC game, you need the highest end hardware to run it. This guy has weapons I've not unlocked yet, looks like it does turn into something cool eventually.

Finally bought a new game for my PC. Sure, it was 37 quid and looks like Skyrim, but that's neither here nor there. I think everyone knows it's a bit of a TES clone, down to most of the controls (at least on Xbox pad) being in the same configuration - Y for jump etc. I'm expecting, over the course of the next 50 hours, to be questing, lock picking, alchemy-ing and, most importantly, collecting flora and fauna for the cooking of. My build will be one handed with shield for parrying, and a side line in conjuration. So, pretty much my favourite TES build. Played an hour. Couldn't be happier. For now, at least.

Started playing this a few nights ago thanks to a free 30 day code I received from a guy on another forum, always wanted to give it a go but didn't want to pay the money to take the plunge I suppose. Decided on a Female Miqo'te (Seekers of the Sun) Lancer with the Oschon Guardian, I'm situated in Phoenix in the Chaos server, Level 8. No idea really if any of what I picked is any good. The game put me into 'Grimaldia' which is a set of forest cities. As for the game itself...still undecided really, very early days 4 hours into an MMO but I like a few things about it and dislike a few things about it really. The world itself seems cool, the servers are stable and even though the graphics aren't upto 2015 standards really it looks alright, runs incredibly well at 1080/60 and I've been using the GamePad throughout without any major problems except I can't seem to find an option to invert the right analog stick which is annoying, but I've got used to playing in default now, despite it not feeling wholly natural. The way they introduce you to the game is very good, you're definitely eased into it, in one little secluded area of the map (Grimaldia), everything is told to you simply and tutorial boxes pop up for pretty much everything, there is still a lot to take it but it doesn't feel like you're bewildered or bamboozled by information and the world itself like other MMOs I've played in the past. Only really explored Grimaldia and its surrounding but it is pretty cool, the scenery is nice, the buildings have a lot of character to them and its cool seeing people potter about with Chocobo's in tow (how the fuck do I get one of them?!). My main gripe though at the moment is the quests, they're all very fetch-questy and traditional MMO staples as 'kill 6 of this creature', 'deliver a message to this person', 'go round up these naughty people and tell them to come back' etc. the coolest one I've done was some woman that was being accosted by this bloke that was a criminal and asked me to meet with him on the edge of town instead of her to see what his deal is, every other quest has been incredibly forgettable and dull, I've played 4 hours and these quests just keep popping up and up and up, they don't seem to go away, but there's not really anything else to do so I keep on just doing them regardless. I didn't understand why I couldn't complete some of the quests earlier, the little 'complete' box was not able to be clicked so I just left these quests uncompleted and went to do some others, tried again later into my session and realised if I pressed left or right on the d-pad I could select a quest reward, once selected the quest was able to be completed felt so stupid. Another stupid moment I had was when I had to get Level 5 gear to do a quest, went to the shop, dropped a load of cash on a set of Level 5 stuff and then realised after that I could've got all of it from the quest rewards I was missing all that money wasted, oh well :oops: Not sure about the Fate-public event quests either, it's a cool concept and when they work and loads of people come to one spot to batter some cunt its a nice spectacle but most just get in the way and are annoying really, only had people turn up in 1 or 2 out of all the ones I've attempted. The combat is really cool though, I mean you can just sit back and just press 1 button here and there, it's not very involved on the face of it, but you feel involved in it which is the key thing, and it feels satisfying enough that when you defeat a tough-ish enemy you're slightly elated. There's definitely something compelling about it though, it just feels like it could be a standard RPG at the moment, it doesn't feel bewildering at all really and I'm just pottering about doing quests, thinking about upgrading weapons, armour etc. like I would a regular RPG, I do hope the quests get better the further it goes on though as I think I'm out if it's another shit-ton of hours of these quests.