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So you drive around and stuff. Its like the first grid, but with better handling. The handling isn't the best still, still feels a bit odd, but from what I remember of the first one, I like the handling better in this new one, was getting quite into it last night using the pad. Its a bit floaty and twitchy, but decent fun IMO. There's a number of different events, like time trials, races, elimination, overtake challenges, so that's good to keep things interesting. the overtake challenges I was stuck on for a while, seem like a difficulty spike, although they are optional I think.. There's 3 types of car, drift, balanced, and grip - they all handle pretty similar though, just as described really, you can still drift the grip cars but it's just easier to drift in the drift ones....the game keeps telling you to drift, so I expect it's not a terrible idea like it would be in a more realistic game, well for going fast anyway. Its difficult to tell which cars are best from looking at the car select screen so I'm just randomly picking stuff at the mo. are the cars better as you go to the right maybe? there's a mix of pgr style city tracks and racing circuits. The graphics are really nice on Xbox, runs smooth enough too. The story is really stupid but that's expected. Yo I seen your vids on YouTube, let's form a worldwide racing league innit. Tried with the wheel today and I think it works better on the pad maybe, wheel would usually help with twitchy ness but here it's still really twitchy, and the force feedback isn't great, still does give some feedback info though. And I did get into it a bit more with the wheel too, so it's not bad on the wheel. Due to preorder bonus tracks, I canceled my order and just rented, enjoying it so sort of wish I hadn't canceled it now, plus it has online pass so I can't play online now- except for a 48 hour trial. The version of brands hatch in the game is the short version - the one I like anyway. (long version is a preorder bonus) So anyone else get this? Like it?

Started playing this last night. It hasn't come up as a game to play in the monthly thread yet (though has been suggested) but it's a good time to bring it up as is about to be released on PS3 and Vita. It's a platform puzzle game so I'm playing with a pad as I hate playing games like this with keys. There is a story running through it, it's very Valve/Portal-like and has Danny Wallace doing the narration which is quite funny. I'm sure people dislike him but I like him in this and found him ok in Assassin's Creed (2? Brotherhood?). I'm a few chapters in so won't spoil too much but the generic square or rectangle shapes have lots of character (in the narration at least) and it's a lovely looking game with nice shadow effects and a brilliant soundtrack. It was made largely by one guy on his free time while he worked in a big studio. Well worth picking up and giving it a go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpsZaExywRk

This is up for free on PS+ right now, and I played it, so here is some impressions. I think I just want to vent. Man, do I hate this game. And for God's sake did I not want to hate it, I didn't want to be that guy. Table Top Racing is made by X-Wipeout folk, and that game rules so, so much. And after Sony Liverpool was dissolved this was what came out. A total mess. I'm heartbroken. It looks like Micro Machines from the 90s. I'm from the 90s, and I liked those Micro Machines games. They should have me in the palm of hair hands, nodding to a game from the 90s with me, as desperate as I am to hold on to my youth (got ID'd last week, I'm still a teen really). But no, this game is really, really confused. It is a lot like Micro Machines in a way. The tracks take place on table tops and its all small and cute, avoiding bread sticks and stuff. But, one of the 'cars' you can buy at the start to race in is the Breaking Bad meth wagon (it has official licencing) so I dunno what they're going for with tone ( Coming from a Mobile origin I guess who cares?). But screw all that: It's about the gameplay. That's what gamers tell me. Even though it is Micro Machines in presentation and has adult content officially licensed in a game that doesn't warrant it... and has a soundtrack that tries to beat Motorstorm: Pacific Rift despite in wubs despite not building up the atmosphere to make it work. The game itself is just shitty. It's a crude mobile port. Knowing it came from a gyroscode design I do respect it in a way. It's a Mario Kart style game that solely requires knowing the tracks for the best racing line, a lot like Wipeout I guess, but it is just executed in such an unsatisfying way; a way that is so unfun, especially compared to Mario Kart which it clearly tries to be as well; a game where it is more fun the faster you go thanks to the drift mechanic. This game punishes going fast in a silly way, despite presenting itself as Micro machines, at least visually. It's like it requires you to drive carefully, be sensible, hitting those apexes right (in a game where you drive through billiard balls like they're paper, with wubs, driving a meth van, with Mario Kart power ups). It's just all wrong. Play it! Tell me it works! I just can't believe these veterans got this so wrong, or they don't care anymore and just want to make something to tick enough boxes for loads of people to work. But this shit doesn't click, and it won't work on a large audience.. I guess they looked a Rocket League and thought they had the game to be this year's version. I expected better from these guys. Fuck this game. It's the fucking worst. Fuck this game. I've not hated a game this much in ages. Thanks for that, I guess.

Just thought I' d talk about a game I've been playing. I saw this on Steam as a pre-release beta, and as I'm a fan of Ghost in the Shell, I thought i'd give it a go. You play a member of Section 9, an elite force of cybernetically enhanced combat operatives responsible for protecting society and fighting terrorists on the streets of a futuristic Japan. It's a squad based tactical online FPS. As a cyborg, you have certain abilities such as heat vision, or active camoflage. However, there is also the opportunity to share your abiltity temporarily with your squad mates, or receive their power. I think it's still in beta. It's free to play, but you can buy early access packs for it. It's not too bad.

Played 10 hours of this so far, mostly with Sly and Small, absolutely loved every second of it I must say, and a whole lot more than when I played the Alpha in January. The game looks bloody stunning on PS4, the frame-rate seems to be 30 but incredibly stable (had no noticeable hiccups at all) and I haven't seen any bugs whatsoever, someone who I was playing with a bug right at the beginning (I think due to server overload) where everyone was queuing up to enter a button on a computer terminal to complete an objective in the Tutorial, but apart from that I've not noticed anything personally, just the odd bit of pop-in every now and again which is an extremely minor fault. Everything just looks so much better than the Alpha I played in January, I guess that's to be expected as that was running at 900p on the 'Bone apparently and the frame-rate, stuttering and screen-tearing was horrendous back then, but now, on PS4 at least, it's just buttery smooth, easily the most polished and stable Ubisoft game I've played in quite some time. As for the gameplay, well there isn't too much different here if you played the Alpha and/or Beta I guess, but the gunplay in particular (to me) feels slightly better, and more satisfying when you pop a headshot, it has almost that Destiny-level of Headshot satisfaction now which wasn't present in the Alpha I found, the main missions are fucking amazing (especially with friends), all seem rather varied and there's tons of them, tons of side-missions to do and that's not even mentioning the Dark Zone which I haven't been able to access yet (only got up to Level 10 earlier today). So yeah, an incredibly impressive first 10 hours with the game, can't really see me changing my mind, but we'll see I guess, really wish I got the Gold Edition when it was on offer on Amazon now because I just know I'll want that season pass. Also, Me and Sly played a few hours with Jim-fucking-Sterling-son and made it into his Division video , it was an honour playing with the man, the myth, the legend himself a couple nights ago: http://youtu.be/rP7YJYk9ubM?t=23m24s

I picked up the early access of Divinity Original Sin on Steam last night. My early thoughts are mixed. The game is way to early on to even be on early access. The character creation is currently set on default, so you can customize your character. They stripped female armor art work out of the game due to an overwhelming outcry from Tumblr's social justice feminist, which has made using the forums to give input on make the core game better completely useless as you have leftwing and rightwing morons trolling each other. Honestly I think people should be focused on other things at this point in development. My short list right now would be. Loading screens that take for fucken ever Janky and broken controls Muddy textures How the game manages resource's to improve overall performance The fact that the only enemy I have seen are giant fucken "Genji" crabs If people put political posturing aside and try to make the core game better then Larian Studios will have a very special game on their hands.

So this was one of the earlier successes on Kickstarter before (or around) everyone started doing. It's a 2D platformer in the style of classic NES games and it's made by Yacht Club Games who are a few ex-Wayforward people. They left over a year a go and Wayforward games aren't quite what they were; coincidence? I say probably (definitely). Since NES games are the inspiration for Shovel Knight it does play things basic. You play with two buttons and a D-pad; one jumps and one shovels. But you also press down and shovel while jumping to do a downward attack and you use that to bounce off enemies. That's what you mostly do and this game, and it stays damn fun while doing it. They've clearly explored a lot of possibilities with your basic abilities. Enemies are either really defensive knights who can be hard to hit or simpler enemies just placed in awkward places that make things difficult (or fun) for you. It's design we've seen before but maybe in not quite this way. You can also make life a bit easier for you by using items you get through the game. You use them by pressing up and shovel, like Castlevania, and the properties of these items are like the ones you find in that game. That's what Shovel Knight is. It's NES games you know put into one well made game. Specifically it's Konami and Capcom NES games that are the big inspiration: pre-SotN Castlevania and Megaman are clear inspirations, as is smatterings of Ducktails and Zelda 2. But it plays a nicer game than those NES games. It controls well, and does actually look a lot better than those games. It's more TurboGrafx than NES. It also has some more forgiving design choices, like the checkpoints, which can be destroyed for more money to buy upgrades but then you lose them for good (like, they're still not there when you pass them after you've died). That's a cool risk/reward mechanic but I think you can still get a lot of gold without having to destroy them, from what I can tell now I'm at the end, so I suppose it's a case of how fast you want to upgrade your stuff. And when you die you lose a percentage of your gold but it can be picked up again if you don't die on route to where you last died, 'cos Demon's Souls. But overall it's a really fun game in a genre that the indies have explored a lot at this point, but I'd say it's one of the better examples. It's made by people ball achingly passionate about that era of gaming and they've crafted the ultimate love letter with Shovel Knight. That's really cool, but it does mean the game struggles to find it's own identity. I wish they laid off the references as it didn't need them since the game's mechanics were all reference enough. Bottom line though is two thumbs up. It's got some awesome bosses and nice, thick, treacle-y chiptune music. I should go finish it now... Oh, it's pretty fuckin' hard if that needed to be mentioned.

So I got this a bit ago when it was on sale. I wanted a fighting game to see me through to SFV, and I've also wanted to get somewhat adequate at Anime Fighters (a sub-genre, not necessarily fighting games based on animes; just ones that are execution heavy and have air dashing and stuff in them (some say even Marvel Vs Capcom is an Anime Fighter)). And it has been working. Thanks to playing this a little my SFV is a lot more confidently aggressive than my SFIV... but this shouldn't be about that. What is BlazBlue like? It's really fucking complicated; more so than I remember. I did play the very first iteration of BlazBlue and had an okay time but I only played it a little and I wasn't as versed in this shit as I am now. Now I just see fucking madness when I try to understand it. This game is made by Arc Systems Works: they're really cool and insane, and they put air dashing in everything, as well as multiple gauges and systems in games you remember being much simpler. I love this stuff, but put in fast action games I just can't keep up. I try, but it oftentimes doesn't work out. I dunno where to start explaining how this shit works. I guess basically you have an 'Overdrive' gauge that fills up quite rapidly where you can either use it to make your special moves more powerful or use it to break combos if you have the rotten luck of playing against someone who knows how to play this game. You also have a multitude of special moves: a general one, the general one while in 'Overdrive' and a special one you can instakill with only under certain conditions. You have to do so much reading while fighting here; scanning all the bars and meters, knowing what it all means and what you can do while you have some anime folk air dashing around. It's very overwhelming. And on top of that the characters are really different. They're not Guilty Gear different (another Arc Systems Works game for those that think BlazBlue is too easy) but they do have their own unique mechanics. This is something SFV does as well and I imagine they've been copying Arc Systems' homework but doing it in a much more manageable way for the layman. Basically you have some characters that use different kinds of traps to play that way, or people who have complex but very effective mobility if you can 'get' it, there is a girl that homes in like a 3D game Sonic... etc... it's full of character unique mechanics. I've not scratched the surface myself. But overall it is just fun to play. There is a lot to discover in this mess and I will be slowly using it to help me 'git good' at fighting games generally. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to most folk. If you want something like this get Persona Arena. It's this kinda fun but for normal people.

From Kickstarter (2013) to Early Access (2014) to official release (2015), Sunless Sea came to be in a manner similar to many indie games in recent years. But even in Early Access it got brilliant reviews and was one of RPS's best games of 2014. Eurogamer gave it 10/10. Those endorsements were enough to pique my interest and I've finally gotten around to putting a couple of hours into it. My early impressions are that it's brilliant. Like I said in the Westerado thread, I love games that are a bit original and this is another game that feels unique. Essentially it is a kind of exploration and survival game. The above screenshots are pretty typical. From the safety of the port of Fallen London (read: some kind of dark fantasy post apocalyptic world) you have to explore the sea, visiting ports to talk to the locals, collect stories, trade all manner of things, pick up quests and generally - discover. The problem is, the extent to which you can explore is limited by your fuel and supplies (food), which are not come by cheaply. Not to mention that it's a dark, dangerous world. In many ways, it's similar to FTL: Faster than Light - but if you read the RPS article you'll see that this is much more of a wordy game, more of an rpg, much more of a developed world than FTL. However, like FTL, death is pretty hard to avoid. When you die in the game you can bequeath certain traits and possessions to your successor, but not everything that you own. So far I've died once, when I wandered too far north and was mauled by some kind of monstrous iceberg that was doing way more damage than I realised and killed me in a couple of hits. I chose to pass on my sea chart to my next character, so the ports I have discovered are still shown on the map. There are actually two ways to play the game - permadeath, and a kind of soft death option (where you can manually save like a normal game), but permadeath is the default setting and the devs say that it is the way the game is intended to be played, so I've gone with that. Last but not least, the game looks and sounds stunning. Close to home the sea is brightly lit but the more you explore the sea is shrouded in complete darkness, so you will welcome the glow of an island you can dock at. And I love the colourful illuminations and designs of the various islands and flora and fauna. As you would expect, the soundtrack is minimal but fitting, and just generally excellent. You can listen at bandcamp.

This is a Super Meat Boy type platformer but oh so much more psychedelic. It fucks with your brain in many ways, it gives you powers, then takes them away when they have already become second nature. It gives you a simple platforming task but bombards your senses with light shows and noise, It's fucking awesome for all these reason but it's also fucking hard. The music is slammin and when your die a chick says "Ooooh yeaaaaaa" in an orgasmic tone that makes you want to bust off. Sometimes a dude says it too, same result. Gameplay trailer: Me winning: http://www.trueachievements.com/gameclip.aspx?clipid=38304519

Apologies if there's already a thread for this, please merge if there is! I think a few of you have played it. I just played an hour and a half of it there, it's brilliant. It's like playing through a novel. I have no idea how long it is, or if the ending is satisfying, but it's a very interesting game to play. Well you don't really play it so much as watch it. You have access to a database of police interviews (brilliantly acted). You find new videos by searching for information or words that came up in the videos you've watched. All of this is completely up to you. The game has a very minimal interface. The sparse music is nice and the occasional flicker of a face on the screen is quite spooky! I've been taking notes with a pen and paper and have covered two envelopers front and back with words to search for, and almost another a4 sheet! So far the story that has developed has been very interesting, and I've unlocked 5/13 of the game's achievements. Great stuff.

So I guess I'm probably the only one that got this, but I'll put some impressions up anyway. Dived in just after release last night for a couple of hours, mixed impressions to say the least I'm afraid to say, although I would lean slightly to the positive side. Purposefully wanted to play all the different modes that weren't in the beta so started out with a few games of Fighter Squadron, overall impression was good but at the end of my first few games with it, it was already getting a bit repetitive and just felt shallow to me, there's not much to it, just fly around and dogfight with people, there are Hero ships and stuff you can play as, but I didn't get to play as one. Quite exhilarating at times though and the Star Wars fan in me got a kick out of piloting these famous ships, but I just don't know how long the fun will last. Next mode I tried was Blast, which is Team Deathmatch. Absolutely awful this was, it was ok on one of the maps I tried which is like a large factory type map, but on all the others they just didn't really seemed to suit it, the shooting is just too imprecise to enjoy a mode like this and I just didn't really get a kick out of it at all, it was like playing an extremely shitty CoD clone really. The last nail in the coffin for this mode was the Endor map, I'm sure it's a great map for Walker Assault and Supremacy, which are the bigger, more traditional BF game modes, but for something as tight-nit as TDM, it was just atrocious, trees everywhere, no real focal point to the map, endlessly getting spawn killed and shot at out of nowhere from Snipers hiding in trees and bushes, just awful, no fun at all to play, and will not be going back. The last mode I tried was Droid Run, this was much better, and is similar to Domination from CoD, first couple of games weren't great as the randoms I was playing with weren't bothering with the objectives so the matches ended pretty quickly (if you capture the 3 droids the game ends in 15 seconds), but the last 2 or 3 were awesome, reminded me of Domination in CoD as I said, fast-paced, lots of struggling to turn the tide of battle on either side, lots of tension as you capture the droid for your team, was pretty great I must say and can see myself spending some time in this. Hopefully get round to playing some more tomorrow night/morning, going to try a few more game modes and see how I get on, saving Supremacy and Walker Assault for last!

The Beginner's Guide is by the guy that did The Stanley Parable and it plays with the same ideas of deconstructing the traditional mechanics of gaming. It's all set against the backdrop of knowing someone through their games and seeing their struggles. The guy who wrote Stanley narrates his thoughts on his friend's games as you play through them, what he thinks they say about him. The games themselves aren't ever especially fun, we're talking the sort of things Jim Sterling would make videos about, but the experience as a whole is quite affecting towards the end. It gets a little heavy handed after that, but then, I'm not entirely sure it's about what I think it's about It's a very interesting thing, I'm not surprised it's not caught the attention the way Stanley Parable did, it's in utereo

Wow, this game is fantastic. The opening is brilliant. Essentially it is like Red Dead Redemption meets Earthbound or Zelda. I won't spoil the purpose of the story but you find it out soon enough in the game. Essentially you explore a Zelda-like overworld in a wild west setting. I've played it for an hour and picked up a fair few sidequests. And the game is seriously beautiful too, and the music is great. Yes, I see a lot of potential in this one...

I first heard of Read Only Memories two years ago when it was being kickstarted by a company called GaymerX. Initially I thought it would be some kind of very in your face LGBT game, but then after I watched a couple of videos I thought it looked really cool. Anyway it was released in October. I picked it up in the Steam winter sale and have played a couple of sessions of it. It's great. (I should say, I don't intend to flood the forum with threads for indie games but if I think a game is good enough to recommend, then I'll create a thread for it, unless other people object). A couple of immediate pluses, this game looks great and sounds great (not all indie games do...). It's an adventure game set in Neo San-Francisco in 2064, the gameplay, looks and music are very much in the vein of Policenauts (and I assume Snatcher, although I haven't played it). You do have an inventory and interact with objects in the environment but the bulk of the game has been dialogue. In terms of the LGBT aspect, I've already encountered a fairly diverse range of characters so I can see how that is going to be incorporated into the game, but it doesn't look to be a game "about" that subject. As you can see, it's very colourful. The characters that are speaking, in this case your AI companion Turing, change their expression while they speak. That seems to be his neutral face. Although it was developed in the US, the game does feel very Japanese.

I'd put the subtitle in but I'm on my phone and I don't know how to spell it. Never Alone is an action puzzle platformer, not entirely dissimilar from something like Limbo or Brothers. You control 2 characters, switching between the two, with one opening the way for the other (you can also play co-op). You play as a young girl who can pull objects and use her sling type weapon to smash things, and an Arctic fox, who can scamper up walls and communicate with spirits What makes Never Alone stand out is that it's made in conjunction with native Alaskans. The story is a traditional folk story and they pull in some art, which I wish they did more of. There's also unlockable videos that are pretty interesting. There's a few knocks against the game though. I really liked it, but there is the sense, especially early on, that this is 'this year's indie game', like it's another Limbo or something. It's a harsh criticism, but it's a shame it didn't find its identity earlier The platforming controls let me down right at the end of the game. Nothing too major but it was a shame to end the game on a down note Probably a bigger issue, although I'm not that arsed, is my game not saving. To their credit the devs have been emailing me trying to find the cause, so it's hard to be too annoyed with them (I got sent the game to review but I'm contacting them from a different email, so I'm just a normal customer to them). It's a bit worrying that they can't work out what's causing it. But I've finished the game now anyway Edited to include a video <iframe width="853" height="480" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/NXC9t9Hmr5g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Very, very pretty game. It's kind of a Stephen King-em-up, it's what I imagine Maine to look like. You play as a detective of sorts who's been contacted by Ethan Carter, a young boy, about something that's happening in the town. Ethan has gone missing and you're trying to find him. It starts slightly creepy, but pretty quickly there's a supernatural undertone to things. It faintly reminds me of the D games with what is happening to the characters. There was a moment that I found massively unsettling just because it was so out of place, but it comes back on itself to be whimsical. It's very odd, a mix of styles that maybe shouldn't be mixed. I'm liking it so far. I think it's going to take me longer than it should because you can miss things. While it's fairly linear it's a very wide straight line, there's stuff hidden (I found a handgrenade that's not been explained), so you worry you might miss things. Equally though you done have to solve anything, there's no barrier stopping you moving forward, and if there is its only a hint to stop, there's always another route around

I think some others have been playing this. Any thoughts. I think I quite like it so far but it doesn't feel as sturdy as Ridiculous Fishing or Luftrausers (other Vlambeer games) but I put that down to this being made in Game Maker. It feels like some production values are missing. But that's my only gripe, really. It's some good shooty fun with solid action and loads of Vlambeer screen shake. It's one of those games that has Rogue elements in it except this is a top down dual stick shooter. There are randomly generated levels though the themes are always the same and the same bosses always turn up. You have a bunch of characters to unlock that have different properties. It's a simple enough game. It is hard, though. I've got to the point where I can pretty confidently go through section 3 but I can't get past 4-1. I just get destroyed by the sentient crystals that fire lasers pretty rapidly. I tend to use the purple crystal dude who has more health and can throw up a brief reflective shield. I reckon he is a newb character but this game is pretty hard so I have no shame using him. I've been mostly playing it on the Vita, usually before work for 20 mins as it is pretty pick up and play. It's like Galak-Z in some ways except that is more complicated and does require longer sessions but I think they compliment each other well.

The PS4 version has just been updated and fixed. So if you were like me and stopped playing due to the horrendous screen tearing and gameplay freezing, it's ok to go back. I'm really enjoying it and it's a perfect relaxing game for just before going to sleep.

Surprised there was no thread for this already. A few people told me how good this was, so I was at a lose end tonight and decided to download it. It was a good decision. The Walking Dead is based on The Walking Dead comics and is a point and click adventure. However, it rips off a few things from other games and adds some new stuff on top. The stuff that's ripped off comes right out of Mass Effect and games of that ilk in where you have an either/or situation or conversation tree which effects what will happen further down the line. It's basically a branching story of which will evolve to your particular choices as you play. Replies to characters in game are mapped to a face button, and while some are timed in others where you are not in control of the situation, there are others that allow you to take your time and pick wisely what you want to say. The new thing that has been brought to the table is context sensitive combat. Now this sounds horrible, but they actually made it like an interactive qte, as in you actually have more control over what happens, but the effects of the qte are always the same, or at least I think they are. Outside of combat qtes, the left stick controls your character and the right stick controls the 4 points cursor, with each point signifying an action on the d-pad. These actions range from observing items, talking to people and interacting with stuff. It's a simple yet elegant set up. The whole shebang is wrapped up in some very nice celshaded graphics that harp back to the comic origins of the series. The way the story is acted out ranges from excellent to a bit choppy, but it's more of the excellent side than the crappy. The sound effects are quite good too, it looks as the whole package has had a lot of thought put into it. I particularly liked the attention to detail on one of the neon lights trying to hawk cola onto people, it's stuff like that that is prevalent here in the south of the USA. It's full of little design touches like this. Either they researched that sort of stuff or some people on the team have lived in the areas they have portrayed here in the game. Other than that, I can't really say much without spoiling the game or soiling the experience, as it's something you played maybe once or twice and then be done with. It's 400 points and is the first of five episodes that will be released. I have no idea when the new episodes will drop, but I'm looking forward to them The episode is quite short, I think I finished it in about 2 1/2 hours, although I think I missed a puzzle. I'm not sure though, it could have just been a dead end, I did look about to see if I could complete it but the game sort of pushed me right towards the end once I past a certain point. A nice touch is that right at the end it tells you what decisions other people made and how you aligned yourself within these decision. Maybe when/if the thread takes off we can talk about it all in spoilers, there's not much point me talking about it until a few other people have played and completed the game. Anyone else played it or interested in it? Click to get the demo Click to buy the game

Played 3 hours earlier today and I'm incredibly impressed with it, it's a shame it's only limited to two maps (Hoth and Sollust) and 2 game modes, but what is there is enough to give you a sense of the game for sure. On PC the game runs phenomenally well, a buttery smooth 60fps/native 1080p on Ultra for me, looks just like all the pre-release footage and gameplay suggested, maybe even better than I was expecting, servers have held up extremely well to me so far as well, only got kicked out of a game twice, once through fault of my own (router restarted to update firmware) and once due to the servers themselves, but apart from this, everything was buttery smooth I must say, phenomenal presentation from DICE, the menu's look incredibly chic and smooth (a small thing I know) and coupled with the server performance it couldn't really be better for a beta really, DICE have done a fantastic job. Mostly played Drop Zone and a couple of games of Walker Assault, enjoyed both, but out of the two game modes, I preferred Drop Zone to Walker Assault, DZ seemed much more CoD (which I prefer) and Walker Assault seemed much more Battlefield to me, which meant everything was incredibly chaotic, I didn't really have a clue what I was meant to be doing and I got killed every 3 seconds Was shit at DZ as well, but did manage to get a little better towards the end, and I was scoring points capturing pods anyway, will play some more Walker Assault tomorrow, but I wasn't a huge fan of it, pretty much everything I hate about Battlefield really, the experience was amazing though, seeing those AT-ATs and AT-STs walking around, pwning people, the Rebel base in Hoth, it was a Star Wars fans wet dream come true pretty much, I just have to try to get to grips with the Battlefield-esque gameplay in that mode otherwise I won't be playing it much in the full game.

This is out on pretty much everything right now, bar the 360 I think. It's a bit of a Rogue-like (or lite) 2D platformer so a bit like Spelunky. But also stealthy so a bit like Mark of the Ninja. You have 100 days to build up your abilities to pull off the final heist. Each heist makes a day tick down, each time you die another burglar takes their place and also takes a day off. When that burglar does, the abilities and money banked remains but money collected in the run gone wrong will get lost. It's good fun so far (I've got about 20 or 30 days in) but I've had some horrendous runs where I've fucked up badly about 10 times in a row so will probably start from scratch a few times before I see the 100th day. I was struggling at first until I watched this video with the developer: What I learned is that the basic hacking is the first thing you can afford, and you should buy that rather than try and save up for other things first. The money needed for most upgrades is obscene at first but you start off only able to rob from poor people and so the money you get out will be low to begin with. But on the other hand, security in the poor areas is quite basic so it's easier to rinse them out. Until the game recognises you're doing well and starts throwing more stuff your way, like mines, tougher enemies, etc. The best thing I learnt for myself when I was playing yesterday was to shut the doors rather than leave them open, so you can control where the enemies will go better. The art style is pretty great and the procedurally generated Victorian style names are superb.

I tend not to post about what I've been playing because I seem to be off on my todd with it, but Jotun is a game I'm surprised hasn't caught more attention. I guess it coming after The Banner Saga hasn't helped it, Jotun being a cartoon looking viking game. It's a different thing though, more like Bastion, an adventure game of sorts. It looks amazing though, it's hand drawn with very deliberate direction towards certain vista's and landmarks, often because they absolutely dwarf you. I'm not sure what I think of it though and I think the scale is part of the reason. The landscapes are so big that it makes you feel slow, and given that it doesn't exactly throw enemies at you it feels barren. I'm sure both of those things are deliberate, I'm just not sure it makes for the best game. The game is a bit vague too. Your dropped in to a land and trigger a hologram of sorts, it's only later you realise that was what you were supposed to do to open the gate. There's stuff hidden in the world, it's hard to know if you've missed something or not. Eventually you learn the structure, it's nothing radically different, and so long as you've picked up a rune, a power, and something that extends your life it's probably level complete. I'm sounding down on it, but I'm more undecided. I like the vagueness sometimes, it helps the ethereal feel they're going for. The pace emphasises the struggle of the world, you might fuck up a god, but it's going to be a fight

I suspect there's posts about Year Walk on the forum but there doesn't seem to be a thread. I've not quite finished it yet, looking at where I can potentially go there's not a lot left, not that it's impossible that a whole new area will open up, and there's still a box I have no idea what to do with. For those that haven't played it, it's basically a point and click, but one that fairly quickly becomes bleak as fuck. You're not quite just switching between locations, you have to walk along until you get to the path to the next area, which is occasionally used quite well, in quite an ominous way, but when you're stuck, lost, or have to do some leg work to solve a puzzle, it gets tedious. Which is where I'm at with it at the minute and why I'm writing this and not playing it. I've worked out what I need to do to solve a puzzle (in the graveyard for those that have played it) but it involves wandering around finding things that I've forgotten the location of, and I'll probably need to write the solutions down on something. So yeah, time for a coffee and a break before going and doing that. It's good though, I love a good off-key dark fairytale, and that's kind of what this is. It does seem odd that it started out life as a phone game still

So I've been playing the closed Beta now since yesterday, put about 5 hours into it and am going to give some brief impressions of my experience so far. This is probably the most impressed I've been in a Multiplayer game in a very long time, it feels very original compared to the likes of CoD and Battlefield and other militaristic shooters on the market today. Obviously some of the weapons you use have similarities with those series, but that's where the similarities end pretty much, everything has a realistic feel to it, like R6's of old, you can feel the weight of your gun/shield, how agile you are and feel the recoil of your weapon, also, once you get killed you're out of that round and that's that, unless somehow you manage to just get downed, then a team mate can revive you and you can continue on, it is extremely unforgiving compared with other shooters with instant respawn, and there's a definite challenge and learning curve there. You can see the Rainbow Six heritage has been kept intact, but what the Devs have done is create a fresher, authentic, modern PvP shooter that's fun, not too difficult to master, but still retains that challenge and depth that the original R6 shooters had, it may sound strange to say, but it feels a lot like the original Gears of War MP (before they ruined it) with the tight maps, one-shot permanent kills and prevalence of shotguns. There's 3 maps in the Beta: Concierge (set in a French embassy), Hereford (set in a disused SAS base in the UK) and House (set in a typical suburban American house) and two modes TDM (5 v 5 Diffuse/defend the Bomb, 5 v 5 capture/defend area) and Terrorist Hunt (5 v a 20 or so skilled AI opponents). What I've played most of is the TDM stuff, the 5 v 5 MP, which is what I think the 'meat' of the game is really, essentially attacking and defending a certain objective on the map, Orange v Blue team, the first to get to 3 wins, the defenders have to barricade the area by putting up reinforcements against plasterboard walls, planting booby traps, planting chicken wire to slow enemies down and to put up an endless supply of barricades. The attacking team have 20 seconds before they enter the match where they can scope out the level, try to find their opponents positions and try to find the bomb which they then have to diffuse. It can be incredibly tense, encounters have a lot of weight to them as neither person wants to die (as you have to sit out the rest of that round) and neither team wants to lose, it is incredibly tense at times. The game employs an almost one-shot kill policy, if you get shot 9 times out of 10 you'll die, it's incredibly brutal and unforgiving, the only ways to avoid this are by having a guy on your team that can supply with you with additional body armour so you can take more shots. You obviously still have certain rounds where you get overwhelmed and you all die in quick succession and the enemy gets the bomb easily, and those aren't as good, but you still feel that weightiness to the combat and weapons and the depth of the encounters, it's all about tactics and planning whether you succeed or fail and you feel that in the game. Next comes Terrorist Hunt, I've only played 2 games of this (more on that later...) but it was fun enough, essentially you enter one of the maps and have to hunt down and kill 20 AI opponents, the only games I managed to find were on the Normal difficulty, and it didn't seem particularly challenging, but it was fun, a kind of inverse Horde mode where you invade the AI I suppose, but I definitely didn't find it anywhere near as fun as the TDM Multiplayer modes mentioned above, that tension and depth just wasn't there, the stakes weren't as high as I felt as if you could just mess about a bit more killing enemies willy nilly. Another mention goes to the operators, there's no classes in R6S as such, instead you get a variety of 'characters' with different skills based on a range of real-life counter-terrorism units around the world, you've got GIGN from France, LA SWAT from the US, SAS from the UK, Spetznaz from Russia etc. and all these different CTU outfits have a range of attacking and defending characters for you to unlock. I've only tried Smoke and Sledge (SAS), Fuze (Spetznaz) and Rook (GIGN) but all of them feel different, have different abilities and different strengths and weaknesses, you unlock them by amassing R6S' equivalent of XP whilst playing through matches, 500 unlocks an Operator in my circumstances, although 1000 unlocks better ones I believe. So far my favourites are Smoke (Defender) and Sledge (attacker) as I love Smokes gas that incapacitates enemies and Sledge's sledgehammer for battering through walls, although Fuze's Riot Shield is incredibly handy. I've only played on 2 out of the 3 available maps (Concierge and Hereford) but they've both impressed me, the design is very strong and due to the random nature of where the objective is going to spawn it always manages to feel fresh (so far anyway). So that's all the positivity out the way, now time for the negatives. Ubisoft employs some kind of Matchmaking in the game, and it's a bit iffy to say the least, sometimes you'll be sat waiting to find a game for ages, and will need to go back to the main menu and search again, and again, and again, until you eventually find a game, this isn't exactly 'game-breaking' for me anyway, but is nevertheless annoying. My second gripe with the game is the over-powered nature of the Shields, they're just ridiculous, if you've got a shield you pretty much can't be hit at all, but can have your gun out at all times to shoot at your opponent, it's just crazy really, feels way to overpowered and I hope they balance this a bit better in the full retail release, because only managing to take out a shield guy by using charges or a grenade sucks. My third gripe is somewhat more serious, every time the game loaded me into a game which was set on the 'House' map, the symbols for the operators and guns wouldn't show for me to choose, the game would count down but still say 'loading...' under my name, whereas everyone else had 'loading complete' this wouldn't of been a big issue if I could've gone back using the start button and then gone back to the main menu to look for another game, but I couldn't do this, I had to Tab+Alt+Del or Alt+Tab my way out of the game, close it, then open it again to start looking for a game, every time I got put into a game on the House map it did this, incredibly odd and I seriously hope they fix this for the final game because this is definitely the most serious bug that's facing the Dev's. So, overall, I'm incredibly impressed by R6:Siege, I think it has the potential to be one of the best multiplayer shooters ever, but I just hope that the Devs are given enough time to iron out the bugs, because problems on launch could ruin its chances to shine.