Search the Community

A couple of us played the Steam demo of Neon Inferno a few months back, and I'd recommend trying that if you want to see if this is for you. Not that it's a complicated concept, it's just an old-school Run 'N Gun action platformer type thing. It has the sort of gritty pixel look you'd associate with the Mega Drive or a Neo Geo, but with a ton of special effects laid over the top, it's a really pretty game. The most notable thing about Neon Inferno is that it's a pretty difficult game. It's one of those games, not unlike an actual retro game, where once you've inched your way further in to a stage, after multiple attempts, the earlier parts that caused you so much trouble seem really easy. Like the game should actually take you about 20 minutes rather than 7 hours. I played it on medium, and that's about how long it took me to get through the game, but then restarting with the other character I raced through the first couple of stages Gameplay wise, while it's pretty basic in terms of the shooting and platforming, you can also counter green bullets, knocking them back to where they came from, or use your bullet time to aim them elsewhere. There's areas where you can move in to the background, usually in the vehicle sections, dodging incoming obstacles or making enemies easier targets. But you can also fire in to the background, so there's a lot going on at points, particularly when the action ramps up Good game, I enjoyed it quite a bit

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.

Played the first 3 hours earlier. I like it so far but it barely feels like I’m out the tutorial really so very early days. A lot of mechanics are being introduced still and it feels like the reigns haven’t been let go of yet so I’m not free to fully explore the world yet. First things first. There’s a lot of cutscenes. Almost all of them during the Prologue are ones we’ve seen from past trailers so in some ways we’ve all seen the opening hour but without the context you’ll get in the game. After that you’ll start to see some new stuff but at this early stage most of it is just introducing you to characters and locales with not an awful lot going on in terms of plot or anything. I’m not sure I need to go into a deep dive over the way the game plays as we’ve seen the gameplay trailers in the past. If you’ve seen those clips with Sam delivering packages that’s pretty much all I’ve done so far, the tone has definitely been on the serious side - thus far at least - with the piss grenades and Kojima wackiness completely missing during the opening stages of what I’ve played at least. The way it feels to pilot Sam though is probably what has surprised me the most, I read someone else somewhere compare piloting him to driving a car in GTA or something which had me a little bit worried because I assumed he’d control like a tank but instead he controls like a Sports Car if anything. He is incredibly nimble and controls very intuitively which I was shocked about, the walking speed is a light jog as well which means you get places really quickly. Holding L2 and R2 in will enable you to keep your balance much better and it’s a godsend when you’re carrying something heavy or traversing mountains as it will stop you flailing from left to right wildly. The way you load and unload packages feels very intuitive as well and it’s somewhat novel in letting you pick it up and then rearrange it on your person, it feels very tactile. I’ve made 3 deliveries in total in my time with the game so far. It seems fun enough to me to simply get lost in the world and walk about eventually getting to your delivery point but as mentioned previously I haven’t been fully let off the reigns so far so have only been able to explore very linear corridors which have been funnelling me to the next exposition point. I have met the ‘BT’s’ once so far and the whole experience completely weirded me out. I fucked it up first time around and was flailing wildly not knowing what to do before being chased by some kind of monster thing so I reloaded and gave it another go. The atmosphere in those moments is so damn tense creeping around them whilst crouching and holding your breath, the BT’s themselves give me the creeps, they’ve got such fantastic sound design. It probably goes without saying but the visuals are absolutely phenomenal as well. They world design has a really unique art design to it, I don’t really know what I can compare it to really other than possibly Nier Automata maybe? It just has this washed out melancholic but vivid quality to it that I’ve not really seen much elsewhere. If you like somber indie tunes you’ve come to the right place as well, in particular moments the music will swell and the camera zoom out to give you a sense of place whilst adventuring along. Kojima has a great music taste. As far as negatives go, so far the writing has been a little ropey in places and I couldn’t help but laugh when Kojima’s name comes up under every casting title during the credits as well. So yeah, so far so good really but it’s still very early days. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with it this far but am eager for the leash to be loosened so I can fully explore the world.

the new game from Double Fine, and it's a lovely looking game. There's a jerky, clumsy look to the world that adds a bit of character to the lighthouse you play as. The world is colourful, and kind of looks flawless, with some cool effects. It's made using Unreal so there's traversal hitching, and shader stutter, which can last a while, like screen frozen time, and was bad enough that the game crashed on me. Really bad, I wish people would stop using Unreal. It deliberately controls badly for the first few minutes, but I can't say I ever loved how it controls, it's fine, and for some sections quite fun, but I kept losing track of the light's direction. It reminds me a bit of another couple of company's games, Amanita Design, the people that made Botanicula, Machinarium etc, the game has that sort of look. And Hazelight, because it does mix the game up fairly regularly, but probably not often enough. It's about 4-5 hours long, and it changes the gameplay up at least 5 times, which is to its credit I think, but unlike a Hazelight game it still spends too often on them. Particularly towards the end, there's a section that really labours its point, it's not the short, quick punch you dont have time to get bored of, or even realise you don't like It really suffers from a sense of "but why?" in its design. I can forgive it in the plot, because maybe that's just me missing something, but so much of the gameplay/puzzles leave you feeling that way. To give an example, there's a point where you get covered in pink fluff, pollen maybe? You see it happen and you see that it means you can now jump and glide for a while, that's an example of it done well. Pretty much every other time it'll be something like you need to get a gold orb from somewhere to take to a giant thing to put in, which means it will now shine a light that destroys a blockage (you have to do this repeatedly). There's a bit where you have to (I think) carry energy from a plant, to the next one, which for some reason gives you more energy yourself, which you keep doing, then you'll have enough to smash through a barrier. It's just a series of ideas that happen because That said, at least it has ideas, a decent amount of them, and a few of them are quite good. That said, I was struggling to keep my eyes open for the first hour or so, genuinely, granted I don't sleep well so that's on me, but it didn't engage me at all I don't know, it seems ok, I can't believe it's as well received as it has been, but I do think the traditional games media love a bit of double Fine, so it could just be different tastes

So after, what? 9 or 10 years Dead Island 2 is finally here and you know what?... I'm having a pretty decent time with it. The first thing I'll say is it feels like an Xbox 360 game... and it's a matter of opinion if that's a good or a bad thing. For me after Dying Light 2 tried to do far too much (in my opinion) having a game that just wants me to hit things until they fall over in a bloody mess is more than OK. The other thing I wanted to say is the opening hour or so is pretty bad... shit weapons that break way too easy and spongy enemies that hit way too hard... or maybe that's my own fault for picking the poor, frail girl character... who knows... anyway things liven up when you get your first real mission and access to a workbench. Anyone who's played the original games (or the Dying Light games) will feel right at home with the modding of weapons and such, electric swords and and flaming golf clubs... all that good stuff. The flesh system is really cool, thwacking a zombie in the face and seeing its jaw dislocate and detach is pretty mind-blowing and adds a lot to the melee combat (not found any guns yet) The other cool thing us being able to use liquids... I was doing a side mission and reached a part where ther was about 10 zombies banging on glass doors trying to get in... noticed a fuel can and explosive canister, picked up the can and poured fuel the entire length of the doors, hit the canister which ignited the fuel and blew out a window which allowed the zombies to walk straight in to my pre-made Inferno... no more zombies.😂 I've also just picked a perk for a pipe bomb... which is hilarious. Anyway, I like this game, admittedly I've only put around 5 or 6 hours in so far so we'll have to see if it can hold my attention but it's off to a good start.

Played a few hours now, it has that special Silent Hill weirdness going on... where everyone you talk to seems off in someway. Considering the setting I probably should play in Japanese with English subs but I kind've hate them so it's English dub all the way... it does the job. I'm playing this with both combat and puzzles set to "story" as the game has multiple endings and, for reasons know only to the dumbass devs, the puzzle difficulty doesn't stack and I know this'll take at least 3 playthroughs to max out... so I'll ramp up the difficulty in NG+. Obviously being on the easiest difficulty I'm capable of tanking a few hits but multiple enemies are still a handful... I got ganked earlier by 3 (sexy) scarecrows. Attacks boil down to light/strong attacks, attack at just the right time and you'll cause more damage, strong attacks cause enemies to be stunned which in turn gives your light attacks more oomph. You also have a sanity system which allows you to focus attacks, this can be depleted and causes damage if you're attacked while using it... this stuff isn't really coming in to play on these difficulties though. It plays well enough but performance isn't without it's faults (on Xbox) there's a hitching thing going on that I'm guessing is the game loading the new areas as it goes... it's not massively intrusive just a little annoying. The game looks nice though and the audio sets the tone nicely. I'll be putting a few hours in over the weekend.

I think I'm in one of those ruts where I don't fancy playing anything too demanding on the brain, so I've gone from finishing PWSim2, to trying a game from the publishers of Onechanbara called Full Metal School Girl, to this. FMSG is fun, but it's an endless corridor shooter that wouldn't have felt out of place in the PS2-era, so in an attempt to pivot from that, I've tried this - a game about rolling a ball around environments that wouldn't have LOOKED out of place in the PS2-era. Anyway, this is apparently the first completely new Katamari game since 2011. It doesn't do much to upend the classic gameplay the series is known for, but progression feels a little different to the instalments I've played. For a start, you don't just get access to the next level straight after finishing the previous one. Sometimes you need to find crowns in the levels you've already played, and an arbitrary cumulative amount will give you access to the next level. Putting it blunt, it feels a little (ok, a lot) like artificial padding to extend the length of the game. But it's a game about rolling up shit. Give me the option of how much I want to replay levels; don't force me to do it. I mean, I'll eventually go back and do all the levels, because the platinum just requires finding all the crowns on specific maps, but still. Give me the option, let's not make it a requirement. The other thing that's weird with progression is the way it's set up. You go from era to era - I've explored a basic, modern day set of levels, the wild west, a prehistoric chapter, and now ancient Greece. But you have an era select menu, where the ones you've not unlocked yet appear as question marks. So right now mine appears as something like "Modern/?/?/Wild West/?/?/Ancient Greece/Prehistoric/?" (hopefully that makes sense) I imagine it's to clue you in to the different time periods you'll be traveling to, but I feel like there could have been a better way to communicate this. Especially when I'm trying to figure out the best time period and mission to go to next while I'm trying to figure out which levels need me to find more crowns to even get into, and which ones just need me to go back in and find the crowns. Looks-wise, it's very much PS2 in a super-charming way. It still has jaggy edges, characters are still blocky and don't have much animation. For anyone that liked/s Katamari for the personality, you'll find a lot to love here. It's also got those tanky controls that have always defined the series. Much like the visuals, this is either something you'll love for the level of control you can achieve, or you'll hate, because you can't quite get to grips with the intricacies of movement. I'm somewhere between the two right now, but that's normal for me with this series. I've kinda waffled about one of the dumbest game series that have ever been created, but it's also a genuinely fun game. The fact you have no real peril, the fun stuff you can roll up, the silly ideas and charming script all combine to give me exactly what I'm looking for right now. The short run time is also a bonus with these games, so I'm not complaining there either. Last night I went from playing on the PS5 with the big TV to playing on PS Portal, and I feel like handheld is the way to go with this game. On Steam Deck or Switch I can see it being a blast.

I swear, if you ever find you need one of those games that can lull you into a state of meditative relaxation, it's this. From the constant "pshhhhhhhhh" of the different washers, to the satisfying "DING!" of a section completed, it all combines to create a fantastic, non-offensive ASMR experience that's super-peaceful. Since I started this last Friday I've already put about 17 hours in. I've cleaned a Dumb and Dumber-inspired Dog Car, an Art Deco house, and a funfair shooting gallery, amongst other areas. It's basically more of the same when compared to the first one, but there are one or two additions that elevate it slightly. First up is the disc-like steamer that makes light work of flat surfaces. Just walk slowly in a straight line and you'll have sparkly surfaces in no time. Living my best Roomba life whenever I use that one. The soap has also been massively improved. You don't need to buy it anymore for a start. Essentially, you spew white stuff all over the level, and cleaning it off again recharges the tank, so you can effectively use it forever. It's possibly the best new addition, and actually makes the soap useful. One sweep with soap, a second sweep with the widest nozzle and you're generally done. A final big addition is the home base. This hub has a map of the county you'll be travelling across to complete different jobs, and it has a big wide open space on the ground floor where you can purchase and place various bits of furniture. I'm not sure if there's a point to this beyond spending your currencies, but it adds an element of personalisation that's kinda fun, I guess. Yeah, not really sure what I think of this bit right now. One big irritant/criticism currently persists from PS1, though. You know how sometimes a surface will have what looks like a ton of dirt left on it but pings anyway, and other times it feels like you're playing 'hunt the pixel' to clear a section? That's still evident here. It's honestly the only thing that takes me out of it at any given time. If you've ever played the first one, you'll know what to expect. It's great fun, and the humour from the original has definitely carried over into this title. I'm really enjoying it. It's the perfect wind-down game after a long-ass day in work.

A cosy/creepy puzzle/adventure follow-up to Strange Horticulture. Once again set in a creepy fictional Lake District village, this time you're in a shop dealing in strange occult objects. You're ensconced in your comfy shop as customers come in bringing news of grim goings-on outside, and you examine the objects on your shelves and consult your reference books to give them the right item for their needs. You get clues and messages which lead you to locations in the town on your maps, giving you little bits of story/lore and additional items. They also help you solve puzzles in your shop for more items or additional help in identifying objects. I enjoyed Strange Horticulture, but I like these weird objects more than the plants in that game. As in the previous game there's' a simple pleasure in labelling and organising your stock on the shelves according to whatever system you come up with.

This caught my eye when they first showed it because it's really quite impressive visually despite technically being an indie game, and it was recently on sale, so decided to finally give it a go. Fundamentally this is a top-down stealth game with puzzle elements. You could maybe say it's a bit like a streamlined, made-for-console take on what Desperados is, comparable maybe to BioShock's relation to the immersive sim. And while a certain group of people will probably look at that and handwave it away for being dumbed down, I think it's actually a nicely accessible version of a genre that can traditionally be almost endlessly frustrating. A key element here are extremely generous checkpoints, which is a simple but often ignored solution to the problem of stealth games being inherently trial & error at times. There have been moments here where knowing the path enemies are going to take is necessary to solve the area, which is of course a guessing game on the first try. But it pretty much just sets you back right before that moment if you fail, which keeps the momentum going and doesn't take you out of it with a big game over screen. That's not saying that you're going to fail all the time though, of course – simply due to its perspective you have an inherent advantage over all your enemies and I find it relatively smooth so far without many retries, which helps staying in the flow. It starts off relatively straightforward with sneaking being your only tool, but chapter 2 introduces a non-lethal blowdart you can use to get rid of enemies that are positioned in a way you can't pass. You still need to prepare the shot and hide the body afterwards, so it's not a win button by any means. When I checked the controls at the start it also seems that at some point you're going to play more than just Hannah, the initial protagonist, so it's setting up for a certain amount of complexity moving forward. But going by what I've seen so far, very gentle introducing the feature, too. The blowdart for example was neatly introduced by Hanna explaining it to two other, younger orphans of their group, which I think is a nicely diegetic way of designing a tutorial. The story starts rather slow with your brother going missing after doing something that really rattles the local authorities, but it does some rather interesting world-building on the sidelines during the first two chapters. It hints at an authoritarian state in a sort of early industrialised setting that is currently dealing with a sickness called the 'heartpox' (which slowly reduces your heartbeat until you die, hence the name), from which the protagonist miraculously recovers at the beginning. Cutscenes are rendered cinematically with extremely impressive, but slightly overacted, character models that are just a tier below the absolute best in the industry, again quite impressive for a smaller game. I'm playing this in small chunks of one chapter per setting because I heard it's a bit on the shorter side, but I'm quite impressed so far. It's a very scripted, linear stealth experience, so like mentioned earlier maybe not a good pick for people who do live and die for Desperados or certain immersive sims, but except for its perspective it also does remind me a bit of the tone, tempo and ideas found in the Plague Tale titles, even if it's not as bleak (yet?), at least on the surface.

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.

About time for some impressions, I think. So its a 2D fighting game made by ArcSystem Works, a studio famous for its 'Anime' fighting games. They usually have a lot of systems and movement options as well as combo systems that can be extended to let players do some crazy stuff as long as they have the execution to do them, which is usually quite hard to do. They have made it simpler here. The first thing is its very easy to 'get in' in DBF since you have a button that activates the 'Dragon Dash' which has you fly across the screen and home into your opponent, and it also goes through most projectiles so for beginners fighting each other having that is useful for swiftly getting in. But it is very punishable, so learning when to use it properly is an early lesson. It has a few mechanics to aid beginners because I'm sure they recognise that this is a Dragon Ball game and a number of people playing it won't necessarily be into fighting games, they'll just be fans of the show so letting them have a good time is a priority here. One of the other ways they do this is by having auto-combos (performed by repeatedly pressing the light attack (LA) or medium attack (MA) for a more powerful variant that ends in a metre costing super). They're not a thing I'm fond of as they won't teach you the game that well but they do make for some cool looking action. The auto-combos, in fact, are totally unique combos. In a lot of other games, they are the same visually as manual combos but do less damage. And since they are unique here its a shame to see them locked into the auto-combos and not be able to do them manually. For example, Frieza, a character I use has a really cool looking move in the first part of his auto-combo which launched them into the air. So what I sometimes do to mix things up is perform the first half of the A-C then go into a manual one when in the air. But I wish I had the option to do this move anytime. But while there is a very flashy and basic fighter there is a high skill ceiling here as well, which you will discover at the time of writing when you go online. It isn't as high as ArcSystem's other games but there is still quirky stuff. Since this is a 3v3 fighter you can call in a member of your team to do a one-off move and jump out again. Using these can give you the ability to get hits in and continue combos where you couldn't without. Or they can be used to cover approaches, help defend etc. There is also the little mechanic also found in ArcSytem's other games; the jump cancel. Its something I've always known about but I've not really put serious time into learning but if you want to get beyond hammering out basic stuff you gotta get used to it. Essentially any medium attack can be jump cancelled. A common thing to do would be crouching MA (which puts them in the air a little), standing MA (pops them up a little more) then hit up while the animation is still happening to quickly meet them in the air. Since you can only use your proper launchers and Dragon Dash once per combo link it frees you up to use them later in the combo and its the mastery of this that really frees up the fighting system as a whole. It's here where it really gets fun. I've not really played the story yet but I hope to get round to it soon (it's kinda bonkers it's about the Dragon Ball gang being controlled by an entity and they turn to the camera when referencing this entity) and it also has this weird turn-based map system between fights. There's other stuff. Sparking Blast and how the online seems to be kinda borked at the moment in that the games run fine until it kicks you out of the lobby for no reason, but this will do for now.

Found out about this by chance when I went through the Golden Joystick nominees and after watching its trailer I immediately bought it. Looked like it'd hit all the right notes for me and thankfully that proved correct. It's from a small French studio called Plane Toast (the food-puns seem to be all over the place) and seemingly their first project. You play as a young adult girl who receives an SOS signal from the ship her sister disappeared in six years prior, proceed to leave the space station you're currently residing at and start following the trail of the signal to a mostly deserted colony planet where you grew up. It's not the most unique setup, but it gives you an immediate emotional hook for what is essentially a purely exploration-driven open world game. And it mixes in some slight Dune-ish mystery elements via the titular Sand Witches and some subtext about environmentalism and corporate greed in there as well. The gameplay foundations are very light, there's a bit of climbing and platforming, there's a lot of driving around, and the only thing you find when exploring are either materials to build new tools or certain items you need to collect quests. Because there are still some people living on the planet and they're struggling to survive, so they're more than happy to have a newcomer there who can help out. Story progression is linked to the tools you build, as unlocking one moves the plot and timetable a bit forward. There's no combat, so when I say tools I mean a gadget to allow you to use ziplines or a scanner for your car to more easily find interactable objects, among them signal blockers which jam your map and are basically UbiSoft towers (they only reveal a couple of question marks on the map though, not a hundred). I can't put my hand on what it is exactly, probably just all the gears perfectly fitting together, but it's an incredibly engaging experience IMO. It's not a deep game by any means, at least mechanically. Think of it as a less obtuse version of Sable, or the bigger cousin of A Short Hike, and you get the idea. The world is densely packed and gives the impression of being vast, but you can drive around from one edge to the other in I presume less than five minutes. But it does evoke an incredibly sense of place, mostly due to the strong artstyle, great soundtrack and grounded, believable writing. It's also unmistakably French, and I don't say that with any kind of fun-poking subtext, because the media landscape has become very unified in recent years, so it's nice to see something European with a unique cultural influence for a chance. I guess part of why I like it so much might also be because it just came out of nowhere, which nobody reading this and deciding to pick it up will have the luxury anymore, but I do believe it's a really good 'experience' if you like more challenge-free games. I'm not quite through yet, but I suspect it will conclude at around the 10 hour mark, which seems like a reasonable length for a game without much mechanical depth. One last thing: I play it on Switch because I don't have a PS5 or a decent PC and I wouldn't really recommend that version. It permanently runs sub-30fps and has horrible pop-in and dynamic resolution drops. It speaks to the quality of the game that I'm still enjoying it, but unless you have no other option like myself, I'd strongly recommend playing it anywhere else.

Stumbled upon this while playing Ruined King, as mentioned, because I thought the developer went silent for a while. Turns out they didn't, but were focused on a (then) PC-only free-to-play MMORPG called Wayfinders. (Un?)fortunately this didn't go to plan, their publisher closed its doors and they were left with a game that had an overwhelmingly negative response on Steam due to its microtransaction model. But newly free of their publishing shackles, they decided to revamp the whole thing, make it a single-purchase game without any additional DLC and refine the offline component to get it out the door on consoles, too. So much for the Star Wars opening scroll. The developer in question is Airship Syndicate, who people might know for Battlechasers, Darksiders Genesis or the aforementioned Ruined King, but for the first time, this is a fully 3D game with a 3rd person perspective. It's somewhat reminiscent of a couple of things, a bit of Borderlands here, a bit of Destiny there, and if you took it under the microscope you might even find some PSO DNA. In other words it's a class-based action RPG you can play solo or with up to three friends. There's a couple of things it does differently though – for example, only three out of the 8 characters/classes are available at the start, a knight/tank, a gunslinger and a rogue. The remaining five will get unlocked by completing certain missions and you can freely switch between them by that point. So unlike similar games where you grind your way through the entire game with one character, this very much encourages you to play around with different playstyles. As a result, none of them have too deep of a progression system and only three unique abilities plus one Ultimate to their name. That is enough for them to play quite differently though. I started off with the rogue who does the usual rogue stuff of being a nimble, fast attacker who can power herself up to damage enemies while dashing through. The character I'm currently playing is the gladiator (character n° 5) who can charge up her abilities, getting hyped by an invisible crowd in the background, and punch twice as hard when releasing the button, which is rather satisfying to pull off. You can, however, mix and match weapons, so if for some reason you want the gunslinger to attack with a sword or the gladiator to run around with a shotgun, nothing's really stopping you. In an unusual twist, both melee and ranged combat feels quite good, the latter makes up for the lack of blocks and parries by having Gears of War's active reload system to significantly boost the power of the next couple of shots fired after reloading. Progression is where I'm a bit split at the moment but I also haven't fully grasped it yet. There's a progression tree, but it only boosts you passively (y does x % more damage). There's also an affinity menu where you can bolster three different types of styles, which influence the stat bonuses you gain from certain equipment linked to that style. So in other words the real growth here happens through equipment, not unlike some of those other games I mentioned at the beginning. But the interconnection between those affinities and the equipment – which also favours using a set for a bonus – can make it a bit difficult to digest at first. Though at least on Normal, it is quite easy at the beginning, so you don't have to run around with a perfect build to survive right from the get-go. Structurally there's a city that works as a hub, from which you can access the first open area. Sprinkled around that area are small caves and larger dungeons, which are partially randomly generated and where the meat of the game takes place. The dungeons can also be modified before entering, increasing the challenge, but also the reward waiting at the end. I've only seen the first open area so far but according to the map there's three in total, so it's quite a big game even if you plan to only play it solo like myself. But I could see how this could be a real time sink if you have some friends interested in it, with all the modifiers and higher difficulties and such. Particularly as some abilities also effect the entire party – the crowd boasting from the gladiator for example is an AOE buff. Of course it also has a story, but it's here you can tell it started off as an MMO because it all happens in stiff dialogue sequences with text boxes. It's good enough to inject some life into the world but hardly the main focus. You also have a neat little apartment you can decorate at will, if you wish, and a lot of the loot you're going to find are weird tables and beds. I'm definitely enjoying it. Exploring the world is fun, the combat feels good, there's really nothing fundamentally wrong with it I think. It won't be for everyone but for such a small studio it's quite an achievement.

Mixed emotions! I play for hours having relaxing fallout adventure fun and then it'll freeze, I'll get stuck behind something or worst of all its bugged and I can't get a character to do something they're supposed to. So I'm stuck.

Played around 4 or 5 hours of this now (split between yesterday and today) enjoying it a lot, the previews really weren't lying when they said it was Dead Space in all but name and in my opinion that's no bad thing as that's one of my favourite franchises of all time. In tone and feel the game shares a hell of a lot from some the survival horror greats, mainly down to inventory space, lack of ammo and how flimsy you are even though you have a suit of armour on... if you've played any recent third person horror game you'd be right at home here. Saying that the game I'm mostly reminded of when playing is actually Control thanks to the weird environments and random floating junk hanging in the air. Supplies are scavenged in the field or can be made through crafting, so far the game is doing a good job with giving me just enough to get the job done... there's no hording ammunition this early on. Story wise I'm very early so don't really know what's going on, I remember reading the devs saying they'd unwittingly made a game about Covid and given some of the logs I've found and read I'd agree with that whole heartedly... whatever is happening has definitely piqued my interest though so that's good. After the Silent Hill 2 remake my main concern was the combat, I found the shooting in SH2 to be a little too skittish and in some ways this is too... there are upgrades that look like it can help out with that but at the minute, with ammo being as scarce as it is, I'll admit I'm using aim assist a little... hopefully I can get rid of that down the line. So far in terms of offensive I have the starting Pistol and the Shotgun equivalent... both can be charged for more damage with the same amount of ammo used, obviously this is risk and reward as charging takes time allowing the enemies to close the gap. Gas cannisters and red barrels make an appearance (of course) and do exactly what you expect them to with the big difference that your suit is completely fireproof and you can literally stand right next to these things and melee them... you also have a defensive fire attack that explodes outward in a 360 circle... handy for stopping the enemies merge mechanic. The biggest niggle so far (and considering it's a horror game it's a big one) the game hasn't been scary... it has atmosphere in spades but it really isn't scary at all. I've jumped once but that was mainly down to a loud noise coming from nowhere. So after some initial skepticism as to Bloober pulling this off I'm pretty happy with what I've seen so far and I'm hoping I can get it clocked before my travels next Saturday... I'll definitely be smashing some hours in tomorrow.

So this is the action rogue-like from makers of Bastion and Transistor. It's a very good one. It has a lot of potential stuff in terms of weapons, buffs and abilities for a run that come together in some surprisingly interesting ways. I don't really want to go into it all, because there is so much and it's a bit of a spoiler, in a way. I do think anyone who likes Dead Cells will have a hard time not getting into this too. It's got the same kind of fast, dash-y combat but I'd argue the upgrades are probably more interesting because they're tied to more than your attacks. I guess Dead Cells has some of that but it's robust with a bigger variety of abilities that can tie to your dash, for example. But Dead Cells is better in some other ways. They're both cool and good; get both! I'm also quite enjoying the story more than I expected. It's set in Greek mythologies' underworld and done in quite traditional way in that it's mostly a family squabble the consequences of which is big, dramatic and violent fights and supernatural displays of power. It's kinda fun that you're trying to escape the underworld in a rogue-like and no-one really cares that you're doing that because they know you'll die and be back. Some give quiet encouragement or Hades himself just rolls his eyes as you leave. It's played pretty straight and it's cool to hang out in that starting area before the intense combat. I'm not sure how many stages there are but the best I've done is get to the third boss, who are a pair of cheaters. I dunno how I'm meant to do it right now. I think since I don't have a brilliant way to do a well synchronised build yet, just out of inexperience, but I'll get it.

Only played a few minutes before I go to sleep, but yep, pretty sweet so far. One thing I thought was really cool is that one of the menu options is you can change the appearance of the food in game. Could be as simple as you’re veggie or vegan and you would rather not everything be meat, but there’s also some silly options like “Castlevaniaesque” and “monster”. In related and weird news, IGN (or their freelancer) appear to have stolen an indie guy’s video review script. Apparently IGN hav taken down their review while they investigate.

yeah so, i like this, it's a bit different to previous mgs games, in that the map is massive and you do missions in smaller parts - and you get a horse to ride around on - bit like the witcher 3. controls are confusing like normal, but pretty well explained. there seems to be a lot of scope for sneaking and doing things differently which is cool, but i am a bit rubbish at it and often get spotted while trying to be sneaky and end up killing loads of people - which is what i usually do in mgs games. doesn't seem to be an easy mode but it's not been too difficult so far. there is a chicken hat you can equip that stops you getting spotted a few times after you fail once or something - that might be the easy mode - unclear. you can hide while riding your horse by sort of hanging off one side of the horse, i thought that sounded ace so... the into/prologue part is a sort of long interactive cutscene, which has some funny/cool bits, and some rubbish/boring bits imo. after the first bit there hasn't been that much dialogue/cutscenes which is odd. but i'm not too far in so there's still time. extracting stuff is awesome.

Bought this a few days ago and I think this might, maybe, possibly, be a game some other people are interested in. As the name implies you're the owner of a small bookshop (in the form of a trailer you drive around with) and try to make a living in a small coastal town by visiting certain places and selling books. The books are categorised into genres like crime, fantasy, non-fiction etc. and certain areas favour one or the other – for example, if you go to the beach, you should pack a couple more children's books than usual because they're good sellers there (keep in mind this is a game of fiction and does not represent reality). You can also decorate your shop and certain decorations influence people's buying habits. A chair or a dog (don't ask) will make people stay around longer and possibly purchase more, whereas certain items with a theme could result in higher sales of related books, ie. spooky decorations push Stephen King novels and such. So below the cozy fassade this has some very manipulative capitalist energy but ultimately it's all done in a cute and inoffensive manner. The majority of the book sales happen automatically, meaning you see people walk in and out of the trailer and tiny speech bubbles showing what they're buying. But a couple of times per day someone will ask for a recommendation, which is where the slightly more active part of the process begins. Someone might ask for an easy read with few pages, someone might specifically ask for certain themes or time periods. For the most part it's easy enough to find the right one as there's also a bit of leeway, but occasionally you come across one that doesn't make much sense (asking for a happy ending but refusing your recommendation if it doesn't have one for example). Some are also a bit weird, like a fanatic of classic plays being super happy when you recommend Hamlet, as if they'd never heard or read about it. The books are real-life books of course. At first I was a bit disappointed there wasn't a list of what you could stock but ultimately this would just be an incomplete list of, well, any book ever written, so kind of pointless. The way it works is that you buy them pre-owned without any clue what's in the box and only by the time you're out and about and someone wants a recommendation can you actually go through what's on display and make an informed choice. There's a short summary of everything and I've already taken screenshots of a few that sound interesting. It's also not snobbishly discrimating, you can have Shakespeare and Le Guin right next to manga like Sailor Moon or Dragon Ball, which I think helps to make it more believable. I think it's a nice cozy game for this season, nothing too deep but also not mind-numbingly passive, a nice middleground that might even indirectly give you a recommendation here and there. Also looks fine on Switch 2 handheld mode despite being a Switch 1 game, though I suspect native resolution on a Steamdeck for example would fare even better (keep in mind the screenshots look worse than the game because of Switch 2 compression). This was my very first recommendation btw., I think the game is stalking my IP.

I've played over an hour of this now in about three 20 minute bursts. I like it but it is very different to Transistor (and the early parts of Bastion that I played). The game is part visual novel, part rpg. It's not as text heavy as a game like Sunless Sea (nor remotely as free-form), but the story is told through text like in the second picture above. Pyre is not remotely an action game. It's been described as a sports game in some reviews, but I think that's a bit laughably over the top. The "combat", known as Rites, does resemble a sport in that you have to take a ball and carry it into your opponents "pyre"...but I think this is the one element of the game that does resemble Transistor to some extent. Actually now that I'm typing this maybe it is closer to basketball than Transistor but anyway, I'm not going to call it a "sports" game just yet. During the basketball match (I've given up) you can perform actions like sprinting, jumping, passing and even throwing the ball into the enemy's pyre (oh my god it's basketball). If you don't have the ball you can cast your aura, i.e. attack an enemy. Each team has three characters and you can only control one character at a time. If a character is attacked they are banished for a certain period of time. Each individual character has stats that govern how much damage they do to an enemy pyre, how long they are banished for etc. Each character also has a skill tree and you can pick new abilities when they level up, and each character can also equip one "talisman" that has some kind of stat boosting effect. Those are the rpg elements. The visual novel elements are basically everything else. You move from point to point on the map (so far the game has been almost entirely linear) and this will usually trigger some kind of story event or conversation among your party that is told through text. In one hour I haven't experience much of the story but basically your characters are exiled in some kind of wasteland, and completing this rites ceremony seems to be some way to obtain freedom for them. There is no full voice acting (the characters make a few squables when they speak a la Zelda) except for the character who seems to control the rites, I don't know what it is but his voice seems to remind me of movies like Tron and Logan's Run. So far, it's an intriguing game, and you definitely can't accuse Supergiant of retreading old ground. Artistically, in terms of visuals and music, it's too early to comment but the signs are that this will match their earlier games.

This is just for the demo so far... release isn't too far away now though. I'm presuming this isn't too far in to the game, you start out already having met Carlos and entering the Subway train, after a brief conversation you're free to head up to the streets. First impressions... and it's a big one, HDR is vastly improved over RE2... I wish they'd actually go back and fix that but after a year its highly unlikely, anyway it's a lot better in this game. It controls very similar to RE2 but with the added dodge, I actually had to go and change the controller setup as I didn't like where they'd put run (clicking left stick) with the change it felt much better. Obviously it looks lovely, already it's a much more colourful game than RE2, shooting feels pretty much identical... all though I think they may have toned down the zombie dismemberment a tad... presumably because there's more on screen. I've had a good wonder around, it's got some nice little shortcuts you can open up to move around easier and I'm surprised at how many shops you could actually enter. I didn't actually get to finish the demo though... Nemisis killed me...? Everything is looking good to me so far, fingers crossed that shitty real life virus doesn't delay the game.

I thought there might be a thread for this, but there isn't. So I'll be the one to make one for the weird indie game Premise is you've got 50 games which are emulative of the style of 8bit to early 16bit era, all released by this fake company called 'Ufosoft' which shut down in the 90s. Games which are dungeon explorers, side scrolling beat em ups, weird puzzlers where you're a chameleon blending into tiles, a kinda horse betting game. Game where you hop around platforms kicking soccerballs at things. A platformer all about suiciding yourself. Apparently there's a full 20 hour classic FF style turn based RPG in there, and an Ultima style first person dungeon crawler. Lots of weird shit The games are hard. You have to actually learn them, it ain't Warioware. Naturally, as an impatient person, I'm full of salt and rage at some of it. But it is interesting, the games get more sophisticated and better to control over the 'years'. Eg, pick up the final game they released, Cyber Owls, which is a beat-em-up that 'released' in 1989, and compare it to Fist Hell from 1987. Similar mechanics but more intuitive movement and faster gameplay. Also some of the games have couch multiplayer. Some of the games are good, some seem crap though like the weird egg dungeon crawler at the beginning where they kill you for walking right. I don't have much history with this era of gaming but it's been talked up a whole lot this year so after enjoying Balatro so much that it's potential GOTY for me I thought I'd try to expand my horizons on here. So maybe I bump this later way more keen on it, or someone else might find it interesting. I did find this one potentially interesting title, Bug Hunter (1984), which is this strategic kinda turn based bomberman game you see below where you have to kill bugs. I think the idea is to find your niche and get comfortable with a few familiar games first before branching out into the more scary ones (which for me, are platformers. Fuck man, great way to get me tilted 😠) Very original idea for a game, but fuck I bet it took a shitload of work to get 50 of them. Some are a bit more throaway like the camoflague gecko game though so maybe there's some sensible overlap that they achieve when implementing them This seems to just be Windows currently, but you could probably play it on any old machine. Definitely expect to see it on Switch eventually

Got my copy early so gave this a go this afternoon after I finished The Inpatient. Starts off similarly to a lot of Monster Hunters, getting you into your camp quite quickly after a few scripted sequences, tutorials and lots of cutscenes. Spent awhile honing my character - went for my traditional ginger lady, had to change her hair as soon as I was able to in camp though as it just looked shite. Went for a tour of the camp and tried to take in where everything is, there’s definitely a lot to take in but I remember quite a bit of the layout already. Chose my weapon - went for the Insect Glaive. Tried it out in the training room afterwards and had an absolute blast with it, felt like Dante or Bayonetta or some shit, I was doing aerial gymnastics like nobodies business. Went on a quest after this to kill some jagras which was incredibly simple, cool to finally get to do my first quest. As soon as I finished all the online stuff opened up, I didn’t even realise the servers were online yet. Messed about a bit with the squads and checking out the new gathering hall which is fantastic. I’ve created a squad for us by the way, it’s called MFGamers - unsurprisingly - if you search for it whenever y’all get the game it should pop up, if not send me a message and I’ll invite you. Hardly got into it really, but it looks and feels phenomenal so far, cannot wait to get truly stuck in to some tough monsters in my next session.

Ok. So I’m a huge Dragonball Z fan. I first watched the series back in my 20’s, via the heavily edited Toonami dub (people never died, they got sent to ‘Another Dimension’). Years later I rewatched the American dub. And a few years after that, the Japanese original. I still have a lot of love for the series. So I was certainly interested in this. Visually, it absolutely nails it. It looks exactly like an episode of the anime. And it’s certainly a nice touch that you can play either with English or Japanese audio. It doesn’t get off to a great start gameplay wise though, with a pretty poor ‘training’ mission. I’ve seen a few videos of “stuff the game doesn’t tell you”. And a glaring omission is how to fight. Sure, you get three pages of a control pad, showing you what the buttons are. But there’s no explanation given in how to actually fight an enemy. I know, as a fan, that you have to charge Ki to perform energy attacks. But it doesn’t tell you that, so newcomers may be a bit puzzled why their special moves aren’t working. There’s a couple of prompts at the bottom of the screen (hold these buttons to do this move). But as far as tutorials go, it’s not great. I then experienced a bug which meant I had to reload my game. “Walk with Gohan to the fishing spot” I was told. Great. Except Gohan vanished, and after 5 minutes of searching it was clear he’d fucked off into thin air. Part of the game is open world, where you can fly around collecting Z orbs of different colours, to level up your abilities. Again, the game doesn’t tell you what these are for. Then there’s the Community Board, which is frankly a mess. You get a board, and when you meet characters and perform certain actions, you gain their icon, and can place them on your board. Putting certain characters next to each other grants you bonuses in combat. Some characters have their own board (Goku’s wife, Chi Chi, and his trainer Master Roshi). How do you add icons onto their board? I don’t have a fucking clue. It speaks volumes that the first time you access this part of the game, you’re barraged with about 6 pages of information. And I’m still none the wiser on what the fuck to do with it. Anyway, only a couple of hours in. Maybe things will make more sense as I go along. Or it won’t, and I’ll just mash buttons and hope for the best.