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This game, is mental. Could probably stop there and that's enough, tbh. Take a cup of Lollipop Chainsaw, add some essence of No More Heroes and mix well before folding in a little big of Cooking Mama. Drizzle with 2D Pokemon and serve warm. I'm still working my way into the main story, but essentially, you play as Romeo. A character who, at the start of the game, has his face ripped off, so your time-travelling grandfather puts a mask on you that will keep you alive. You're fated with skipping through time and space, finding Juliets to kill. Your first major battle is against a Juliet who cuts her own head before growing like one of Rita Repulsa's monsters. This also causes her to shed her clothes, so you're fighting a giant, naked and sagging Juliet. Who's headless. Honestly, as with any Suda51 game I've played, it feels a little bit awkward. Every now and again it feels like you're not in complete control of the combat, but I'm slowly getting my head around it. It looks good, and the scripting is a lot of fun. But it's the minigames that seem to add tons of depth. I'm still finding my feet on these, but there's one that looks a bit like Pacman. I think as you build up strength you get more fuel you can use here, picking up various power-ups as you go. There's one that looks a bit like a cross between a fruit machine and a cut-out of a pinball table. Still haven't figured out how to do that one. Oh, and there's a katsu curry cooking minigame, too. You add ingredients and make different recipes to give varying benefits. And then there are the bastard seeds. That's where the pokemon bit comes in. On board your time-and-space-travelling ship, you have a little garden. You plant seeds, and they allow you to grow bastards, which are essentially zombies with different powers. You can evolve them, combine them to create different powers, and it seems like there's going to be tons of depth in that aspect. You'll find the various seeds, and the katsu ingredients, as you explore levels and pick them up. Speaking of the levels, I don't know if this will carry through the entire game, but the first one at least is fucking weird. You start off exploring a small section of a shopping mall, and have to switch on 4 generators. But some parts of the mall are blocked, so you have to interact with one of the floating TVs, enter sub-space, explore there, and exit another TV to get to the next bit in real space. I'm writing that with a straight face, but you cannot convince me there's anything 'normal' about that. It's got all the hallmarks of Suda51's normal mental approach, and it combines 'realism' with the blocky flourishes that make his games super recognisable. Yeah, I quite like this. Not sure how much legs it'll have for me though.

The reviews, even the bad ones, made me too curious to wait for a sale. I'm about an hour into this now. It's both impressive so far, and a little underwhelming though the parts that are underwhelming are very subjective. This is basically as 1:1 a remake as I've played in a while, to the point that I'm able to rely on my memory from a few years ago to know exactly where to go and what types of curveballs a quest will throw at me, as well as how to deal with those dinosaurs that sound like chickens. Every NPC is exactly where I expect to see them, and the scale of the world seems about as small as the original, at a glance, but this could change as I progress. It is impressive because of this as well though as Gothic's progression is such an important part of its appeal, and so they've tried to preserve as much as possible of it (except potentially, its combat, as I'll mention). Even though it has a very stock UE5 look, default UE5 can still look extremely good in high res. The lighting is a bit overcranked, lots of black crush, but setting the gamma up a bit I think it's a relatively handsome game given how AA it is. Just don't play it while the sun is coming in the window if you're on OLED, cause you can't see shit unless you're on one of those ridiculously newer brighter ones I suspect from the off that this is one of those remakes where there'll almost be no point in trying the original out except for historical curiosity. The one big change I've seen is the combat, which felt like driving a tank in the original. In this, it's much more generic, possibly 'better' but I actually think the awkwardness of the original game's combat is kind of part of the genius of it, cause when you got better at understanding the timing, so did your character get faster at swinging. It's one of the coolest combat progression systems I've seen in an RPG, even if it also sort of sucks. So I'm wondering if the remake will have the same style to it, your guy certainly is shit at swinging a sword early on so they seem to have the right idea. As I'm not german I've no idea what the community has been saying about this leading up to its release, but based on Marys' comments in the news thread I'm guessing they wanted this as 1:1 as possible and that's why it turned out like this

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

Ok, so it's been out a while, think it had a period on Gamepass too (a while back) but I felt an urge to play it before I really tackled Call of the Elder Gods (which is now on Gamepass). And its distinctly...... okay. It's really just one of those 1990s click screen puzzle adventures presented in a first person world - each scene having no more than a handful of puzzles to progress together with story items to read. But it's not too complex, no convoluted combine x with y to do z, so predominantly reading the things that present the clues in your notebook to apply a solution - rotate this, press these in this order etc but some logical steps are needed at times. What is mostly missing is the compelling narrative - it's all a bit too vague and fragmented and if it wasn't my familiarity with HPL and CoC / Shadow Over Innsmouth, then I'm not too sure it really holds together that well, but is more a fan service for those who already know (inc. the odd document signed by Tillinghast, Dexter-Ward, Pickman etc) A pleasant enough stroll around, and the occasional swim, 8 hrs and probably about 3/4 of the way though it

Imagine being a bus driver, but without the stench of piss surrounding you, people spitting at you, and a general foreboding that you're going to be stabbed at some point. Then put it in America, because obviously we have to drive on the right in this game. That's the reductive premise of Bus Bound, a kinda sim published by Mud/Snowrunner guys, Saber Interactive. This was one of Rosie's free games on Friday, and I've spent time on and off over the last few days just tootling around the city. Honestly, it's puddle-deep, but it's a great way to relax and switch your brain off. You upgrade individual stops by dropping off customers, you can set up your own routes, edit existing ones, and your buses slowly upgrade as you go. The city slowly evolves, between different sectors (which also open up as you upgrade individual stops). Your goal is to make drives enjoyable for passengers. Driving below the limit, obeying traffic laws, nice smooth driving over speed bumps (basically nothing the bus drivers do here). But there's no real punishment beyond reducing the bonuses you can earn per stop. It is nice seeing all the thumbs up and smiley faces appearing whenever you drive well, though. It's not a massively tough game, although you can play in the driver's seat viewpoint to increase difficulty, and all the buses have different feels as you drive. Definitely not a world-beater, but if you want something in a similar vein to EuroTruck Sim, it's worth a mooch. Just don't expect a HUGE city. You can only do 5-6 stop routes at the start, and I'm currently up to 12, so drives take no longer than 20-ish minutes. Pop it on, get a podcast in the background and you're off to the races.

The very king of fighting games is back, and I'm head over heels with the little beauty. It looks and plays incredible. So much detail and so fluid in motion. I know I'll be posting in this thread in five years time, although tbf, probably as the avid spectator to online tournaments that I've been for 10 years by now. Truth is I've never been able to play the thing to any degree of competence, I just like watching other people do it. Having said that I've decided to do something I've never done when (trying) to play it. I'm going to go with grapplers. Maybe slowing things down a bit for myself might be more appropriate for my age - (advanced)!

Apparently have 4 hours in this already, which must include some alt-tab time, I'm not sure. I nearly beat the third area on my first run but since then it's been a string of failures. It's pretty much the same thing as the first game, but better looking. There's 5 characters now, I've unlocked 4. Two of the new characters are 'Regent', which is a class based around summoning a sword and 'forging' it to deal more damage. I didn't get far with him, but he has a second resource on top of energy to cast certain powerful cards, so there's multiple things you have to manage and build towards to make him powerful, between forge, energy and the mana stars. The other new one is Necromancer, I haven't used them yet. On my Ironclad run I didn't see much that was new, but I did have a card which lets you hatch a bird and play a powerful 0 cost card to deal some damage. The build I tried to do was limited in terms of block and relied a lot on vulnerable, but I just couldn't do enough rounds with the last boss to keep up. There's also some new mechanics for The Silent, one called 'Sly', which is a property which executes a card if it's dismissed directly. A discard build seems powerful with that class. As it's Early Access, it has some placeholder art, but it's the best placeholder art ever. Otherwise I'm not sure right now you could tell this is an EA game, it feels really polished. It's mostly an iteration of StS1 as far as I can see. My biggest weakness remains not being more disciplined about picking cards which have direct synergies with what I already have and ending up a bit too bloated.

So, you might have noticed that I decided to stop hating on the PC games. Due to Popcap giving Peggle Nights away, I've spent a fair bit of time playing that on and off, and it got me thinking about all the stuff I have missed. I'm not talking about all those games that will break Deep Blue trying to run, but those other games, you know, the ones that play better on a mouse and keyboard. Except FPS, everyone with half a brain would tell you those are better on a control pad. http://www.mfgamers.com/public/style_emoticons/#EMO_DIR#/tongue.gif So with that in mind, the first game I decide to run on my decrepit rig is Civilizations IV. Now I liked Civilizations Revolutions on the 360, it was rather good, it reminded me of playing a version of Colonization that I had on my old Amiga 1200, but more modern, you know because we had moved on 15 years and you would expect that. So that's what I was expecting, a more complicated Civilization Revolution. People had told me that Civ IV was way more complicated than Civ Rev, but I didn't really believe them until I actually got a hands on with this bastard. Yesterday I played through the tutorial, and while picking up the thick end of it there were bits that went completely over my head. Seriously, I f I were to compare these two games I would say imagine playing Snakes and Ladders, then moving on to Monopoly with ruthless players. It possibly has one of the biggest learning curves I have ever witnessed. Saying that, after cracking on with the tutorial again and this time completing the first scenario taking more in than I did the first time, I got into it. I must have done, because the tutorial and the first win took me over 4 HOURS which seemed to fly past in an instance. Seriously, I can see some rounds of this going over days, it's OK now, because I have a few days off, but otherwise this is a long term game. Gone are the days of Civ Rev when you could finish a game in just over an hour, It's going to take that long to get a couple of cities up and running and protected. Saying that, I am having fun with it and I can see myself playing for a few weeks until I have taken each empire to the top via various means. Once I have done this I'll be ready to go on to onw of the next old PC games I missed out on. Hell, if I really get into it, I might upgrade my PC so I can play stuff that was released less than 2 years ago.

I got my first match nerves out of the way so I'll start the thread up, but also as a way to encourage others to download it 👀. I ran online with Luna Snow, I think her name is. Did 2 matches and won both 2-0 (best of 3). Chucks healing ice at people and wears booty shorts. I think I did reasonably well with 0 experience in the genre and no idea of how to strategise. I just chucked ice at things if they looked like they were dying, if I even noticed them, and other healers did the same for me. In the second match I did here it looked like there was one Wolverine who clearly got the memo "kill the fucking healers first". Brains and brawn that guy Seems fun but chaotic and hard to get a handle of the UI you're supposed to be looking at. Luna has a move on the shift key which increases her DPS and HPS, I think. She has a move on right click which delivers a freeze on a target and heals her, so that's her self sustain. Her ultimate gives HPS and DPS depending on pressing Q to toggle. E is a sort of tethered heal between you and another character, to give them a passive defensive buff. Very straightforward with Luna, easy to get to grips with in a game that's sort of overwhelming. Healers have always been my preference. That said I don't think she'll be a long term pick, once I get comfortable. I'm interested in the more complicated ones eventually, and I'd like to try a tank as well so I have an alt if the strat role is taken, leaning towards Steven Strange because he's voiced by Grimoire Weiss and thinks with portals, so his match chatter actually sounds good I've also played Cloak and Dagger, who's harder to heal with but the stance swap thing seems interesting. Can't quite figure out the shadow powers, apparently they blind and hide people but I feel like I have to be on the receiving end of this in a match first before I even know what this means and how it impacts strategy. You can shoot a rectangle line AOE heal at people and a little healing bubble which if FFXIV has taught me anything, fucking nobody will be standing in that thing Anyway two people on the first match had 0 percent accuracy on some rounds, it was hard and I was sad. But I got MVP in my 2nd match with her tho, maybe she's cool I'm liking what I'm seeing with Iron Fist, for DPS. He has a defensive stance which procs a stinger attack and can triple jump, all his attacks reduce the cooldown of his defense stance. He also has self sustain with E. He's really agile, just seems like the goto for that role and I don't think I'll be changing my mind

I don't know how to give impressions on this without getting in the weeds. In terms of features it's an old fashioned 2D fighting game. You have an arcade mode (which is kinda interesting in that the better you do the harder the end boss gets) and there is a story that is literally an anime that you just watch, which is what the last game did too but it's still wild to me. There's also a pretty intense Mission Mode that does it's best to teach you the deeper mechanics of the game which if you're the studious type could work pretty well. I could do with spending more time in it myself but getting wrecked by someone using my character then trying to rip them off in the next match is more fun for me. It's the good netcode that saves it though. Well, the matchmaking is pretty rough at the mo but it plays really well in game. It just means there's always people to play with. This came online at midnight and I was ready to play it so I went to the east coast of USA since it was a more sensible time there and while it was a little choppy visually my inputs were barely delayed, if at all. I really hope they put this in a DBFZ2, in fact it would be shocking if they didn't. I've not saved many fights yet since I think I'm still pretty scrubby but my Gio is coming along a little. And this fight with Zato was fun when I wasn't put in the corner with all his nonsense:

Finally bought a new game for my PC. Sure, it was 37 quid and looks like Skyrim, but that's neither here nor there. I think everyone knows it's a bit of a TES clone, down to most of the controls (at least on Xbox pad) being in the same configuration - Y for jump etc. I'm expecting, over the course of the next 50 hours, to be questing, lock picking, alchemy-ing and, most importantly, collecting flora and fauna for the cooking of. My build will be one handed with shield for parrying, and a side line in conjuration. So, pretty much my favourite TES build. Played an hour. Couldn't be happier. For now, at least.

So I've finally managed to put a few hours in to this and it's good... very good. I've seen this described as a 360 throwback and in a way I could get behind that, it's not gonna reinvent the wheel with what it's doing... mainly shooting and exploration... but what it does do feels really good in practice. You play as Hugh who turns up on the moon along with his team to do... something?? And then for reasons ends up separated and alone before teaming up with D-I-0336-7 who he nicknames Diana... the titular PRAGMATA. It's a good thing too as the moons AI has decided to go cuckoo and make all the robots in the place in to murderous nutters... Hugh has a gun but without the aid of Diana's hacking skills it's about as much use as a pea shooter. The hacking quite cleverly is done using the four face buttons of the controller, think of it as up, down, left and right where you'll try to set a path through various different nodes which will set off different effects... it's cool and in the heat of battle a bit mind frying. Once hacked this opens up the timing for Hugh to get to work with his guns. The shooting feels great (although I do wish I could shoot faster) as does the movement... I know it's not for everyone but I love the weight that Capcom gives it's characters. Hugh is really well voiced and Diana is just the right side of being endearing rather than annoying... childlike characters are hard to pull off in games so far I think they've done alright in this. I like the fact you can go to your safe hub at any point in the levels through shortcuts that are opened up... ditto for being able to return to previous areas whenever you feel the urge... and you'll want to as you won't be able to collect everything on the first visits. The games made a really good impression on me so far and I'm looking forward to putting more time in.

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

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.

I've been playing this on the side since it came out on Switch, as it's a really good handheld title. It's out on everything though, IIRC on PC since last year. Oddly very little talk online even though it ticks all the boxes for a hit. I don't know if it's the lack of a mascot and it having a rather 'faceless' presentation, or just multiple unlucky release timings. In any case, this is a bit of a mix between various games and genres, like Tetris and Carcassone put into the roguelite corset, but in combination plays like none of them. Explaining this will be a bit boring, but it generally revolves around building a landscape on a playing field by putting Tetromino-shaped blocks on it. The blocks themselves fulfil certain functions: plains, forests etc. generate produce like wheat and wood, others help increase said production (a farm for example), while the third group, military units, bolster your troops in case you land on a field with an enemy. Unlike Tetris the blocks don't fall automtically (at least up until the higher difficulties), but reaping your rewards does require completing a row. The Carcassone element comes into play because it's generally advisable to logically combine blocks of the same type by building a forest, a mountain range or a river, as a lot of production and military facilities work with multiplyers linked to large biomes. The roguelite part of it, meanwhile, is that it features three areas you have to go through and your 'deck' of cards/blocks grows with every stage you beat – even though, to me, it feels more like a classic arcade game than a modern roguelike. Think of a shoot'em up, but instead of shooting enemies you lay out the land and instead of powering up your weapons you unlock new lands. You do unlock some permanent upgrades by fulfilling certain conditions though. I realise this probably sounds very unexciting but it's quite a fun game. There's a lot of depth to it, especially after unlocking secondary factions. The first one, the eponymous Duchy, is a relatively straightforward agricultural deck which is designed around harvesting large fields and interlocking them with military outposts that generate units based on the fields surrounding it, for example. But every other deck has its own unique gimmick they bring to the table: the Order is a religiously-themed, crusading faction that benefits from building and using 'faith' as a currency, the North cannot combine miltary units during its combat phase but can pillage production units for larger benefits, while the Tribe is designed around strategic runestone placement, so that it's central stone momunemt can harness the produce of as large an area as possible. There's also a truckload of additional cards/blocks you can unlock, which are independent from the factions, and add their own little twist on things ('nobles', for example, are very powerful but can't be rotated). But if you don't like some of these, you can banish them, effectively removing them from playthroughs. Combat is a rock-paper-scissors affair, so carefully ordering your units to attack can lead to victories vs. numerical advantages, as seen in the little screenshot below (I won a 162 vs. 180 with 1 unit left). There's a ton of stuff to do here, too. After about 20 hours I'm still not done unlocking all the aforementioned cards, but there are multiple difficulty settings, a trial mode, an endless mode etc. It takes a while to click, because it really showers you in information early on, but when it does it's genuinely good fun. Reading through dwarf's Titanium Court topic, this basically seems like the more approachable little cousin of that game.

I'm only about an hour in, but can start talking about it. It's a retro-styled sort of strategy game, kinda has a roguelike structure but not really. You are taken away to a faerie kingdom, it's got characters in it from the play A Midsummer Night's Dream (well, one at least, Puck and possibly Titania), but they're just there as sort of playful references. Anyway, this game is kind of like a boardgame. You have different stages, 'low tide' where you play a match three game which allows you to generate resources like wood, water, food, stone. These let you buy units for the war stage. You don't want to overspend on each battle, cause your resources carry to the next, so you have to find a balance of resource gathering units and warriors to do the fighting. There's also some other mechanics in there to get a better sense of the units you're fighting, their gimmicks, and ways in the different stages to get more different kinds of units. It's a very funny and weird game, every time you kill a castle you get a sound effect and a random picture of someone swinging a golf club or a slam dunk, or dogs catching frisbees. You just gotta go with it, do as Puck and the rest of the courtiers tell you. The music is fucking great, but the game is quite mentally taxing, speaking as someone who finds it very difficult to quickly pick up on the rules of a new boardgame and gets a bit stressed by them. So this will be something I just take my time with. It's not something I can just turn on and zone out a bit like Slay the Spire, so I'll probably beat Evil Solitaire first Edit: 9/10 in this month's EDGE

This is the first game from a new French studio I think is made up of a few ex Arcane folks, and published by Konami. It's a puzzle adventure game in the vein of something like Limbo, with added stealth elements. There's some strange backstory seemingly involving aliens who are staging a takeover of the planet via manufacturing food or something? Anyway, they suck up the octopus you're controlling from the sea and dump you in the factory, from where you try to escape. It looks very nice, the animation of your octopus character is fantastic and full of personality (even if he does seem to only have 6 legs). Your abilities like being able to stick to surfaces or camouflage yourself are fun to use. The puzzles aren't too difficult and the punishment for failure of getting killed is pretty lenient, with checkpoints generally being pretty close together. There were a few frustrating moments where I died and had to repeat a challenging section which I thought should have had a checkpoint after, but I can only think of a couple of those. I had fun with it. It's cute and funny, and although it felt a little rushed towards the end I enjoyed my time and came away feeling positively towards it. It took me about 5 hours, so plug that into your personal price/value judgements, but I think it's worth trying.

It's finally here and I've been playing it... 😁 Off the bat it looks and feels fantastic, I've really gotten used to these games feeling fairly heavy to play and this feels no different... it's got a nice sense of inertia on the characters and if you've played any of the remakes I think you'll feel right at home. Grace seems like a cool character, I really like the small touch with her hands shaking as she aims due to her being terrified... whereas Leon is just a bad ass from the start, I've never been a Leon fanboy but I already like him in this much more... maybe it's the age thing. Probably played for around four hours so far but I've not made too much progress due to deaths/reloads... I'm playing standard difficulty with modern saving on my first playthrough... just picked up the level one wristband. Also stuck with third person views for both characters. Rhodes Hill seems like the closest thing we've had to that classic Resident Evil mansion or police station we've had in years... the zombies are amazing and there's more things to avoid in this place as Grace than we've ever had... it's constant cat and mouse. I can't wait to pile hours in to this...

Helldivers 2. I've put a bit of time into it now. Here's what I think. It's almost all good. Movement and shooting feel great. Shooting has a mechanic I've never seen before where you have a reticule that is fixed where you aim, and one that moves around it depending on how much you are being rocked. If you are springing about the actual aim goes all over the shop, but if you take a knee and control your bursts it stays accurate. It feels really good for the most and makes you really think about your positioning and shooting, especially when the terrain dictates how you must commit or respond to a conflict. The fights are mostly regimented even with randoms, with people cycling in and out as fights bubble over the map and keeping some sort of structure. When it gets really mad and people start scattering it becomes a bit of a mess, but that's part of the charm in that sometimes you're going to be pressed. I've had games where I have seen people be bait for the entire run, and then I've had dives where it was me that was basically being the lightning conductor that everyone thanks for keeping the attention of the more dangerous mobs that require flanking and precise fire to kill. Only 2 factions in this game at launch. Robot and bugs. The way you fight either faction is very different, I feel like the bugs are more a case of zerging the best they can and just absorbing lots of gunfire, whereas the robots it becomes a bit more tactical. Not that they take over or anything like that, it's more a case of them shooting back and having more offence compared to the bugs defence. They have defence as well, but generally it's just a well placed shot that takes them down. The map from the previous game makes a return, but I think it's altered somewhat to before. For the uninitiated, it's a big circle broken up into tetrominoes. Super earth is in the middle and the factions are on the outside, you fight them towards the outside of the circle, conquer their world and that takes them out of the game until the war is over. If any faction makes it to the middle of the circle, it's a collective game over for everyone. I think they have altered how this works in some manner, because previously although it was tetrominoes you had a linear progression between the middle point and the far edge. Now it looks like any adjacent tile can be invaded so theoretically even though you only have 2 enemies, they can approach Super Earth from any angle. I might be wrong there, but this is how I am reading it. The only other explanation I have is that Arrowhead plan to put 2 more factions in the game so you are fighting on 4 fronts. That's just speculation on my behalf. Other changes you might want to know about. A lot of the strategems are now infinite and just have timers on them. If you played the previous game you would know that if you called a heavy weapon down and you lost it, that was it. Now it's very much a case of just wait for your timer to run down and call another in. In fact sometimes this is preferable if you are running low on ammo. Some strategems have had a rework. The ammo one now has a global cool down and has 4 ammo slots in it. For me this is a mixed bag. Some people are awful at just calling them in the wildest of places. And then you are fucked because your ammo is miles away because the one person that refused to come with the group has all the ammo and you have to wait it out. Or you have people chucking them into areas that are too hot to get ammo. It's just the usual 3head and selfish plays you can come to expect. Same with people walking under air strikes, or throwing air strikes on places you need to traverse though. It's not always like that, everyone is different. Some teams are well oiled and consistent, some are dog shit and couldn't give a fuck if you kill all 3 team mates as long as it means they have full ammo and kill that one bug. Reinforcement has also taken an overhaul. Gone are the infinite call ins, now you have 10 drops for one player with an extra 5 added on for each extra player. You can bolster this with some loadout stuff, but once those lives are out, that's it. Unlike Helldivers 1, if all players die, it will drop all players back into the field if you have the lives to do so. Unlocks are done via a few methods. Gone are the unlocks for beating certain missions, now everything relies on samples, credits, medals and the games premium currency super credits. There's a season pass that's not really a season pass, but it is a season pass that has loads of different weapons and stuff you can unlock, as well as armours and other gubbins. This uses medals which are earned through play. The paid season pass I think can be bought for super credits you find or unlock through the normal battlepass and has all the things you would expect in it, flashier customisation and some weapons that are similar to the free ones you unlock, but not really? For instance I got an explosive assault rifle from a dead body and although the bullets exploded, it was way slower on the fire rate. I sort of preferred the vanilla one if I am being honest. Speaking of weapons and different stats, you can hold reload and alter the fire rate and magnification. If you do intent to play this, or already have it, you can also look down your gun in first person if you aim and then press middle mouse button. I assume that will be a stick click on controller. Helps for those extra long distance firefights. The other currencies can be found all over. There's credits that can be gotten that allow you to buy more strategems. The other thing you can collect are samples with allow you to make the ship that is dropping said drops more efficient. Mostly the perks are just stuff like they have a smaller call down time, or a quicker cool down. Some are more specialised like making the centre of explosions larger for more destructive possibilities. I feel like the asking price for these is a bit of a piss take actually, and also I have a sneaking suspension that the difficulty wall I mentioned at the start has migrated here, as there's different rarities of sample and I am suspecting it may be a case of the rarer ones showing in harder missions. Bad points then. The servers are pretty fucked at the time of writing this. I just played an hour before writing this and had a few disconnected games. Once I got in it was all fine, but those frustrating moments looking for a match only for it to lag out. The only other really bad thing I can point out is it makes my PC sweat like crazy. Even RDR2 on ultra isn't putting my hardware under this much pressure. Some optimisation would be nice. It is a very pretty game and there's quite a bit of destruction going on in it, nothing that will blow you away, but yeah, it all has to be accounted for performance wise. It does look very pretty though, I'll give it that. Will Helldivers 2 have the legs to carry on being the game that I hope it will be? I'm not sure right now. I think it has more mass market appeal than a lot of other 4 player co-op shooters, but I think that it depends on Arrowhead being compliant with listening to what works and what doesn't in regards of the game and adjusting accordingly. We're still heavily in the honeymoon period right now, and I am thinking that it could be a long running thing, but the ball really is in their court and they could smash it or they could fumble it really hard depending on what happens.

A collaboration between Grey Alien Games (Regency Solitaire and a few more card and puzzle games I've never played) and Night Signal Entertainment (Home Safety Hotline, Night Signal). It's PC only the moment, I believe. The game starts with your character starting up his computer and messaging his sister about an exciting thrift store find: Forbidden Solitaire - a 90's CD-ROM game they were obsessed with as kids because it caused a huge furore with parents and eventually banned/withdrawn from sale. You start playing the game, and periodically get more information through instant messages from the sister who is digging up weird and disturbing things about the history of the game. Eventually, surprising nobody, the cursed game elements begin to kick in too via glitches and flashbacks giving further insight into the development of the game. The story isn't going to win any awards for originality, it's in line with other games of this type and I enjoyed it a lot. The solitaire game is fun to play, and it captures the 90's PC game aesthetic it's going for brilliantly. I had a great time with it.

Way back in January 2013 this game raised £1.5 million on kickstarter, was released in 2015, followed by a Horizons "season pass" which looks like it is receiving its final major update this year. I bought the base game at some stage during the last two years and have finally gotten around to playing it. I've played it for over four hours so far. The game has a number of tutorial missions (and videos) which explain some of the fundamentals of the game, piloting and landing your ship, combat, travelling between planets. There's certainly a learning curve but I think I have the basic piloting, landing and navigation parts down now. I can't really speak for combat, I completed the basic combat tutorial but I haven't yet encountered any combat in the main "open" game, which I've played around 90 minutes of. You start off with a ship, 1000 credits and a mission to deliver data to another port. I completed that mission and you are then told which places to visit if you wish to learn about various aspects of the game. Each port has a mission board where you can take on a variety of missions, but you can't take on missions of a higher rank than your current rank. I'm still at the starting rank "Penniless". So far I've completed one extra mission, to supply copper. I haven't even scratched the surface of the surface of the game but just playing this most basic part of the game has been fun so far. I've been playing on PC, with a controller. Aesthetically, the game looks and sounds beautiful. The hyper space jumps or whatever they are called are amazingly eerie.

This arrived yesterday and I've played 11 hours so far...it's really good, it's a bold statement but I think it's the happiest I've been with a game in terms of expectations and how it's been to play it. It's very skyrim in the exploration. It really isn't linear at all, I'm on chapter three now and it's unbelievably open world. This might be the one in the series that brings people in, it's hardly a final fantasy at all.

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

Let me start by saying I hate the Americanised spelling of the title. I'm just copying exactly what's there, though, so don't pull me up for it. Now let me follow up with what @Sly Reflex said for EDF 5... "If you've not enjoyed these games before, abandon thread now. There's no point in you wasting your time here. It's more of the same with tweaks, mostly good tweaks, but nothing that's going to convince you you want to spend time with the series." I've been playing this online co-op with Rosie (it was one of her free games the other week, so I'm like a pig in shit), and honestly, it's tons of fun. The story follows on directly from EDF5, and the invaders aren't happy about earth turning the tide in the last instalment, so they've amped it up to wipe out humanity altogether. I've currently only played as ranger - the default character - but there are a couple of tweaks that are fantastic for QoL. You now have a slot for a backpack weapon. This could be anything from a vehicle to a healing grenade, to regular grenades, to your very own turret. This is a great addition that means you're not completely fucked when the crowds become overwhelming and you're trying to reload. I've been using turrets a lot, just to try and thin the herds in harder levels. The turrets also have a decently large angle of fire, so they're not bad as anti-air solutions, either. D3 have added a visual indicator of damage. Great for the numbers people who like to try and figure out the hit points of any given enemy. I've not given it my full attention, but I do keep a side-eye on the numbers as they tick up and consider whether it's worth reloading or not. Lots of new enemies, as well as plenty of familiar stuff from 5. Off the top of my head, I think there are at least 8 new enemies. That brings it out to about 12-15 different enemy species, not including the kaiju or palette swaps of enemies. Some of the older enemies have been tweaked. There's a new variation on the jumping spiders, for example, that fires electric threads. So that's a new one to consider. I don't know if it's just because we're both playing ranger, or if it's because we suck, or if I've been carried more than I realise in 5, but this one FEELS harder, too. So much so, we've been playing on normal just to try and boost our armour and weapons before heading into hard/hardest/inferno. One of the big criticisms I've seen online is that some assets, maps and exact missions have been recycled into EDF6. Without delving too much into spoiler territory, this is true, but it's also done in a really smart way that feeds the narrative beautifully. Look, this is still B-Movie bullshit, but it's B-Movie bullshit that makes sense(ish). I've been all in on this series since 4.1, and I fully believe that if you didn't like it before, you won't like it now. It's still janky, it's still running on the same 20-year old engine the last few games have utilised, it still descends to single digit frame rates when shit kicks off, and enemies look like they're animated by the same guys that made Jason and the Argonauts when they're in the distance. However, if you've been on the fence, or unsure, or just haven't had much experience with it in the past, I think this is the one that's worth jumping in to. Don't expect much fun in single player. Get a mate or three and have an absolute blast in co-op. Honestly, I think the series has taken over my brain a little bit, because I'm currently playing this 4-5 nights a week with Rosie then dipping into 5 with Sly and a couple of people online each week on top. It's great fun, and if Helldivers 2 has ran its course for you, I think this is definitely worth taking a punt on. Maybe wait until it drops to £30, though. There's enough content to justify full price IMO, but it's far too samey level to level to drop £50-60 on.

Finished the prologue of this after roughly 10 hours, so maybe a good enough impression for a topic. It's very much as advertised, Greedfall through the lens of Dragon Age: Origins – or the other way around if you want. Meaning it's very much tackling similar ideas and themes to the first Greedfall but whenever some evil monkey or brigand comes you way it turns into a pure D&D type combat with tactical pause, commands and whatnot. In terms of narrative this does a 180 and instead of playing a diplomat from the side of the colonialising factions, you play an inhabitant of the island. It all takes place a couple of decades before the first game, so it's early days, and hostility among the natives not quite as pronounced yet. It's a difficult subject to tackle and the game does it with a bit too much naiveté at times. If, for example, you need to shut down a mine whose gold-cleansing procedures poison a river, all you need to do is tell the workers they angered an evil spirit. Other moments are more in line with the severety of the situation and during the prologue you have two companions who play two different tunes (one open-minded, one entirely xenophobic), which leaves you as the blank slate in the middle. Like the first game, it doesn't really comment on the issue, which is the right path IMO, but it adds an interesting and unique layer to what is, essentially, a fantasy RPG. The island is home to a coming-of-age ceremony your character goes through and doubles as a tutorial where most mechanics are explained organically (combat, stealth, crafting, decision-making, the whole thing). After you leave it opens up a lot more and it becomes immediately apparent how ambitious the game is. Greedfall, or most of Spiders games, are very flatly designed games, in the literal sense. But the moment you set foot on the main continent you're presented with a hub world that's not only vast but also immensely vertical, a massive piece of terrain with flora, fauna and forgotten ruins to explore. It's an enormous leap for a team whose RPG path humbly started out with Live Arcade game Faery all those years ago, and that no review I read even bothered to mention. When out and about you inevitably will get drawn into combat, and like mentioned at the start it's here where it's an entirely different beast than the first game. I've yet to make up my mind about it, because despite offering text boxes upon text boxes informing me about all the different buffs, debuffs, and idiosyncrasies of its system, the early game plays more like DA: Inquisition: target an enemy, tell your team to do the same, and do a nice rotation through your skills whenever the cooldowns are up until the characters with the red outlines are dead. During one boss fight, pictured below, I had to move my team out of harm whenever they did some AOE attacks but so far it's been a very gentle introduction to its systems, most likely by design, considering the stark shift from the first game. Maybe it'll stay this way on normal, maybe not, but in any case it does give you all the options you need, including a tactical pause and staggered command inputs. It also features two separat combat modes which incrementally reduce the control you have over your teammates, likely moving it closer to something like DA: The Veilguard. I haven't tried these out because they recommend the default, full experience. So far I haven't done many quests and such, but most allowed different approaches, like sneaking in a bandit camp to free a prisoner or buying his freedom in exchange for either a real or fake relic from the nearby ruins. Some systems like stealth are a bit undercooked but still allow you to knock out some enemies pre-fight to turn the tides in your favour. One aspect imported from D&D I don't like is how skill checks outside of combat are dice rolls, ie. lockpicking a chest or a diplomatic dialogue choice having a 80% success rate. This boils down to the discussion of save scumming we had around KCD, but if my 80% lockpicking check fails you can bet I'll just reload and try again – in this specific case I wish it was dumbed down and binary, like how Mass Effect just locked away options you didn't have the skills for. So far it's difficult to say whether I like this more than the first or not. The latter had a more impactful opening, but this feels more cohesive and complete in its vision and the more I play and the better my understanding of its mechanics are, the more I'm enjoying it. I haven't been able to spend much time with its final set of party members yet, but there's two early favourites there already, whereas I barely remember the first game's at all. Visually it's not a big leap though, at best a tiny step. In quality mode it looks roughly the same as the original, but performance mode reduces resolution and detail noticeably, even on my 1080p screen. Most likely a result of the more complex systems and the both larger and more dense level design. I've been hopping around a bit too many games lately, but this has finally drawn my focus and it's a good one to sink your teeth into. Kind of wish it wouldn't have launched into the weird Crimson Desert hype because had reviewers gotten more time with it they might have enjoyed it more, as it's not the kind of game to rush through for a deadline. It would have needed the help because as it stands, with Nacon's fortunes up in the air, I fear we might be looking at Spiders' last release.