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Apparently this was a Stadia exclusive, but is now on Steam. They've just released a sequel, and but the first Figment was free for a while to promote it. The game takes place in the mind of an adult man, who is driving and gets in to an accident. The game isn't about the accident so much as the state of his mind. You play as the manifestation of his courage, the mind's protector, who has all but retired. You and your companion (a bird or something) travel around the different areas and see the state the brain is in, rather than creativity and energy its all stress and spreadsheets Gameplay is simple puzzles, things like putting batteries in a different socket to make a route through. Taking a platform from one area to another while still leaving yourself a route back. There's combat too, but not loads. The mind has been infested by nightmares, dark thoughts that are themed for each section, there's small ones that take a few hits and bosses at the end which require a gimmick of some kind to beat Figment is good, but it's greater than the sum of its parts. The combat and puzzles are fine, but the game has loads of character. It's full of absurd over the top songs, with some good dialogue. It's worth playing

The Demo is out now, possibly the first of two if past Resident Evil games are anything to go off. Based on the demo it's pretty faithful to how the original starts, playing up to the village fight before it ends. The opening moments are expanded and they've developed the combat a little. you can stealth a little now, the knife is a button press, there's opportunities to shoot then melee in a more deliberate way than it felt in the original. There's dodging and parrying, and when enemies are downed you can finish them off, which you need to do and I've had a couple change on me even this early in the game (this could be a demo thing) There are a few changes, as said there's a expanded start with some more story telling played out, and some subversion of what you expect, which runs throughout the demo My only issues so far, I don't like the aiming. I think by design it's easy to miss, but I'm not really a fan of how easy it is to miss even when you aren't being rushed. I'm also not a huge fan of how it looks. That might be a common thing with the engine, assuming this is the same as the RE2 remake, because I thought that could look a little rough at points. I've played the performance mode, and it has loads of ghosting when you turn the camera, whenever there's movement, and just at certain points on any fine detail, so I'm not sure what reconstruction they're using but it's not working great (playing on PS5). I might have another run on the graphics mode to see, then I might even download the PC version

I’m about seven hours into this and I’ve finished the first act of the game so I thought I’d share some thoughts. Pentiment is a very unique game. It’s not a point and click adventure, it’s a basically a visual novel, or an interactive book. It’s set in the early 1500s and is clearly a labour of love for the team that created the game at Obsidian (I guess they must have several teams now). It was written and directed by Josh Sawyer, who I’m guessing must be a massive history buff, or at least must have done a lot of research for this game. Many reviews made comparisons to The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco which is a good comparison I guess. It’s a very highly quality game. I don’t know if the music is strictly made by instruments of the time period or not, but it sounds like it, and it’s very impressive. The art and presentation are excellent as well. The game is unapologetically slow. It moves at its own methodical pace. It feels very much like the result of one person’s strong vision (although that’s just my assumption). I’m really enjoying it. I think it’s great. The time period setting and whodunnit mystery nature of the game make it somewhat comparable to The Case of the Golden Idol, but that was much more of a game and requires much more effort and thinking on the player’s part. Time will tell which I prefer.

Originally a PS3 game with a PS4 version, Ishin has now been remade as a PS4 and PS5 (and Xbox) game, and you do get the sense it's probably the final game we'll get that feels like 'old' Yakuza. It's hard to place what exactly makes it feel like an older take on the game, possibly the movement, it's a bit haphazard, I can't see a lock-on, it's not as refined and flowing as it could be. It's the difference between playing Kiwami 1 and Yakuza 6. It also feels less mental with its missions, but I don't know how many of them are just lifted from the original game. In terms of the story, it's not quite a retelling of the first Yakuza game, but it's pretty close. Not-Kiryu (the cast is made up of renamed characters from past games) comes back to town after time away, ends up having to avenge a paternal figure, after being blamed for a crime he didn't commit. From there it does become its own tale, with enough to it that it doesn't feel like a 2nd-rate spin off Again, I don't know if this was in the original, but it has its own take on 0's switchable different fighting styles. There's the standard Yakuza brawling, plus the swordplay you'd expect playing as a samurai. Less expected is that you are also carrying a gun and can just blast away at people (I suppose this will have followed Dead Souls originally), and a style that combines sword combat with your firearm, which leaves you defensively vulnerable, but it's the most fun to control and the most flowing style (Sword has been my do to). I've been using fewer Heat actions, they seem to have been downplayed this time, and access to them is more part of the skill tree As you use a style you'll level up, unlocking specific and general orbs that unlock the next skill in the various combat styles. There's gear with stat boosts, and some with perks attached. I've got a sword that recovers a very small amount of help every time it causes damage, which is great, but the headband I've got with the most defence points blocks me from earning heat, which means it can go in the bin as far as I'm concerned I'm enjoying it more than I expected, I thought I was a bit Yakuza's out, I never finished Kiwami 2, I never finished Judgement, and haven't touched the games that came after. But this feeling a bit archaic has helped it I think

Played through some of the opening hours of this last night. My understanding watching previews was that this is an open world immersive sim, but you wouldn't really know that from the opening. It's an incredibly rail-roaded section of gameplay which really feels like a throwback to 360 gaming, which I don't entirely mean as a compliment cause it's an era of gaming I don't quite enjoy (overly long set pieces showing off HD tech being one of those things I don't love). There's some interesting stuff here mechanically however, or at least it appears like it will become interesting. It's tribute act includes Bioshock (and maybe Prey). Instead of neuromods or plasmids it's this polymer stuff that is the newest thingy you stick in your hands and eyeballs to do magic. Starting off I got a zap power, and a power which covers stuff in a sort of grey paste looking gel which also conducts electricity by the looks of things (the one power interaction I've discovered so far). There's a big focus on melee combat, sort of like Condemned, with a kind of spacing element to its gameplay which is hard to figure out cause it's hard to know how much distance is safe or not or how much reach you have. It's a very clunky onboarding, with some atrocious voice acting in the English dub that actually had me muting sections until I found out you could change it to russian (the subs are a bit small, unfortunately). To be honest, based on these initial hours I think the whole thing feels a bit shonky and unoriginal, but these games don't come together mechanically until you've unlocked some powers and they take the reins off and let you feel more independent and brainy, which I hope will still happen in this once it finally opens up. This screenshot made me lol, big ass mission text that never disappears saying 'where the fuck am i, find door handle', waypoints everywhere and huge weapon taking up the screen. Yup, a 360 era game lol. You can't holster weapons or customise the huds. These seem like nitpicks but the UI could do with being more customisable cause it gets in the way of immersion in this immersive sim, imo. There's also no FOV adjustment, which can be a bit motion sickness inducing in a FPS with a melee focus, tho I fixed that with flawless widescreen. Highly recommend doing the same if you can, or having a hardy stomach The game is visually decent, however there's no ray tracing at all which is strange as this was I think the first game Nvidia ever demonstrated with RT on their RTX 2000 cards. The poster boy for the tech. Well, at least it runs extremely well, no stuttering and it has a precompile shader cache, something which seems to be catching on now between this and Dead Space (this is just 30 minutes into the game, but I'll spoiler it) it not only rips of Bioshock, it also rips off Harry Potter!

Hi guys. I wanted to draw your attention to a little indie game I discovered due to the good old Youtube rabbit hole. I was watching an old Caddicarus video, and he included this game in it. And it's a blast. You play a goose. That's it! Behind the very pretty hand drawn looking graphics is a stealth game, I suppose. You get a check list of things to do, but it's up to you how they get done. Here's an example of the start of the game. You come out of a bush beside a pond. The game shows you the controls. You honk. You flap. You peck. Then you swim across the pond and see a picnic on a park bench. What you do with it is entirely up to you. A little further along you find a farmer minding his own business, tending his crop of carrots. That's when you get your "things to do" list. Things like get the farmer wet, steal his keys, turn on his radio. As you progress through the game, you realise that the main point of being this goose is to annoy the hell out of the villagers as much as possible, while trying to complete you current things to do list. And if you're like me, usually you'll be giggling maniacally while playing. The art style is really nice, the horrible goose struck a chord in me, and the pranks are puzzles to figure out and moves to time and execute. Like stealing the farmers keys is more difficult than it sounds, especially if you've already pranked him, and he's aware of this bloody goose walking around his fields. Though the things to do are not exactly challenging, it certainly brings a sense of satisfaction to complete list after list. In all, it's a sedate laid back game with a horrid sense of humour. If you fancy leaving the things to do list alone for a bit, just have fun pissing off as many people as you can.

I played a good chunk of this the last two days, and now the clock on it says 9 hours. Enough to give early impressions. It's a mixed bag, and I'm not going to get into the technical problems cause there's a lot out there on that already. Just to say that 8GB VRAM cards are going to have problems, and so will PS5. Pick your poison (or don't), but it's genuinely a shocking product that Luminous have put out, especially given the generally high quality of FFXV (technically speaking, the game itself wasn't something I was into). Something went wrong in the production process here, maybe this is one of those games which just could not adapt to development during the pandemic. That said, there are some neat things which aren't being spoken about much in the 'discourse' around this title. I probably already got into it on the demo thread I made, but it's a free-flowing parkour battle mage combat system. I think it's really cool, and is the reason I bought the game in spite of all the issues and high price. You have a sort of stamina system, little pips above the health bar. They let you parkour and are also used to defend you from massive damage. When you parkour, you can do other contextual actions like attack and such. You chain parkour, support abilities and attack spells together. I think it's neat anyway It's just you have to grind through some really mundane stuff to even get to see what good the game has to offer. The opening few hours limits you to these rock powers for maybe 6 hours or so, and that was me sort of beelining my way to the first boss to get the melee abilities unlocked. Meanwhile the presentation is very cheap. Badly animated cutscenes, stilted animations and awkward fade-to-black transitions. It reminds me of the main story questline in FFXIV, in terms of all of the above (also funnily enough built on a fork of luminous engine I think). It feels sort of like an Assassin's Creed 1 type of game, where there are parts here which could be built into a great game but are thrown together in either a lazy or rushed way, and the overall feel is a bit meh. That said from what I've seen and heard the game only improves as more abilities unlock, and if you just want to fly around the place killing things with fancy magic the game seems to serve that battle mage fantasy very well.

Spent a couple of hours with this over this afternoon... after the reviews I've been counting the hours. First up I'll say spend some time setting the game up, turn off film grain and blur and knock performance off you'll notice a marked improvement in picture clarity. Also the game came set for stereo sound which is odd. The game does look great though, plays really nice too, having played the three Dead Space games repeatedly this feels really quick compared to the clunky original games... took a little while to get used to but feels nice now, especially after changing to the DS2 control option. Noticed quite a few new doors in the environments I've seen so far, also walked to the beginning of chapter 2 instead of using the tram which was really weird... been a couple of instances where you choose what to power up... one where you're forced to kill the lights and this game does proper dark, no bullshit greys in this game... it's dark! The game has already made me jump more in the first two hours what with noises or necromorphs creeping up behind me than The Callisto Protocol managed in its entire run time... it's good to be back.

Well this has turned out to be a very pleasant surprise... So let's get this out there straight the way, although this has strong rhythm elements you could (up till where I've played at least) get by with a bare minimum of rhythm... yeah you'll get damage perks and better scores but you can button mash your way through just as well. It looks lovely, very stylized with a look of Lollipop Chainsaw or Sunset Overdrive and for me pretty humorous too without going too far that way. Special mention must go to the soundtrack which so far has been pretty amazing, especially the original music and the way the whole stage seems in sync with the beat. There's a fairly decent amount of accessibility options too for people, who like me, have no rhythm whatsoever... so far so enjoyable and it's a game I probably never would've given a second thought to if not for my Game Pass sub... Great stuff.

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.

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.

I’ve been enjoying this game a lot. It’s a flower shop simulator. Not really. On the one hand, it’s a gentle puzzle game where people come to you with requests for certain flowers and you have to identify them from descriptions in a book. You also have a map of the area that you can interact with, and you are given hints about points of interest on the map that you should visit. The game seems to be set in a fictionalised version of rural England and there is a greater story and mystery going on that you learn about as you talk with your customers. So far, it’s been a very chill, well-designed game that is a nice change of pace from anything else I’ve played recently.

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.

Forspoken demo, put a few hours into it and beat the boss on normal mode. It has some neat ideas, and I think it is sorta like an air dashy Dragon's Dogma. However the luminous engine (FFXV engine) is still such a dog when it comes to combat. Or maybe not the engine, whatever framework it is the FFXV people build their combat off. My big problem with it and also XV is the way melee attacks are contextual based off proximity and your character sort of magnetises to enemies. The automatic feel is still just absolutely terrible. On the other hand, Forspoken has a really cool magic system which has some interesting layers to it. Here's the boss I beat up. Here I slogged for an eternity killing these dumb gators. The visuals of this game are not well suited for a game like this. The particle effects make it very noisy to look at. The resolution is not high enough and the framerate is not high enough. This kind of game needs 4k 60 native, it has this weird reconstruction stuff going on that doesn't work well with the particles maybe. It just doesn't run well enough in this build for the combat to feel good. Hopefully at release it is better. That said, I'm still interested in this game. Even if it ends up a 6/10 on release it's rare you get open world games with varied combat. Especially magic combat, which is usually just about keeping away. When you chain the spells together and mix in the range attacks and distance closers it can be pretty cool looking edit I played some more later, I actually had a really good time this time. I'm more confident in the game now, maybe it can be a 6.5 lol I think the general idea in combat is your r2 spam melee moves are your main damage moves, and your cooldowns set up safe opportunities to spam them. Other than that you need to hang back a bit and spam the 'gun' attack. The radial wheel is not very clean to use, I wish they had a better shortcut mapping system. But I think it works well enough, especially if you set it to pause on opening the wheel and play it like FFVII Remake's wait mode a bit

There wasn't a thread for this, I think. Unless it got deleted. Anyway, I am 20 hours in. At the end of the first 'area'. It looks like a Souls like game on the surface, but the similarities are largely on the surface. This is mostly a hardcore action game in the same kinda vein as Ninja Gaiden, but with Soulslike concepts to how it designs its action rather than the more DMC-like ethos of NG. But I wouldn't really consider it like Souls, cause I think Souls is a lot of exploring and dealing with traps, and then some simple but punishing combat. This is purely about studying very complicated combat, and exploring very simplistic and repetitive levels. At least, that's the impression after clearing the first area 20 hours in or so. So it's really hard. If I'm quite honest, it's a game which can make me fairly miserable. I'm not having the best of times with it at this early stage, so I'm not sure if it's a future candidate for 'fucked off game' or whatever the thread is called. However I am really interested in what's going on with its combat, and it really demands that you study that combat to pass even the basic challenges the game throws your way. You have three stances, high mid and low. High is heavy attacks with lots of stamina drain, lots of health and 'ki' damage ('ki' is what they call stamina). Mid is in between that and 'low', which is fast and low committal. Each stance has different properties to its dodge as well, and I think block costs different amounts of ki in each stance The reason for the three stances is a mechanic called 'Ki Pulse', which is a timed 'burst' of white energy after every active skill and combo string. You press r1 at the right time and you recover your 'ki'/stamina more quickly and has other properties later on. So for the BnB combat in this you're looking at trying to figure out an approach which combines these different stances, taking note of attack properties and recovery times, as well as ki cost and trying to space the enemy out. It sounds like a lot, right? It is, it's a lot. It's a really hard game. The RPG comes in the form of lots of inventory management, which sucks. It also comes in the form of a FFX Sphere Grid style upgrade system for your different weapon skills, which is the part that's really interesting. You use a weapon a lot and it gives you a skill point which you can invest in certain skills. Like a quick kick for a chain-scythe type weapon, which is useful to proc 'ki pulse' cause it's quick and recovers quick. Or a parry move (which seems universal to every weapon), which can get further upgraded to have followups. You can equip/unequip the moves and replace with others God hand style (parry is not my style, it's hard enough to react to reactable shit in this so I use alternatives). More impactful are these buffs you unlock which grant different properties to the ki pulse for each stance. So if you get a perfect ki pulse on high stance, you get a damage buff. On mid stance, you get a 'free' block (which is a lot more important than you think for fishing for openings, at least at the beginner level I am at). then low stance gives you a free dodge. tbh, I've not been using that one as much, but mainly cause I don't know when to do so. But anyway, skills and buffs get chained together looks to be the gist of it. You don't just mash square to get through (I think). I'm speccing for fists and 'Kusarigama', which is like a scythe on a chain that pulls guys or your own guy in, and has moves to retreat and back off. Mainly I'm using the fists right now though. In general the combat is sort of based around dealing lots of posture damage, which when fully depleted puts regular enemies in a spot where you can grapple them and boss enemies in a spot where every attack deals hitstun and you can go to town. So fight design and your build combine to create very difficult combat puzzles. They repeat enemies and minibosses a lot to make you learn harder and harder variants of that combat puzzle also Here is me finally defeating Bojack, and putting an end to his terrible nonsense once and for all. Pretty basic gameplay but it's a very hard game to learn even basic stuff in. Also, you have a kind of Oni mode, called Yokai. You power up and mash the buttons, use it during the monochrome segments where they drain your ki. You can also cancel anything into a quick yokai move which you equip. The moves do things like toss spears or summon snakes. Apparently there's some defensive ones as well So yea, there's some pretty deep stuff going on for an action RPG. On the combat side anyway, everything else seems fairly prefab (levels and enemies). It takes forever to figure out basic stuff tho btw, I'm playing on PC. The port is great. It wasn't great when it came out but I guess they fixed whatever was wrong with it from back then.

Played for a couple of hours and I'm happy to say that, so far, I've loved every minute... everyone already knew it was going to be a spiritual successor to Dead Space and apart from the inclusion of melee combat that's just how it feels. You play as Josh.... sorry Jacob.... who for reasons finds himself locked up and awakens in his cell with things very much already fallen to shit... not long after you receive your first melee weapon and after a quick tutorial you're left to it... I was worried by the dodge mechanic in this for a while but it's actually not too bad... there's no timing window, something I'm immensely grateful for as I have none, instead as long as you're holding left or right when the enemy swings you'll dodge... just don't dodge in the same direction twice. As for the hitting things, it feels meaty as in The Last of Us 2 meaty... and messy which I suppose trying to batter a monster to death would. I've picked up a pistol but so far I've not had much cause to use it... ammo seems sparse. As expected it looks really nice, they nailed lighting and sound... something that would've been criminal coming from the guy who gave us Dead Space... he sure knows his outer space. I've already died a number of times on the middle difficulty with some pretty disturbing death scenes... I think I'll be seeing lots more of these during my run time.😂

Booted this up for the first time today just for a look see... played for a couple of hours and completed four levels. For those not in the know it's a Steam punk (I guess) take on Westerns mixed with Vampires which I thought was going to be much more shooter orientated than it is... it's actually much closer to the newer God of War games than Gears of War, shit, you even open and smash chests the same way as Kratos does. So there's a definite leaning towards melee combat over ranged but there's Guns involved obviously being a Western. These work on a cool down rather than relying on ammo drops and are mainly used for hitting exposed weak points with the rifle or chip damage for the pistol then there's the sawn off which is great for obliterating shields... all standard stuff for anyone who's played a third person adventure game anytime recently. So far in terms of levels it feels very old school with very linear levels designed to funnel you from one encounter to the next. As for looks it's been a very mixed bag so far, actual game play looks ok, I'm not sure if it's a design choice or what but there's a really weird glow with everything... fire sources are ridiculously bright and this isn't even an hdr enabled game and then you have the cutscenes which everything just looks muddy and crushed to fuck... I'm not sure whats going on there. Funnily though the pictures I'll post look a damn sight better then they do on a tv.🤷‍♂️ So a bit of a mixed bag... plays fine, looks a little ropey.

So, the first game was a very enjoyable car-crash. They’ve skipped straight to 3, because why not. And this is legitimately one of the funniest games I’ve played this year. It starts by ripping off the intro to Skyrim (and openly admits as such). Then you’re set loose into the world, to cause total carnage. If you played the original, you’ll know what you’re in for. If not….Jesus, where do I start? You’re a goat. You can lick things and drag them around. You can headbutt stuff. That’s pretty much it. The rag doll physics are proper funny. Head butting an explosive barrel, causing people to go flying is a riot. You can catch on fire/electricity, and spread that through a crowd. There’s various tasks to do, which gift you in game currency. Which you then use to unlock add-ons to customise your goat. Currently I’m rocking a molten lava skin, with 4 paint cans stuck on my feet, and tennis balls on my horns. Most of the add-ons are cosmetic only , but some have powers you can trigger at will. My personal favourite is a firework launcher. Which when fired at cars/ people, causes them to go rocketing into the air at 90mph, ragdolling furiously. That’s had me cry-laughing repeatedly. As you run around the open world, you’ll encounter random missions you can do. Which reward you with more cash, and usually a cosmetic. There’s already been several Easter eggs relating to other games/franchises. So again, many laughs to be had. Oh, and it’s 4 player online co-op as well. Not tried that yet, but I imagine it’ll be utter carnage. So, yeah. This has been bloody hilarious thus far.

I’m blitzing through games now. Norco is a point and click adventure game set in New Orleans. The location alone gives it a very strong Gabriel Knight vibe. I say point and click adventure but Norco is closer to a conversation ‘em up. Most of the gameplay in the first hour plays out through conversations. Similar to games like Read Only Memories and Va-11 Hall A, and of course, Disco Elysium, without the rpg elements. The game also has a strong Kentucky Route Zero vibe. Let’s see if it lives up to the reviews.

it's a bullet hell game, and it's really good! which was sort of surprising as it's by NGDEV, i've not played all their previous games but the ones i have played were sort of average i guess. i'm not sure how to explain what makes a bullet hell game good to me, it's all about the dodging, so the bullet patterns have to be fun to dodge basically, i feel like there's a lot of shmups that don't get this right enough, as in they get it right part of the time and they're fun enough, but only cave stuff and a few others get it right most of the time, and it's early days but this seems to be doing a great job here. imo anyway. there's a few difficulty modes, practice, missions, a roguelike mode which gives you random powerups or something? there's a nice bullet hell tutorial too which explains some stuff really well. unfortunately i also have a problem with the game which is the checkpoint system, i really hate checkpoint systems, i mean it's not as bad as it could be and a lot of people seem to like checkpoint systems and i want people to try the game because it's so good so i'll try not to whine about it too much! I'd usually post about this in the shmups thread but giving it a go in a thread of it's own, see how it goes (probably badly) pc only for now i think but as the trailer below shows it's coming to everything. anyone else giving it a go? edit - steam link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2025840/Gunvein/

Started this on GP over the weekend after hearing a few good things about it but not really knowing what it is. Turns out it's a survival horror game with a PS1 graphical style heavily inspired by Resident Evil. The setting is a bit Dead Space though, in that it's set on an otherworldly space mining facility. All the typical RE accoutrements are present here, you'll be combining objects to fashion a key, using the sparse save rooms as the only way of saving your progress and managing your 6 inventory slots with the help of storage boxes. You'll also be shooting, dodging, whacking and running away from Zombie-esque enemies dotted around the mining facility that creepily glitch out as they approach you with your Pistol and Shotgun (complete with laser pointer) and Stun Rods. You will of course also be solving a few puzzles (none of which have vexed me as much as previous RE series puzzles though) and gradually making your way through the mining facility, trying every door to try to find a path forward, going back to previously discovered wall safes and the ilk, finding keycards and all that good stuff. Unlike RE (I think) you are equipped with a Radio and can tune in to different frequencies which then help with puzzles and other mysteries around the facility. I think I'm only about 2.5 hours in so far, it's not meant to be overly long (HLTB says 8-10 hours) but I'm very much enjoying it. The atmosphere is spot on and the PS-era visuals somewhat unique in a day and age where 8/16 bit visuals still seem to be so popular. I struggled to put it down last night, highly recommend it so far. Pics:

I’ve played about 3 hours or more of the campaign which I believe is about half way. It’s alright but it’s like a ‘best of’ of the series. Think of it as a Now That’s What I Call CoD! Track listing includes: A swimming bit. A sniper bit. A gunner in the skies bit. All the hits dating back many years. The story and overall attitude of the game is awful I’ll say that. Dude bros with guns. No one is likeable or too much different for anyone else. The game is very linear as to how you can tackle each short segment. Be a few metres away from where it wants to be and you’re killed. I look forward to multi once the campaign is done with.

Roller Drome seemed to get talked about a lot right before release, then no one mentioned it again. It's a CEL shaded roller skate arena game with similar muted colours to Sable. Presumably deliberately it reminds me of old 70s genre films. The concept is kind of Running Man, you enter arenas and have to shoot the house players. To reload you have to do tricks, this refills your ammo, killing enemies gets you health back,and there's a bunch of different enemy types. I wasn't feeling this originally, it just felt flat and boring, frustrating even. Movement can be a bit odd, you don't control your momentum, press forward to start then leave it, concentrate on steering, jumping and tricks. Get close enough and there's an auto aim to shots, with some of the weapons having slight tricks to them. There's a dodge, time this with the slow down time mechanic, usually used for aiming, and you get an extended period of slowed time. There's challenges to the levels, things like performing certain tricks, kill enemies with certain weapons, and I think it's this stuff that was annoying me. It's probably best to just beat a level then revisit it and try to get one or two challenges each time, that's not how I was approaching it. You need to beat a certain number of challenges to unlock the next set of levels, so I was trying to beat everything all at once, you just don't have that sort of control early on, or I didn't, I did much better when I came back after a break and went back to the earlier levels. I'm still not sure I see the really high scores for it, but when it does all click with you it is fun, really fun at points

Well this pretty much came out of nowhere. Like, I didn’t even realise it was out. I remember it being announced, but not much after that. The original Tales game was one of the best things Telltale came out with (Walking Dead peaked after their first season, and by the end was crap). I’m not an expert of the franchise, I’ve only finished 1 and 2, and some of the DLC. But that didn’t stop me from having a great time with Tales. So, now we have the sequel. Though it’s “episodic”, it plays out as one big game, giving you a break between episodes. I’ve just finished Episode 1. And so far, it’s off to a good start. The dialogue has been amusing enough. The story, which switches between 3 playable characters, seems solid enough. There’s zero puzzles, so you’re mostly down to making dialogue choices, and occasionally wandering around the area to trigger the next set piece. There’s a fair few Quick Time Events, but they’re easy enough. One review said that the hacking mini game is laughably easy. It is indeed, and makes you wonder what the point of them even is. It warns you “failure has repercussions”. But honestly, you’d have to put your controller on the floor, to fail them. The IGN review said the final episode is a train wreck, and almost ruins the game completely. We will see how that plays out. But so far, yeah, this seems decent enough.

I’ve played this for 4 hours now. And the harsh reviews can honestly fuck right off. They’re way off the mark, in my opinion. Usually, Skill Up does decent reviews, but I don’t agree with his video review of this. He moans that unlocking “Knigthood” for all 4 characters is a massive grind. Is it bollocks. There are two ways to level up. All characters share regular XP, so you can freely switch between them. But each character has a 4th skill tree, Knighthood. This needs to be unlocked for each character, and you do so by killing 3 mini bosses, and solving 10 crimes. In my 4 hours, I’ve got Knighthood unlocked for 2 characters, and almost done it for a 3rd. The way he moans, it’s like it’s a huge chore. He also creams his jeans over Arkham Knight. Personally, I thought that game was boring as fuck. I’ve had more fun with this, than I ever did with that. I’ve also seen some people complain that one fight sequence has the rock remix of Livin’ La Vida Loca. To those people I say “Have you even played Saints Fucking God-awful Row?”. What a stupid complaint. Anyways. Combat-wise, this ain’t Arkham. There’s stealth takedowns, but I’ve not had opportunity to use them much. So far, there’s not the vast array of gadgets that Batman had in Arkham. But, each character has their own play style, and abilities. Robin has been quite fun so far. A lot of people got pissed off when it was revealed this is 30fps on consoles. I’m no graphics expert, and to be quite honest, I’m happy with how this looks on PS5. It looks pretty damn good to me. The story has been interesting so far, and it’s worth swapping characters, as they periodically have their own side missions, which further develop how they’re coping with the loss of Batman. So yeah. I’m having a great time with this so far.