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I think everyone knows what this is and what it's about by now... I've played around with it for three or four hours so far and to be honest I think I'm a little bit in love... Up front, so far I'm pretty bloody awful at dodging and parrying but apart from a couple of (I presume) optional bosses things haven't been too bad and it's not punished me too badly. There's a couple of mechanics that I'm not to sure on, mainly Lune and her "stain" system... she absorbs different coloured stains to power up her spells... but I'm sure it'll fall in to place. There's also something in here that reminds me of Lost Odyssey a whole lot which is nice. It looks lovely after turning off all the usual bullshit such as movie grain and motion blur (seriously do people play games with this stuff on?)... another game that doesn't have hdr though. The voice work is top notch unsurprisingly given the talent involved, music has been wonderful and I'm loving just how somber the whole thing is and given the subject matter I wouldn't want it any other way... can't wait to get my teeth in to this properly with more party members and more combat options.

The glow up for Suikoden 1 is almost immediately apparent. The script has been tweaked IE better translated. The sprites have QoL improvements and the overworld & town maps have been given a modern facelift. I capped off my first session with acquiring your base. Roughly six hours in. It reminds me there is a reason I hold this series in very high regard. Even the "bad" one (Suikoden IV) isn't terrible. Hopefully if this remaster is a financial success, Konami might even revive the series proper. Or at least give a collection with the other three games (and maybe DS spin-off).

Lots of Oblivion chat so figure I'd post it here I played about 4 hours or so, picked an Acrobat Orc. Lots of jumping, punching and arrow shooting. I have alteration as a major skill, I guess I can use that for shield magic so I don't have to block. It's interesting to revisit as you can imo still sort of feel how BGS generated this sort of inertia with their games that led to them stagnating a lot with Starfield, it kinda starts with this game. But I do think Oblivion is cool in spite of its flaws, it has some of the most interesting one-off questlines. Like the guy who you have to rescue out of a watercolour painting, which I did the other day. I always like the sort of weird episodic style of its storytelling, even if the over-arching narrative is a bit derivative. I don't think I'll be spending too long in Cyrodil this time tho, it's really hard to overlook the level scaling. That you can be at your wits end cracking a hard safe and your reward is another lockpick to replace the 8 you broke and 3 Septims. This is just the kind of thing that when you notice it it can destroy the feeling of exploration, to the point it makes Oblivion the hardest one to return to I think (apparently Skyrim fixed this? I don't know). I'm probably going to just use this as a zone out game now and then when I want a distraction rather than take it too seriously. It got me to install Daggerfall again so I might do the two simultaneously, one for relaxing one for stressing out cause of screaming skeletons. Here's a screenshot with the hardware lumen stuff maxed out, tho I'm keeping it turned off cause it runs badly. It mainly adds/improves self-shadowing to foliage and other things. There's a few minor changes I notice like how when you go up a steep incline, your character's walk animation changes. When you level up, you get these ten 'virtues' to spread across at most three different stats and the amount you spend seems connected with the things you did to gain the level up. So you are still tailoring your character in such a way that their actions govern their attributes, but they don't have this same min-max issue which causes problems in the 2006 game if you get paltry bonuses each level (caused by not leveling minor skills or ignoring the largest bonuses) and falling behind the level scaled enemies. Theoretically that's not an issue here but you won't know until you're at like level 14 or whatever Your health regens out of combat, I don't actually like this change tbh. Hope they let you toggle it off cause I like making potions to do that instead, for the role playing experience and so that mistakes matter more in combat (not that they matter that much or anything, but still) The game looks good enough, but it's got a beige-pink colour grading on everything. It doesn't have the same artstyle as 2006

Picked this up as it was discounted on Steam and I’m feeling very intelligent after playing Blue Prince. I thought there was a thread but I guess not. Anyway, I booted it up to try it out and 90 minutes disappeared very quickly. Artistically, the game is a knockout. The mysterious animal theme is a very nice. Now that I’m thinking about it, the mysterious atmosphere of the game reminds me of Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery EP, even though they have nothing else in common (I haven’t thought about that game in over 10 years). The subtle visual and sound effects are very well done too. Gameplay wise, it’s kind of like a compact metroidvania with a focus on puzzles.

Spent a few hours with the game during this afternoon, suffice to say it's bloody amazing to look at... The whole driving to the festival segment right at the start of the game just put a massive smile on my face, it's so stupidly over the top that you can't help but grin. So far there's not been anything massively different from the 4th game but to be honest that was already the best open world racer by a huge margin so this just has to build on that. So far I've I think the game has been hand holding me through the early parts but not enough that I can't decide to put whatever the game is suggesting on hold and do something else, which is nice. I also think that the map is definitely going to encourage going off road far more than Britain did in the previous game. Anyway, so far so gorgeous!

yeah so, i like this, it's a bit different to previous mgs games, in that the map is massive and you do missions in smaller parts - and you get a horse to ride around on - bit like the witcher 3. controls are confusing like normal, but pretty well explained. there seems to be a lot of scope for sneaking and doing things differently which is cool, but i am a bit rubbish at it and often get spotted while trying to be sneaky and end up killing loads of people - which is what i usually do in mgs games. doesn't seem to be an easy mode but it's not been too difficult so far. there is a chicken hat you can equip that stops you getting spotted a few times after you fail once or something - that might be the easy mode - unclear. you can hide while riding your horse by sort of hanging off one side of the horse, i thought that sounded ace so... the into/prologue part is a sort of long interactive cutscene, which has some funny/cool bits, and some rubbish/boring bits imo. after the first bit there hasn't been that much dialogue/cutscenes which is odd. but i'm not too far in so there's still time. extracting stuff is awesome.

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 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:

Hey, maybe don't buy this Vice City squad, I come to you with gameplay clips littered with copyright claims. Not that there's a shortage of videos out there about this but it helps to see how little the gameplay has changed as well. I'm a couple hours into the opening sections. Actually, I could be a bit beyond the opening sections. Was this game short? I'm already at the bit where you are doing missions for Diaz. Visually I think it looks ok, I think they could have done a lot more work here tho and it's a bit perplexing that this is more demanding for my machine than The Witcher 3 maxed out. No ray tracing or anything like that is in it. It could be a rough one to play on PC for this reason but maybe the settings are more scalable on lower settings. I think the volumetric lighting is what is killing it. Also the game comes close to dying every time I pause, I found out I'm not the only one with this issue so it's a problem with the PC version. Vice City now is a game that is hard carried by its soundtrack I think. I don't think I could stick with this type of thing without these tunes. It's also weird to think Vice City is now more retro than the year 1986 was when Vice City itself came out. It's like a russian doll of nostalgia or something. I will say for VC first thing you should do is turn HDR off and set contrast to 0. The default contrast level is hideously oversaturated and destroys the tone of the game. At zero it is not a million miles away from the original's visual style Going back now also it really feels like Ray Liotta phoned in his performance as Tommy Vercetti, but the people around him do a good enough job to make up for that fact. Especially the lawyer guy. It's weird to think how they got all these really big movie stars in a game like this (Burt Reynolds is in this game, if you forgot). Nowadays you can see that these movie people don't exactly translate their talents to the digital screen, some of them are pretty bad at adapting to it. Or are just used to sell the game. But back then this was a really big deal for Vice City. There's one visual thing which has really annoyed me early on, the rain effect. It is a constant streak of white lines that make it impossible to see anything and actually made me feel a kind of motion sickness I've never felt with a game. I haven't heard anyone else talk about it, it could be a subjective thing. But man, it is rough to look at. On the other hand they add a cool effect where you get puddles and the grass gets wet. You slide in the rain also, I think that's new. Might not be but it seems new. Gameplay clips, spoilered for post length not spoilers cause this game is 20 years old now

This game has been undergoing a bit of a renaissance recently cause of the unity fanport and I figure I've played enough that I feel I want to type words at the internet about it. It's a version of the game which fixes tons of bugs with the earlier DOS version and allows you to run it at a high framerate, and in typical TES fashion supports tons and tons of mods which drastically change the experience. Version 1.0 came out just last year. https://www.dfworkshop.net/ It takes place in the kingdoms of High Rock and Hammerfell (the latter I've not seen yet). You're on this quest for Emperor Uriel Septim VII, the same guy who gets murdered in the opening to Oblivion. You're solving a problem for him, something to do with a letter to some queen with some private matters in it, and the ghost of a vengeful king. None of that matters too much cause it's more about navigating this huge unyielding world (larger than Great Britain in its scale). This is a very different Elder Scrolls than the ones after it cause it's this procedurally generated universe, maybe less than 0.1 percent of the world is authored content. So cause of that it means that they can have thousands of towns, but they are all populated by the same looking buildings and NPCs, just laid out differently. Which is a fairly repetitive, but it is designed as a sort of abstract RPG framework rather than an open world game with RPG elements. Like the world is all there, you can spend years of your real life exploring it but it's not the point (and is insane)*. The point is way more on how you build a character to tackle dungeons, and how the different reputation and skill systems in the game interlock to allow you progress through the world's regions, main quest and factions/dungeons. The sort of 'RPG framework' thing comes into play with the character creator, which is the part that impressed me when I first tried and failed to get into it after Morrowind. There's so many skills in this, beyond the ones that later TES games have. You have all that restoration and blades stuff and you also have the cool levitation skills from Morrowind. But then there's 'climbing', which rolls a dice anytime you push against a wall and does a sort of BOTW style climb against it, and you will slip if your stats are bad at it. This has obvious potential for immersive sim solutions in some dungeons and you can use it to climb over the walls of gated towns at night. Which you might want to do cause you will get arrested if you try to camp outside or will get attacked by ghosts if you loiter. There's languages in it, like the Orc language or Dragonish. I don't really know what they do yet. There's things in it like 'ettiquette' and 'streetwise' which do dice-rolls in your interactions with NPCs, which you have to rely on to find directions to the guilds and churches or specific quest NPCs. My speech skills are really low so a significant amount of time is spent trying to extract the most basic of directions from NPCs. Which is pretty grating, but in a sort of immersive way. When I get enough magicka to cast charm it will be way easier I guess. Stuff like faction and regional reputation seems to play a part in this also, which could have the side effect of pushing you to stick to certain regions and make questing more frictionless cause people might have heard of you and be more willing to help you out. The meat of the game is in this questing, whether it's main quests or sidequests for factions or oddjobs or whatever. There's a timing mechanic to them, go to this dungeon, kill this cunt and come back within 28 days. Or go to some guys house in the town a couple days over and kill the tiger in his bedroom (???) and come back in 14 days. The world is not designed to be traveled in real time so you open a map, type in the area they tell you and it will tell you it took you 5 days to get there, or maybe less if you travel 'recklessly' (which seems to mean you will be unrested on arrival). Then when you're in the dungeon, the dungeons are huge, you mainly seem to rely on using the rest mechanic to heal health, fatigue and magic. Which also counts into that timer. So it's about time management and having ways to save that time really help, like the recall spell or restoration magic. I guess potions could help later but I haven't been able to tell how to get them or make them, they seem incredibly rate in this. Also the dungeons can have locked doors which might be blocking your objective, so not having alteration or lockpicking could cause issues. In terms of deep stories and lore there's not a lot there, it's more about this systemic approach to difficult problem solving in a role-playing context, I think. It's a really difficult game and the tutorial dungeon is designed to kick your ass with a combination of enemies and obstacles in a way to make you reconsider your build, or your approach, or just even playing the game at all. I don't know much about this particular youtuber but he was apparently one of the most popular TES content creators and disappeared for ages, anyway he came back with this vid which maybe explains the game a bit where he does a weird challenge run showcasing the game's systems *That hasn't stopped modders from trying to turn it into that kind of game tho, the mods on nexus are really interesting

I played 4 hours of this last night. Premise is you inherit this mansion, I think from your grandfather or something, I forget. You 'draft' rooms randomly and create a floorplan which can lead to different things. Some rooms have several exits, or none. They might have currency you can use to open doors, buy things and so on. They might also contain some lore in them. Some rooms have debuffs, eg you might spend more steps going into them. You might have ways to workaround this though, either in the floorplan or in some other strategy. What's more interesting is the ways in which certain rooms can be combined with each other, like the security room has specific interactions with other rooms. There's no reason to go into detail on this cause the game is about accumulating these details yourself and learning how to combine them to unlock secrets, solve puzzles and figure out how to progress to the antechamber. At first anyway, maybe the game changes later but I've no idea Being real about it, I feel like the 'eureka' moments have been spread rather sparsely across the playtime so far and I'm not loving it, I'm sort of giving it the benefit of the doubt. But due to the nature of it it's guaranteed to be one of those delayed gratification type of experiences cause you need to learn lots of tricks and gimmicks before you can really synthesise it into something clever, and I'm not quite there yet, tho I did figure out something rather cool about the security card system which I won't spoil. But from what I see lots of the rooms and unlocks have multiple applications so it's probably a game about rewiring your brain to these multiple possibilities. You should definitely take notes, I have notes saved in a text editor. Best analogy I can use to describe is that it's like starting off a 1000 piece jigsaw, you're just kinda feeling a bit aimless. I'm sure it turns into something else entirely eventually though. Its pace is definitely an issue so far though

Picked this up as it's on sale at the moment and I've really just been looking for an excuse to give it a shot (and I need a break from Xenoblade). Today being a holiday and all I managed to get about 4 hours of playtime with it. It starts off relatively linear and scripted before dumping you into its main world, which is a seemingly abandoned piece of land cut off from the rest of the world via a magical dome surrounding it. From a story perspective you and your team are stranded inside, so the main narrative thread is exploring it and also looking for a way to escape. I was surprised at how talkative it is and I can see some people disliking that, but on my end I have no issues with it. It is, however, strictly split, as in you can only really talk with your comrades and move the story forward in camp whereas out and about it's purely about gameplay, except for some (rare) chatter via a magical comm device. The thing that made people pay attention to this is its playfulness with physics that loosely was reminiscent of BotW, but at least in the beginning that aspect is rather under-developed. There's telekinesis, which works a bit like in Control, though less snappy, and ice powers, which can cool down the area or freeze enemies in place. The third power you unlock is summoning a Vortex that traps enemies, but it's so weak early on that you kind of have to throw enemies back in again after wacking them with your sword, though that also highlights an early and simple way to combine powers. I'd imagine this aspect growing more prevalent as you progress (especially with a larger mana pool and fire powers), but right now I tend to dispatch smaller enemies with parries and sword swings, which works well enough and is fun, but there's no progression for melee combat in the sense of unlockable combos and such, hence why I assume it wants to slowly nudge you towards being experimental will the element powers in the long run. You also have a bow but I find it not particularly useful – though again, that might change. Some gameplay aspects are a bit 'wonky', especially if you combine multiple features like freezing a big enemy in place, climbing on top of them and trying to aim for a weak spot. It's a sign of a smaller game without month-long AAA Q&A testing and polishing, but relative to its ambitions I think it does a fairly good job glueing everything together. The gameplay 'loop' of leaving camp, exploring the outside (which is divided into large, open-ish hubs) and then coming back to improve your equipment with collected resources is a bit basic but it works. I previously had some reservations about the fact that you lose the majority of your collected resources if you die, but right around the time when it opens up a bit and throws stronger enemies at you, you also receive an items to teleport back to camp without any kind of penalty. So if things go south, you can always just jump away, maybe improve your amour and weapons, and go back. Whether it becomes grindy or not I can't say yet of course, but at least it doesn't seem overly punishing. First impressions are really positive, and for an indie project I think this looks quite fabulous, and very cleverly hides its budgetary shortcoming by (2D stills of the characters during most conversations for example). It's also refreshing to play a game that is just fully optimised for the system you're playing it on. I get that the usual quality and performance modes have their uses, but here there's nothing – just press start and play it as intended (60fps). Also nice soundtrack and really solid voice acting – depending on your dialogue choices the main character is also quite likeable and thankfully not even remotely the kind of girlboss archetype I was expecting after some trailers.

The best way to describe this is what if Suda51 had a queer Indian cousin who also made games? It's really out there, in every sense of the phrase. The setup is basically Scott Pilgrim through an Indian lens, with the protagonist returning to her hometown after a breakup and then having to confront all her exes. From a gameplay perspective you're either talking, skating around, doing some QTE-based minigames or fight in turn-based battles. I don't want to call the gameplay loop gimmicky because it's a bit derogatory, but it still explains it best. There's not much depth to anything you do, but it's a very enjoyable cocktail presented in a very wacky and charming way. During dialogue sequence you can pick answers which in turn give points for one of three different 'thirstsonas' (their word, not mine). Supposedly this impacts both the narrative and gameplay, but I haven't noticed the former and the latter just boils down to minuscule shifts towards either your HP pool, your offense or your defense. Skating is wonky and clunky, but you can skip every challenge the game asks you to do before progressing. I think it's a nice enough diversion, but it's no Tony Hawk for sure. Combat meanwhile is a solid spin on the Paper Mario/Mario et Luigi formula with timed button inputs influencing damage dealt and received. Debuffs are called taunts and certain skills you have deal bonus damage if a debuff has been applied. That's pretty much it, but it's a solid template and the boss fights, while quite a bit talkative, are the clear highlights, with the exes withdrawing into some sort of mind palace where they take different forms (a bit Persona-like, now that I think about it). There's also a part where you can cook meals for combat use or to make up with your exes, which is technically just a series of QTEs intertwined by a heart-to-heart with either your mum or dad (depending on what menu you choose). I'm definitely enjoying it a lot and it also has a very stylish presentation. 3D modelling can't quite keep up with the art but it's a really 'cool' game to look at with a lot of visual flourishes, nice UI art etc. The OST is really good as well, though in a less eccentric way. Overall a nice little feelgood game that still tackles some deeper subjects from a different perspective than we're used to in games.

the gaming definition of Look Outside starts with a simple request, take a look outside of your window It seems that everyone who does turns in to some Cronenberg style monster, who then stalk the halls of your apartment building as you hunt around looking for items to, presumably, escape, I don't actually know yet. It's a very strange game, which in some ways is to its detriment. It looks like an rpg maker game, it plays like an old style jrpg, in that you can choose to attack, defend, use items, use a special attack, or maybe escape. Some times you can use an item or talk to a monster that will get a certain outcome. I got a kiss off one 😄 and seemingly he's going to be useful later. There's another I can eventually recruit to my party apparently, although it doesn't half feel like you could easily miss some of these characters. At night there's often a knock at your door, so far it's just been traders, but it can be people to recruit, I've not seen that yet. I'm kind of enjoying it, I love the look of it, and it has made me laugh with how horrible it is, but at the same time it leaves you unsure of if you're doing the right thing. Lisa The Brave had the same thing for me, I understand the Jrpg structure, I've played enough of them, but when you alter it a bit it just leaves me 2nd guessing, and as such it can feel weirdly difficult. Like, I don't have a ton of healing items currently, I needed them for a particular area, now I'm a bit stuck. The game will give you some as you hunt around, but I've no idea if they're finite Anyway, it's horrible and strange and I kind of love it, but I wish it was a bit clearer or easier as I think then I'd love it. Just a character with a heal spell would do

Spent around 5 or 6 hours with this over the last couple of days... and so far so decent I'd say... For those who don't know the game is set in an alternate 1950's version of the Lake District where the Windscale disaster has covered much of the area in radioactive fallout. You have the age old condition of amnesia and wake up in a bunker with no recollection of how or why you're there... there's no character creation to start you off (I've no idea if you'll ever see the character, so far I haven't) and there's also no character voice over, which I don't have problem with tbh. Upon leaving the bunker (which in reality is about 3 rooms) you set foot in to the first of around 4 open areas you're free to explore and find leads which are how this game handles missions. Usually these are in the form of collectable journal entries or through conversations with characters you'll meet along the way... and the way these work is you'll never be able to do them all as completion of one characters leads will more than likely cancel someone else's in some way or another. I'm aiming to try and suss out who seems decent, I'm not feeling the General of the Protocol at the minute (the Army) he seems a little on the heavy handed side. Combat, so far, isn't anything to write home about... I'm mostly hitting things with a cricket bat at the minute, I have a shotgun and rifle but as they're single shot they're only so much use in a fight... and taking on more than two armed people head on in this is virtually suicide too. The other thing is there's no XP system in place so there's no real reason to go looking for trouble... getting stronger happens through finding skill books and crafting blueprints. I think the mystery of the story might be the main pull of the game for me. It looks nice enough to me, I think you can tell the game is cross generation but it's far from ugly. I think as I feel now, thanks to the more real world setting, I'll be getting more out of this than I did Avowed but I guess I'll have to keep playing to see.

After saying I wasn't going to I went ahead and started this today... only managed maybe 1.5 hours due to adulthood being crap again but I've liked what I've seen so far... In my time with it so far Hazel has watched her house get washed away with her mum still inside thanks to a huge Hurricane and set out to try and find her... we've discovered she's a Weaver (she hasn't yet) who can basically see and manipulate strands to help in combat and with traversal... the look of the game reminds me of The Nightmare before Christmas even though it's not really anything like it... it just has this really nice animated look with the character models in cutscenes looking really good to me. Combat boils down to pretty much what you'd imagine for a third person game, admittedly I've hardly opened up the levelling tree and I suspect I'll be getting new abilities and fighting different types of enemies in due course. The voice work and music has been really good so far and I'm betting this story is going to get fairly dark fairly quickly... knowing this isn't the biggest game in terms of size and that I'm already liking what I've seen of the story/characters means I'll probably stick with this now until I hit the end... just wish I had more time to play the damn thing.

Spent about 5 hours with this yesterday and just left the first planet. I really like that sort of game design in open world games. A complete but bite sized chunk to get you ready for the rest. Places like White Orchard in The Witcher 3. As for the game, it's okay. Crushingly okay. There's nothing in the game I don't like but there is nothing I love either. The writing is pretty good and there have been a few funny moments but there hasn't been a character introduced yet that really connected me to the world and the world itself is your generic capitalism gone wild scenario. Which I like, I'm an easy sell on that sort of thing but it's been done so often that it's just okay. Combat is okay. Loot is okay. Graphics are okay. Character creator is okay. Skills are okay. Player choices are okay. You get it. I'll be putting some more time into it today so hopefully it just starts off slow because there is definitely potential but I worry that they have spent so much time on giving the player a million different choices that none of them really mean anything.

Well,it’s finally out. I’m three missions in,and thus far,it’s off to a very good start indeed. It looks glorious,thanks to the RE engine. You start off as Nero,the only character that was in the demo. And he’s a riot to play as. I’ve never been a master of this series. I can throw down a few SS/SSS combos here and there,get the odd A rank from time to time. But I’ve long since accepted that I’ll never be a top tier DMC player. But that doesn’t matter to me. All that mattters is, “am I having fun?”. And thus far,DMC 5 is absolutely fun. There’s a ton of skills to play around with,the Devil Breakers add a new level of tactics to combat. I went for the Digital Deluxe edition,so have access to the Mega Buster from Mega Man. Which is definitely a favourite thus far. Now,on to the issue of micro transactions. A lot of people kicked off when it was announced this game has them. Jim Sterling has already said in his review that due to his standpoint,this excludes the game from “Game Of The Year” consideration,despite the huge amount of praise has for it. So,are they actually that bad in DMC? Honestly,no. They’re hidden away in the Menu screen,at no point are you obnoxiously told “Hey Kids,want to buy some stuff?”. And the prices of the items themselves,aren’t that much at all. £1.70 gets you either 3 Blue Orbs,or 100,000 Red Orbs. All of the reviews I’ve read have said you get more than enough without resorting to them. And I feel that seems about right. So yeah,it’s not the end of the world that they’re in this. There’s a catch up video that sums up important events in the previous games,which is pretty decent. It made me laugh that DMC2,the worst entry in the series,gets less than 10 seconds mention,whereas the rest get several minutes at least. So yeah. I’m excited to finally have this. Should be fun.

Broke my gaming fast with some jankcore immersive sim. This is a weird game, it's a Soulslike immersive sim. Why don't we have more of those? It's like the most obviously great idea in the world alongside first person survival horror. Like Cruelty Squad it's very postmodern and feels like a 4chan shitpost but critically the game doesn't feel like it's just being stupid and random with how ironic it is all the time. You're either into this type of thing or you find it unbearable, this is why Steam has a 2 hour refund window. It's a bit Deus Ex in its setup, you're in a HQ and your handler sets you off on a mission to investigate carcinogenic shampoo or something. I'm not going to attempt to explain the story part cause it's very dense in strange lingos and terminology, which is where it gets a bit Soulslike cause its story and world feels a bit broken and hard to understand. But it's also soulslike in that Euros are your souls for upgrading, and you can pick them up on death or lose them forever. I tried a recruit first and got really fucked up with debt, started over as a detective who can seem to do things like look at the company intranet but it shows you a bunch of hexadecimal and I've no idea what to do with it. Nothing in the game is explained, you have stats like Vitality and Perception and Luck, you also have Bioenergy and 'Lack'. You sort of have to stumble your way through and figure it out via context, I suppose. NPCs can help you out with that and if you bribe them they can tell you things about the state of the world, politics, cocaine task forces, celibacy, energy drinks and investment opportunities, the last of which is very important cause if you don't have a diverse portfolio you will lose money every single day. You want to get time in the market quick, NPCs will help you there. They also give you sidequests which give you more things to do Outside of the NPC stuff, it turns into Deus Ex meets Armored Core. You have a big mech which you can upgrade and change the properties of. It's not as in depth as AC or anything like that but it is very difficult and you can't just yolo it. In terms of how to infiltrate combat areas I've just not figured it out yet, I'm still at the 'accumulating knowledge' part of all of this. One thing I did figure out is how to kick in my next door neighbour's apartment and murder him for a cool 15Gs, but then I got killed after only spending some of it and didn't recover it quickly It's early access so the purposeful jank is going to also have a lot of accidental development jank I swear I'm not trying to big up a strange game to seem cool, I do like immersive sims a lot and this seems to go really hard in a way I've not being able to find with a game for a while. It seems super crunchy, both in its systems and in how it looks. I expect this thing to bubble into a really weird cult thing this year, off the back of Cruelty Squad being that already but I think this will be more interesting to people cause of the RPG elements

Balatro. What can I say about Balatro that will do it any justice...? For the uninitiated, this presents as roguelike poker. You're dealt a hand of cards and use your card counting skills, or your natural-borne luck, to build a game-winning combination. Everything from high card draws to the fabled royal flush will score points, and it's your job to work through eight rounds of three games. I've managed to get half way through a game up to now - ante 5/8 - before crashing out horribly. Like I said, though, it presents as poker. Realistically, it takes poker to a whole new place, and this is thanks to the store between rounds. You can buy a range of bonuses to increase your chances of reaching the end. Tarot cards apply specific bonuses to individual cards from your deck (this could be anything from giving you an extra $3 if it's not used by the end of a round to a multiplier if it's played and scores). Planet cards provide bonuses to specific hands - I'm a fan of bumping up my two-pair bonus, as it's one of the most common hands I play, and it can become especially prolific for points the more you increase its level. You can get packs that add more cards to your deck, and then there are Joker cards (that's Poker with a J... Coincidence?) that give you overall bonuses. The key to the game right now seems to be the Joker Cards. A two pair hand with two 10s and two 5s can score around 50 points as a base. But add in a Joker card that adds 4 to your multiplier if you play clubs, as well as the joker that adds 30 chips if you play a 10, AND a +4 multiplier for the same numbers, and that two pair hand quickly shoots up to almost 10,000 points. Skipping some rounds is an option, and will present you with a bonus if you do so, but this comes at the cost of making more money to go into the store with. Is that card pack, which is usually $6 worth accepting, rather than playing the round and getting to $10 so you can buy a new bonus card or a couple of new Jokers? In each round of three games, there's also a 'boss' match. This will add further complications to the gameplay. Some of the ones I've encountered include all face cards being dealt face down, specific suits being debuffed (so those awesome bonuses are completely negated) and even ALL dealt cards being handed out face down. These are super tough at times, and if you hit a bad run, you're essentially screwed. I'm under no illusions that I'm not great at this game, but it has a fantastic 'one more go' quality that makes you hop in for another round. I honestly can't express how much I'm enjoying it right now. I'm determined to figure out a way to get through all 8 rounds.

^ That's the title screen, btw. He is moving the entire time. His left eye (right on the image) also glows red when you push the button. It looks awesome! First Impressions There is much to do, off the bat. Arcade, Character Episodes and Story, I haven't touched yet. That's because not only is there your standard practice mode. But there is a training mode that gives you some combos to practice for every character via challenges. There is also a avatar-based Arcade Quest that is similar in teaching you the mechanics of the game. Including the interesting new Heat system. Which seems very reminiscent of the Soul Gauge mechanic of SC6). This is where I've been spending most of my time. The newer characters IE Reina, I didn't really get a feel for yet. Old faithful main Bryan Fury has eased me into this entry. I tried Yoshimitsu and remembered some stuff (remember I have recently been playing SC6, with it's own Yoshi). But as Tekken likes to do, they have altered the inputs of some attacks. Which has affected my muscle memory. I aim to give a fair crack at most characters. But I know, due to story mode, I have to pay some attention to Jin. Doing more with him than just the button mashing I did in the demo. Definitely more impressed with this than with MK1, already.

I've got 4 hours in on this since launch, including an unusual day session today because I've (half) blagged the wife that I'm feeling under the weather and need to take it easy for a busy weekend's work.🤧😃. Will look to get to level 5 tonight. I'm really liking it. It's looking and playing really well on PC, with a saturated graphical style similar to the Outer Worlds, but very much refined. It's very early, and I don't want to end up with egg on my face by over-enthusing, but it's far better than I was actually expecting. What I want from an open world RPG is, just now and then, to happen upon an NPC just through exploration, who draws you into a quest that branches into numerous paths and lasts for ages, offering lore and moral dilemmas along the way. That's happened already. Great. But it happened rather early in Starfield, and never happed again. So, here's hoping. I'm working on a one handed shield bearer on this first play thru. I've heard there are easier builds, but the combat is so fast, brutal and well put together that I'm having a whale of a time. I'd say it's one of the best first person mêlée games I've ever experienced. You're character really does what you want her to, and you know instantly if you've run out of steam in a fight, with a very well put together UI for things like stamina and special move cooldowns. I'm loving it up to now.

Kinda surprised there's no thread on this yet, but anyway. I've tried to get into the Yakuza series over and over again. I love the juxtaposition of serious gangster shit and nutty stuff like collecting softcore porn and helping a Michael Jackson ripoff remake Thriller. For whatever reason, though, it's just never quite managed to get its claws into me. After 15 hours, I think this might have changed that mindset. It's like Black Flag through the lens of a JP developer, and I'm having a blast with it. Collecting crewmates, making friends, just being a pirate in general, it's just fun. I'll post more a bit later, but I wanted to open the conversation, because this is dumb in all the best ways.

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.:.

I'm cheating a bit here because I only played the demo, but this came and went without any kind of exposure but I think it might interest some people here. It's cheap to compare a game to others in an effort of explaining it but I like doing it because it's also quick and easy to get the message across – so this is basically the indie baby of classic Resident Evil and Killer7. At least as far as its gameplay foundations are concerned, the overall tone and setting is somewhere between SMT and Paradise Killer with very weird, supernatural characters that float somewhere between being human and godlike entities. You're playing as some normie girl working a boring late-shift job but suddenly stuff happens and you receive the boon of being able to perceive an alternate dimension where demons live. Gameplay is presented from a bird's eye view reminiscent of the aforementioned RE classics (there's even an option to toggle between direct and tank controls) and mostly consists of figuring out classic adventure puzzles. An early example is that you come across a computer that doesn't have a keyboard attached and is locked, so you need to find a keyboard and a passcode. It's basic, but it works in the sense that it shuffles you through its claustrophobic levels to force you to combat the demons. Combat then is where it morphs into Killer7 because holding the trigger to ready your weapon switches to first person while activating your demon-sensing ability highlights weak points on enemies. Smaller enemies die from one critical attack (melee or ranged are available), bigger ones might need multiple shots. Landing multiple of those critical hits in succession fills up a special gauge for a an extremely powerful shot that discards any normal enemy and is necessary to defeat bosses (at least as far as I can tell – there's only one boss in the demo). You can also attack enemies 'normally', ie. without first scanning for their weak points, but it's suboptimal and kind of a waste of ammo. The risk-reward here is that your scan has rather short range, so while enemies are easier to dispatch, they're also more likely to counterattack. I quite liked the demo, just quickly glanced at metacritic and it's around the 80% mark, so it seems the full version is pretty good. Might pick this up sometime this year. Quick note as well, despite the RE inspirations I wouldn't call this a horror game, it's more of a surreal, slightly spooky atmosphere it conjures.