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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.

Played the first hour and a half myself tonight as well, I definitely wasn't blown away by it, but I had fun with it, and it definitely gave me a kick to be in Max's world and to play as him being a fan of Fury Road. I was impressed though with how well polished everything is, some of the particle effects, sandstorms, explosions and the intricacy of the way the guy moves around on the back of your car is pretty cool, and they've stuck incredibly to the art design of Fury Road, some locations from the film have been mentioned and some enemies I've fought that were in the film already. It really does film like you could be cruising around in Fury Road, incredibly exhilarating feeling cruising around in your own car as Max, the voice acting helps a lot too, all been rather good and the story missions I've done so far have been better than I expected them to be. The melee combat, so far, to me, has been the weakest part of the game, it has the template of the Batman: Arkham games, but somehow it just doesn't have the rhythm that that game employs to go from one enemy to another with ease and feel awesome as you do so, it just feels like an average kind of combat system, like they've just got the combat template from Rocksteady, dumbed it down a bit and thrown it in the game, already feels a bit repetitive as well, but it can be satisfying, again, early on though. Seems like a huge game too, in my session earlier I was just pretty much going through the opening tutorials and main story missions to get my car, meet certain characters and learn all the mechanics of the game, but there is a lot to get stuck into, not encountered any side-missions as such, but there's been a few side-activities I've got distracted by already when they show on the map and collecting scrap and making sure you've picked it all up at a certain location is already rather addictive. Definitely seems like Avalanche/WB have employed a Ubisoft-style design philosophy as well, everything I've seen and done so far has been reminiscent of what you do in the Far Cry games in particular, like scouting bases, then liberating them to wear down a factions influence in a certain area, the car handling also feels similar to FC also. So yeah, pretty positive first impressions, need to play more obviously, but it's one huge game to get stuck into and I reckon is a must-buy for any Mad Max (especially Fury Road) fans out there, definitely the most authentic MM experience you're ever likely to get in game-form that's for sure.

Oxenfree was released way back in January which I guess makes it a retro title by today's standards. I don't know about the PS4 or Xbox One but it's currently heavily discounted on Steam so now is as good a time to pick it up as any. As it turns out, I already own it. It looks like this. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/388880/ss_aae01eea5fc489c7fbb20c2e92440c1cf92f4e83.600x338.jpg?t=1465496144 http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/388880/ss_75af452f6e7f6c5dc1ada4f001abcccac6c57db7.600x338.jpg?t=1465496144 I just played it for sixteen minutes so I can give you sixteen minutes worth of impressions. So far it's been a pleasant side-scrolling walk and talk simulator. Not a million miles from Life is Strange if Life is Strange was side-scrolling. The conversations so far have been kind of typical preppy American teenage stuff. At the beginning of the game the characters are heading to some kind of after dark party on an island. The main point I'd like to make is that the game has a really good electronic soundtrack. The art style has a bit of Kentucky Route Zero.

I'm sure this will come to everything at some point, but at the minute I think it's PC only. A couple of months back it seemed to be being played round the clock by various streamers, there was a lot of hype for a simple, cheap (currently less than £2) rogue-like, but it's actually worth all the talk (and definitely worth that price) It's a very simple concept, you control the movement of your character, more or less top down, you're either avoiding swarms of enemies or hunting them down, looking for breakables for money, health, or a couple of the special items. You do not control your attacks Instead your attacks just trigger on a cool down. You start with 1 attack, for the first character this is a whip, others might have fireballs or lightning that strikes in random locations. As you kill enemies they drop experience orbs, pick that up to level up, when you to you then pick a new perk, which can mean new weapons (it can also mean movement speed, cool down on your attack (this is hugely important later in I find), increasing your base attack power or luck), so you could add lightning to your skill set too, or you could increase the level of the whip, so rather than just hitting in front of you, it now whips behind you too, then it does more damage, then it has more range etc As you kill things there's a chance for extra rewards and gold, the gold leaves the level stage with you, so then you can increase your base stats by buying things like improved gold or experience gain, lower cool down, some health recovery, better base damage, and so on; which ultimately means you'll last longer, which means you'll earn more money There's extra weapons to unlock by completing various missions (things like surviving 10 minutes with one of the extra characters), new characters, weapons can be evolved. Basically, there's always something to be working towards which keeps you playing, although of the new characters I've unlocked, I still prefer the 1st character and do tend to just aim for the same build, and on that note, you can only have so many weapons and so many attribute improvements per run, which is a bit of a shame later on, but it means you could have all the random attack spells and leave yourself without anything for if enemies get in close if that's the choices you make It's such a compulsive little game. I bought it at about midday yesterday, and didn't stop playing it until I ordered some food at about 7, then I went back to it. I've got to the "end" of a couple of stages, where I can no longer improve my character and am instead getting money or health recovery as I level up, where I can just stand still and enemies die before they reach me because I'm throwing out so much damage. Eventually though something happens that means you're not going to survive for much longer. That's kind of a shame, but I suppose it's to stop you from completely breaking the game's economy

Guess I might as well, even if ultimately nobody else is going to play this. A bit of backstory, this is the third game from Red Thread Games, Ragnar Tørnquist's studio, which he founded to conclude his Dreamfall saga (with Chapters) roughly a decade ago. Their previous game, Draugen, is IMO an overlooked gem in the 'walking simulator' genre, easily on par with the likes of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and What remains of Edith Finch, so I might as well use these lines to recommed it. Dustborn started development shortly after Draugen's release five years ago, so for a double-A title that's quite a bit of a ride. I remember posting its first screenshots in a forum that got closed down in 2020, which feels like an eternity ago and predates all the Sweet Baby backlash internet assholes have been throwing at it. It takes place in a near future in the USA, or rather the SA, because united they are no more after the assassination attempt on Kennedy failed and took his wife's life instead, turning him into a cynical and bitter person who proclaimed half of the country a police state and left the other half to do as they please. The game is build around the idea of a road trip and you and your fellow travellers ride a bus from the west to the east coast, looking for some sort of safe haven where they plan on selling some valuable cargo. Fundamentally this is some kind of Life is Strange esque narrative adventure, in which you run around blocked-off areas to explore a bit and talk to people. It doesn't have 'person X will remember this', nor are your choices black and white. There's also no morality bar or something like that. Instead, your choices affect which one of three main personality traits of your companions will end up being the most pronounced. So if I keep using the brutish Sai to knock down walls and afterwards compliment her for doing so, she will slowly turn into a 'punch first, ask questions later' type. It's not a high-level examination of psychology, but an interesting take on this whole morality aspect I think. What it doesn't do well is the mise-en-scène of all these dialogues, because frankly there isn't any. It's people either standing or sitting around, looking at each other and talking, while you can spin the camera around a bit. This is most likely a budgetary constraint but it does drag it down - maybe it's a personal preference, but even very static over-shoulder dialogue sequence à la Dragon Age Origins would have been better than what they used here. Unfortunately the writing can be very hit and miss as well. There's one moment where you have to cleanse Echoes from people, which are remnants of misinformation-spreading propaganda thought bubbles influencing people in their line of thinking. At some point I noticed this must be some commentary on social media and then, not two minutes later, one of the characters just literally spelled it out. But there are some good moments as well and your crew, while not particularly likeable, is at least an interesting bunch. Oddly for a game in this style, Dustborn also has combat segments. It's super clunky and unpolished, but I can't deny that it can be some fun and is a nice diversion, especially as it amounts to, at best, 5 minutes every hour of playtime. There's basic attacks, dodges, parries, some special moves, team-up attacks. It's simple, but cute, though the lack of lock-on means you miss quite a few of your bat swings. Both in combat and during some dialogue scenes, you can also use the main character's Vox abilities, which is kind of this universe's X-gene and gives certain mutants Anomals special powers. In your case, that means controlling people with your voice, which can influence dialogue branches and, among other things, stop opponents in their tracks during combat. During the latter it's a pure gameplay system, but using it during dialogue sequences does have repercussions on your standing with teammates or how the story progresses. There's also a (surprisingly fun) rhythm minigame in there, as the cover under which the group travels is that of a band. And a sort-of ghost-hunting minigame (for the aforementioned Echoes) that unlocks new Vox powers. And maybe more, I don't know – I'm only about four hours in but the game just seems to throw random stuff at the wall in regular intervals. I've not fully formed an opinion on it yet. I think the first 90 minutes to two hours are almost excruciatingly boring as it just drops you into the narrative without much introduction (for that, you need to read a prologue comic from the main menu) in regards to what you've been doing prior to the title screen and why you should care. At a certain point it introduces a couple new characters from the protagonist's past, and then goes on a tangent with a bit of mystery stuff and I started enjoying it a lot more. Guess we'll see where it goes from here. On last note but I like the visual style. It's a clean, comic-style look somewhere between Borderlands and Sable, and chapters are introduced with fake comic book covers and such. Gives it a lot of personality the in-engine stuff not always manages to fully pull off in motion.

Playing this tonight, met the alien died twice, thought I had done it got to the lift then the cutscene came on doh! Will give it another go tomorrow, if the background in this is the future its pretty good. I do miss my surround sound but that might be too much in this game!

I think this is only on pc currently, but I can't see why it wouldn't come to everything at some point. First thing to say, it's not a racing game, it's a platformer. It's sometimes a Crazy Taxi em up, but it's core game is a platformer. It's structured like Mario 64, and the guy who made you (you being the taxi) is called Morio. It's kind of funny, looks like a Saturn game, and the villain is Alien Musk, who is evil, owns a car company, and wants to get to the moon. I kind of both really enjoyed and was hugely frustrated with Yellow Taxi. It controls like a kart, it's very nippy, but not very precise, so it being a platformer leads to issues. The way the game is laid out is, bar a couple of levels, when you open new worlds (via portals in Morio's home) the point is just to find these corrupted cogs that open up the next world. It feels aimless, beyond the message that pops up saying you've unlocked the next world it doesn't really give you any feedback. However, there's specific characters you can help who will then reappear later, they can be useful, but again, I'm missing some I think, because I mustn't have encountered them. The cogs start off relatively easy to find, and on the Crazy Taxi stages taking people to places rewards you with cogs sometimes, on these levels you have a time limit, with extra time rewarded. As you progress you end up having to boost off ramped scenery to take to the air to land on a small platform to boost and boost cancel to gain height. Eventually cogs are on needle like steeples way off in the distance I did have an abundance of of cogs initially but the requirements ramp up towards the end. Fortunately I discovered there's an area outside Morio's house, and that has levels within it, if you saved those people, which means more cogs to choose from At points I found Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom hugely frustrating, and when I was missing a ton of cogs for the final world I wondered if I'd bother finishing it. I was controlling it like a racing game, using the triggers, maybe if I'd used the A button it would have been easier to control. Its good but it's fiddly. That said I watched a video of someone else and they were ridiculous at it. I did beat it too, so maybe I did ok

Been playing this for around 6 hrs on Series S - and it's quite enjoyable. Has some similarities, in terms of roguelike progression, as Into the Breach, although game presentation and pathways are significantly different. I've defeated the first boss, and so I'll see how well it keeps my interest (probably up to a point where it turns into a grind (or not)). Anyway it's certainly a bit different in looks at least to the mainstream.

I was pretty close to just bumping the old thread because man, is this Persona 3. I'm sure there are plenty that want a remake as faithful as this but I was more on the side of using the opportunity to take a second run at it and tighten it up a bit and improve some of the story of the game. There are quite a few changes to the dungeon crawling element, a lot of additions in presentation and mechanics such as the ability to pass a turn to another party member after hitting a weak spot which makes the game easier. But I was a bit disappointed with the AI party members since there are less tactics than the original and they don't use the new mechanics. Just for nostalgia's sake I tried to play it the old way but it's so not optimal. It just seems to be thoughtlessly added and it's clear they're really expecting people to play it with direct control of the party. I just always thought it was cool to be the leader of an autonomous group and it's just faster too. But oh well! Bosses haven't really been touched very much either, mechanically, despite those getting quite a bit better in later games is a big missed opportunity too. Other difference is it obviously looks better... actually, I dunno, it doesn't have the creepiness of the original to me, something to do with some of the colour grading maybe. Looking too clean isn't hitting quite right. More of the game is voice acted, I think it might be a little rewritten but I'd have to look at side by sides to be sure but it's mostly the same stuff happening and even acted out the same way. I'm not new to this game but I think to someone that is or is coming from Persona 5 it's still gonna feel like an older iteration despite the new coat of paint. It's still one of my favourite games, and I've barely stopped playing it but it's my fault, I did at one point dream of a game that felt like a sequel to P5 but with P3's story and it isn't that. It's P3 with some modern concessions.

This just came out a few days ago on PC (not seen any info about a console release?), it’s really good imo. It’s like a turn based tactics game with some emphasis on moving enemies around and throwing them out of windows, a bit like into the breach, but also quite a bit different too. But that’s why when I first saw a video of it I was interested in it because I really really like into the breach. you basically setup all the moves of your wizards, and can see what the enemy will do before ending a turn you have the chance to rewind move by move, but when you end the turn that’s it for that turn you can’t go back any more. You have lots of special powers like one wizard bouncing a laser type attack between enemies pushing them in different directions, preferably all out of different windows. at first I was struggling with the different abilities and making the most of them but I’ve got into it and using the abilities better now, at first I was getting through the levels ok but struggling with the extra objectives, now I’m getting a lot more of those done too but not always, they add to the difficulty so it’s not too easy. so yeah it’s very good the writing is funny too. ~£15 with a launch discount on steam.

Played an hour of this so far and agree with the above. It's very Souls in combat, but if those games disagree with you due to the lack of direction, this is more like a proper action RPG with main quests, side quests and a compass type thing in the UI that shows where you need to head to do your thing. I have no idea what's going on in the story as I wasn't really paying attention, but it also seems a bit intentionally vague as well. Art style seems cool, but not sure how I feel about the lack of faces.

Had this lying around for a while and decided to give it a go at last. I'm completely unfamiliar with the original, I know it melted video cards back in the day and I do have the remaster/remake, but never got around to playing it. So I couldn't tell you whether this was a sequel or a reboot or something in between (though I think it's a sequel). In any case it drops you on an alien planet as a dude with no memory, gives you a jetpack and a gun and then asks you to talk to aliens that are surprisingly open-minded about a human running around and shoot a couple of spiders (or rather tons of them – I played for 2 hours and already killed 200 enemies). Fundamentally this is an open world game designed with late PS2, early PS3 design principles in mind, there's a couple of points of interests your map reveals by you running around close to them and completing them usually results in immediate rewards like a larger health bar etc. There are shades of RPG in that you have two separate skill trees for traversal and combat, each of them using different kinds of XP so thankfully it doesn't force you to choose between cool Jetpack stuff and cool shooting stuff, but rather how you prioritise developing either independently. The early game is super talkative to the point where I think it's maybe a bit overdone. Think ME1 Citadel but without the smart word-building. It does a somewhat good job of introducing its own lore and vocabulary (in a nice touch, you can make a glossary pop up mid-conversation) during these early moments, but you will feel relieved by the time the world opens up and you can wander/glide around on your own. I have invested zero points in combat so far but the shooting feels good (even if movement not always does), thanks to some aggressive auto-aim on console that works almost like a lock-on (you can turn it off if that's not your style). There's also an energy shield at your disposal that works as expected and can be used as a melee attack up close while the Jetpack can help you dash around on the battlefield. There's also some super attack that freezes enemies around you – so definitely more than enough tools to have some fun, though I admit none of them are really necessary when fighting spiders. Though I presume that will change as it goes along and enemy strength increases. Visually this is a splendid production that yet again proves we don't really need AAA budgets, with really beautiful flora and some great use of bloom and diffuse lighting to give it that distinct alien 'Outlast' shine. It doesn't, however, run super clean, at least on console. Quality mode feels a bit sluggish and Performance mode has frequent dips in busy areas and screen tearing. It doesn't bother me too much and it does talk about some VRR thingies in the options, but I can't try those out with my TV. The other downside of its presentation are rather dated character models and animations, though that's usually the case with these mid-budget games and I really don't mind it at this point – especially when the writing is very early 2000s anyway, it's not like it'd pull you in with masterful dialogue anyway. But so far this makes a really nice first impression if you go in with the right expectations. (Not a glitch on the gun, it just looks that way.)

Spent a few hours with this over today and Friday (through Game Pass on Series X) and it's OK... I've seen it described as a Souls-lite which is a fairly good shout to be fair, this actually has three difficulty levels though which is nice for a game like this (although you can't earn achievements/trophies on story) and so far it's been pretty manageable even for someone as crap as me at this style of game. You play as Nor and her companion Enki (the magical god fox)... it plays much as you'd expect with melee combat mixed with a little gun action. The gun can be used to knock enemies out of unblockable attacks and such. It has a cool risk reward thing going on where different actions in combat will raise a percentage multiplier and you can keep that going for as long as possible before you choose to "bank" your reputation but take one hit and the percentage is zeroed and your reputation is banked minus the percentage. Reputation can be dropped at death and needs to be collected again before another death. The story so far has been a bit meh, something about the Undead and bad gods blah blah... tbh I've yet to play a game like this that actually had a good story and the voice mixing isn't helping much considering a couple of the characters seem to have voices that consist of pure bass and just seem to rumble more than anything else. I kindve feel a little hooked on it so far though... unless there's a massive difficulty spike along the way I can see myself slowly plugging away at this.

It's a bit like deus ex/dishonoured but less stealth and more scary. i really like those games so i really like this game. it's also less level based as you can explore the whole space station. you can get powers to turn into a cup, although i didn't really use them. and i say it's scary but its maybe more that the music is scary, it put the fear of god into me and i had to keep taking short breaks to calm down, had some less intense music been playing i think i could have halved my completion time of around 33 hours. oh and you can do stealth but i didn't so not sure how viable it is, but it didn't seem as viable as in deus ex/dishonoured. you get upgrade points that you can spend on special powers/more health and stuff. some of the powers seem cool but i didn't really use them, i went for hacking/repair/heavy lifting stuff to open up more areas. some of the enemies can turn into in-game objects, like a book or projector, which can be quite freaky. the crafting/materials system is nicely implemented, didn't spend much time messing about in the inventory. the gloo gun is pretty cool, freezes enemies and can be used to aid platforming, although the platforming controls are a bit hit and miss. my basic tactic was to gloo gun stuff then shotgun it in the face - i was playing on easy mind so that might not be as effective on higher difficulties. the story is really good and intriguing, although the end was a little disapointing. lots of interesting side missions too. and the game makes you think about your choices, some side missions i didn't do because i was concerned about the consequenses. i played it on pc, my pc is old (2500k) but with a modern-ish graphics card (970) and the performance was great, looks really nice and ran really smooth, except for 1 room, where even on medium it was a little choppy. so yeah i liked it

So this has a demo out, presumably on every system, and it's relatively chunky at around 90 minutes to two hours. Turns out it's pretty neat and I actually bought it on a whim after the demo ended. One thing I noticed right away is that despite there being lots of discourse about it, most of it was so focused on its technical side that I never really knew what kind of game it actually is. So I was a bit surprised to find out that it's not a linear run & gun shooter, but more of a story-driven adventure with (very) slight Metroid elements, platforming sections, a couple of (easy) puzzles, a skill tree and some downtime sections where you talk to NPC. Not saying a straight up shooter would have been worse than this cocktail but the fact that there's more to do than just click on heads was a welcome surprise. I also really enjoyed its opening act – the story is a relatively trope-heavy YA mix of different things, but it's surprisingly engaging IMO. On the gameplay side, while it's not all shooting, the shooting part is still the meat of it, with every aspect of the skill tree boosting your combat prowess. As the Avatar Unforeseen, you can wield all four elements three magic types, which means you have the funky equivalents of a rifle, a shotgun and an SMG build into the gauntlet on your hand. Per magic type are three subtypes and there's a bunch of other stuff like Overdrive and more powerful spells filled by a mana gauge. It can feel a tad overwhelming at first but you'll soon learn to wield them properly, pick out snipers with blue magic (rifle), pull in supports to finish them off with the red magic (shotgun) and slow down brutes while pumping them full with green magic (SMG). I do want to point out though that it's a very static game in the sense that all the horsepower of the console is being used to make it look as pretty as possible. There are zero physic toys available here, the world is purely decorative. I'm not too bothered by this but it does feed into the discussion that hardware resources are being used for ultimately irrelevant things today. Speaking of, visually it's really stunning, as expected. I think there have been a few patches since release that increase the native resolution and make the upsampling a tad less aggressive. It does look sharp, but I'm only on 1080p, so hardly a high-end benchmark situation. But it also runs a but sluggishly at times and can only really hold the 60fps target in closed-off spaces. Which I think is the exact opposite at what it was at launch, when it was locked to 60 no matter the cost. Probably would have preferred that to be honest, but at the end of the day it's not a dealbreaker for me. But so far, so good. I wish the demo had come out a bit sooner, because I think it might have helped selling a few more copies and avoiding the unfortunate downsizing of the developer. Getting greeted by this when booting it up feels really bittersweet now:

It's hard to explain The Cub without being reductive. It's kind of a really pretty Limbo, except without the puzzles. The most striking thing about it, without doubt, is how it looks. It looks like a cartoon, the devs have done an amazing job with it. It's even got the choppyness to the animation, without it being too overbearing. The characters look great, the backgrounds look great, and there's even a few bespoke animations that are only used for set moments. It runs really well too, my desktop hitting it's max framerate on a game like this isn't a huge surprise I suppose, but it was locked at 60fps on Steam Deck too Gameplay features a lot of platforming, nothing especially challenging, we're not talking Celeste or whatever, but you will likely die a few times. Often this will be because you have to encounter something to know it's coming, the mine cart section for example, it's just a case of failing until you learn it. It's also where I noticed a did of animation delay. Pressing to duck actually takes a few frames to happen because The Cub animates to duck. That caused a few deaths. The double jump either gets taken away from you at points or it's more temperamental than it should be. Similarly there were a few times The Cub didn't grab ledges. It adds to the feeling that the platform mechanics aren't quite there The rest of the game is made up of stealth, chase, flying and a couple of swimming sections. With the stealth it's not always clear what will act as stealth, a problem from the art style I suppose, but it's not too frustrating. Which sums up the game I suppose, you'll die a decent amount, but it isn't hard, it's just a case of learning what to do A word for the story too. Humans have fled earth, they're now Martians and are taking trips back to mine resources and play golf. The Cub is a mutant who has survived on earth. The catastrophe that made earth uninhabitable was caused by late stage capitalism, and the rich abandoned the rest of us to die here. There's a ton of moments that are pulled from the headlines, I suppose your mileage with that will vary. All in all The Cub is a decent game. It came out earlier this year and had a pretty significant discount on Steam during the recent sale. It's a few hours long, nothing too demanding

So, this is the new game from the Civ and XCOM developers, Firaxis. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, it is a turn-based game. It's safe to say it's more closely aligned to XCOM than Civ though, but this has an ace (or many aces to be exact) up its sleeve that differentiates it from just being a Marvel XCOM game, and that's the largely divisive (from Previews) inclusion of Cards into the combat. As a result of the cards coming into play, the game isn't as rigid or locked into a grid like it is in XCOM, you're free to move somewhere within the little combat arena you're placed in once per turn, with certain placements being preferable, scoring knockbacks or environmental attacks. You can draw three cards per turn, but certain cards do get refunded as they're used up, giving you an additional card or two per turn, you can also redraw any card you're not happy with twice per turn. A lot of the cards so far are quite basic, in that they are 'standard' kind of slash/punch kind of moves, but they do come with additional benefits like knockbacks, chain attacks, inflicting bleed damage and the ilk, on top of these you've got ability cards which gives you and your team buffs as you fight and hero cards which are much more powerful and usually allow you to take out multiple enemies at a time, the kicker being that you need 'heroism' to use them, which is gained by taking out enemies. The enemies themselves have been fairly standard grunts for the most part, if you imagine the basic super soldiers from XCOM, then it's pretty much the same here, just they're now Hydra Soldiers. The bosses have been more interesting as they're now various Marvel villains instead of snake-creatures or something like they were in the XCOM titles. As established in the paragraphs above, the game shares a lot of DNA with XCOM, and that's no bad thing, the animations, certain effects you can pull of like the knockbacks mentioned earlier and the environmental attacks all look and feel very similar to XCOM but they've now got a more grandiose superhero sheen on them. You'll head out on missions from the 'war room' with yourself ('The Hunter') and two other heroes chosen at random to assist you. You'll about your task, fight a boss or retrieve an item at the end of it and then return back to your base. It's in this base segment of the game where you can see where Firaxis has been far more ambitious than their previous title. In XCOM, the base was an important part of the game where you'd build new sections, invest research points into them to help bolster certain specialisations, new weapons and all that good stuff. All of this DNA is contained within the 'Abbey' in this game, which is a huge Cathedral with sprawling grounds for you to explore to your hearts content, you explore this in 3D in your role as the Hunter, gone are the days of a 2D plain, seeing all your little soldiers move into their newly built wing. It's super impressive and such a great feeling 'base' right away that really makes you feel at home, all the segments you'd expect to be there are in their place but there's also tons of secrets to explore and a sprawling grounds containing blocked passageways which will likely reveal themselves to me later on. The Abbey has the feel of the School in Fire Emblem Three Houses or the Normandy in Mass Effect to it. This also takes inspiration from those titles in the new social links system, where you can sit down and hang out around the Abbey with your new team mates as you assimilate and get used to your new surroundings, doing so gets you friendship points which levels up your bond with your squad mates as the game goes on. I'm not too far into the game but I assume the more it goes on the more activities around the Abbey get unlocked and some of the more mysterious bits and pieces I've seen so far unveil themselves. The Abbey is the most ambitious element of the game and is almost a game unto itself, it makes me realise why it got delayed a few times. So yeah, I've loved my time with it so far (probably about 4-5 hours) and can't wait to play more, it's a real breath of fresh air compared to some of the other stuff I've played lately. To be continued and pics added.

So it's like a top down/isometric sort of rally game, with a nice basic/stylish graphics, it's great, the handling is spot on imo, it's on the realistic side but not as hard as dirt rally because of the wide tracks with lots of run off area (cut pretty much every corner), and there's a lot more scope for some nice power slides and opposite lock. its great fun. a trailer might explain it better: the leaderboards seemed to work at first but then seemed a bit broken, so hope that gets fixed, not that i have any friends on the epic store (think i'm 'spatular-' if anyone wants to add me). it's pc only at the moment but i guess it might come to consoles later. it's on steam for just under £20, well about £17.5 with initial discount, it's the same on the epic store but if you claim rocket league for free you get a £10 voucher so can get it for £7.5. might have been better getting it on steam for the leaderboards but don't regret my first epic purchase after getting control free with a graphics card and claiming 70+ free games on there. it's a bit hard to judge jumps because of the view but jumps are always difficult in rally games anyway. i'd like a normal chase cam and steering wheel support added, i recon it'd make great more-standard/not-top-down rally game too. these guys also did a game called absolute drift which is good fun - but also really hard to drift iirc - by default art of rally has steering assist on 100% i think, i haven't changed the default settings but am guessing turning that down makes it handle more like the old game. Anyone else going to give it a go?

Played about an hour and haven't got any of the Bioshock style powers yet, but it's done a pretty good job of teaching you some of the basics. The tutorials are hidden as gameplay elements (follow someone, play hide and seek etc), but a little on the nose for a while, once things start to kick off though it does a better job of setting things up so that if you want to do a stealth kill then you'll get an easy chance, if you want to do a drop attack then there's a convenient pipe above a guard. Or you could just walk up and stab people, whatever annoyingly on the pc it's got the same quirk Witcher 2 did, that it's 2 handed attacks mapped to the opposite mouse button, so the sword in your right hand is mapped to the left mouse button, while the gun in your left... Not a big deal but I did alert a few guards by dropping down and shooting a guard in the head instead of a nice quiet throat slit

FromSoft isn't messing around! Giant Mech✔️ Missile launcher✔️ Big gun✔️ Laser sword✔️ Jet propelled agility✔️ ..And go! This isn't Metroid however, this is your standard tool kit. Master it quickly. You get about the first couple minutes to introduce you to the controls. Then, you're on your own. Free to roam and battle as you wish. Your first objective has four markers, to be approached in any order. Naturally there is a lot of distance between each and From is quick to demonstrate that the enemies have the advantage. This is their base, you are the intruder. Be prepared to fight waves around any given corner. Some nice little Codec-like voices are your only warning the enemy has spotted you. The controls have come a long way since early AC's. After only an hour or so, I get what they were saying about taking what they've learned from Souls (more from Sekiro, really) and applying it to AC. Combat is fluid, reactionary and fast-paced. It all feels really intuitive, however. I imagine the first boss will be a rude awakening to any new to AC. I died a handful of times. But, this isn't Souls. This ain't no Vanguard either. I didn't defeat the boss by learning it's patterns, tells and counteracting them. No, I beat the boss by making the most of my own abilities. Your handler gives you one hint to dodge a specific attack. But it's more important than it seems. I mentioned Sekiro before, because you have the same meter system to the boss fights. Get the bar into the red with sustained damage and not only does this put the boss in a stunned state. But they take more damage too. Be careful that it does work both ways. Not to mention the cooldown to all your weapons and dodge/agility capabilities. This is all demonstrated in the first boss fight. When I "got it", I smashed the boss quite easily. I didn't get long to play today and likely even less time tomorrow. But just from the opening mission, I'm very impressed.

This game came out in 2021, but I was unaware of it until the current steam sale. It's a lovely, chilled golf-puzzle game. Over a number of different themed worlds, you complete golf holes, earning more stars for completing in fewer shots. Working out how to do some of the holes in 2 or 3 shots to get the maximum star rating is actually quite fun. Some levels have a hidden secret hole/cube/other object to seek out and hit with your ball, which will unlock an alternate path on the map leading to extra stars or a special hole. Completing that hole will add an extra hidden collectible "blue things" to some of the holes on the map, which are used to unlock access to more challenging caverns which make use of the various features and gimmicks you've played with on that map. They can take a bit of figuring out, but are very satisfying. There are only a couple of barriers to progress requiring you to have earned a certain number of stars to pass, or the caverns mentioned above needing x number of the collectible things. The requirements aren't high, helping the game to feel pretty relaxed (the final cavern at the end of the game only needs slightly more than half the total number of collectibles). I got right to the end without engaging much with the secrets, then went back to the first 3 or 4 worlds and completed a bunch of them and had a great time doing it.

I'm probably over halfway through the game and, yeah, it's as good as the last game in most ways except in ways that doesn't make much sense to me. The story is still the main focus and it is as well performed as last time but it isn't as striking as before. That had a unique, almost theatrical one-woman show due to it existing mostly in Senua's head and memories where as here she is interacting with others. I do like that though since it's a good place to go after the first game being all about self actualisation and then seeing how she puts that into action around others. It just also means the scenes are a bit more conventional. Outside the story you wander around solving perspective based puzzles which feels easier this time around because I got stuck a bit on the last game but they do hide the optional lore poles (?) and hidden faces in the environment which tell stories too. I find those harder this time, I've missed so many. But it's the combat which is a problem. It has been simplified to the point where it's just block and hammer attack. There's no reason to use the heavy attacks really and they've made the parry have such a small window it's frustrating to use. I don't know why they made that harder but the rest so much easier. Fights are also one on one only so the spacing element from the original is completely gone. I don't know why the went in this direction, I am a bit baffled by it. No, it's not a combat focused game but they had a really nice compromise going with the original, and I don't think I'd heard of people dropping it, finding it too hard. It's just a bit disappointing that they've felt they had to address a problem that wasn't there. But the drama is good, how it incorporates mythology with coping with or explaining the affects of mental health is good so it's still entertaining but it's always gonna baffle me that they've removed any remotely interesting friction the original had.

Where to start. What it is. It is definitely an old school Rare esq 3D platformer. From the music to the grunty dialogue, the duo of characters and the cohorts you meet along the way, it's pertty much Banjo Kazooie 3 in all but name. It's good from what I played so far but I know it will annoy people due to being the above. You can scale a height of platforms only to find you can't progress. Certain characters won't talk to you yet untill you do something later to unlock their progression. Everyone talks alot and makes bad jokes. You can see things you can't get to as you need to learn a move that comes later on and I think this kind of thing will piss people off. I love this kind of game, i'm on board, I knew what it was and that's what i want so im cool with all that shit. What i'm not cool with is the shitty camera. It feels like they've brought that with them as part of the nostalgia. It's not game breakingly terrible by any means but, for example, the boss of world one is up a slope. He's chuckingshit down at you and you have to avoid it. For some reason they've loked the camera really low down so it's hard to judge when to jump. Also, the movement when you move up slopes using your slope run move is awful. It's realy fast and even when you press left or right you go up a little bit first. This is super fucking frustrating on his third attack pattern and I felt like I shouldn't be getting this pissed of with the game on the first boss. It can also be hard to judge where platforms or collectibles are a la Banjo or Mario 64. They slightly deeper in to the background or more in to the forefront than you sometimes expect - extra annoying if that is a misplaced jump that sends you falling to your death or back to the beginning of a climb. But but but, it's great platforming for the most part. The controls are slick, it's a beatiful colourful world and it's all very jolly. Littered with collectibles and tons of stuff to do, it seems certainly great value for your money. It's just weird I have the same beef with it that I did with the Nintendo 64's flagship game. I'm only a couple of hours in, watch this space I guess.

I find myself needing to take breaks from FF7 Rebirth. What better then to play the last of the Classic Era I am the least familiar with? I played this originally with the PSOne collection many years ago now. The newest playthrough is via the Pixel Remaster. So let's get this out of the way. The story isn't the main focus of this one. This is a "four chosen heroes gather to protect the elemental crystals that power the world". I'm already two and half hours in and the story has been on the lighter side, so far. As is the tone. This is almost at odds with FF4 and FF6 that start strong on the story front. You play as four characters almost from the very beginning. So there is no real "main one" to focus on. So what is the main focus of this one? Job Classes. This is basically the last game to refine the job system that debuted in FF1. Here's the gimmick though: You level up your job class and past a certain cap. Unlock a skill IE use of White Magic that you can retain when transferring to another job. For example, when the job classes are first unlocked. I set one character as a Monk IE the physical powerhouse. A couple levels in, you unlock "Barehanded". A skill the grants other job classes the physical strength of a Monk, when unarmed. Therefore, that character is now a Black Mage. Who when the skill is set also happens to be one of the strongest attackers in the party. This opens up a lot of variety to each build and character. Magic is also done a bit differently in this. You don't "learn" a single spell. You buy them from a Magic shop. Now levelling up White and Black Mages grants higher levels of proficiency. The initial unlocked skill grants use of Level 1 White/Black Magic EG Cure, Fire etc This goes upto level 6. So it pays to have one of two of your characters set long term as a Mage. Blue Magic also returns. Which is weirdly done. Because you don't influence enemy attacks in anyway. You just have to wait and see if the enemy has something you can learn. You don't even gain the "Learn" ability until Blue Mage lvl 3. This is the kind of grinding that I find really relaxing. Especially with the speed up battle option.

I've already played the start of the game a few times now, and with all the average press i was starting to get a bit down on this despite having been looking forward to it for ages. anyway so far i think it's a bit like the first game, awesome but flawed, maybe a bit of a missed opportunity to make it all amazing. i just did a level that i loved, the view was amazing, there was some nice running away from people, finding the right route up a tower, some nice jumping to find some hidden stuff, it was really great. combat is a bit of a mixed bag, jumping over something and smacking a dude in the face as you land and running off is great fun, but sometimes you have to stop and fight which is much less fun. the directional kicks so you can kick people into each other or off buildings is cool. other mixed stuff is the some of the side missions are too difficult imo - they need a 3 star rating like the timetrials to avoid frustration - i tried a delivery one and had to retry it maybe 20 times to finish it, you have to find alternate routes to complete it in the time as far as i could tell - this isn't really a bad thing but at the start of the game i just want to have a quick go to get 1 star or something then later go back to it to try and do better. there was a similarly annoying distraction mission that's basically impossible without many retries and finding shortcuts, again not really a bad thing if you know what youre getting into. i actually had a good sense of achievement and ended up enjoying these missions when i knew what i needed to do, but they were really frustrating at first. anyway i know to avoid them unless until i'm in the mood for that sort of thing now - i'll probably enjoy them after finishing the main missions. the main mirrors edge gameplay of parkouring about the place is still there and is generally great fun imo. it looks great, runs nice and smooth, well except for a bug i'm having on pc where the cutscenes stutter and the audio is completely out of sync. so there you go.