Search the Community

Played through this roughly a month ago but never made a topic. But I feel like I need to lure @Nag away from the dinoboobs so he can play something decent, and I also just dabbled a bit with New Game+ earlier (not sure if I have an entire second playthrough in me, though it is a very nicely paced, frictionless ride). In any case, this is a bit of a weird one because the game called Echoes of the End that got panned by critics upon release and the one you can buy now are two totally different beasts. I never played the original version, but from reading through what they added with the Definitive Edition – skill trees, stat-altering accessories, craftable armour – it must have been very barebones and empty at launch. Not so anymore. In short what it does is put you into the shoes of Ryn, a vestige, which is this universe's moniker for someone who can use magic, in Ryn's case: telekinesis. It's a very personal story mostly revolving around saving your brother from an evil army, but it does feature some believable character development on the protagonist's side. Some key plot points don't hit as hard as the writers probably wanted, but at its very wholesome conclusion I did want to spend more time in that universe and with those characters, so I did something right, for me at least. On the gameplay side it comes as no surprise then that your telekinetic abilities play a big role, in either combat, platforming and puzzle solving. Because this is a good, old-fashioned videogame where you do a little bit of all three of those things in regular intervals. Platforming is self-explanatory (you jump and climb), while puzzles are actually quite well-designed in the sense that you're rarely doing one sort more than once. Some of the more basic stuff, like shifting platforms around with telekinesis, is a more frequent sight, sure – but the rest is mostly unique to the area you're currently in, like navigating desolate ruins with fake mirage bridges, or channeling your powers through a stone that can shift between two time periods, like that one level from Titanfall 2. There's no real headscratcher in there, but they're also not mind-numbingly easy – just a good mix to give you something to do other than jumping and fighting. Combat is probably where the most effort went in, though mostly in terms of polish and options, not necessarily depth. The aforementioned skill trees allow you to develop pure martial art, telekinesis powers, defensive abilities and coop manoeuvres (there's an NPC following your around for most of the journey). You can max out three out of four of these in one playthrough, so it's not primarily about choice but rather about the order in which you unlock stuff. Combat itself is a classic light/heavy attack affair with dodges and parries, plus a couple of telekinesis stuff. The latter feels a bit half-baked early on because the manapool is so low, but in the late game it becomes a bit more integral to the fights. It can be a bit clunky at times – the developers didn't go to Remedy's school of snappy object throwing – but it works well enough and gives you more options than just slashing your way through (which does, at least, feel quite impactful and satisfying). And I think 'well enough' describes this game perfectly: absolutely no part of it stands out in any shape or form, but for a debut title (from Iceland no less, don't think I've ever played a game made over there) it's very confidently put together, it has barely any lengths or annoying bits, doesn't repeat its major ideas and set pieces, feels well-balanced on normal. Overall a really solid 7 that could pave the way for an extremely good sequel if they ever get a chance. It's also that rare breed of a game that is an excellent piece of advertisement for UE5, because it looks technically phenomenal – albeit a tad orthodox in terms of environmental art – and runs at a rock solid 60fps throughout despite the developer's meagre resources. It does have a quality mode, but for some reason activating it makes the game bug out and crash, but I never saw a reason to play it like that anyway, considering it would severely impact two out of its three major gameplay facets.

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.

Played 90 minutes or so myself and I've enjoyed it so far, already I can tell this is a really well made game that has had a lot of love and attention gone into it. The puzzles are pretty basic in nature, essentially a 2016 Snake-Light puzzle but with different elements that make them harder and harder such as having to pick up little squares on your way to the goal and having to control two snakes at the same time. They have grown quite challenging already and I've got stuck a couple of times already but persevered and eventually found a solution. The island itself, the atmosphere and the art style is where the game really shines, there's absolutely no tutorials, no hand-holding whatsoever and you're left to explore wherever you like and solve whatever puzzles you like. The game looks truly beautiful, like a 3D painting come to life. The Island feels purposefully bewildering, haunting, eery and mysterious and just ripe to explore, it definitely has that Skyrim sense of wonder to it, seeing something in the distance and thinking to yourself 'Ooh, I wonder what's up there' and then sauntering up to see what you find. Found a couple of the voice recordings too and they were both high brow philosophical quotes from famous scholars, scientists, philosophers from a bygone age. My only worry so far is the repetitious nature of the puzzles, but I've read they go more in depth the further you get into it so its not a major worry. Going to put another 90 minutes into it later tonight.

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

Continuing my Indie binge with Hollow Knight. Heard lots of good things about this game earlier this year and saw a Let's Play from Easy Allies of the first two-ish hours of it, has been on my Steam wishlist ever since. For those that don't know, it's an Indie Metroidvania game set in an eerie melancholic bug-world. I've enjoyed it quite a lot, being new to the Metroidvania genre I didn't really know what to expect, I've seen an awful lot of great indie Metroidvania games and kind of got turned off them in the past as there's just so many, I'm glad I gave this a go though because it's now a genre I'd like to explore more. For starters it doesn't hold your hand at all, you get a very brief control tutorial and are then left to explore the world. It doesn't explain anything at all, and if I hadn't of watched the EZA Let's Play I would've been a bit lost on where to go and what to do, luckily that gave me a brief idea. It was still a bit disconcerting exploring areas and not knowing where the fuck you are in the slightest, no map, no idea where the next Rest point is, no idea where the entrance to the next area is or anything though. Luckily you realise how the map system works pretty early on and then discover a vendor to add new areas to it, mark your location on the map etc. All incredibly useful. The gameplay loop is pretty similar to Souls I guess, if you die you loose all your 'Geo', you get Geo by killing enemies. The most innovative mechanic is that when you kill enemies you get souls that you then use to replenish your health, which adds to the whole risk/reward system of the game as it makes you want to attack more in combat in order to get more Souls to heal in the heat of a battle, it is a balance at times as your Soul supply can be used for other things too. You use a small sword for the combat (called a 'nail') which enabled you to hit enemies in any 360 degree direction, there's a lot of enemy variety on offer, when you go into a new area you have to learn their mannerisms all over again, there's a few areas with traps for you to fall into (similar to Souls) too, it always feels fresh and involving. It has that Souls feeling about it to about worrying where the next save point is, knowing you've got 1000+ Geo on you and whether to venture into the next area where a boss may be waiting or head back to a previous area and save. I won't give too much away but new mechanics are introduced as you go along that unlock new locales, one changes the platforming significantly and one changes the combat to a significant degree as well, the game never points you to these so presumably you could go the entire game without discovering them. There's also a system similar to the rings in Souls where you can get slightly more Souls when you defeat an enemy, a bit more health etc. but the slots are incredibly limited at this time meaning you have to choose very wisely which you want to equip. The game looks absolutely stunning, it has a really unique art-design about it, it's cartoonish but the backgrounds and levels managed to look realistic and give a very lived-in, ancient kind of vibe. By far and away the best thing about the game is the music though, it is just absolutely incredible and makes the each area feel special and meaningful, when you go to your first town and a certain song plays it's just so melancholic and haunting at the same time, it really is very special. The noises the characters you meet along the way make are fantastic too, they put so much personality in them just from gibberish and grunts. A few pics:

Started this last night, have probably put around 6-7 hours into it so far. I'm not going to go into too much detail as folks have already put up detailed impressions of their time with the demos. But, yeah, seeing as my expectations for this were pretty much 0 and I'd not played any of the pre-release demos, alphas etc. I have been pleasantly surprised. The graphics are what I noticed first really, it looks absolutely phenomenal. The voice acting and motion capture for all the characters just feels so incredibly lavish as well, all the performances are amazing and the motion capture just looks and sounds like one of the most realistic I've ever experienced. The hub world is reminiscent of Destiny's Tower but it feels much more Biowarey than I expected it too, it feels like much more of a real, living, breathing place than the lobby-esque workmanlike aesthetic of the Tower. Throughout the first few missions more and more areas of the Fort are introduced to you and you discover new people and places to see like a lovely plaza and bar. What has surprised me the most about the base is probably the NPC conversations though, you have multiple people to speak to after pretty much every mission you finish and talking to these different people to get to know them is a real joy, it doesn't feel like some throwaway exposition dump like in Destiny and other GaaS shooters, you do feel these folks have personalities. The 'action' part of the game I just felt like I was playing an Iron Man game really, there's not really any other way I can describe it. It felt fucking amazing to jump of of the cliff face outside the fort and just engage the thrusters for the first time. Combat itself feels way better than I expected too, although it has been very easy so far with me dying once and my shield being depleted on only 1 other occasion, all the other missions I've played have been a breeze. I have had quite a few bugs. Textures popping in some places - one time I was flying around and a whole environment was pretty much white and then spawned in around me making me crash -the helmet of your character not appearing on the cutscene that plays just before you go on a mission, a weird one where the subtitle box from previous dialogue stays on the screen and won't go away. I've also had quite a struggle getting it to run smoothly on my PC - which is surprising - I had to lookup a guide to get the settings right earlier and have actually managed to get a mostly stable 60fps with few dropped frames - before I was getting as low as 30fps in firefights. I actually haven't had the game kick me out at all though which is surprising, the servers and matchmaking side of things has seemed uber stable so far apart from the long loading times to get into a mission. So yeah. I like it and I want to play more. Apparently after 10 missions there's some kind of Wall that you have to grind to get up, but I'm not there yet so just enjoying the journey so far. It definitely feels way more Bioware than I was expecting and way more distinct thanks to the flight aspect. Lots of pics:

I'm shallow and wanted a pretty game for my PC, so I got this. Mainly off the back of Alex at digital foundry comparing it to Crysis a lot It's a fairly boilerplate Far Cry template, for the most part. Big map, fogged up until you go to different areas. Towers must be captured. It's got some things in it though which I think are neat. One thing is I think the criticism about Ubisoft checklist games is reaching some decision makers at the company, as it foregoes map icons and tries to hide the waypoint janitor busywork within a more organic framework. That framework still being a Far Cry template, you craft and gather and stealth archer your way around. But it feels more cleverly integrated and less of a checklist (tho undoubtedly this is something that'll be less the case after time with the game, when the novelty wears off) You play a Navi and your background is a bit fish out of water. I've not seen the 2nd film, and I just don't care enough, but it's straightforward enough and seems to take place alongside the 2nd one I think. The whole ethos of its gameplay seems to be like you're a hunter gatherer on Pandora. There's dynamic time of day and weather, though oddly it seems for the opening this is entirely scripted and not dynamic? I'm not sure why that is. But if effects gathering mechanics cause somethings you want to gather at night, or while it's raining, or vice versa. Then you get better ingredients for cooking. There's also a whole mechanic in the game around 'clean kills' and 'mercy kills' for enemies, which requires you to study their weak spots and basically kill them quick and with few shots. It's very difficult, moreso than it sounds, I haven't done it properly once The game is the most visually spectacular game I've seen in a year full of visual spectaculars. It's Crysis but for the present day. The foliage density is peerless, they even have a 'hidden' graphics setting called 'Unobtainium' which sets everything way higher. I don't find I need that though, one thing I find is after about an hour playing this my eyes are really sore and I might have a headache. Said this before about Horizon, but there's so much detail here it's hard to take it all in and I think I'm not blinking as often as I should. Combined with the HDR highlights it's like my corneas are getting mildly seared. So it's very visually fatiguing. On the one hand, that level of visual noise is annoying. It's difficult to see things when you're running through the forest. On the other, it's weirdly immersive in that the enemies with their camouflage actually camouflage, and you need to use your navi vision to spot them (the visual effect for this sucks though, it looks like a migraine). The fauna behave a lot like the wildlife in RDRII, and do a lot to make the game world feel alive and will scuttle under the foliage and come out to surprise you, and fuck you up. The flora is also interactive, you can shoot certain plants and they will let off a big fart or smoke and I assume that has gameplay implications if you want to fuck with the soldiers. It's not on a TOTK level at all, but it means a lot that the world isn't static. The weather and your own character will displace and move the leaves and things around. It's a world that's really well laid out also in terms of getting around, you have these huge branches which form almost a highway system which let you get back and forth quickly. The movement system feels like a pared down version of Mirror's Edge and all these different systems and mechanics blend together quite well I'm finding. It works well enough that it makes hunting and gathering not feel as tedious as it might be. Naturally those movement mechanics lend themselves well to combat also, my fave trick being to jump between branches and do a charge jump out of cover to headshot a soldier (this has a very nice and generous aim assist, worth using even on M&K) All those details are really cool. It's very standard tho in its gameplay structure. You go to outposts, fix their broken shit, beat up the humans turning the forests into ass, unlock more regions of the map. It's still one of those games, but they try and keep more of it within the world rather than within a map system. It even does a thing where they don't actually give you a waypoint for a quest, they give you a text description like 'go south of the river and look for the smoke, beat up the RDA'. Or 'find the home tree near yada yada'. It makes you learn the geography and orient your way there. All that said, I don't see this landing anywhere but number 10 on my goty list, but it shows how you can make this style of game feel less like a spreadsheet and more like a video game by surfacing it in a more 'old fashioned' way

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 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.

I'm very early in this, but I picked up my save which was right at the start of the main part of the game, after the prologue. I'll say right away that the prologue is a very poor onboarding to the game. It goes on for about 3 hours I think, involves a lot of tedious, rail-roaded shite, and it's hard to really care about what's going on with Henry at this early point of things. So it's why I stopped. I picked it up again and have wandered around a bit, and I think I'm more into it. Straight off what it feels like is a more sim-heavy version of Oblivion. Oblivion is my point of comparison cause of how the game gives every NPC some sort of routine, they go to sleep and they kick you out of their houses, things like that. Not that Oblivion is the first game to do that but it's the most notable example from the HD generation There's a huge attention to detail in this, having been to a castle just outside Prague and seeing some of the countryside IRL I feel like I can appreciate that part of things more this time around. You go in all these churches and there's these frescoes and things, and they throw a mountain of historical context at you in the codex if you're into that. It's definitely a game for a particular type of history nerd, or, if you prefer, extremely boring people. So I'm into that. I've done very little still in the way of actual gameplay though, haven't even swung my sword since the prologue. I stole an apple and loaf of bread and wandered around at night without a light, which apparently gets you chucked into prison (nevermind that I was right behind another NPC without a light, and did they arrest that guy? Did they feck). I'm still at that point of blindly fumbling through the fog of systems, survival mechanics and quests, but I think these initial parts of a deep, open world RPG where you work your way through your bafflement are sort of the magic hours, before it all settles into predictable routine and czech-lists. So I'll savor it cause it's not often you get a lavish, HD open world game that is anyway hostile to its players and pushes back a bit. I think this game is actually more gentle to the player than its reputation, I haven't had a problem getting food or things like that, but my point is it doesn't feel like a gentle themepark ride the way modern Bethesda games can feel There's a hardcore mode as well, but I'll save that for the sequel, if I complete this one (I heard the sequel is easier)

As i kinda explained in the new purchases thread this is rogue-like RPG dungeon crawl/deck builder mash up that is currently in early access. (it's about 12 quid) When start the game you choose from 1 of 3 characters all of which have different perks and attributes, then another perk/gift much like in rogue-likes/Dark Souls/Hearthstone etc. Your aim is to get to the end of the game without dying as it's perma-death. Game over. I think there currently 3 Acts at the moment and in each map you're given a map and have to chose one of 4 starting points at the bottom, with the boss at the top finishing the act. Once you've chosen you get to pick the next step to move along that path... like this.. - Unknown is Unknown . It's a story event. I could end well (with a new passive perk or something) or badly. - Merchant is a shop where you can buy new cards or items. He usually has some sales too. - Treasure is a treasure chest - Rest you have the option to gain some of your heal back or upgrade a card. - Enemy is a enemy. - Elite is like a mini boss. You see this map even before you set off so you can plan a bit. Do i go after that treasure or have a rest on the other path?.. etc Risk/reward, it's cool. Ok, now the turn-based combat. It's all card/item based. Looks like this.. Like Hearthstone/most card based board games, at the start of each turn the player has a certain about points that they can spend to lay cards. This can be modified with other cards/relics as you progress tho. And like Dominion/rogue likes you start off with very basic cards but after every fight you get to choose 1 of 3 cards to add to your 'deck'. So as you are progress and building your deck, your character is getting better. Enemies/bosses drop loot like money which can be spend at the shop or relics which give you a passive ability. Once you've spent you're points, you end the turn and the remaining cards are put into the discard pile. When your draw pile is empty, the discard pile is shuffled and you start again. That's it basically. It's simple but fuck, it's reeeally good. It merges the deck building with the rogue like stuff really nicely. I wish every turn-based RPG had the same combat/deck building loop this has. It's much more approachable and pick up and play than any card-based video game i've played too. Even more so than Hearthstone. But it still does a lot of the things i like about deck builders. So, yeah if you've ever thought of giving a card game a go but were scared off how impenetrable they can be. Then this maybe the gateway drug. Very addictive. Great game, still in early access too so it should only get better.

Played 2 hours of this so far and have got through the Prologue/tutorial section pretty much - the section which Journo's played through during the tutorial. So far I'm incredibly impressed with it I have to say, way more than I was with RotTR and probably around the same as TR 2013 - although admittedly my memory of that is a little hazy by now. The first thing I noticed was how goddamn gorgeous this game looks, this is the first game in the series that I've not played in 720p/900p at 30 on consoles and goddamn what a different experience playing on PC - granted it will still look pretty great in almost 4K 30 on Xbox X but at 1440p/60 with everything set to Ultra boy does it shine ?. I thought RotTR had a distinctly last-gen look to it and here whilst there's still a few rough looking textures here and there the whole engine and graphics as a whole looks much improved. I think the lighting is the most impressive though, going through caves, water and a small Mexican town, the way everything was lit was just astonishingly beautiful. It's a shame that so much of the early story has already been revealed by previews and trailers, but the beginning is pretty spectacular. You start out after the shit has hit the fan then go back before it hit the fan to find out what the hell went on (although I knew this already thanks to previews). And it's pretty damn fantastic, lots of slow exposition through a beautiful Mexican town where you can just take in the scenery, music and vibe of the place as you slowly make your way through and investigate followed by some light tutorial stuff and a tomb (yes an actual tomb this early!) which was great fun followed by a nice light puzzle room. After this things go bananas in a typically TR kind of way and lots of mad shit happens which involves you gunning down lots of dudes and running away from collapsing buildings/mountains. I just like the somewhat slow build up this time around, it feels a bit more organic in some ways than having you thrown in at the deep end for the 3rd time in 3 games and let's you appreciate the bombast when it does come all the more. The things they do with the characters already has me way more intrigued than I was for the entirety of RotTR which helps an awful lot too I just hope it continues to bring home the drama. I guess in terms of mechanics, controls and gunplay you know what to expect if you played the previous two games, although I will say I think the new rappel manoeuvre and the way you can now stalk enemies from shrubbery-covered walls is really cool and feels such a good fit for the Jungle environs. I have had some technical issues though. The photo mode is borked for me, everytime I access it the camera does a weird juddery motion and then as soon as I quit the mode everything is ok again, I have also had some huge framerate dips when hanging from ledges which is odd as its been a solid 60 everywhere else so I've had to turn off a few of the superfluous graphical effects and that seems to of remedied it. But yeah, so far I'm way more impressed than I expected to be with it and I can't wait to dig into it again tomorrow night. Some pics:

I picked up the early access version of this, but made the fatal mistake of starting Balatro at the same time which has taken all my attention span and locked it away and thrown away the key. So I only played maybe 2 hours of this. I'm at the apartments It's familiar and different, I was struck by how the VA and framing of scenes feels like a pretty close take of the original without it feeling like an overt homage or anything. The original has very unvarnished vocal performances, I think the main VA was an amateur, so that sort of enhanced the uncanniness of some of it. This isn't quite the same but close enough It looks very good but also incredibly unpolished. It's a very sharp looking game on PC, they seem to have went very hyperreal with it. Not saying it looks realistic just that the high res visuals, the lighting and fog give it this sort of dreamy, heightened kind of look that I'm not really able to explain. Maybe screenshots do it better, I dunno. But it has lots of visual glitches, things like turning the camera causes the culling to not work correctly and objects and lighting activate in front of you. There's some weird occlusion glitch where there's this ghosting all the time, not the spooky kind. Everything between the camera, James and the area in front of James has this visually buggy look when moving the camera. That might be caused by some setting I can turn off, but I don't know what. I only mention the boring technical stuff cause it's a game primarily about immersion in a slow moving narrative, so disruptions like that do stick out a lot more. There's some black crush in these screenshots cause they were converted from jxr, which is a HDR format, and badly compressed to jpg I think it's really impressive what they've done here though. It seems to understand the original well enough and makes sensible changes to not make it too much of a rethread. Example being you walk past the point in the original where you expect to get the radio, but you don't, you get it later and in a different way. Everything takes maybe twice as long, unsure whether or not that will be something I enjoy more or less as it goes on. It has the same town layout, I think, but the distance has been increased and there's more in between areas. So if you haven't played the original in a long time, like me, then it exists in this strange foggy realm of forgotten memory yet also familiarity, like you've been here before. But I'm struggling to have a good time with it. The technical issues are really hard for me to overlook, which is why I mention them so much. I'm usually able to sort of push past stuff like this, but I've not played a lot of UE5 games so I don't think I quite realised how much this game will keep skipping and jumping forward a few frames like it's an old film with a bunch of damage on it. The VRR causes constant flicker in the apartment area on OLED, I guess cause the frame variance is so high. So you can turn that off, or play on a different screen. I also find the combat a bit too much, it's very aggressive and seems to be about spacing, attack patterns, recognising stun animations from attack leadups, knowing when to use your limited ammo or combo into the stick. It reminds me how Homecoming looked. It's not a bad system they've designed, but it goes harder than what I was personally looking for and I'm finding that just to be a bit of a hassle. I'm dying a lot and getting filtered by combat I'll admit, but I was expecting that side to be more basic. So objectively speaking it seems like a good game marred by really bad technical issues, subjectively I'm much more mixed tho. I'll take my time and maybe I'll come around, I'm not coming at it looking to hate it or anything. As mentioned I'm really impressed by the specific changes Bloober have made to some things

Big fan of this so far. If I were to want to be reductive, and I do, it's sort of Breakout meets Vampire Survivors. You play as a character moving up through a lane, enemies drop in on tiles and lanes, and you fire off balls that bounce around and damage the enemies. When enemies die they drop experience, you pick it up and eventually level up, choosing a passive perk or another special ball to throw out. The balls are in 2 types, you baby balls which just deal low damage but come out more regularly, and special balls, which do more damage and have traits like poison, slow, burn etc You level up and gain a stat point, and can level up your perks and balls, which means you can kind of spec towards something. Have lots of things that fire more baby balls, maybe you hold out for the perk that improves their damage, or increases the damage of all balls when they bounce off anything. All of a sudden your weaker stuff is now more regular and doing more damage There's Fusion drops that act like the treasure chests in Vampire Survivors, randomly increasing the level of perks, or allowing you to fuse certain items. My favourites so far are the blizzard (slow and extra damage while frozen from the ice ball, and the area of effect damage from the lightning ball). and the egg sac combines with the laser, where the egg sac spawns baby balls on contact, the laser hits everything on an enemies row on contact; so if it now spawns a bunch of baby balls, all of them fire lasers doing row damage on contact As you progress there's bosses, you can see them coming up on the map. There's an end of level boss, beat that and you get a gear, get enough of them and you unlock the next level. So far the game has been fairly easy, I'm on the 3rd level from a couple of hours play, and have beaten the 1st level with 3 characters. In between stages there's a kind of farming mechanic. I could live without this truth be told, but it does have some gameplay use. You can plant and grow wheat, wood and stone, these are materials you'll need to build things (I'm skipping over some of this). This lets you build the housing that unlocks new characters when you get the blueprint during a run. You can also build totems and things that improve all your characters, so far these have relied on me beating stages, with bonus improvements for each person I beat it with. It's a mechanic that feels a little stuck on, but there is a use to it while its there

Megabonk is basically 3D Vampire Survivors, which sounds reductive, but it largely is. You're more limited in how many weapons you can hold, initially 2, but I've managed to get it up to 3 now. Same with the perks, here they're called Tomes, which is more of an issue with them, because with it being so limited I don't see why you'd select pick up range and item drop rate instead of damage and health regen, or attack cooldown and XP gain. Megabonk mixes it up with items, that are less useful, but can give you armour, or poison damage, health regen etc, by the end of your time they can really stack up The level structure is a little different. You've still got the time limit of Vampire Survivors, but Megabonk introduces end of level bosses, that you can curs if you find the right statues, this will then let you finish that tier, and open up the possibility of selecting a 2nd tier next time, which means beating tier 1's boss, then going to tier 2 through a portal, taking your stats and abilities with you once you've done a few runs you might have met the requirements and earned enough currency to buy new characters and items to take in to levels. It's pretty addictive, which is sort of annoying because I wanted to get other things done, but it does seem a very good Steam Deck game

So, this has been out a while on PC and is soon coming to consoles and now i've finally got around to giving it a go. Like the first game, It's an insanely open CRPG where you can pretty much tackle most situations anyway you like and has an excellent elemental based combat system (cast a rain spell and electrocute it to shock everyone, poison clouds are combustible - that sort of thing). The customisation is nuts - you can spec out your starting character any way you like, even specifying the main instrument used for dramatic musical moments (I went for the cello). You can even choose which specialty you want any other characters who join to have. Once your past the first 'tutorial' area your left to your own devices exploring an area around a fort. There's very little hand holding here and every NPC is worth talking to - the writing is fantastic. The detail level in the areas is bonkers. I'm only a few hours in, and the fights have kicked my arse a few times (still working out a solid character load out) but it's awesome. Oh - and it has full co-op as well which i'm hoping to start up this weekend with three others.

I started playing some of this. I'm definitely going to need digital foundry to hold my hand on what settings I should be turning on, the auto detect option on the game itself recommended I max the game out but that isn't happening. I figured I would settle for 30fps but the camera motion in this is really bad, it doesn't feel good. So I'll have to tweak that. Anyway it's very janky and hard to play so far. Everyone makes a big song and dance about DLSS but it dont play well with camera movement. I guess there is a hell of a lot of detail to be reconstructing all the time. Sometimes the game looks spectacular but sometimes I'm sort of finding it to look kind of terrible. Part of it is the game feels sort of weird. People phase into existence in front of you, cars render in front of you. Obviously there's weird shit with people t-posing but that's minor. At one time in a cutscene V was completely naked for no reason, that made me lol and makes me wonder if your model is always like that cause it's a FPS game and you can't see your tits or dick or whatever. Gameplay wise I find it hard to play and the HUD and text is such a bad clash of colours and design that I can't tell what's going on half the time or what the things I'm picking up are. This could just be the awkward teething phase but it feels kind of gross. The driving is also really swimmy. I mean I'm sure it gets good as you go in but yeah it's like kind of clunky in a really strange way. These guys did make The Witcher III I suppose. It feels like someone took Euro jank and gave it all the money but kept the jank. The game throws a million things at you at once and displays a bunch of info on your HUD that's hard to keep track of. It's not a very gentle easing into the world, it sort of just throws you in and you're constantly bewildered, well I am anyway. I'm confused. There's a lot going on here but it's not so much that it's deep just that there's a fucking lot of it and I can't be arsed to read it all. I played 3 hours of it, one of which was a big shootout. The shooting doesn't feel good, but it sounds good. Aiming is bad, there's a lot of control options to figure out so I will definitely be following whatever guide somebody puts up to fix the issues with it. Anyway it's cyberpunk, it does the Bladerunner thing. Pris is in it, sort of. That's what people wanted, a very Bladerunner-ey game. Except this is less chin stroking and more aggressive 90s Rob Zombie in your face all the time. Feels of an era This game is very hard to run, pretty much never see 60fps at the settings the game recommends for me. It's exactly the kind of game people were expecting, an absolute monster for both GPU and CPU. A new Crysis.

Quick thread to kick it off. I'm 2 chapters in, trying it on hard mode (you cant change after selecting, warning for that upfront). Beat a boss fight It's got some cool visual stylings, but it's a game I'm not sure I have calibrated correctly. It's extremely dark and grey, have went back and forth on what the intent is here. If I set the HDR brightness high it improves things but washes out many of the darker scenes. I think they really want you to play in pitch blackness. I don't want to dunk on the game too early in, it's one I was looking forward to. But I'm finding it a bit boring. It's got some interesting setup, very Twin Peaks. I guess even similar to season 3 in a sense, given the time gap. But I don't really feel like I'm investigating stuff, I'm just sort of running through mazes and corridors unlocking the next exposition dump, and a samey FMV jump scare happens now and then. Then you go into the 'mind palace' and stick photos on a wall by pressing A a lot. I read a review which says it gets off to a very slow start though, so maybe I'll turn around on it. I hope so anyway. By this point with Control though I was completely bought into it. This in comparison is feeling very standard, at least in these early hours

I've been wanting to play this one for a long time, as it's sort of the grand daddy of the immersive sim. The team who made it would go on to do the System Shocks and Thief games, and their design can be traced back to this game. Their design brief was to make a RPG dungeon crawler which 'simulates' reality. The idea (and the idea in all immersive sim) is to make a game world feel 'real' (or immersive) by having it be governed by a set of systems with natural rules to them that allow you to reason logical solutions, similar to a table top DnD game. So physics, realism, common sense and logic and a lack of hand-holding (beyond the manual, you also have a PDF clue book which can hold your hand a lot if you want). So it's open-ended, rather than a closed box requiring a specific key. Speaking of keys, a basic example, you don't have a key to open a door, but maybe you can bash the door in with your club. Your club will get damaged but it will work eventually. There's also some funny ones in there like using a lit torch on corn on the cob to make popcorn, which feels like the domino that could lead directly to Breath of the Wild. You can also light incense though I don't know what that is for yet. The setting is this big 8 level underground dungeon that you get thrown in to rescue a princess, or something. There was an attempt by a guy to establish a utopia (underground, in an evil abyss?) but it failed. There are all these disparate factions under the abyss, humans, goblins, lizardmen and so on and they have allegiances and feuds with each other. So along the way to finding out how to rescue the princess you get info about these eight artifacts which symbolise different virtues, which is familiar to me from trying Ultima IV which was kinda the same deal. Similar also is how nebulous and undirected the quest is. While it is the case that each of the eight levels offers an increase in difficulty, the game is very freeform in how you go about things. You can jump down a goblin toilet all the way to level 3 early on and get stuck in, or you can meticulously scan every corridor and room on each level first. The game is all about interaction and combining stuff, so you have on the left of the screen at all times things like 'grab', 'look', 'speak' and 'control/unlock'. Everything you 'look' at will tell you stuff about its condition, its quantity, a NPC's disposition towards you (which affects speech outcomes, and I think barter), you can pick up every object in the game and find some use for it, or throw it away (which triggers the physics in the game). This is, I think, one of the first 3D games or at least one of the first first person 3D games. It predates Doom and Wolfenstein. So it's impressive that there are some rudimentary physics, if you use your sling to attack enemies the ammo will bounce off of them, allowing to collect it again. You also have to take a running start for your jumps, in general the 3D movement is difficult to learn cause it's actually meant to be played with mouse rather than keyboard and you drag your cursor around to make your character move faster or slower. You can get away with WASD a lot but you can't sneak with keyboard and you can't jump. I've seen most of everything on the first 2 levels, fought and killed a floating eyeball in the mines for the mountainmen. I died while fighting it, but I had a silver sapling which turns into a tree which resurrects you, so I ran back and finished him off. Which feels a bit cheap, it's basically a Bioshock vita chamber. Maybe there's a catch to it I haven't realised yet, but I always put the tree in shrine rooms so that when I die I can at least level myself up. But I also don't know that the point in the game is to be an intensively challenging survival game, it's more about exploring and solving problems, and getting stronger equipment to do all the above more quickly. The quests are fairly basic and if I have a complaint it's that 'rescue the princess' is kinda a lame player motivation, so you have to find your own tbh. There's also some really miserable inventory management in here, maybe the worst I can remember seeing, bags inside boxes inside more bags which have day old bits of chicken and spikes and badly damaged cudgels that you forgot about hours ago. But the coolest quest I've done so far is encounter this lizardman and a mute wizard in a prison. In an earlier dialogue interaction some goblin was giving out about not being able to understand lizardmen, and told me what 'yes' and 'no' meant. So what happens is you talk to the lizard, he speaks an unknown language to you, you then go to the wizard and type in the words he says and he uses charades to tell you what they mean. That is imo the coolest fucking quest gimmick I've seen in a game in a while. Anyway, I found out that the lizard wants lots of food to release the wizard. A big thing that is making this click for me better than Ultima IV is that you have this auto map. It fills in as you explore, and you can take notes directly on it. I think this is the driving imperative in the game, being able to explore and understand how the areas in the abyss connect and where everything is. Rather than whatever the main story is about. Anyway I'm looking forward to seeing what's on levels 3 and 4

I know it's out in just a few days, but I was looking for something to play and instead of doing like I said and trying Hollow Knight again I wanted to give this another shot, the early access. I've really turned around on it in this session I think, maybe it's due to updates or maybe the quality of the game is a lot better than Hades I, or maybe it's just that I'm better at the sequel. But I think it's really good, something is really clicking here this time. What I think it is that the battle systems are more intricate, cause of the shift towards this style of battle mage gameplay. It has more or less the same systems and mechanics as the first one, but with a stronger emphasis on finding harmony with your combat options I think. Your basic starter is a staff with decent range, you have a cast which binds enemies and you can stack boons on top of that obviously, and you have your specials which tend to be ranged moves, but not always. The cast is hugely useful for kiting enemies and grouping them, which benefits certain AOEs that like clustered enemies but it can also be used by you with certain boons to regenerate mana. On mana, it feels like a much more important mechanic than in Hades 1 I think, if I recall in that game the game didn't just recharge your mana in each room, but I might be wrong on this. In this game, they specifically tell you to spend all your magic in each room, there's a big benefit to speccing builds that regen mana passively or from certain attack combinations and I think this lends to combat feeling less mashy and more skillful, which is a problem I think I had in the last game, it always felt like I was mashing. Here it feels much more like I'm actually playing the game, but that might be just on me not really enjoying the first one. But I think the sequel's witchiness just produces more interesting kits to fight with and makes it feel 20 percent less unga bunga (but still pretty unga, all told) Another thing which makes high mana use important is the 'hex' mechanic, which is the same thing as the super mechanic in the first game but you proc it by spending mana. So if you're holding onto magic and not finding opportunities to use it up a lot, you are throwing away DPS and crowd control There's an absolute shitload of 'reagents' and things that unlock stuff in your home base, and it has the same gift system as before to unlock accessories you level up in your runs. It has some new mechanics like an armour system which buffs your cast speed, or makes you run faster or whatever, but you lose it when you lose your armour. My favourite weapon so far are these fireball staffs that let you play like a zoner, and they have a special which is about crowd control damage. You unlock boons for it that let you zig-zag the fireballs around when you dash around and things like that. If you've played Hades 1 there's not a lot to say, I'm sort of skimming through the dialogue cause you can't turn subtitles off, which means I kinda just read it quickly and move on. I'm not that interested in it, but there's a few exceptions. One thing is that there are way more Homeric inclusions here, characters like Odysseus and others I won't spoil, so it's stuff I'm more familiar with and I enjoy the stylish twist it offers. There's a boss fight in this I cannot spoil but it's the coolest boss fight I've seen in a game in a while, and Hades 1 really only had one good boss fight imo, the last one. Maybe the first one also, the other two were rubbish. So hopefully that's a standard it can keep up. Anyway, surprised it's clicking with me, as a Hades 1 hater. I think I read that your saves carry across to the full game, but if they don't then I'll just treat it as a challenge to push as far as possible with a low level character come release, and maybe I'll actually read the dialogues this time.

So I'm about 4-5 hours into this, and so far it has been nothing less than phenomenal. It's a sequel to 2019's Jedi Order and takes place 5 years after the events of that game, again with Protagonist Cal Kestis (motion captured by Gotham's Cameron Monaghan), this time a lot more attuned to his Jedi powers, a little more dishevelled and world-weary but nonetheless determined to expunge the Empire from the Galaxy bit-by-bit, using his Jedi powers in tandem with small groups of misfits around the galaxy to do so. As this is a sequel, it plays very similarly to Jedi Order. You pilot Cal, his lightsaber(s), wield the force and explore different planets around the Galaxy in way reminiscent of a Souls-like and something like GoW/Tomb Raider 2013, you're able to go round different paths only to come to a dead end that will have a shortcut nearby it which will lead you back to a Mediation point (this games' Bonfires), you'll also encounter areas and paths that are inaccessible to you on your first visit, you'll have to return to these later once you have the required power and unlock the path. There's a lot of games like this nowadays, particularly open world third-person adventure games, so it's likely you've played one similar at some point, pretty much everything is back from Fallen Order, the way the game plays mentioned above, the platforming, certain set pieces, certain slidey bits you drop down into before/after/during said set pieces, you'll be lightsabering a lot of Troopers and wildlife, solving puzzles and collecting trinkets. There is a grappling hook of sorts this time around I don't remember being in FO, there are also stances that enable you to dual-wield, double-end or just have the standard saber setup. You can now customise Cal to the Nth degree (apart from changing his hair colour), including his Beard, Clothes and Hairstyle, along with his Saber (oo err) and your trusty Droid BD-1 who, again, returns from FO. So far I've explored two planets. The game itself starts off in the dingy underbelly of Coruscant, which is every bit as amazing as you think it's going to be, Neon signs everywhere, cyberpunk vibes out the wazoo, flying cars whizzing about all over the place, gaudy electric billboards and all the trappings you'd expect from this City Planet if you've seen the films. This planet is quite linear, you pretty much have your objectives and can still go off into mini-exploration zones which usually circle back and where you first started exploring from, but a lot of it is locked off for the time being, giving you a streamlined approach to the objective at the levels finale. Koboh is the second planet I've been exploring and is absolutely bloody massive. It's a Wild West feeling Frontier planet (complete with the accents!) which seems to just go on and on for miles from the vistas I've found so far. It's rocky but with plenty of beauty and charm, lots of interesting wildlife and interesting flora and fauna to look at and admire, I thought Coruscant was a visual spectacle but some of the vistas in this have been absolutely mindboggling. Compared to Coruscant which felt like a Planet you'd visit, this seems to be the Bogano of Survivor, the hub planet, with loads of different paths possible for you to take, loads of NPCs to speak to, shops to peruse and lots of mini-games and activities you can partake in Whilst I very much enjoyed the previous game, it did have lots of niggling technical issues that would eat away at your enjoyment from time to time, it just never really felt polished. You'll manoevre Cal onto a bit of pipe and he'd randomly do a Tee pose, there would be silly little bugs frequently enough that you'd notice them and kind of roll your eyes but never really annoyed or frustrated, that kind of stuff. But here, thankfully, all that has seemingly been eliminated, in my eyes at least, as everything feels so incredibly polished and buttery smooth, as alluded to above the game is a visual spectacle, it looks absolutely bonkers at times, particularly on my TV. I'm playing in Quality Mode on PS5 for reference. If on PC though, it might be best to wait a couple of weeks for a patch, because, much like most big recent PC releases that version has been borked - which is a shame and not acceptable - but if on XSX on PS5, this would get a strong recommendation from me already, particularly if you're into Star Wars and/or similar third person adventure metroidvania/souls-like type games. Pics:

for those that don't know, Horses made the news a couple of weeks back because it was refused a place on Steam. I'm not going to get in to it too much here, but seemingly the devs were asked to submit a build to Valve because they were concerned about some of the content on the store page, they did, Valve didn't like what they saw and refused it. The devs made some changes but no dice. It's also then been refused a place on Epic, and for a day Humble, but they're fine with it now as are Itch.io and GOG What I can say, now I've played through the game, is that there's nothing there that really warrants a ban as it is now. Whether or not the game deserves the attention its had I suppose is another matter, but I enjoyed it, and found the story quite interesting. It's also only £4 on GOG, so its not exactly a huge risk if you're interested Horses is about a student who's strict parents have sent him for a summer job on a remote Italian farm, where he'll be helping the farmer with his work around the farm. The farmer seems nice enough, I mean aside from what he gets up to he's actually quite likable tbh. The thing is, what he's been getting up to is rounding up people he deems to unworthy or unclean, then injecting and them and turning them in to human horses. Literally wearing horse heads, eating hay, giving people rides around the farm and dragging ploughs it definitely gets quite dark, there's things you'll have to do that you won't want to. There's moments of cruelty, abuse and sadism. Scenes that bring to mind the creepier moments of David Lynch. There's lingering pauses and odd close ups, veiled threats. Whatever you think of Horses, it does build some atmosphere However, it's also not what you're picturing, it's not as relentless and "hardcore", it's also quite funny and silly, and never goes as far as it probably could have, and certainly not as far as you'd expect for something even Valve wouldn't put up on Steam The gameplay is basic stuff, like water the plants by getting the watering can, filling it up, then heading to the vegetable patch. Or digging a grave by getting the shovel, a wheelbarrow and so on. It's a narrative heavy game, and it's a pretty good one imo, even if its not life changing

I guess I'll try and kick off a thread for this. I got this yesterday and played through most of the Berlin mission. I'm basically at the end of it but trying to hold off on progressing too fast and want to savour things a bit. These games are so good at designing levels which are rewarding to explore, I always enjoy the feeling of taking a really long time to work my way to a specific area and then finding a really inconspiocus short cut I could have taken, the multibranched progression through each stage and the way it twists and winds into itself makes it fun to literally just walk around looking at shit. Even while not necessarily making much progress on your targets. I play with almost all the HUD elements turn off except the one which lets me see targets are red guys. Not to make the game obtuse or difficult but to get more of the pleasure of just wandering around looking for ways in, or eavesdropping convos. You do sort of need the instinct vision tho as some targets are not very obvious to look at, especially in Berlin I'm not playing Hitman for the story so I was happy to jump right into the first mission that interested me, I tried a bit of Dubai but it looks more like an introductory mission with some story handholding. Not that that's bad, they do it in the other games too. Berlin is very classic Hitman tho. It even has a flavour of Hitman Absolution to it with the way it sets things up, but I think it's better than Absolution The premise of it is Older Hitman games have played with this concept a bit (Silent Assassin, Blood Money) but it takes center stage here It's quite a pretty game, it doesn't look hugely different to the last two but they made some lighting adjustments like screen space reflections. Not ray tracing, but I don't think it really needs it. The older levels get updated with it as well. I posted some screens in the screenshot thread but they came out a little too dark and don't get the visuals across very well. I imagine it looks great on Series X/PS5. There's also some great line reads in this. I'll probably just dip into levels from all three games now that they're all on the one package and 60GB. I still have to do Japan in 1 and every mission in 2. For now I'll stick with the new stuff.

Been playing a game called Sektori this evening. It's a lot like Geometry Wars, like, quite a lot like it. Neon wire frame graphics, EDM beats, enemies dropping in, and the enemy behavior changing as you get further in. The ways that it's different, from my blurry memory because they changed a bit, the level changes constantly, and you need to be out of the red zone when it does otherwise your run is over. You select a weapon like R-type or Gradius, in that when you pick up enough XP a level up item will appear that needs to be collected. On the left hand side of the screen are your perks, each of those level up items you're holding climbs you up the ladder and you eventually select whichever one you want, with different levels to each one like speed, missiles or your blaster. Plus there's card things you unlock at points during your run that give you perks, so I ended up with drones shooting alongside me, and the ability to shoot behind me too. Eventually there's bosses if you survive long enough, plus the word MIRAGE to spell out if you time collecting letters at the right time, I've not managed it yet so I've no idea what happens. It's very difficult to parse at points, but it's also one of those games where you find yourself lasting longer and longer at It's on PS5 and Steam, no idea about Xbox or Switch

The Half Life 2 documentary made me start up a new save on that game, but then I decided why not play the original. I've played it before but it was on PS2, which has huge auto aim and kinda comes from a point in time where this genre wasn't well served at all on console (arguably, I'd still say this is the case, but PS2 was so much worse). I put it on hard mode, cause I beat Doom Eternal like that so surely I'll be fine. Anyway this game is a dick, it comes from a school of design that feels so odd to return to cause it's really unfair but also that is the point. Not in a Dark Souls way, it's more like it's trying to be an action horror comedy or something. Black Mesa is out to kill Gordon all the time, walk down a hallway and shit is blowing up. They hide things out of sight and then jump you with vortigaunts on both sides and you die. You quick save a lot. There's a lot of 'ffs, how was I supposed to know the platform would crumble beneath me into a room of headcrabs for guaranteed damage or that the elevator would break and drown me in radioactive piss'. But you just continue on anyway I think it's cool though cause it makes Black Mesa feel so dangerous. It helps an old game like this still feel immersive cause the place is trying to fucking kill you all the time, whether it's the extra terrestrials you imported via the bit of cheese you pushed into the laser or cause of the facility's in built security systems. Sometimes when talking about stuff that's old and influential it's easy to file it away as 'important, but not worth going back to'. But a lot of the time the reason that something is influential is cause it was super fucking good and that quality isn't always something which fades over time, even as other things build upon it. The approach to set pieces in Half Life is a lot purer than modern games cause it's always happening around you and you are always in control, you have to react to what's going on and adapt. It doesn't feel like it's awkwardly pausing the bit where you play the game for an interactive cutscene or anything like that. The way it combines combat, exploration, platforming, environment hazards, horror, it reminds me of RE4 in how it constantly introduces new gimmicks and knows when to retire them just in time for something new and fresh. Constant forward progression that always feels satisfying It also still plays really well, far faster than Half Life 2 and a billion times faster than Alyx. I think once they started fucking around with physics in 2 it slowed the pace of gameplay by like a third, at least. Became more about interactivity and puzzling than run and gun violence and explosions. I like how you have to chuck grenades into unknown areas to smoke out enemies, it's more a strategic weapon than it is a damaging one cause of the potential to get sucked punched by some bullshit you don't see. The trap mines are also fun to play with. I'm at the Surface Tension level and will probably beat it over the weekend, then onto HL2. I'll have to play Portal 2 at some point cause that's one I've never completed on any platform. I do remember the final chapter or two being a pile of shit on PS2 so I hopefully it's less of a hassle here, probably not.