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Backlog time! Through pure coincidence I picked the right timing though, because this game takes place during Valentine's Day (I always enjoy playing games 'seasonally correct'). A rather quick and accurate way to describe this is Hotel Dusk through the lens of Life is Strange. With the former it shares the setting (hotel) and the sort-of detective gameplay, while the latter clearly influenced the overall tone and presentation style, with it being a slow-paced 3rd person adventure and every interaction prompting a short commentary from the protagonist. Unlike HD's Kyle Hyde, Sophie isn't a detective, but a young cleaning lady who likes to balance out her uneventful and sheltered life by snooping around the rooms she's tidying up. In a sort of meta-context, I found this rather interesting, because as gamers we're no strangers to walking into an NPC's house and stealing everything the game allows us to, but add a bit of narrative context and it suddenly feels quite wrong. Though what starts as a questionable, but in context also understandable hobby then evolves into a mystery thriller and it's here where it becomes difficult to talk about the game because it's entirely built on the premise of being this emergent choice-driven adventure. I can't really give many examples without spoiling anything, but there are a lot of variables that are considered here, and not all of them lead to the outcomes you might expect. But at the same the writers don't throw any far-fetched curveballs at you, every outcome feels organic and logical in the context of the people involved with dealing with it. This is all super vague but again, examples would spoil the fun, because even some minor details are impactful here. I think one I can give is that early on after finding out something mildly disturbing in a room, you get the option of calling one of two co-workers, and that person will then become your confidant and have an impact on proceedings. So that's the first of a lot of branches the narrative can split into. I did go over the achievements (which aren't hidden, fair warning) after I saw the credits and there is a surprising amount of different outcomes. Some are more positive than others, but the developers seem to go out of their way to not proclaim any of them 'good' or other 'bad' endings. They are, again, just very organic conclusions to the actions you took. 'My' Sophie, for example, might not have had the most fulfilling job experience in the hotel, but at least she found love. Others might not, but might climb up the career ladder instead. Others might do neither, or both. But it's never the 'pick upper-right option for best outcome' kind of design. In terms of production values I think this is a beautiful example of what you can pull off when you align your goals with your financial means. Both the setting and protagonist choices are very clever in that regard, because as a cleaning lady on duty, you're not supposed to wander off (= smaller game world) while the guests are obviously all out and about (= fewer NPCs). It never feels arbitrarily restricted though, except maybe for a trolley blocking a way at a certain point. The way its cutscenes are shot, with fixed angles and little movement, is probably also a byproduct of its budget, but gives its cinematography a very classic movie feel. Through some strong art direction and good usage of colour this is a very attractive game I think that doesn't even want to punch above its weight class. It's only the rather stiff body and facial animations that can sometimes make scenes feel a bit lifeless, but the really good voice acting (English and French are done by the same Canadian voice actors) usually manages to make up for that. If I had to point out one thing I disliked it would be the somewhat fiddly interaction with items. There's no highlight feature à la Life is Strange, so you have to align your tiny cursor with the object and if the latter is something small, like a key, it's particularly easy to just miss it and mistake it for a non-interactable decor item and run around in circles until you desperately try again (personal anecdote). This is all a very roundabout way of me saying that I really enjoyed this. At about 5 hours for one playthrough it's both a nice palette cleanser but also a very fulfilling and interesting game in its own right. While the branching narrative will probably lead some players to replay it multiple times, I usually tend to stick with 'my' story in these games and move away after the credits roll. Though with its relatively compact playtime in mind I could see myself coming back to it maybe in a year or so. But very much recommended if you like narrative games and/or either one of those other titles I mentioned in the beginning.

So, this has been out a while on PC and is soon coming to consoles and now i've finally got around to giving it a go. Like the first game, It's an insanely open CRPG where you can pretty much tackle most situations anyway you like and has an excellent elemental based combat system (cast a rain spell and electrocute it to shock everyone, poison clouds are combustible - that sort of thing). The customisation is nuts - you can spec out your starting character any way you like, even specifying the main instrument used for dramatic musical moments (I went for the cello). You can even choose which specialty you want any other characters who join to have. Once your past the first 'tutorial' area your left to your own devices exploring an area around a fort. There's very little hand holding here and every NPC is worth talking to - the writing is fantastic. The detail level in the areas is bonkers. I'm only a few hours in, and the fights have kicked my arse a few times (still working out a solid character load out) but it's awesome. Oh - and it has full co-op as well which i'm hoping to start up this weekend with three others.

This hasn't reviewed amazingly, and while I loved Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon, I couldn't muster to energy to do the same stuff again in far Cry 4 and 5. In fact I booted up Far Cry 4 towards the end of last year because I wanted a nonsense fps to play, and I still couldn't. I ended up doing the pacifist ending, then booted it back up and ran about it bit, then realised I just couldn't be arsed For whatever reason the more I've seen of Far Cry New Dawn the more I've been interested in it. I think knowing that it's shorter is a big part of it, like I said I loved 3 but the amount of time I spent with it, doing the same routine over and over did start to drag by the final island, although at the time I put that down to me doing everything before moving the story on. New Dawn looks amazing, maybe a bit too amazing. I'm playing it on high settings (it can go to ultra) on a GTX 1080 at 1080p, and I still get framerate drops to 50 every now and then. It's less when there's lots of combat, more when I'm in dense woodland with lots of mist and fog. Which I mention because it is ridiculously dense, so dense I've been bitten by snakes I couldn't see, and have to rely on watching when and where my A.I. teammate starts screaming and where she's shooting at. I'm impressed with how it looks though, I had this pegged as a bit half-arsed, and granted it could be I didn't play 5, but the colour and the environments look great Gameplay wise it's kind of just Far Cry. It's not as reliant on taking back encampments as the old games, although there are still some, and there's no radio towers. You're still randomly getting attacked by animals, and there's still a skill tree, you're still playing good guys vs bad guys. Enemies take more damage before they go down than I remember, with some enemies having a 2nd health bar, possibly a 3rd but I've not seen that yet. You're kind of dumped out in to the open world pretty early, you have a story mission but it's far enough across the map that you can't help but do other things along the way. A lot of the side stuff involves you stopping trucks, be it for all important ethanol or less important humans, chasing them down isn't fun, being in the right place to stand in the road and shotgun the driver in the face is fun, that said I've not managed to get an ethanol truck yet. Beyond that, I've just been rescuing people by killing bad guys I'm really enjoying it though, played for hours tonight and I've still not got halfway to the first proper story mission. Before I go there I've got some treasure to find, an ally to recruit, then a bunch of buildings to kill everyone in, then I'll do the thing I've been asked to do

I picked up the early access version of this, but made the fatal mistake of starting Balatro at the same time which has taken all my attention span and locked it away and thrown away the key. So I only played maybe 2 hours of this. I'm at the apartments It's familiar and different, I was struck by how the VA and framing of scenes feels like a pretty close take of the original without it feeling like an overt homage or anything. The original has very unvarnished vocal performances, I think the main VA was an amateur, so that sort of enhanced the uncanniness of some of it. This isn't quite the same but close enough It looks very good but also incredibly unpolished. It's a very sharp looking game on PC, they seem to have went very hyperreal with it. Not saying it looks realistic just that the high res visuals, the lighting and fog give it this sort of dreamy, heightened kind of look that I'm not really able to explain. Maybe screenshots do it better, I dunno. But it has lots of visual glitches, things like turning the camera causes the culling to not work correctly and objects and lighting activate in front of you. There's some weird occlusion glitch where there's this ghosting all the time, not the spooky kind. Everything between the camera, James and the area in front of James has this visually buggy look when moving the camera. That might be caused by some setting I can turn off, but I don't know what. I only mention the boring technical stuff cause it's a game primarily about immersion in a slow moving narrative, so disruptions like that do stick out a lot more. There's some black crush in these screenshots cause they were converted from jxr, which is a HDR format, and badly compressed to jpg I think it's really impressive what they've done here though. It seems to understand the original well enough and makes sensible changes to not make it too much of a rethread. Example being you walk past the point in the original where you expect to get the radio, but you don't, you get it later and in a different way. Everything takes maybe twice as long, unsure whether or not that will be something I enjoy more or less as it goes on. It has the same town layout, I think, but the distance has been increased and there's more in between areas. So if you haven't played the original in a long time, like me, then it exists in this strange foggy realm of forgotten memory yet also familiarity, like you've been here before. But I'm struggling to have a good time with it. The technical issues are really hard for me to overlook, which is why I mention them so much. I'm usually able to sort of push past stuff like this, but I've not played a lot of UE5 games so I don't think I quite realised how much this game will keep skipping and jumping forward a few frames like it's an old film with a bunch of damage on it. The VRR causes constant flicker in the apartment area on OLED, I guess cause the frame variance is so high. So you can turn that off, or play on a different screen. I also find the combat a bit too much, it's very aggressive and seems to be about spacing, attack patterns, recognising stun animations from attack leadups, knowing when to use your limited ammo or combo into the stick. It reminds me how Homecoming looked. It's not a bad system they've designed, but it goes harder than what I was personally looking for and I'm finding that just to be a bit of a hassle. I'm dying a lot and getting filtered by combat I'll admit, but I was expecting that side to be more basic. So objectively speaking it seems like a good game marred by really bad technical issues, subjectively I'm much more mixed tho. I'll take my time and maybe I'll come around, I'm not coming at it looking to hate it or anything. As mentioned I'm really impressed by the specific changes Bloober have made to some things

Creating a thread for this as it seems like it might be quite a bit meatier than some other games I’ve played recently. Citizen Sleeper is the latest game from the developers of In Other Waters, which I played recently and was quite good. I guess like In Other Waters, it involves a lot of reading and clicking on various menus. Not quite a visual novel, but an adjacent genre I guess. You’re a “sleeper”, a robot of some sorts that escaped or survived some mysterious past and somehow gained sentience, which is apparently a big no-no, so shady characters are coming to put an end to you. You’ve wound up on some kind of space station called Havenage. Here you meet characters and complete tasks to achieve various goals. I can’t describe it beyond that. It’s too complicated. But it’s quite unique and intriguing so far. Based on what I’ve played of this, and In Other Waters, the developers’ (Fellow Traveller) focus is clearly on telling unique stories in unique settings, with an emphasis on mystery and the unknown.

The writing is great, it looks wonderful but I’m stuck on the first dice game to get the ring to feed mutt 😭 I just don’t understand the bloody game despite all of its instructions. My dog is hungry I must work it out! Stop saying I’m bust!

Supraland is a charming first-person metroidvania set in a child's sandbox, almost entirely the work of a single developer. You play as a red toy person who's village water supply appears to have been sabotaged by the blues on the other side of the sandbox. Your job is to find out what happened and get the water back. The game looks really nice, with lots of oversized human items making up the landscape. It's funny and fun to play, the powers you gain are interesting and have multiple uses, the more you gain, the easier and more enjoyable backtracking through the area and looking for secrets becomes. The puzzles are quite inventive and it's usually clear what you need to do, I only found a couple of them a little obtuse. The combat feels a little tacked on and repetitive, only really serving as a way of gaining coins for upgrades. I think it's currently PC only, both this and a sequel are apparently console-bound soon.

Steam tells me I've put 9 hours into this, so I think I can put some thoughts down. It's an RPG tower defense hybrid. Collect character classes through the story and put them down as you would towers on the battlefield. They don't move but have different abilities and stats. You have your short range, long range, healer and slow-shit-down classes just like any normal RPG or indeed tower defense. So it's a bit weird that I haven't across something as overtly a hybrid as this before. You level up your characters as you go and although you're only given one of each through the story, you can buy more in the shops. It makes sense to have at least 2 of everything, at some point 3 of everything might be wise. You also buy new weapons and armour from the shops although the stats are ultra simplistic as nothing has a downside - you can clearly see if that new piece of shiny is better, worse or the same as your current build, which is brilliant for ignorant fools like myself. The gameplay itself is really fun but it's not gonna win over anyone that doesn't like tower defense as the core gameplay really is just that, just with levelling up on top of it. The story is very RPG though and is pretty much pants. The writing is pretty shoddy and the cut scenes are just un-animated stills that change occasionally. I think it normally goes for a tenner which is a bit much considering how "homegrown" it is but there is a lot of a game there.

I’m about 2 hours into this and have completed five cases. On 5/11 achievements so I suspect the game is not very long. I’m really enjoying it so far. It’s obviously a game inspired by Return of the Obra Dinn in that it uses similar mechanics, with you trying to deduce what happened by piecing together the evidence. I loved Obra Dinn and this is great too. It’s also less abstract. Each case is self-contained so it’s easier to solve, and the game tells you when you are right in a more efficient way than Obra Dinn. There are two screens, an “exploring” screen where you look around and gather evidence, and a “thinking” screen where you submit your theory of what happened (by putting words/names etc into the blanks). The game will tell you when two or less items are incorrect so it’s easy to stumble over the finish line when you are close. Overall, the game does a good job of making you feel smart. I haven’t needed any hints so far (there is an in-built hint system). And it’s very fun to play.

Played and finished this in one sitting earlier today. It's definitely an interesting game and attempts to be an Interactive Film in lots of ways really, got that art style from Firewatch and The Witness about it and its told in a very filmic way with lots of fast cuts between scenes never staying in one place too long, the price (£6.99 on Steam) is very much the kind of price of a film ticket/DVD too and its only 2 hours long. The game has no spoken dialogue and you're left to your observations and readings in first person to put together the plot. You start as a young FBI Agent tasked with locating a missing person in a small Virginia town who's partnered with an older more experienced Agent to show you the ropes and things go on from there. Music is a huge part of the game and helps tell the story in lots of ways, making up for the lack of spoken dialogue, the score is spellbinding, fantastic, incredibly powerful and moving at times and fits the game perfectly. I loved it up to the final third and was following the plot intently, but the last third of the game gets a bit too clever for its own good and becomes too bizarre to make sense of really unfortunately. Would still recommend it though if you're in the mood for a short game or fancy a slightly different film experience. Added a few pics:

Somehow I was convinced radiofloyd played this when it came out in Japan and made a topic. I played it for about five hours over the weekend, which is roughly the length of the tutorial/prologue. Origins and VIII are the only Ys games I've played, so I'm not an expert on the matter. Chronologically this seems to take place almost at the very beginning of Adol's adventures (after 1 & 2 to be exact), but in classic fashion it's not really necessary to be aware of those other games. Characters hint at certain things early on, but it's very much self-contained otherwise. So in Nordics you end up in a very cartoonish, pop-culture version of northern Europe with Vikings Normans who have claimed the northern seas for their own. After some exposition and the game introducing major NPCs, stuff happens, magic happens, and you then sail around the archipelago with a young Norman princess, Karja, in tow. While the whole Norse/Viking theme has been a bit overdone in the west in recent years, it's nonetheless interesting and refreshing to see it through the anime/Japanese lens for a change. I'm definitely quite enjoying the setting, and Karja is a surprisingly likeable sidekick, a bit of a tsundere voiced in a very bratty tone, but with a reasonable side to her as well. I remember some people, myself included, being a bit disappointed when they announced it would only feature a party of two, but after experiencing the battle system for a bit I can see that any more would easily have overwhelmed the player. There's a couple of ways in which you can fight: the basic one is just running around as either Adol or Karja, attacking by yourself and letting the AI take over the other character. I find this relatively useful when engaging groups of smaller enemies, in a 'divide and conquer' kind of way, as the AI draws some aggro, too. While playing like that, however, you can always change to the other character by pressing a button, which happens instantly and also works mid-combo. There's not much use for that early on, but I can see maybe casting special attacks with longer durations and then immediately switching to keep the pressure on as an option when unlocked. There's a second Duo mode for combat which activates while holding the right trigger and it's here where it becomes a bit much to wrap your head around early on. In this mode, both characters are linked by a magic chain and can't move, but they can block and parry (with very forgiving timing) and attack in unison while also having access to a different set of special attacks fueled by their combined Mana pools (in a funny twist, you can also use these if one character can make up the cost with their mana bar in case the other doesn't have enough – no idea how the developers expect you to properly gauge all that mid fight while parrying and dodging). But all this is only the very baseline as the game keeps giving you tools upon tools in rather quick succession. Early on you unlock a grappling hook for traversal, but it can also be attached to enemies, you unlock launchers for air combos or a unique move activated by holding the attack button which lets Adol cast a burst of fire and Karja a pillar of ice, affecting certain elements in the area (plants, water etc.). And that's just the feature handed to you in the first 5 hours. I find it a bit overwhelming at the moment, but it's cool to see so much depth and potential – I did really liked VIII, but combat in that game mostly revolved around last-minute dodges and not much more. The other big part of the gameplay, outside the usual traversal and exploration, is naval combat, which I think is a first for the series. So far this feels like its weakest link, as the ship is rather unwieldy – but not in a physically realistic, but rather a 'that's an odd control scheme' kind of way. In the early game you have two options to attack, a long-range cannonball to slightly damage and stun ships, and a short-range barrage which does enormous amounts of damage. So you use A until you get close, use B to finish them off, rinse repeat. It does suggest a lot of upgrades to you ship which I'm hopeful will make these encounters more fun and engaging the further along you get, so I don't want to judge that aspect too harshly as of yet. It's not as immediately gripping as the ship combat in AC Black Flag for example though, just to set expectations. I'm playing it on Switch, and compared to VIII, which suffered from severe aliasing or IX with its wonky framerate (at least going by its demo), this feels like a more polished product all-around, with clean visuals and an almost rock-solid 30fps with good frame-timing. The downside of this is that a lot of objects and NPCs pop in very close to the character, which I'm not too bothered about, but not everyone is as forgiving. I suspect the PS5, or I guess even the PS4 version, to have none of these issues, but in any case there's a demo on every platform to check for yourself. As always, can't do screenshots on Switch anymore, so here's a Karja plushie:

What I'm about to say here is either going to reaffirm why you want to play this, or it's going to reaffirm why you don't. There's no in between, and it's because, at the root of it, Dynasty Warriors is much like war - it never changes. You still slash, stab, swipe and scream your way through hundreds, if not thousands of enemies on any given level. You still play out the Yellow Turban war. You still run into Lu Bu, Cao Cao, and all the other DW staples that have been a part of the series since at least the second entry. All of these things are entirely unsurprising. What is surprising, at least to me, is the way this is all presented. Instead of picking a war general and playing (insert number) levels, then picking a new one and doing it again, you play as The Wanderer - a nameless grunt who fights with and against the different characters from Romance of The Three Kingdoms. This is good. It gives you more choice over weapons. You have control over your special moves. You can pour points into upgrading skills and strengths. In a small but effective way, it shakes up the Dynasty Warriors formula. Is it deep? God no. Does it make a difference to your motives? Weirdly, yes. The gameplay loop is presented differently here, too. Like I said, the set up used to be choosing a character, playing the story, then picking a new one and doing it again. Dynasty Warriors 9 tried to mess with this and introduced an open world aspect, but it was TOO open world and felt fucking awful. This game drops you into an overworld, Final Fantasy-style, and has you traipsing from village to village. Small fights will appear from time to time, where you drop into a small cut-out section of a level and need to fight 400 enemies, or a couple of generals, or whatever else. Once done, you'll go back to the overworld and continue your business. You then have medium-scale battles - same again but with a bigger section. Finally, you have the big ass battles. The ones we've been seeing since DW2 on PS2. These come with battle prep, information on win and loss conditions, and all the other stuff we know and love. Each village on the overworld has an inn, where you can read letters, pick up bonuses, or create gems to pour into your stats. You can also mess with your moveset and weapons here. Like I said, none of this is a massive change from what the series has done in the past, but the QoL improvements have made it an exponentially more enjoyable experience than these games have been in years. The small battles for example, there's barely any loading going from the overworld to the fight. It means it's worth taking the small detour to get into a kick off, because you don't wait around too much. I've just got access to a horse, so running around the overworld is quicker now, too. Honestly, if you have a passing interest in this series, give it a go, but only once it goes on sale. I got it free, and I know I'd have felt ripped off paying full price for such a basic, PS2-era feel. If you're not into the hack and slash these games have always offered, there's literally nothing here that's gonna convince you otherwise.

I’ve played through the first three levels so I’m still on the linear portion of the game (according to reviews the game transforms into a full-on metroidvania after a few hours). So far it’s been an enjoyable platformer/hack and slash game, with the standout being the visuals and music The first two levels I played through in handheld mode but tonight I played using the pro controller and it’s much more enjoyable. The game has a mechanic where if you attack something mid air, it allows you to jump again, it’s a little bit uncomfortable in handheld mode but as I suspected it works like a charm using a proper controller. Not to mention the game looks beautiful on a big screen.

I got this a while back and I see no-one else got it so I'll put something here about it. I was always going to get this because frankly it feels kinda tailor made for me. It looks like another pixelated "Metroidvania" but that would actually be fairly inaccurate. While the action looks like it takes inspiration from those kinds of games its actually closer to the Wonder Boy games - or more specifically Monster World IV. This feels like if SEGA published a game to compete against Metroid in the 16bit era and it was made by Treasure. It's that good. So you jump and shoot around (some really nice, tight, satisfying controls), solving some surprisingly clever puzzles and fighting really cool bosses. Whats interesting about the bosses is they nearly always bring a new mechanic with them that you have to learn to use over the fight. Sometimes you even take control of another character entirely that you've not used at this point. It really brings a new panic to the fights, but you have enough life to learn and make a few mistakes without dying and having to start over. It's got a real JRPG scale story as well. You often have party members, there is loads of lore and your antagonists get some JRPG level characterisation as well. It really has more than you'd expect for an action game. I wouldn't say its that good, but I admire the thought. It gives the game a certain personality at least. Like Axiom Verge, it's entirely made by one guy so a certain personality is gonna come out I guess. Early 2018 has been kinda insane for these kinds of games but don't forget this one as well. It's the real deal.

Started earlier this afternoon around 2ish and got around 4 hours with it... with around half of that mucking around with the character editor... Made my Arisen... Tried to make Fighter Jill Valentine, to be fair I don't think she turned out too bad...🙂 Next up my Pawn... Who turned out to be a hot Elven Archer called Laurana... Although I've made both of them too bloody tall and they both tower over the male NCP characters wondering around... so once i get the chance to modify them I'll shorten them down a bit. As for actual game play it's very familiar if you've played the first game and as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing... it feels really weird feeling lost on the map because of that though as I knew the previous games areas like the back of my hand. It also seems like the Pawns are really ferocious in this as half the time they've demolished the Goblins and Harpies before I've managed to draw a bead on them... It's nice to be back in this world and I can already tell I'm gonna have a ball with the game.

Played 2 hours of this so far and have got through the Prologue/tutorial section pretty much - the section which Journo's played through during the tutorial. So far I'm incredibly impressed with it I have to say, way more than I was with RotTR and probably around the same as TR 2013 - although admittedly my memory of that is a little hazy by now. The first thing I noticed was how goddamn gorgeous this game looks, this is the first game in the series that I've not played in 720p/900p at 30 on consoles and goddamn what a different experience playing on PC - granted it will still look pretty great in almost 4K 30 on Xbox X but at 1440p/60 with everything set to Ultra boy does it shine ?. I thought RotTR had a distinctly last-gen look to it and here whilst there's still a few rough looking textures here and there the whole engine and graphics as a whole looks much improved. I think the lighting is the most impressive though, going through caves, water and a small Mexican town, the way everything was lit was just astonishingly beautiful. It's a shame that so much of the early story has already been revealed by previews and trailers, but the beginning is pretty spectacular. You start out after the shit has hit the fan then go back before it hit the fan to find out what the hell went on (although I knew this already thanks to previews). And it's pretty damn fantastic, lots of slow exposition through a beautiful Mexican town where you can just take in the scenery, music and vibe of the place as you slowly make your way through and investigate followed by some light tutorial stuff and a tomb (yes an actual tomb this early!) which was great fun followed by a nice light puzzle room. After this things go bananas in a typically TR kind of way and lots of mad shit happens which involves you gunning down lots of dudes and running away from collapsing buildings/mountains. I just like the somewhat slow build up this time around, it feels a bit more organic in some ways than having you thrown in at the deep end for the 3rd time in 3 games and let's you appreciate the bombast when it does come all the more. The things they do with the characters already has me way more intrigued than I was for the entirety of RotTR which helps an awful lot too I just hope it continues to bring home the drama. I guess in terms of mechanics, controls and gunplay you know what to expect if you played the previous two games, although I will say I think the new rappel manoeuvre and the way you can now stalk enemies from shrubbery-covered walls is really cool and feels such a good fit for the Jungle environs. I have had some technical issues though. The photo mode is borked for me, everytime I access it the camera does a weird juddery motion and then as soon as I quit the mode everything is ok again, I have also had some huge framerate dips when hanging from ledges which is odd as its been a solid 60 everywhere else so I've had to turn off a few of the superfluous graphical effects and that seems to of remedied it. But yeah, so far I'm way more impressed than I expected to be with it and I can't wait to dig into it again tomorrow night. Some pics:

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

Ok, so I’m 2 hours into this. I’m an absolutely massive Yakuza/LAD fan. In over 40 years of gaming, this is by far my favourite franchise. The reviews for this have been universally high. Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first: charging separately for the New Game+ mode, sucks. There’s an entire dungeon, and trophies/achievements locked away behind that. That’s pissed some people off, and I think understandably so. There’s also multiple Micro transactions, ranging in price from £5 for instant level up boosts, to £12/£15 for other stuff. I won’t be bothering with any of that, and so far, the game hasn’t been obnoxiously highlighting them. Right. I’m 2 hours in, and it’s pretty much just been cut scenes. Which is pretty typical for a LAD game. That being said, I’ve already noticed two improvements that have been made to the combat system. You can manually control the movement of each character before making a move, making it much easier to pick up items to hit enemies with. One of the more annoying elements of the previous game, was that if you bumped into another enemy in the middle of your attack, their was a good chance they’d hit you, and cancel your move. That’s been scrapped entirely, thank god. There’s no difficulty options. When I watched the IGN video review, they specifically mentioned how annoying the difficulty spikes became about halfway through LAD. That was what made me eventually give up on my PS4 playthrough, and I found challenging to get through when I eventually finished it on PS5 last December. The reviewer said that there’s none of that difficultly spike nonsense in IW. Hopefully, he’s right… In terms of story, there’s no “Previously on LAD” to catch up newcomers to the story. Most games in the series have optional “movies” to watch, which explain what’s happened before. There’s none of that here. So if IW is your first time to the series, I’d suggest watching a video of at least what happened in the last LAD game. I won’t spoil what’s happened so far. But, I will say, it’s been an absolute joy seeing Ichiban and his friends again. Kiryu is my favourite character in all of gaming, but Ichiban is quickly becoming a firm favourite too. He’s likeable, charismatic, and amusing. Whereas in LAD: Gaiden, you had to wait a few weeks for the English dub to become available, here it’s available right from the start. I played LAD in English, and had no issue with doing so. So, I’ve chosen the English dub for this. There’s been a lot of hate thrown at Jong Jea, the YouTuber chosen to portray Kiryu. I’ll reserve judgement for his full performance. The footage of Kiryu doing karaoke that leaked a few weeks ago was legitimately awful, autotuned to buggery. But, I’ll give him a fair chance. What I can say though, is I’m very dubious about his ability to pull it off. Kiryu is a legend approaching the end of his “career”. From the lines leaked previously, he sounds far too young. Still, I won’t write him off just yet. Im away on holiday for a week after today, so won’t get to play much more. But once I’m back, this will be getting my full attention.

cheers for the games Duck! it's early days, and a bit all over the place, but i quite like what i've played of this so far. i worry i'll get annoyed with the aiming in the long run. needs more auto aim imo.

Yessir! I like what I've played alot, probably done the first hour. Its extremely similar to the first one but that's no bad thing. Poor fucking bitch, she's already taken a hell of a beating. Agree with Nag on the looks, its stunning. That snow... Controls are lovely: fluid and intuitive. Lots of stuff to do and already had tons of action. Looking forward to spending all Saturday with it.

This had a cool demo so I decided to treat myself to a little sidegame over the long weekend. I'd actually encourage giving the demo a shot, because the game looks like a run-of-the-mill pixel indie title but it has an amount of quality and polish to it that really makes it stand out. In a Nintendo-ish way, it's entirely designed around a singular idea and that's the drill your character carries around. It allows you to drill through certain areas of the map, be it ground, snow or other, it works as a propellor underwater, it can revv up certain machines etc. I'm not going to spoil in detail what the developers have cooked up, but there are genuinely cool surprises here throughout and no two levels feel the same – again, very much Nintendo-like. This seems to have been in development for about seven years, which sounds absolutely bonkers, but it shows, because it's really an incredibly accomplished take on one of the oldest genres out there. There is one caveat though and those are the boss battle. I'm not going to mince words, they're all pretty bad. Well, at least the three I played so far. The first one was okay-ish I suppose, but the two that followed were just very tedious 'death by a million cuts' affairs that don't use its central mechanic in an interesting way. The third one, in fact, is easier if you just don't drill into the ground at all. It's weird to see how devoid those fights are of ideas considering how excellent the rest of the package is – almost as if they had been made by a completely different team. So while that might sour the experience a tiny bit at the end of every world, I don't think it drags the game down overall. From what I read it's not super long, but quality over quantity seems the focus here, and there's time trials for crazy people to get a bit more out of it. As a final commentary, the soundtrack is extremely good as well and I wish I could link a few samples but nobody seems to have uploaded anything yet. It's on Spotify though, if you want to give it a listen. Completely misrepresenting screenshotTM

Well no-one else will so I'll start a topic. I'm very early on, done the mission for the doctor which turns a little "odd". I'm always running out of space in my wallet and my crafting pouch so I'm gonna have to take some time out of the main quest to make some bigger pouches. Having seen what the PC version looks like, the 360 version is definitely poorer visually but it's still passable.

The Half Life 2 documentary made me start up a new save on that game, but then I decided why not play the original. I've played it before but it was on PS2, which has huge auto aim and kinda comes from a point in time where this genre wasn't well served at all on console (arguably, I'd still say this is the case, but PS2 was so much worse). I put it on hard mode, cause I beat Doom Eternal like that so surely I'll be fine. Anyway this game is a dick, it comes from a school of design that feels so odd to return to cause it's really unfair but also that is the point. Not in a Dark Souls way, it's more like it's trying to be an action horror comedy or something. Black Mesa is out to kill Gordon all the time, walk down a hallway and shit is blowing up. They hide things out of sight and then jump you with vortigaunts on both sides and you die. You quick save a lot. There's a lot of 'ffs, how was I supposed to know the platform would crumble beneath me into a room of headcrabs for guaranteed damage or that the elevator would break and drown me in radioactive piss'. But you just continue on anyway I think it's cool though cause it makes Black Mesa feel so dangerous. It helps an old game like this still feel immersive cause the place is trying to fucking kill you all the time, whether it's the extra terrestrials you imported via the bit of cheese you pushed into the laser or cause of the facility's in built security systems. Sometimes when talking about stuff that's old and influential it's easy to file it away as 'important, but not worth going back to'. But a lot of the time the reason that something is influential is cause it was super fucking good and that quality isn't always something which fades over time, even as other things build upon it. The approach to set pieces in Half Life is a lot purer than modern games cause it's always happening around you and you are always in control, you have to react to what's going on and adapt. It doesn't feel like it's awkwardly pausing the bit where you play the game for an interactive cutscene or anything like that. The way it combines combat, exploration, platforming, environment hazards, horror, it reminds me of RE4 in how it constantly introduces new gimmicks and knows when to retire them just in time for something new and fresh. Constant forward progression that always feels satisfying It also still plays really well, far faster than Half Life 2 and a billion times faster than Alyx. I think once they started fucking around with physics in 2 it slowed the pace of gameplay by like a third, at least. Became more about interactivity and puzzling than run and gun violence and explosions. I like how you have to chuck grenades into unknown areas to smoke out enemies, it's more a strategic weapon than it is a damaging one cause of the potential to get sucked punched by some bullshit you don't see. The trap mines are also fun to play with. I'm at the Surface Tension level and will probably beat it over the weekend, then onto HL2. I'll have to play Portal 2 at some point cause that's one I've never completed on any platform. I do remember the final chapter or two being a pile of shit on PS2 so I hopefully it's less of a hassle here, probably not.

I didn't know about this until a few days ago (not that i remember anyway), just released yesterday, and it's pulled me away from persona, for a bit anyway. normal price is ~£12 but seems to be on offer for ~£10 currently. Initially interested because of comparisons to REZ, i like shooters like that, even the dragon one on the xbox one that didn't seem very popular. but it turns out it's not as similar to rez as I was expecting, the shooting (on the right stick) is simplified a bit and shares game time with rhythm action line following (on the left stick). On the normal difficulty you aren't asked to really do both of these at the same time, but i think that changes on harder difficulties. The shooting is quite similar to rez, but you can only aim within a circle and quite a lot of stuff is conveniently at the edges of the circle so easy to aim at, because you will be expected to do two things at once. The rhythm action bit is following a line with your ship in time with the music, a bit like that old psn game i can't remember the name of (and didn't think was that great) but it works really well here, and is good fun, imo. the music is not what i'd normally listen to, don't really know how to describe the genre either, dubstep maybe? but it fits in really well with the game and i was enjoying it. there are some problems mind, the auto lock-on can target stuff you don't want when a missile is just about to hit you, and coming back from a hit can instantly cause another hit, but these might just be me needing time to get used to it more. i've done all the 15 levels on normal, then re-did a few to get more stars to unlock the next difficulty setting but not had much time on that yet. so yeah i've been really enjoying this. wasn't sure if i should pick it up but glad i did.

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