Jump to content
passwords have all been force reset. please recover password to reset ×
MFGamers

Search the Community

Showing results for tags 'PC'.

  • Search By Tags

    Type tags separated by commas.
  • Search By Author

Content Type


Forums

  • MFGAMERS
    • News
    • General
    • Games
    • Media
    • Technology
    • Ed's Super Deals

Calendars

There are no results to display.

There are no results to display.


Find results in...

Find results that contain...


Date Created

  • Start

    End


Last Updated

  • Start

    End


Filter by number of...

Joined

  • Start

    End


Group


Twitter


Skype


AIM


Website URL


MSN


PlayStation Network


Steam


Wii


Xbox Live


Interests


Location

  1. mmmark

    Far Cry 6

    Full disclosure I’ve only played 30 minutes of actual gameplay as my eyelids weighed about 500lb. I really like the style of it and opening. Once you’re set free to play you’re pleasantly set up for revenge. The next gen (playing on XSX) has proper elevated this game from past entries. It looks gorgeous but most impressive of all is the draw distance, amount of vegetation and that it is all crisp and clear to boot. Gameplay is how you’d expect from a far cry, or any half decent fps really. The machete is nice and lethal for stealth plays. I’ll be making good use of that. It was real fun to have my own personal alligator run alongside me. I look forward to diving back in.
  2. I’m about two hours into this on the Switch. I’ve been playing the main game, haven’t tried the visual novel prequel thing yet. But I’ll probably play them concurrently. The game takes a few twists and turns early on, but nothing overly dramatic. So far, typical jrpg opening (as jrpg stories go). The combat is quite unique though. Enemies have elemental types and during battles there is an elemental field, which, depending on the elemental spells used causes certain elements to get stronger and the opposite type weaker. For example blue and red (water and fire) are opposites. If you use a blue elemental spell, the blue area of the elemental field (this is shown on the screen) will grow larger, and blue spells will become stronger and red spells weaker. One interesting tactic connected to this is when fighting enemies of different element types, their spells can antagonise each other, which can affect the order in which you might want to take them down. In addition to that, when you do a normal attack, you can choose between weak, medium and strong. Weak attacks have high accuracy and strong attacks low accuracy. Every hit that connects raises the accuracy of subsequent attacks. It’s up to you how you choose to string combos together. There’s more to combat than that but those are just a couple of interesting points.
  3. Been playing this, beat it earlier today. If you've played Elex or Risen the past few years it's the first game made by Piranha Bytes, who made those series. This is the big one by them tho, this and Gothic II. I'm mainly interested in checking out Gothic II but as that game literally starts with the two main characters having a conversation about the final boss from the first game I felt I should check out part 1, also that I was pretty interested in doing so anyway based on how people talk about it. It starts out with a really interesting premise, basically it's Escape from New York but with orcs and wizards. You get thrown as a prisoner into this mining colony shielded by an impenetrable magic barrier. The prison doesn't go according to plan though, and for some unexplained reason the mages fuck it up and trap themselves in with the prisoners. Over an unspecified amount of time (ten years I think?), the prisoners split off into factions and bring the mages along with them. So you all these different micro communities within one 'big' but still micro-community in the middle of this fantasy world where barely anything about the outside world is explained to you. I think there was a war with an orc kingdom, but again it's rarely brought up, but really the only world that matters is the prison colony. You've got the 'Old Camp', which work out an agreement with the king who is now dependent on their obedience to get the ore he needs, which leads to the creation of a new kind of landed gentry within the prison, the 'Ore Barons' who reap the profits of the digger's labour. The 'New Camp', who are like 'fuck this' and want to come up with an escape plan to blow up the barrier, and routinely raid and make life difficult for the Old Camp and steal their supplies (they also have their own mine). The 'Swamp Camp', who sell weed to the other camps and worship some demon, these guys are a bit weird. It does the Morrowind thing of making you follow directions in your journal to find quest locations, and learning the location of relevant areas (eg, you will eventually lock into your brain that Old Camp is in the center, and north of Swamp Camp, and the paths to the New Camp and the mine etc). There's some interesting social dynamics as even tho these three communities are sort of hostile to each other, there's also some interdependencies between them. The Swamp Stoners who smoke joints all day have to go into the mines to extract venom from the monsters inside, which has the side effect of protecting the other camps from them. Also they sell them really good weed, so they tolerate all the weird shit they do while remaining a bit suspicious. The mages in each of the other two camps act as a peace broker between the powerful figureheads as well, and it's interesting to see the tensions emerge in the game narrative as the game pulls you back and forth into making a decision about which camp to join. To even gain acceptance in each of the camps you have to ask local leaders within each community to speak up on your behalf, which means doing some chores for them but some of them can turn out to be pretty interesting. Some have paths within to betray them at the last moment to get some item or renown with a different camp entirely. Progression is also pretty interesting. You start off extremely weak at level 0, the fact that it is level '0' seems to be saying something. If you don't pay protection to the guards in the old camp they will mug you for far more than what they originally asked, and you even have a bully in the new camp who forces you to do boring repetitive work everytime you go in or he will beat the shit out of you and mug you. You have to do this every day, and he keeps his promise even if you're off doing sidequests and come back 2 days later. At one point I basically did not leave the new camp until the next day to make sure I did the boring task and didnt get beat up and mugged, and then stayed away from the camp for a really long time cause I was afraid of going back, pretty immersive lol. Eventually tho, you grow up and get a few bits of equipment yourself and return the favour. In general a lot of disputes are handled like this, it is a prison after all. If you want to sleep in that hut in the new camp you don't just ask nicely, you beat up the new guy who decided to take it. So long as you beat him up and mug him and put him in his place you've settled the matter, after all what are the guards going to do, put you in prison-prison? That said, some people are friends with each other and will jump in to sort you out if you beat their friend up, tho they seem to actually not do that if you beat them up previously. So the NPCs retain some memory of prior beatings which is cool. You have to pay trainers to teach you how to effectively use weapons, the way the combat works in this is a timing based system. The best way I could describe it is imagine Dark Souls crossed with Tomb Raider crossed with Raiden's HF Blade combat in Sons of Liberty, it's a tanky, z-targetting based system where you have to use WASD/analog and the 'action' button to perform your swings and with correct timing. But if you pay the trainers you can get more easy to execute swings with better framedata and cool flourishes. This is a thing I like in RPGs, when they find cool little diegetic ways to express play progression, like beating up your bully and learning how to even begin using a weapon effectively. It's fun and original and makes progress feel more meaningful and earned than if you already start off with lots of cool abilities However, this is just chapter 1, and for the next 5 chapters the game appears to lose interest in the inter-factional aspects a bit and sets you down an increasingly linear path through some dungeons to chase some magguffins and deal with a predictable ancient evil. There is some variance in progression depending on which faction you join and what type of magic you can get, and when, as well as the cosmetics of your armour pieces. But it gets more and more dilute and meaningless as it goes on, so it basically starts off as a really interesting setting with a unique thesis statement to how to approach player progression in a WRPG. Butends up a fairly routine slog through some very buggy quests (I had to enable god mode at one point as a follower would murder me on a perfectly timed loop every few minutes because his AI was programmed to be as hostile to me as the enemies we were fighting, and he was supposed to be there to make an unreasonably difficult section more easy https://www.reddit.com/r/worldofgothic/comments/qzrch9/wtf_is_wrong_with_gorn/). I'd say it starts off as a 9/10 and ends up more like a 5/10. Really the only interesting game design occurs in chapter 1. At the same time tho chapter 1 is most of the game almost, I was just short of 30 hours in my playthrough and around 14 of them was in chapter 1, I spent a long time trying to decide which camp to join. Chapters 2 and 3 are also still good and have good pacing from the first chapter, but it kinda falls apart a bit on 4, 5 and 6. Pretty interested to check out the sequel tho, which is considered one of the best RPG ever and fixes a lot of the more glaring problems here apparently. There's a few threads on here about other PB games I think, Shiny did one a few years ago about Elex which is a more modern take on this kind of game I think. Tho maybe that is just as buggy, I dunno
  4. OCH

    Cult of the Lamb

    Heretics Defeated! So far, very good. Only got in an hour today (for now) but I'm enjoying everything about this. From the "Happy Tree Friends" aesthetic. To the distinctly Isaac/Gungeon feel to the combat. The cult building aspect so far is the newest gameplay to me and the most intriguing. It reminds me of both Freedom Fighters and the base building of Suikoden. I have fought one boss and indoctrinated three followers into my Cult. While grinning from ear to ear at the presentation.
  5. DANGERMAN

    Cat Quest 2

    I really liked the original Cat Quest. It's an action RPG that takes place on a pretty small map. It gates you by having huge spikes in enemy levels, so if you wander in to the level 15 area at level 6 you're going to get very fucked up. It worked though, despite retreading a lot of old ground it keeps feeding you more, keeps you on the train, and it's not long before you're wrecking previously unkillable enemies The second one is effectively more of the same. This time there's co-op, you can play as a dog too. In single player you can switch between the two with the other character being controlled by the AI. It works, the a.i. is invulnerable so it can deal damage while you back away from enemies to dodge their signposted attacks. It kind of suffers from 2 problems, the first is that it's more of the same. The combat works the same, the progression more or less works the same (I no longer have to stick to landmass). The gear system works the same too, you can find repeats of the same items that will level it up, or you can pay to level it up. This obviously can make a huge difference along with your level as to how much damage you give and take. It's not something you have to be thinking about all the time but it does help The most obvious difference between the two games, and something I'm not sure is either a problem or a benefit, the map is now significantly larger. It still works the same way, going in to certain areas is suicide, but it's more gradual now, there's more space to spend your time in during the lower levels. Equally though it can mean trecking around is a bit more of a slog, when you're hunting for side quests or ticking off the explorable caves, the end game is going to be slower Ultimately if it has a problem it's that it's more of the same. Given that it's now a much bigger and longer game that's probably magnified, but it's still good fun and I'd still recommend it, it's simple, a bit mindless, but that's kind of what I want at the minute
  6. Been playing a lot of this the past week, the openmw version (which is an open source re-implementation of the game engine to run better on modern systems, with more modern visual tweaks while still being the same old ass game). It's a game I've a ton of half hearted attempts at getting into but this is more of a proper attempt, primarily cause I figured out how to install openmw on steam deck and get save syncing working between it and pc using something called syncthing. If people are interested there's guides out there to get openmw working on deck, you want that, you don't want vanilla cause it won't run as good or play as well. I did try to see if there was a thread to bump but seems there isn't, so I mean the effort was made there. Maybe it exists but I can't find it 🤷‍♂️ Anyway, it's cool. It's very interactive in the way Bethesda games usually are but moreso in some ways and less so in others if you compare it to their modern output. Everything is dice-rolley as fuck. Even casting a spell can fail if you aren't properly learned in its school of thought, even if you have the spell 'learned'. Getting around doing quests means following actual directions relative to specific cities and locations on the map, one quest in particular is given to you as a series of sermons from a church which follows the teachings of 'Vivec', who is like Morrowind's JC figure, telling you to go to specific locations like caves beneath vivec city or a big wall made out of the remains of deceased dark elves and give offerings. You have to figure that shit out yourself, it's up to you, and it's a cool approach which demands you actually spend time reading books of lore and listening to what people say to even know what the hell a 'ghostgate' even is or why you probably shouldn't press beyond it cause it's a bit shit on the other side. Anyway, this will be the time I beat Morrowind. The really wordy bits where you spend ages reading actual novella length backstories of a Dark Elf queen and demigods tearing things apart and putting them back together are pretty well suited to deck gaming, tho in general the whole game is tbh. It's got an immersive sim quality to the way you can figure out some stuff, like it doesn't have a fast travel system, not really, so getting from Pelegiad to Balmora is a bit of a pain but there are some workarounds like this involving alteration and special potions There's others which require you to invest a bit of time into the game's systems, like being able to use telekinesis to open booby-trapped doors from across the room, or use the same skill to pickpocket someone really far away without having to take risks out in the open. Right now my khajit is a neophyte in a lot of this stuff and all his potions have the fun secondary effect of causing temporary status decreases, so a little bit of poison to go along with the buff, but my more recent potions have less of that in it. It's clunky and difficult but a lot of the quests and skills force you to invest the time to interrogate the RPG clockwork which allows you to do lots of interesting stuff, while at the same time improving your understanding of the world itself and its history. It's not quite botw cause you don't have a physics engine but finding different interactions is still a lot more interesting here than in Oblivion imo which while it had tons of physics interactions they did not improve the gameplay which was mostly just action based. I never played enough Skyrim to really have an informed take on it but I didn't get into it in any of my attempts (X360, PC and PCVR). Besides Morrowind it is probably my biggest gaming blindspot, but unlike Morrowind I'm not as likely to address it I think cause I kinda know what it is but MW still has lots of fun unknown stuff for me cause even now it feels pretty unique and worth playing, even 20 years on Quest wise it's being mostly ascending to apprentice-hood in the thieves guild and mages guild, at the same time as trying to decide which of the three houses suits me best (decided Hlallu cause they about money) and deciding if I want to do a fighter's guild quest where someone is asking me to kill fellow guild mates, if there's any consequences to it or whatever. All my stats are heavily speech and money focused, which is a probably weird way to play the game. But the way you are supposed to do things anyway is cram points in your misc skills to get the most level ups rather than just focus on your base 10 stats. So figuring out the mysteries of conjuration, illusion, alteration and mysticism is what I'm into, too magicka starved to go into the deep end of some higher level magicks or destruction tho
  7. one-armed dwarf

    Stray

    Played about an hour of this, which is not a lot but you're looking at apparently 6-10 hour runtime. Walking sim-esque, echoes of Miyazaki about it (Ico, Last Guardian), seems like a companion based puzzler with lots of pretty environment puzzles, but what I played was pretty linear. What might make it more interesting is it seems to have a strong environmental narrative focus on it, why are things the way they are. What is this city, what is going on with its inhabitants. I'll leave it at that, seems interesting but nothing mind-blowing really in the opening. I would have played more but I got about 2 hours sleep last night so I'm running on fumes. Will update with thoughts when I actually complete it I reckon It's a very pretty game, lots of screenshots and wallpaper material. At the same time I think the game is pretty enough that spoiling lots of views will rob people of the better parts of the game. So check out this screenshot of a cat hanging out in what is considered to be a pretty upmarket apartment in the cyberpunk dystopia FWIW, no HDR or ray tracing or anything like that. Lack of HDR is strange but I like the muted look tbh, don't really need the eyeballs seared right now. The game is so linear that the lighting they use is good enough as is. Runs at 60, these are PC impressions btw but I imagine it's identical to PS5
  8. spatular

    Neon White

    This is like a fps parkour shooter type thing, like super meat boy in 3d, like cloudbuilt, or ghostrunner with more shooting. Also its like a timetrial thing where you have to beat levels asap to get gold/silver/etc medals, which you actually need to progress. You need gold or above on a certain number of levels to progress to the next set, so far anyway this hasnt been too tricky. The levels are between 10 seconds and about a minute long so far, ive done the first 20. theres a jump button, a fire button, a switch card button, and an alternate fire/ability button, all on bumpers/triggers which is good. You pick up card and that decides what fire/alternate do, it sort of works like a context sensitive button, so youll pick up a pistol just before you need to do a double jump (pistol alternate fire is a second jump). Alternate fire also throws the card away. Other cards have alternates like a boost, or a grenade launcher you can use to blast yourself up high. Its a good system as it keeps the button count low so they can all be on the triggers. I found it can confuse me at times though because the same button does loads of different things which sort of fries my brain a bit. Theres some talking/story stuff but it seems unnecessary and can be fast forwarded. its not surprising i like this as i like stuff like ghostrunner and cloudbuilt, and so far its been really good. Unclear if the confusing multi use button stuff will halt my progress later on. anyone giving it a go?
  9. Ok, so this is awesome. i grew up with the Turtles in the ‘90s. Spent a small fortune on the arcade games. Loved Turtles In Time, which was the second SNES game I ever played. Scrolling beat em ups remain my favourite genre. So I was always going to be all over this. Thankfully, it was totally worth the wait. It looks fantastic, you can tell a lot of love has gone into this. The combat is satisfying, with each character having slightly different moves. If you play through Story mode, you gradually unlock more stuff, such as extra health and lives, and abilities. Each level has 3 challenges, ranging from do-able (kill 3 enemies with a specific move), to “not bloody likely” (don’t get hit once). There’s secrets to find, which help to level up a bit faster. The soundtrack is pretty catchy, and I love that the voice cast for the original series is more or less present and correct. I’ve played a few online sessions, and the net code seems pretty stable, even with 6 players, though that can be a bit chaotic. Fairly easy to get into an online game as well, which is good. Trophy wise, most of them are alright, though there’s a few pretty tough ones. Not sure I’ll manage the Platinum. But I’ll definitely have a fair few online sessions. It’s been scoring pretty high with reviews. And it’s totally justifiable, as it’s so much fun to play.
  10. 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
  11. I'm going to get straight to it. The only way I can describe this game is by saying it's Goat Simulator on coke. The goal of the game is to create enough chaos to get the police on your case. You then defeat said police and cause more destruction until you prompt the next wave of police. You also play as a deer. With a stretchy neck. Who replaces his antlers with guns. And you can end up with 15-20 guns equipped at any time. Oh and the police are sheep. Or polar bears. Or bunnies. Or bunnies driving hippos with laser attachments. There's not much to say about it besides WTF?, but if you're looking for a quick 1000G from Game Pass, this can be knocked out in an afternoon.
  12. spatular

    Tunic

    This is a bit like old 2d zelda games, but at the same time not that much like old 2d zelda games, there aren't really specific dungeon areas, or there are but they aren't like zelda dungeons, the world is maybe a bit like something like fez or the witness as it's a bit puzzley, but also not quite like them. the game world is full of hidden paths and secrets, anywhere there's possibly a hidden path or chest, there probably is one, you spend a lot of time walking into walls and into areas you can't see properly to find this stuff but i like the exploring. the combat is supposed to be pretty hard and i nearly got killed by one of the first bad guys so turned the accessibility options on pretty quick - infinite health and stamina - this sort of negates some of the items/pickups which are for combat/health but you don't really need them any more, for me it's definitely the right choice as i'm rubbish at the combat and would probably die a lot and give up, and the puzzling/exploring is still good fun and the main draw of the game for me. there is a problem with infinite health though, it's a very open world and you can pretty much go anywhere from the start - especially if the harder enemies can't stop you. so from the start i probably followed the proper path for the first hour, got the sword etc. then the next 2 to 3 hours were spent doing the wrong things in the wrong places, but you can still get powerups/collectables in these areas so it's not a complete waste of time, but i'll probably need to go back to these places later. but i still enjoyed this exploration. i think i had most of the other weapons in the game before i got the shield which i think youre supposed to get early on. but after this i looked up some stuff so i could make some progress, as i wasn't sure what i was looking for i thought these doors were blocking me but turns out they were for later on but finding out how to open some of them as i go along will save having to find them again later. anyway then made pretty quick progress through the first main section of the game but then i didn't know what to do after that so looked up some more stuff just to point me in the right direction, turns out you need to collect things, i already had one of them. the game barely explains anything to you, well it does but in a round about way - you get manual pickups - like pages of the in game manual, but they are only partially in english. the manual does explain a lot but you can miss the pages or get them out of order so it can be pretty confusing. some things i wish i'd known earlier than the manual tells you - i found these by looking up stuff on the internet but think the manual tells you at some point: so yeah overall i'm enjoying it, the exploration and puzzles are fun. i think i'd prefer more hand holding personally as while i have worked a lot of stuff out on my own i've also looked up quite a lot too. edit - it's on gamepass
  13. Do You have an Xbox One, Series S/X or PC? Do You have Game Pass? How about an untenable urge to create and run your own business from home? If you answered yes to all three of these questions, then let me introduce you to the excitement-filled world of Lawn Mowing Simulator. In Lawn Mowing Simulator, you're armed with nothing more than a ride-on lawnmower and a strimmer. With these two essential weapons, you will start your own grassroots company, work through the ranks and become a world-famous* landscaper. *world-famous may be a slight exaggeration Look, this game is boring as fuck. I know it is. It's literally garden after garden. You run around and pick up some stuff, then hop on your mower and make the grass shorter. There's not much to it. As you get further in, you can hire employees, get bigger warehouses (so more space for extra mowers), and work your way up to becoming a trusted business. I called mine Mow-asis. You can take out loans - although this seems pointless at the minute. I have one employee, two mowers and two strimmers, and I'm bringing in around £3500 per week. This is giving me a nice little income, and if I take out a loan, I won't have enough to expand the business as a whole. I need to work up to the next warehouse, which is £160,000. The biggest loan I can take out is £32,500. At 30% interest. No. No thank you. There are a few challenges you can play, which amount to mowing a lawn with restrictions - either time or fuel - but these aren't part of the career mode. I don't actively dislike the game. I know it's boring, like I said, but that cycle of part-exchanging a mower to get the next one, training up and sending out employees to do jobs while I sort my own, working towards the next mower and then blitzing through the gardens I've already done before is strangely satisfying. I picked up the Dino DLC for £3-odd, mainly because it's a Jurassic Park rip-off. The change in location makes it a bit more interesting, but obviously the core gameplay is exactly the same. But my real reason for this post (and the reason I'm happy we don't have downvotes anymore), I was playing this yesterday and had the following conversation with Rosie: Me: You know, I think my business is becoming quite successful. I'm turning into a real mow-gul. Rosie: **Silence** Me: I feel like I'm gonna need to get myself a wife soon, though. Rosie: ...why? Me: Because it's lawn-ly at the top.
  14. Honestly surprised I couldn't find an impressions thread for this, especially considering how fantastic previous entries in the series were. Anyway, I got this (and CTR) in a racing sale on Xbox, mainly because my kid keeps going on about how much he loves playing it on Switch in his mum's, so I thought it'd be a cool way for him to show me something he likes. He bounced off it when he realised I'm better than him. I'm hooked, though. Is it as good as Transformed? God no. But is that familiar Adventure mode that combines traditional races, Grand Prix events and cool little challenges still present and correct? God yes. I'm trying to take down some of the harder achievements. Up to now I have two that less than 1% of people have earned. I don't think it's because the challenges are especially difficult (although there are one or two that I've been stuck on). I think it's probably because tons of parents would have bought this for their kids without realising there are some damn punishing things to take on. I suppose this post would be pointless without a shit sandwich, though, wouldn't it? So here's the filling. It feels so. Damn. Slow. It doesn't matter if you hit a boost plate, use a wisp (more on those in a second), or manage to powerslide into one of those cool Sonic blue boosts as you straighten out of a corner. Nothing feels as fast as it should be. To the point I got irritated and started shouting 'why the fuck are you in a car when you can run faster than this you stupid blue cunt?' Some events give you a boost start. It feels like it moves at about the speed of a geriatric in Tesco on a Tuesday afternoon. A lot of reviews from when it came out said the same thing, and I just don't understand how it can feel this sluggish. Now. The Wisps. These are the Mario Kart-style power ups that these racing games use. The only difference between them is the colours. I haven't noticed any difference in their shapes. So while you're racing it's hard to see what they do, unless you know each one already. This is a pain in the ass when you're neck and neck with that annoying crocodile dude. Final complaint. The best-named Sonic character is nowhere to be seen. Sonic Advance 2's Cream the Rabbit. The joke from Games TM has stuck with me since I read the review all those years ago. "No idea if that's a name or instruction." As the other piece of bread on this poop butty, when you get into a rhythm with each course it's really satisfying. The ring challenges especially. I really like the flow as you move from powerslide to powerslide. Will I get all of the achievements? God no. Will I keep playing until I hit the unattainable goals? God yes.
  15. radiofloyd

    Elden Ring

    Played an hour, on PC. The game defaulted to High graphical settings, so I left it at that. I chose the Vagabond class. So far, so Dark Souls. Looking forward to losing my life to this game. The opening cinematic is very cool. One of my Steam friends has already played this for 8 hours.:.
  16. DANGERMAN

    Intrepid Izzy

    I've been playing a game called Intrepid Izzy on the Dreamcast this past week. It's pretty good, certainly of a better level than some of the stuff that gets charged for on the Dreamcast nowadays, even if it's not got the production values of an Under Defeat or something It's a platform adventure game. So for the most part a fairly standard platform game, with some combat via the attack button (no jumping on heads), where you work your way through the level to get to the boss, beat the boss and get the item or power-up you need for the next part. However, it's got the Castlevania 2, or probably more accurately Quackshot adventure element, where you might hit a dead end in one level that requires you to go to another level to find the solution On a technical level, it can be a little too easy to slide in to an enemy, not enough inertia to the movement, and you can be kit by things you dont see coming until it's too late. There's also a weird stretching and shrinking on the edges of the screen, almost as though it's making more of the texture so it doesn't have to bring the next one in, but I'm honestly not sure why it's in there. It's odd though The adventure part is the bit I was most reticent about when I realised what Intrepid Izzy was, I don't like backtracking, it makes me roll my eyes when I fight my way to an area only to find I can't progress. This turned out to be a problem, particularly as the game has outfits, outfits you can't change in the game world, you have to head to a teleporter, head to town, your house, back to the teleporter, then back to the bit you need the outfit for. The section I'm doing now, where I need to revisit areas to find 4 stones is a case in point, one needed the squirrel suit, the next one doesn't, but I only discover that once I've reached it The game can be a little vague in its design too. I can see people getting stuck, and even in the video below I miss a route I'm supposed to take because it's not indicated. Maybe that would make the game too easy, but you can definitely be left with little idea where to go, perhaps just making the map more detailed (with closed doors a la Metroid) would go a long way to solving it Anyway, I think I'm approaching the end sections once I've found these stones, and I've been enjoying it, it's been a nice change of pace from the likes of Pokemon and Shin Megami
  17. Team based Metroidvania! This is great! The game begins with the three lead protagonists. Arias the knight, Kyuli the archer and Algus the wizard. All journey to the Tower of Serpents to save their village, wherein it's waters have been poisoned by something in the tower itself. As this is a Metroidvania I can't really quantify it by the in-game clock. But rather map completion. I'm currently around 30% and it doesn't feel like I'm even close to halfway yet. The team based nature of the game comes from the unique abilities of each lead. Kyuli, is both your ranged attacker yet also she has a walk kick to reach higher platforms. Arias is your typical knight protagonist with certain obstructions only he can cut through. There there is Algus - literally the best character in the game (so far). As the magic user, that makes him your pew-pew man. Middle ground in terms of range but, his base strength makes him a better choice in combat than Kyuli. The fact that you can't immediately switch between your characters on the fly, does add to the puzzle element of many rooms. Combat is just as you'd expect from a Metroidvania IE you can die very quickly if you aren't paying attention. Which is wherein this games gimmick comes in. You can level up in this game. The level up system however, only boots up upon death. Your first death is predetermined to introduce you to this idea. After that, you get the gist. Graphics are a lovely retro 8-Bit stylised aesthetic. The sprites, while not entirely devoid of detail. Are colour coded to make up for any deficit. There is something surreal in playing this game on my big modern TV. If you're interested in anything I've mentioned so far, I really recommend giving it a go.
  18. This came out last year sometime and I've only just come across it and I'm a little mad it took me this long to find it because this is a very tasty version of my jam, The title is wild so I've been having a little look at where the game came from and Record Lodoss of War looks to be a series of books that are dramatised versions of real table top RPG games in Japan. Deedlit is a prominent character, a rogue-ish elf lady and Wonder Labyrinth is I suppose a quest in the RPG. They took this stuff and made a Castlevania game, pretty much. But it's a really fun one. The exploring does take more of a backseat and is pretty linear comparatively but the attention is more on the combat and there are so many weird systems in here I find it glorious. Standard melee attacks are very familiar with quite a lot of weapons to find with varying degrees of attack speed, range and power. You have a separate bow where you can adjust angles and shoot in different directions. You have spells that have many different forms of area of effect damage as well as been element based with enemies having strengths and weaknesses. But the really weird one is having two elemental spirits that you switch between to do either fire or wind damage as well as giving you extra mobility abilities; the wind one giving you extra air mobility, essentially letting you levitate, and the fire spirit that gives your slide more distance and invincibility frames. Lots to play with. Also in that spirit switching is some Ikaruga, or more fitting to this, Mousmarque's Outlander. And maybe it's here that things don't quite work as well as it could. It's mostly just because it's hard to read visually. Those games have art to compliment and really draw your eye to that mechanic but here it can be hard to quickly recognise the situation you're in so you do have to be cognisant of the spirit you're rocking. And the game is pretty fast and during the bosses the attack patterns can get intense but when you're in the zone it feels so good. Another aspect, yes there's more, you level up the other spirit to the one you currently have equipped and lose a level to the one you're holding when you take a hit and you max out at level three, and when you're at level three you do more damage and also slowly regain health, which is good because enemies hurt really bad. It's a fascinating set of mechanics which gives the game a pretty intense pace. Maybe it's more stuff than needed but it's a fun puzzle to solve. The rest of the stuff is serviceable at best and feels like it could have been level based and the open map not adding a whole lot but not taking anything away either. The frequent fast travel points stop backtracking from being too much of a problem. And it has some gorgeous pixel art and the music is also a good rendition of that Castlevania style. It's one of those games that wears it's inspiration on its sleeve a lot but it's such an interesting take I've been low key blown away by it. It takes a lot of complex mechanics but still feels so slick to play. I'm playing it on Gamepass and if you have any interest in these kinds of games its definitely worth a look.
  19. regemond

    The Pedestrian

    I'm starting to think all the best titles on Game Pass are the little indie darlings. I've smashed Boyfriend Dungeon. Enjoyed Raji's full game a hell of a lot more than the demo. I absolutely adored The Gunk, and Dodgeball Academia. And now I've played this clever little head-scratcher. Meanwhile, I'm constantly ignoring the blockbusters that hit the service, because fuck it. They can get played another time. Anyway, I've started talking about The Pedestrian on a tangent, and I kinda feel like that's how the game has to be played, too. Your goal is to navigate an incredibly linear world as the stick man (or woman) from public toilet signs. You do this by working your way from room to room, solving puzzles, and all that good stuff that makes a simple game loads of fun. It would all be a bit boring if the concept just involved you jumping about in a world with worse graphics than Super Mario Land, though, which is where this game's USP comes into play. Each area you navigate is set on a road sign-style panel, and might have different doors or ladders to get you into the next area. These panels aren't always connected though. Sometimes you'll need to hit Y (or triangle) to zoom out and see all the current panels you have to work with. You'll then be able to make connections from door to door, or ladder to ladder. You might even need to move the panels themselves to create a line of sight between each exit. Moving panels won't break a connection, but adjusting where connections happen will. Basically, if at any point you break said connections, the entire puzzle you're on at the moment resets, and your progress starts all over again. It's not just about creating a route from area to area, although that's a big part of it. You also have to make the environment work for you. Every now and again you'll encounter a hub level which requires different elements before you can escape. These are acquired by hopping into those tangents that I mentioned earlier. Say you need a key. You might need to head through the bottom left-hand door, which will take you to a series of puzzles, eventually letting you bring a key back to the main room. You might then need a wire, or a battery pack, or even something as simple as a box to hop up onto a ledge that's just out of reach. Once you've solved all the tangents for each hub, you can then move on. You know how in some games they use the same idea over and over again, and it can become exceptionally boring? Well The Pedestrian doesn't suffer that fate. Its physics, mechanics, and even the nature of the puzzles themselves have been sanded down and polished to this outstanding finish where nothing feels out of place. Can't solve a puzzle? That's on you. That ledge too high? You need something to help you get there. Go find it. The very fact that I sat down and finished this in three goes says it all for me. I loved everything it did. It's so, so much fun, and something that literally wouldn't work in any other type of medium. Achievements are very generous, too. I got 1000 points without trying.
  20. Started this on Friday night and have put around 9 hours into it so far. For those not familiar with the first game, to play it feels like a mix between Dead Island, Mirror’s Edge and Far Cry. The zombies, looting and emphasis on crafting from DI, the first person parkour of Mirror’s Edge and a similar mission/open-world structure to Far Cry. There is a distinct day/night cycle too where stronger zombies come out at night but you earn more XP and in the day there will be more zombies inside buildings so it’s more difficult to get to loot and crafting resources. As well as this there’s a drop-in drop-out co-op mode so people can join your game at will if you so choose and you can join theirs. So it’s much the same case here although they’ve changed the day/night cycle balance a little bit (as many in the first game weren’t incentivised enough to go out at night, so many players used to skip it completely) so that it’s really difficult to access loot caches in the day (as a lot of strong zombies are there) and the rewards for venturing out in the night are far greater. On top of this, if you try to venture inside anywhere during the day (anywhere without sunlight) there is a 5 minute timer that counts down, when it reaches 0 you ‘turn’ and die. This can be topped up by taking inhibitors which allow you to explore longer in the dark depths of Villedor. This timer and the inhibitors also come into play at night when you’re not under UV light. The other big difference with this is that unlike the first game, there’s no guns. So far I like it but not quite as much as the first game. The first 5 hours or so is quite a lengthy tutorial section where you’re held by the hand, shown some new mechanics and gradually led into the city of Villedor. Once there you then have to do a few missions before you’re finally set loose in this gorgeous sprawling city. Graphically, it is absolutely superb overall but the textures can look a little muddy at times. For the first couple of hours I played on resolution mode before switching to Quality Mode to see what the Ray Tracing was like in the game. I’m glad I did as well as the RT in this is by far and away the best implementation I’ve seen so far in a current gen title, it goes far beyond the reflections seen in the likes of Miles Morales and is a full on game changer, it completely changes the look of the game and makes everything look better and more natural. Despite only running at 1080p the game looks noticeably better than the resolution mode and it’s artificial rays. Since getting let loose in the city properly I’ve been enjoying it but feel like I need to unlock a few more Parkour moves on the skill tree and some of the cooler combat abilities like the drop kick before I can really start leaping from building to building, dropkicking zombies off ledges and all that good stuff. The combat is as good as it was and feels a bit deeper than the previous game and the city this time around feels massive compared to the Istanbul-esque Harran. Villedor feels more Eastern European with some Parisian influences to me so far. I haven’t toyed with the online side of things much with it so far either, in the previous game people just used to drop into your game from time to time but with this it seems like you need to call for help before anyone will actively come in, likewise you can respond to other players’ requests for help and it’ll transport you to their game. So yeah, so far so good really. It’s a big game so I’ve barely scraped the surface to far, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played. Pics:
  21. This ain't Banjo... It's been a long, long time since I played an N64 game. There are certain things you forget, that are distinct to that console. "Jank" I believe is the modern term. I don't remember the platforming being as weird as it is here? Perhaps because I was used to how the platform worked regarding 3D jump mechanics at the time. Fast forward to now and it is jarring to say the least. Jumping is precise and quite unforgiving. Ironically, you cast no shadow to judge if you will land on the platform you are aiming for. There was an infuriating little jump early on, along the way to acquiring the Asson that brought out a little frustration. Later exemplified in areas involving death traps and (early game) one-hit KO lava. You have a dodge mechanic. But it doesn't work as smoothly as you might expect, coming into this from the perspective of modern From Soft titles etc The remaster gives us camera control with the second stick. It is both an improvement and not. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than in the swimming mechanics. The first time I swam in this game. I tapped the action button, as standard and promptly drowned when I couldn't right myself. Later, I discovered the problem and it's solution. You don't use the action button to swim... You use both sticks. Forward on the left stick to move and steer with the right stick. If it sounds like tank controls, it basically is. But being in the water, it does become intuitive quicker. Ultimately my first session went on for about an hour and a half. Collecting four Dark Souls. The second weapon in the Asson and 66 Cadeaux. Quite intrigued to continue at this point.
  22. Ok, I searched the forum. It ain't on it, but well look at that thread title. It's possibly on here and the search engine went 'fuck that'. This is one I've put off for almost as long as the game has been out. I remember reading about it in magazines and thinking it sounded like some really cool shit, but being sad that all I had was a laptop with integrated graphics and no real way to play. Anyway, with the sequel on the horizon I want to make a more concerted effort. I'm playing on Veteran difficulty, I'm not sure if I have mods installed cause technically this installation has been on my drive for years since my last attempt to get through it. I did however install some mod which enables the EAX stuff, which is some old PC tech that used hardware to process sound, eg sound cards. It doesn't work on modern OS, but you can get it working still. So if you're in a cave or underground bunker or whatever your shots will echo through, or something like this. So far the only place I've noticed it is when you walk past someone playing a guitar. Sometimes this old PC tech can be really neat, it's sad that stuff like that goes away tho (like the phyx stuff we were talking about in the Batman thread) One thing that surprised me is it's not as open as I thought. It's divided into levels, or zones if you prefer. They are relatively open but generally full of little bottlenecks. There's some sidequests and lots of them seem really easy to fail cause of timers. I'm on some bit where I have to meet up with a gang and there's a huge army of bandits in front of me. So I rummaged around a giant radioactive dump (drink lots of vodka) and found an 'artifact', which is a kinda RPG item in this game. I don't really know what it does, maybe you equip it or something. But anyway it's not really open world in the way you might imagine. It's just got a bunch of levels where you can approach things in unique ways, I think. So far though it's pretty pedestrian, but I understand the opening is considered to be pretty slow going anyway. The premise for the game is also kinda bare bones, I think you lose your memory and you're hunting a dude named Strelok. Obviously like the title suggests it's set in the exclusion zone, but I think in an alternate history where there was more than one Chernobyl disaster (as an aside, it still weirds me out a bit that there's so much weird fiction surrounding a disaster which is still very recent in memory. I remember our family hosting kids with thyroid cancer who were the same age as me, to give a sense of how 'recent' it was and the people who were affected by it, a lot of people our age. But anyway) I guess for people who've never played the game I would say to them it feels like Fallout, the Bethesda ones, but way way more 'CRPG'. CRPG meaning like Baldurs Gate or Planescape Torment, in terms of picking up quests and the way your inventory is managed. But only in a really light way compared to those games. I'm pretty deep in on xiv atm so this might end up being another really slow playthrough, but I dunno with all the PC talk recently why not create a thread for one of its more interesting exclusives ahead of the sequel launch later this year? (if there is a thread for this, apologies but I did type it in the search engine both ways)
  23. Maryokutai

    Chorus

    I thought this was intriguing since its initial reveal (back when we all thought it was called Chorvs) so I picked it up recently and played through most of it during my holiday break. I'm one and a half steps away from finishing it, so this might be as good a time as any to make a topic about it. Haven't seen anyone mention it here so it'll probably be a dead topic, but I absolutely love the game and feel like I owe it to the developers to at least put something about it on the web. I'm not too experienced with this whole space opera genre and I think the last somewhat comparable game I played was Strike Suit Zero. But this genuinely feels like a bold new step for these kind of games. It's not a linear, mission-driven game, which is what I expected, but it's designed like an RPG almost. You visit a certain amount of areas that function as hubs for main and sidequests, three of them medium-sized, the rest a bit smaller. Because space is large and dark exploration is very streamlined: a button press reveals items and money pickups scattered across the world and holding the button unlocks points of interests on your map, i.e. the aforementioned sidequests, for example. Completing those usually rewards you with new weapons and equipment, hence why I say this very much feels like an RPG. But just like the size of its world, the stuff you find doesn't overwhelm you. I completed every sidequests I came across and still only have six different laser weapons, for example. Rather, everything you have fulfills a certain function, so mix-and matching for the best combination is key here. While it does seem like putting on extra hull energy is a good thing, getting hit in Chorus usually means you already made a mistake. So I went to max out my energy meter and recovery instead, to be able to use more special moves. And it's here where you can see just how forward-thinking this game is designed. Usually dogfighting games are 50% shooting at enemies and 50% turning your ship/plane around to find an enemy to shoot. Chorus just gives you all the power you need to reduce that downtime to almost zero and it's just wonderfully executed. Those special moves I mentioned (called Rites in the game) are the key here, particularly the first two: one allows you to instantly teleport behind and enemy in your line of sight to flank them but the most important tool is the so-called Drift. By holding a button, you can freely turn around your ship in any direction while maintaining your current trajectory. So instead of flying straight at a stationary target to destroy a turret and then rinse and repeat until all of them are gone, you can just plot a course alongside them, drift at 90° and shoot them all in one fell swoop. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. I'll put a poorly played little clip at the end of this post just to show it off, but the feature is so flexible it's really the one thing that turned this game from a very good game into an excellent one. Story-wise it's a modern take on the Dancing with the Wolves formula, but the lore is rather interesting and the two main characters - the pilot, who has a special gift (lore explanation for the usage of her "Rites") and her sentient ship. The ship in particular is really well realised, floating somewhat between the robotic AI of something like HAL and the basically human-like portrayal of the concept in Cortana. It's a very unorthodox pairing but really well realised. I particularly enjoyed how both characters responded to stuff happening during the action scenes, with the ship being surprisingly blood-thirsty or how both of them finish each other sentences the stronger their bond grows. Definitely low-key blown away by this. The excellent gameplay, interesting lore and overall tone and atmosphere (somewhat channeling Remedy at times) just make for a superb combination. I'd probably have to nitpick to find stuff I didn't like, like dialogue being cut off way too often when random encounters spawn (should have looked into that Uncharted 4 tech) or how there can be a tad too much flying around in the beginning and towards the end (think Wind Waker, but at lightspeed) but other than that this is just great. Anyway, here's the simple drift clip to conclude: And for the record, and despite being the only one here still playing on last-gen, this runs absolutely fine on Xbox One and probably on PS4 as well. But I'll definitely go back to it when I have a new system to see just how much it improves by running at 60fps.
  24. mmmark

    F1 2021

    I’ve managed to pick this up for £25 (£30 minus £5 slave discount) which is good timing now that the season is over and the better man won. I’ve only played very little so far of the story mode and when you’re racing it’s as good as ever but I’m not convinced by the story yet or your influence over it. In the second race my team mate forced me off the track in a pre recorded story scene. I then made it back past them and everyone in the top ten to win my first race. The win wasn’t referenced tho and all the focus was on that one moment of been pushed off. It’s a small complaint really. The game itself is likely to be better than ever. It certainly looks and handles better than 2019 (I skipped 2020).
×
×
  • Create New...