Search the Community

Started this earlier with @Sly Reflex we probably got about half way to 2/3rds of the way in at the 3 hour mark. I like it, I was actually a bit bored at the beginning but thankfully it picked up in the last half of our session. The first part just felt like if David Cage made a co-op game really, there are tons of QTE’s, some shonky writing and it just felt a bit like a pastiche of famous prison break films/tv shows over the years rather than its own unique story. It’s an ambitiously original game though, but perhaps not as unique as I was expecting, a lot of the co-op stuff is the standard ‘boost me up here’, ‘turn valve to progress’ etc. That we’ve all seen before in numerous other games and the focused split-screen action windows we’ve seen before in the likes of 24. Where the co-op split split screen stuff shines though is when it pushes outside the norm. Moments like one player being a lookout whilst the other digs a hole in his cell or having to coordinate paddling, take downs or door smashes so you time them just right and don’t alert the guards/police really shine. There’s another sequence where you have to keep swapping a tool between both characters to avoid detection by the guards and another involving a laundry basket that are both fantastic. The setting has been done an awful lot of times and carries a certain amount of baggage with it. Despite attempting to put it to the back of my mind I kept being reminded of Shawshank, OITNB and Prison Break. The entire thing feels an awful lot like Prison Break series 1-2 and if you’ve seen those it may take some of the mystique away from the story beats. Probably my favourite moments in the game are when you’re left to just mess about and compete with your co-op compadre. There’s this place where you’re left to your own devices for awhile and I was staggered that every little detail you wanted to look at or interact with was available to interact with. Go up to the sink and you’ll get a monologue, you can set a fire or turn the tv on and relax, go up to some musical instruments and you’ll be put into a music rhythm game and compete for a high score against your partner or even compete in a game of horseshoes. Just that freedom to explore and the way every little detail had been thought about and given the individuality and creativity to shine was great to see, even the responses to the two characters changes depending on the piece of equipment you’re interacting with and one of the characters can even wipe out the actions of the other or have wildly different results. The graphics and engine are astounding though. I believe I read this is Hazelight’s own engine which is even more impressive, and for a game built on a modest indie budget it really shows, particularly in the lighting and particle detail department. Foliage and texture quality has impressed too but NPC character models and animations are where you can see the money being saved. Still about half of the game left to go but at the moment I’m enjoying it without being overawed.

Well. I usually enjoy Rebellion’s output. Sniper Elite is always good for a laugh (who doesn’t enjoy shooting Nazis in the bollocks?). Strange Brigade was a lot of fun. And I mostly had a good time with Zombie Army Trilogy, until I got close to the end, and the massive difficulty spike really pissed me off and stopped me from playing it further. So, I was certainly interested in renting this. First impressions were good. It has the satisfying combat of the Sniper Elite series, and at first, it seems like it could be fun. However, there’s a significant problem: it’s fucking ridiculous, even on Easy. I’m playing Solo, but it’s quickly becoming clear that its going to be nigh on impossible. Most games are generous with health packs, or regenerating health. Not so here. You can hold one medkit maximum, and they’re pretty rare. Your health doesn’t regenerate at all. Well, there is a way to get some health back, by performing a melee kill, but the ability to regain health from that requires you to have killed 10 enemies in a row. There is an ability that lets you get back up after being downed, Borderlands style. But you can only use that once per level. Each level consists of 4 chapters. I just finished Level 2, and that really tested my patience. Especially when the “special” zombies start making an appearance. Those often require to hit a specific weak point. Good luck doing that when you’re constantly getting ganked. I fluked my way through the last two chapters of Level 2, the final one consisting of having to defend two generations, for a stupidly long time. All while horde of zombies keep damaging them, meaning you have to repair the bloody things. All while constantly running out of ammo, or health, or both. The words “for fucks sake” were uttered multiple times. With a team, it would be more bearable. But as per usual, Rebellion don’t seem to understand how to make a game fun in single player. With at least 4 more Levels to go, I don’t imagine finishing it. I play games to have fun, not have my patience tested to breaking point. A challenge is one thing. Taking the absolute piss, is another.

This game is an absolute gem. I’ve played it for five hours since yesterday. It’s a first person exploration game, with no combat. Instead you play as a painter, exploring an island, talking to its inhabitants and painting pictures of various things on the island. I’m hooked. It looks and sounds beautiful. The island of Eastshade is a fleshed out world with its own history, visiting the opening village of Lyndow and the large city Nava is as impressive as the first time you arrive in Oxenfurt or Novigrad in The Witcher 3. All of the characters are animals. I’ve been playing on PC using the Xbox controller. Top stuff so far.

This is a spin off of XCOM, with much the same principles, but a few changes to some key aspects of the game. It's launched cheap, I think about £8.50, 50% off, I can only presume to get people to play it and generate some buff around it so they don't have to advertise it, and it is competing with Gears Tactics I'm enjoying it so far. It's still XCOM, you set your units behind cover, choose to shoot, use an ability, defend or overwatch. You'll still need to heal, use grenades, and you'll still miss from point blank range. The difference in the main combat loop is that it's now turn based in a traditional srpg sense, so not team by team, now a couple of your characters might get a turn then one of theirs. you'll get a few moves that can push turns down the queue or bring yours up. It doesn't sound like a huge difference, and some turns it isn't, but it is another level of tactics, worrying about which enemy to target The stuff around the main combat is kind of similar to main XCOM. Characters still level up and learn new skills, you have to research new technology, equip gear. The world still gets panicked and turns on you, I'm not sure what the consequence is other than a game over, but you can do missions to ease a districts rising stress, now instead of satellites you can put teams in districts allowing you to freeze the meter or reduce it every few terms. The big change is that characters aren't just generic, they're set with specific moves. You only start off with 4, but you do start to add more. It's not particularly character lead, I don't know anyone's personalities really, but I know that there's a couple of characters I like to use more than others. I like the big guy who can smash things, I feel like I should be using the shield guy more, he can boost defence of other characters, I should probably make more use of that. The Psi alien can learn levitate and mind control enemies, neither of these seem to work the way I'd expect, he might need to be replaced. His move should be stopping enemies from attacking our team, seems to barely ever work, so maybe I'm not understanding it. One change that I've noticed but might just be an early game thing, the game relies on 'breaching'. You burst in to rooms, time stops, there may be perks or downsides to the breach, but it happens a few times a mission and is used to break up rooms. It means you're dealing with quite small rooms, lots of cover, I've just got a guy who seems to be a sniper build, I'm not sure how much use he's going to be. But it's nice to have some tailored moves that force your hand to try some new stuff. The only issue I have is the issue I have with all XCOM games, I always feel like there's something I don't understand, the macro stuff. I always feel like I'm missing something, or I'm not building the right way and I'm a few turns away from getting a game over I can't recover from

Picked this up in the Steam Sale. I'm a big fan of the early Flatout games so this seemed a no brainer. I saw a quote stating that this is the spiritual successor to Destruction Derby and that's pretty bang on the mark. 24 cars thrashing around short simple tracks with plenty of weight behind them. It's brilliant fun. There's a real low-key Sunday morning cars in a field vibe to it all, you can almost smell the grease from the catering vans. It's also pretty tricky - I haven't played much but halfway into the first tour it's fairly hard to finish in the top three. There's also your standard destruction derby events and a load of different vehicles. I've raced cars, lawn mowers and i've seen school buses mentioned.

Well, decided to pick this up while it’s still half price in the PSN Spring Sale. As you’d expect from the guy that brought us Katamari Damacy, it’s mad as a box of frogs. You start off with the Mayor, a green Cube. And as you interact with the environment, you gradually unlock new friends, and more stuff to play with. The more you do so, the more extra friends you unlock, and that’s pretty much the gist of it. All while a Katamari style tune plays in the background. It’s obviously not going to be everyone’s jam. But I’m quite enjoying it, it’s certainly a fun chill out game, while I wait to rip peoples spines out in Predator.

This is fantastic. Apparently it’s inspired by a comic book or something. It’s an rpg where overworld traversal takes place on like a beautiful board game map, which then transitions into proper exploration for dungeons and other “explorable areas” (not unlike the transition in the PS1 Final Fantasy games). The character art and background art is lovely. Combat is turn-based, jrpg style. But the game has a couple of original, interesting ideas. Aside from default attacks, characters have abilities that cost mana, but you also have a stat called overcharge. Default attacks give you overcharge, and if you use abilities that cost mana, the game uses your overcharge first before taking from your mana. So if you have 20 overcharge, and you use an ability that costs 25 mana, you lose 20 overcharge and only 5 mana. It’s an interesting system that differentiates the game from other turn based RPGs. Also, attacks and abilities have casting speeds (eg instant, very fast, fast) which is another thing you have to take into account. I bought it heavily discounted but it’s been easily worth that so far.

No impressions of this? I thought some people had it. If you don't, well you should. This game is pretty damn amazing. I think if you played Origins you'll know what to expect when it comes to the normal platforming levels. You sprint, jump, punch and bounce your way through a bunch of levels that make some pretty creative use of Rayman and the gang's skills. Of course, it looks amazing, again, with those lush hand-drawn graphics and it has some of those funky ditties again. But there is new stuff. You have music levels which are awesome. It's a shame there are only one per world as I'd play the heck out of a game that was just all these; they're just so much fun. I guess they're not unlike the levels in Origins where you chase the sprinting treasure chest but seeing the levels and the enemy placements sync up with the music as you take them out just adds more of a silly playfulness to it, and they are really imaginative with it, too. The other thing they have which I think is only on the Wii U version which I played is having levels where you take control of Murfy, a new wee flying fella with a big underbite. They are controlled solely using the touchscreen of the Gamepad and you basically interact with the environments with it. Like you move platforms around so an AI controlled Goblox will navigate the level. Early on they're not great but they do build into something a lot more interesting, and again, there is some real creative stuff going on with this different way of playing. Though some of the final levels have it fall apart slightly where Goblox will just do dumb things and get himself killed when you do the right things... it's like the levels get a bit too complex for the AI to handle. But over all, it's amazing. Maybe the lows are lower than Rayman Origins but I think the highs are much higher than in that. It still manages to be surprising despite being a strict follow-up and it is just one of those games where you can tell everyone working on it loved working on it; you can tell, it just pours out of the screen.

Hello. So, Tacoma could be classed as a walking sim i guess, its an exploration game at heart. It's set aboard a space station of the same name. You play as Amy, sent on board the Tacoma to gather information about a serious incident at the station leading to the disappearance of all crew members. Set in the year 2088, technology has advanced in the way of Augmented Reality and serves as your guide around the ship and as a modern mobile/PC but right in your face like. It allows Amy to review the crews movements and interactions with each other as you build up a story leading up to the incident and beyond. This is played out in small AR recordings that appear in front of you, the crew members represented in humanoid form but as colours instead of features and clothes. These can be manipulated, rewound, paused and fast forwarded so as to enable you to concenrate on specific crew members or conversations. I wont say anything else about it gampeplay or plot wise. It gave me the feels though. Once I got to know each character a little more and understood their potential plight I started to give a fuck about them. Obviously you're investigating the past and are unable to help them, curiosity driving you forward accompanied by a feeling of helplesness (in my case). Anybody else given this a go? I'd like to hear someone elses opinion and talk about the game a little. It's only a couple of hours long if that.

I massively bounced off the first game, Grow Home. It was awkward, a little too twee and just not a game I had a good time with, at all. So obviously it's only natural I try this one anyway. And I'm really glad I did. I had so much fun with this game from start to finish. I just really enjoyed it. The artwork and animation were adorable, the gameplay was still incredibly awkward, with your character, B.U.D. seemingly having legs with a mind of their own. Once you built up a little bit of momentum it became really difficult to slow down or stop. But that also tied in with the other systems in play. It was all based around climbing. The story involved collecting the parts of your crash landed ship, M.O.M. to reach orbit and jet off home again. Her 9 different parts were scattered all over the planet, and your job was to navigate your way to each one. Climbing was done with the shoulder buttons, LB/LT made his left hand grip, RB/RT the right. So when you built up a little bit of speed and needed to stop, pulling back then hitting the shoulder buttons would get B.U.D. to grip on to the nearest surface. There were a few other goals - scanning all of the planet's flora, growing star plants, that kinda stuff - but as long as you were restoring your ship you were heading in the right direction. I played it start to finish over the last week or so, and had a lot of fun with it, but at one point my brain said 'this is like a cute assassin's creed'. I'm really starting to enjoy Ubisoft's more artsy stuff. It wasn't fantastic, but I did have a lot of fun with it.

Doom! Doom is back! ROAR etc. And after a 5.02 gig update I got to play it too. After a pleasingly short intro you're straight in to the action because stories are for girls. The movement is super slick, old school Doom style, you really ping about like you are wearing buttery shoes or cum-laden socks. Certain enemies dont hang about either. You start off with a pistol but soon pick up a Shotgun. You can shoot enemies to death or.. shoot them till they stager, then they glow orange and blue and this is your prompt to melee them to death in what's called a 'Glory Kill'. The benefit of this is that it makes health pop out of the dying bad guys body. If in real life you stabbed someone in the head and cake popped out would you do it? I've added an Assault Rifle, Plasma Gun and a Chainsaw to my arsenal since. The actual weapons can be upgraded from these little floating robots you see here and there, for example my shotgun can be charged by holding the L trigger, then upon firing with R it spits out powerful explosive rounds (that then need a small cooling off period before re-use). Each weapon actually seems to have two upgrades each, Ive so far also upgraded my Assault Rifle to spit out a volley of missiles which is cool and a second shotgun one that lets you fire rounds in quick succession. You can swich between uprgades with Up on the D-Pad. The chainsaw is a little different. So far it has three fuel cells. The bigger the enemy, the more fuel cells it will take to kill. The plus of using your chainsaw is that it will cause enemies it kills to spill ammo, super handy if your running low so using it it becomes tacticle. Also, the fuel cells have to be refilled by little gas containers that seem to be scarce so far, this obviously stops you using it all the time as it's a one hit kill machine so they had to nerf it or the game would be a piece of piss. It's a really good idea and well used. The levels are fairly decent in size, i have only done the first three but the third level was pretty big. The story is there, it's just introduced slowly and in bits instead of a big lump at the beginning. You bump in to a couple of people along the way, i wont spoil the story incase your interested in discovering it yourself but there's hsit going on, giving you purpose I suppose, if it's needed. I had to use the map to find my way a couple of times as the in-game pointers send you in a specific direction but there are two or three levels of depth sometimes and there is no up or down indicator. This isn't a problem, just saying. The doors make the same sounds as in the original too, i liked that. You need red, blue and yellow keys too which is a nice touch and you pick up green armour in both bits and in whole, like a floating chestplate, just like back in the day. What else. You upgrade your armour, like you can make yourself less vunerable to environmental hazards like exploding barrels and you can give yourself a spidey sense to detect secret areas (of which there are apparently tons but I think i've only found one). There are also in game missions that reward you with upgrade tokens, like kill two enemies with one shotgun blast or melee kill x number of enemies in a certain way. You also get rewards for killing a certain amount of enemies which I just narrowly missed on the third level. It's kinda tough. I'm playing on Hurt Me Plenty (normal) and I've died a few times. The enemies are furious and when they are in number it can be a battle to survive. This is a good thing, makes you play cautiously, backing off where you can, going for glory kills to top up your health, hopping you've saved a chainsaw use to earn some extra ammo. Finally, not far in to the game, scenery wise it reminded me of Metroid. Sandy scenery as far as the eye could see and a desolate lonely feeling. And later, when I was battling hordes of enemies with a similar backdrop I got to thinging how cool a Metroid game with these controls could be. But that's just a deam. Anyways, I wont get to play this again untill Saturday but then I was gonna have a go on the multiplayer and report back. Enjoying this so far.

I'm going to start by saying this is no way a 4/10 game. I know I'm a Castlevania fan, I know I liked the first Lords of Shadow when others didn't, and I haven't finished this yet, but it's really not that bad. The fighting is fun, it flows better than the first game, it's a tad more forgiving too, a bit like DmC compared to the old Devil May Cry games. They've introduced a mastery system, the more you use a move the more you fill it up, once you do that you empty it to increase your mastery of that weapon. I'm not entirely sure what that does tbh, but it encourages you to use the moves you've unlocked. Which is the point I was going to make about the combat, you can tell it's easier because you can choose what move you want to do rather than just hammering whatever's effective The platforming is fairly simple, occasionally there'll be hazards you have to avoid, these could be clearer, but at least it's got something to it. I've also found odd occasions where it's not always clear what you're supposed to do, one of them was simply because I wasn't on the exact spot I needed to be so the jump point didn't highlight, although the one I couldn't possibly reach did. It's not just the platforming that suffers from a lack of clarity either, the boss fights can sometimes, but it's really the stealth sections. The stealth comes in 2 types, ones where there's guards and you have to distract them, posses them, or turn in to a rat to get around them, these are more common. In theory having a change of pace where you have to use your brain is a really good idea, but they're awkward and messy, and just not all that interesting. The other type involve key characters hunting you down, one of them was deemed bad enough it was singled out by GamesTM (I think), I didn't think it was that bad but I'd accidentally read some advice. Certainly it wasn't fun, parts of the ground made noise that gave away your position, a combination of Dracula's loose control and the collision detection on it meant it was a bit clumsy, but I did it in 4 attempts. Certain bits have been great too, When the script is good Carlyle is good, his delivery of "god failed" is great, shame some of the rest of the script and acting aren't quite so great. Anyway, video here, which looks worse on youtube that it did before I uploaded it. The original file was something like 40GB though, so y'know, you can't have everything

Mutazione is a narrative game following a 15 year old girl who sets off to a distant town to visit her estranged grandfather, having received news he's on death's door. The titular town was once a busy place until several decades ago it was destroyed by a meteor, and which slowly mutated the people animal and plant life left. The game itself mostly involves talking to the townspeople and getting to know this community and their lives, planting musical gardens, and solving the mystery of the giant tree in the middle of the town which sustains the island. It's gentle, slow-paced and relaxing stuff, lasting about 5-6 hours. I had a lovely time with it.

Reviews: 1up - A GameInformer - 9.5 Nowgamer (PS3) - 9.4 Nowgamer (360) - 9.3 CVG - 9.2 Gamestm - 9 Eurogamer - 9 Anyone picked this up? For PC or console?

This came out today, I think? Nvidia's cloud streaming solution. If you have an Nvidia account* what you do is you run the Geforce Now program on a PC (has to be a PC) and you login to Steam through it and add games individually to your library. Basically it is a VM. You literally install the games in a VM, but don't actually install it. It's weird and doesn't make much sense. Also because it is a VM you have to keep giving the 2FA key each time as steam will think each login is from a new machine. From a UI perspective it is absolute dogshit to get up and running. But once you have a game linked you can jump in immediately and access your steam cloud saves. So I was able to pick up Doom from where I left off. The streaming experience is pretty bad for me though. Visually it looks slightly better than I remember Doom Eternal looking on Stadia, not that that's a fair bar to compare to as it was a demo last year. But it is way laggier on my 2.4ghz home wifi and turns into unplayable territory quite often. But sometimes it works fine. They list 5ghz as a requirement but that means you need to be near a router so it really isn't there yet for me unless I kick my housemates out of the common space and declare it as my man cave which I think would be undiplomatic of me. I don't really think this is an amazing service or better than Stadia or anything but it's major advantage up front is this steam library connection stuff. It doesn't ask you to invest deeply into its ecosystem beyond paying a monthly sub if you want. This is more the thing I want out of cloud gaming, an addon to existing ecosystems rather than this closed garden thing Google are doing which just seems like such a shitshow from waiting for publishers to announce games, having to port everything to its weird variant of Linux etc etc. You have to pay for better queues, better quality streams I think and RTX enabled games (ray tracing). I've just added Civ V to it which is one game I actually think I would like to play regularly on this. The switch version is nice but not quite all the way there UI wise. *You don't need anything for an account other than a gmail if you don't want to give Nvidia login and password stuff. Obviously they'll get your data and whatever but it's easy to setup

This is a 2D platformer, run and gun type thing, where you can do all kinds of fancy things, such as shoot at two things at the same time, bounce bullets off things, skateboard, kick things/skateboards at people, slowdown time, and dodge bullets. when you're doing the cool things it's a lot of fun. i often forget to do the cool things and just run through a level shooting everything, which is still pretty fun. especially i find the controls for dodging bullets to be tricky so forget to do it, and slowdown time i keep forgetting to do but the controls for it aren't tricky. but the controls for shooting 2 things at once work well imo - you aim one direction and lock on by holding down the left trigger then aim elsewhere and fire with the right trigger. there's some gimmicky levels that are a bit different, they probably arent really any good but i really enjoyed the 2 i've done so far because of how over the top they are and they don't last long. the levels are very short but there's a lot of them, apparently it's quite a short game, think i'm about 2 hours in. you get graded for each level, i think that's where the game will come into it's own if you get into trying to get a better score/grade - so i think it's good that the levels are short for this. i'm not sure if i'll bother replaying it like this though, don't really know how the scoring works, i'll have to look into it. paid ~£13 which seems like a fair price for it. apparently was playing it in 4k, switched to 1080p and upped the graphics settings, couldn't really tell the difference. so yeah i like it so far and at times it's brilliant, but maybe doesn't live up to how great the trailers for it are (possibly it does but i'm not good at it). also a banana tells you what to do.

Looks like there's no thread for this, then? Continuing my random bite-size gaming journey, I started this earlier. I love a lot about it. I love the style and world they've built - instead of dragons, knights and demons, this is a Souls clone with mechs, basically. There's some cool twists on the Souls formula, like you can target specific body parts. This has some element of strategy to it - you could go for an un-armoured head or leg for a quicker death, but if you target an armoured part and do a finishing move, there's a chance of cutting that body part off and putting it on you. That guy has a cool headpiece? Target it and swipe it off. I played a couple of hours before it crashed and nearly beat the first boss, but he did have some fucked up attack patterns. I made some good progress before that but nearly got stuck on a mini-boss that killed me in one hit, with a drone by him an an extra tough enemy hiding behind him. My Souls experience has taught me that I shouldn't be there yet, so I eventually found the proper way forward. Apparently it loses its appeal after a few hours but I've enjoyed the time I've put into it and it cost me nowt.

I might as well say something about this since I'm stuck. So on the surface this is basically a classic Metroid game under another name, and I'd even say it's classic Metroid a little under the surface, too. It's hard to get away from the comparisons. But it does have it's own stuff. Gameplay-wise it is less predictable than it initially looks. You can see that there are ares you can't traverse but it doesn't quite use the same kind of abilities as you'd expect from a game so inspired by Metroid and Axiom Verge certainly does a pretty good job of surprising you. I kind of don't want to talk about them, but I will say the drone is pretty inspired. It plays a pretty good shooter. The enemies are really fiendish which really do cause a problem not long into the game and the weapons you get are weird and unexpected, too. They maybe a bit too situational so you will use the default a lot but there is some satisfaction in figuring out the best way of using the weirder ones. It feels quite Turbo-Grafix-y more than Metroid-y in terms of action, actually. I don't think I quite understand the story, though. There is a bit too much jargon that comes across really stupid, sometimes, but the atmosphere is spot on. The environments do pull off the surreal, dreamy, alien sci-fi thing really well. The soundtrack helps a lot; it's mostly really good. I know this has past a lot of people by, it hasn't had much attention for some reason but I would say it stands alongside Shovel Knight as a good modern take on an older style of game. I kinda hate it now because being stuck really blows chunks, especially on games like this.

I've played a little of this so here's some impressions. It's another indie racing game inspired by the arcade titles of the 90s. Visually and audibly it's very Ridge Racer but the handling is something else. Maybe more like Motorstorm but a bit driftier? Not sure but it's not expected and it's maybe more unforgiving than is satisfying. But I guess that's what this is; a hardcore racer for real gamers, like back in the day. There is a difficulty spike really early on that is a narrow course through the woods and I felt like giving up. But I found that conventional wisdom doesn't work here. I was using a car that was statistically slow but with good handling which in games like this is usually the beginner car but when I was failing a lot I tried another and I found maintaining speed and drifting is so much easier to do so once I learned the track I managed second place. The slower car just snapped out of drifting so easily and I couldn't figure out how to be fast in it. The AI is pretty brutal. Its like when I used to play Gran Turismo 2 and sometimes use the other cars to get round corners since there was little to no punishment for it. Well, get used to being on the other end of it. You cannot corner a little too slowly if anyone is behind you. But it seems okay so far despite that. Once I got a little hang of it I was having fun. But the handling seems like it might click... but might not.

Drawkanoid is Arkanoid or Breakout, whichever you prefer, except you have to draw the placement of your paddle. Initially I wasn't seeing where the challenge came from with this. The screen is split, the block area and the area where you can draw a paddle, once the ball enters the latter time slows to give you chance to draw. However, when the screen is full, and your ball is bouncing back immediately, with all the neon and affects, it can be easy to be a little slow to react. Similarly the ball gains pace when it bounces in your area, that can take you by surprise, and makes waiting for a better angle a bit of a gamble the levels seem to change each run, I don't know if they're procedurally generated or just drawing from a selection, but level 1 isn't always level one. You can buy rewards when you game over, these can change the game quite a bit. I've got one that makes my paddle wider, one that can pierce the first 2 blocks it hits, and one that will target a specific block, useful if there's one that's firing shit, or you're just trying to hit the last block to move the stage on. The latter two power ups have to be triggered, the icons for which can get in the way a bit, distract, and can mean you're activating them when you don't really want to because they're where you need to be I quite like it though, I do wish it wasn't run based and was more a level structure, but there's other modes that can be bought using the points you'd spend on power ups, which is a nice touch recording_2020_01_25_11_31_17_272.mp4

Played the opening couple of hours. It’s a beautiful looking game that is graphically far ahead of Shenmue 2. If Shenmue 3 had been released soon after Shenmue 2, it wouldn’t have looked as pretty as this. Ryo sounds the same, pretty impressive given that the voice actor is 20 years older. Shenhua obviously doesn’t, which is a shame. But there’s nothing wrong with the new voice actress either. The music is gorgeous, especially the Bailu Village theme. The gameplay has many returning features, and some things looked to have changed, but I won’t comment on that until I’ve played some more (and everyone else has had a chance to play it). Looking forward to playing more tomorrow. Trophies aren’t available yet, but I assume the game has them.

So far it's kind of Deus Ex Human Revolution but with better combat and tweaked augment mechanics. The latter sort of work like Crysis now, only with an rpg element so they're incredibly limited until you dump some points in to them (presumably, I haven't got to that point yet. You have skills like silent walking, Batman vision, cloaking, and another one, all of which use your energy meter. This will refill a bit, but it really is only a bit, otherwise you need to eat this game's version of the energy bar from Human Revolution So far I've been stealthy bollocks, although I had to reload a save because the kill to knock people out is the same as killing them, the difference it a tap and holding it down for a nano second. Also, while I'm having a bit of a pop at the controls, the augments are on the F keys (F1, F2 etc), sort of fair enough, I assume they're on the dpad if you're using a controller, but the F keys aren't really easy to find, they should be on the mouse wheel or something It looks pretty The animosity towards Jensen, and all augments presumably but Jensen is the only one I've encountered so far, is a bit heavy handed, but one of his squad shouting "Great fucking job Jensen you fucking bell end" made me laugh

This is a Sad Indie (TM) adventure game, with a lovely art style and pretty good story, told entirely without dialogue. I got it a while ago as a freebie on the Epic store. The game starts with your character after a car accident which killed his wife and left him in a wheelchair. He finds he has the ability to go back to the day of the accident via portraits of people that his wife painted, and tries to change things to prevent the accident. This is the main gameplay element, each portrait gives you control of the person in the painting, and you attempt to change their actions to prevent their part in the accident. Changing that course of events inevitably has knock on events, ending in something else being responsible for your accident, you have to go between the three characters and manipulate things to effect the others. It's fairly straightforward, and takes about 4 hours or so. It's very well made, and I liked it a lot.

Played around 2 hours of this earlier. I pre-ordered this on PS4 ages ago but never got around to playing it for whatever reason, with a small gap between finishing SotTR and AC:OD on Tuesday I have time to go back to a few small games and play through them so this is one of the first that came to mind. It's a PSVR title so unfortunately no one without the headset will be able to experience it but I thought I'd write about my experiences nonetheless. I should mention that I have - briefly - played it already as it was included in the PSVR Demo Disc #2 at the beginning of the year, I was so impressed with it then which is why I picked it up. The game is told in a fantasy storybook kind of way with you as the 'reader' looking in on the events of Quill's story. You play as Quill, a small charming Mouse from a leafy mouse kingdom. Everything is jolly at first and the vibrant opening area is a real treat for the eyes but this being a game things predictably take a turn for the worse and Quill must set out on an adventure that will leave the comforts of her home world and take her to some of the other dark, dangerous regions dotted about in her world. You look in on Quill's world as the 'reader' seeing her scamper about in various diorama-like stages with a page turning sound playing when you get to the next diorama in a chapter. You play with a controller - as opposed to the wands or other input devices - and directly control Quill, but you can also interact with various movable objects in a stage using the light bar at the front of the DS4 controller. The way the game plays early on is a relatively simple puzzle platformer where you have to move blocks, staircases and other objects onto buttons so Quill can proceed into the next room. They do quickly become more difficult though with multi-room solutions, turning switches on and off and manipulating enemies into a position using your 'reader' power. All stuff we've seen before really but the feel to Quill, her animations as she scampers about and how lifelike she is draw you in and the feel of controlling her, manipulating enemies and obstacles blocking her way feels really tactile and nice to pull off. The combat is the only thing I'm not sure about yet. It's relatively simple featuring a sword hit on Square and a dodge on X but it is quite a bit more challenging than I was expecting and am worried that it may become a crutch later on. but it does make it way more satisfying to clear a room of enemies than I was expecting from a game like this. The enemy variety has surprised me with one marksman type, one melee type and one that will follow you everywhere and blow you up with Goo if you're not careful. There's scrolls to pick up whilst you're exploring too, placed in some reasonably difficult locations that really makes you think for a few minutes how you get up to it, which keeps you on your toes and looking at every angle of the diorama possible so you don't miss anything. So, so far I'm very impressed with it, it hasn't blown me away or anything but it's a great charming little platformer on an unusual platform

Interesting game this. 198X is a narrative game set against the backdrop of retro arcade games. The game starts off with a simple Streets of Rage clone, then a side scrolling schm'up, then Outrun, and I won't spoil the next one because I think there's only 5 and I've seen 4. The games are decent, the Outrun clone is really faithful, and it's the game where the narrative bleeds in to the games, it's well done. It all looks fantastic, more SNK than the Sega games it features. The music is brilliant, neo techno ambiance, I love the presentation. What I'm not so keen on is the story. I don't mind the coming of age story in and of itself, but it's so pompous and self-serious. It's bathed in weary vocal-fry, life and death analogues, but it's talking about playing Asteroids and Outrun, going to the arcade, it's horrendously up its own arse. I think by design, I think it's deliberately going for ultra earnest. Hopefully it gets to the point where it justifies its tone, because I really like everything else about it