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I think this is only on pc currently, but I can't see why it wouldn't come to everything at some point. First thing to say, it's not a racing game, it's a platformer. It's sometimes a Crazy Taxi em up, but it's core game is a platformer. It's structured like Mario 64, and the guy who made you (you being the taxi) is called Morio. It's kind of funny, looks like a Saturn game, and the villain is Alien Musk, who is evil, owns a car company, and wants to get to the moon. I kind of both really enjoyed and was hugely frustrated with Yellow Taxi. It controls like a kart, it's very nippy, but not very precise, so it being a platformer leads to issues. The way the game is laid out is, bar a couple of levels, when you open new worlds (via portals in Morio's home) the point is just to find these corrupted cogs that open up the next world. It feels aimless, beyond the message that pops up saying you've unlocked the next world it doesn't really give you any feedback. However, there's specific characters you can help who will then reappear later, they can be useful, but again, I'm missing some I think, because I mustn't have encountered them. The cogs start off relatively easy to find, and on the Crazy Taxi stages taking people to places rewards you with cogs sometimes, on these levels you have a time limit, with extra time rewarded. As you progress you end up having to boost off ramped scenery to take to the air to land on a small platform to boost and boost cancel to gain height. Eventually cogs are on needle like steeples way off in the distance I did have an abundance of of cogs initially but the requirements ramp up towards the end. Fortunately I discovered there's an area outside Morio's house, and that has levels within it, if you saved those people, which means more cogs to choose from At points I found Yellow Taxi Goes Vroom hugely frustrating, and when I was missing a ton of cogs for the final world I wondered if I'd bother finishing it. I was controlling it like a racing game, using the triggers, maybe if I'd used the A button it would have been easier to control. Its good but it's fiddly. That said I watched a video of someone else and they were ridiculous at it. I did beat it too, so maybe I did ok

My battle brothers First up, so far, orcless. Zero orcs. This time you're fighting the Tyranids, a hive mind swarm of demon like creatures (who may not be demons in the lore, but they've blade like appendages rather than arms), and while you might first encounter a small cluster, generally this prompts waves to follow. A lot of the time you're fighting them in standard combat, swinging your chainsword, countering and dodging the larger monsters, and taking out the distant projectile throwing Tyranids with your bolt gun. There'll be points though where you have the high ground and have to try to delay the swarm by throwing grenades or exploding barrels as the Tyranids scamper over to swarm your position It's fun, it's a bit basic and samey, but it's fun. In some ways I wish you felt a bit more indestructible than you do, but I suppose that's less interesting as a game, and the Tyranids are a threat. There's also another enemy type that's more like the rats from A Plague Tale, nicely you generally get a flame thrower for these sections, that's fun If its anything like the original it's going to kick on in the 2nd half, and there'll be some more variety. I think I'm currently trying to get to a lost/stranded Magus, which feels quite early in still. Also I watched this this morning which was quite a good background to Titus up until this point, I'm not sure how much he's a character outside of the games, but there's a lot there

Been playing this for around 6 hrs on Series S - and it's quite enjoyable. Has some similarities, in terms of roguelike progression, as Into the Breach, although game presentation and pathways are significantly different. I've defeated the first boss, and so I'll see how well it keeps my interest (probably up to a point where it turns into a grind (or not)). Anyway it's certainly a bit different in looks at least to the mainstream.

I was pretty close to just bumping the old thread because man, is this Persona 3. I'm sure there are plenty that want a remake as faithful as this but I was more on the side of using the opportunity to take a second run at it and tighten it up a bit and improve some of the story of the game. There are quite a few changes to the dungeon crawling element, a lot of additions in presentation and mechanics such as the ability to pass a turn to another party member after hitting a weak spot which makes the game easier. But I was a bit disappointed with the AI party members since there are less tactics than the original and they don't use the new mechanics. Just for nostalgia's sake I tried to play it the old way but it's so not optimal. It just seems to be thoughtlessly added and it's clear they're really expecting people to play it with direct control of the party. I just always thought it was cool to be the leader of an autonomous group and it's just faster too. But oh well! Bosses haven't really been touched very much either, mechanically, despite those getting quite a bit better in later games is a big missed opportunity too. Other difference is it obviously looks better... actually, I dunno, it doesn't have the creepiness of the original to me, something to do with some of the colour grading maybe. Looking too clean isn't hitting quite right. More of the game is voice acted, I think it might be a little rewritten but I'd have to look at side by sides to be sure but it's mostly the same stuff happening and even acted out the same way. I'm not new to this game but I think to someone that is or is coming from Persona 5 it's still gonna feel like an older iteration despite the new coat of paint. It's still one of my favourite games, and I've barely stopped playing it but it's my fault, I did at one point dream of a game that felt like a sequel to P5 but with P3's story and it isn't that. It's P3 with some modern concessions.

About time for some impressions, I think. So its a 2D fighting game made by ArcSystem Works, a studio famous for its 'Anime' fighting games. They usually have a lot of systems and movement options as well as combo systems that can be extended to let players do some crazy stuff as long as they have the execution to do them, which is usually quite hard to do. They have made it simpler here. The first thing is its very easy to 'get in' in DBF since you have a button that activates the 'Dragon Dash' which has you fly across the screen and home into your opponent, and it also goes through most projectiles so for beginners fighting each other having that is useful for swiftly getting in. But it is very punishable, so learning when to use it properly is an early lesson. It has a few mechanics to aid beginners because I'm sure they recognise that this is a Dragon Ball game and a number of people playing it won't necessarily be into fighting games, they'll just be fans of the show so letting them have a good time is a priority here. One of the other ways they do this is by having auto-combos (performed by repeatedly pressing the light attack (LA) or medium attack (MA) for a more powerful variant that ends in a metre costing super). They're not a thing I'm fond of as they won't teach you the game that well but they do make for some cool looking action. The auto-combos, in fact, are totally unique combos. In a lot of other games, they are the same visually as manual combos but do less damage. And since they are unique here its a shame to see them locked into the auto-combos and not be able to do them manually. For example, Frieza, a character I use has a really cool looking move in the first part of his auto-combo which launched them into the air. So what I sometimes do to mix things up is perform the first half of the A-C then go into a manual one when in the air. But I wish I had the option to do this move anytime. But while there is a very flashy and basic fighter there is a high skill ceiling here as well, which you will discover at the time of writing when you go online. It isn't as high as ArcSystem's other games but there is still quirky stuff. Since this is a 3v3 fighter you can call in a member of your team to do a one-off move and jump out again. Using these can give you the ability to get hits in and continue combos where you couldn't without. Or they can be used to cover approaches, help defend etc. There is also the little mechanic also found in ArcSytem's other games; the jump cancel. Its something I've always known about but I've not really put serious time into learning but if you want to get beyond hammering out basic stuff you gotta get used to it. Essentially any medium attack can be jump cancelled. A common thing to do would be crouching MA (which puts them in the air a little), standing MA (pops them up a little more) then hit up while the animation is still happening to quickly meet them in the air. Since you can only use your proper launchers and Dragon Dash once per combo link it frees you up to use them later in the combo and its the mastery of this that really frees up the fighting system as a whole. It's here where it really gets fun. I've not really played the story yet but I hope to get round to it soon (it's kinda bonkers it's about the Dragon Ball gang being controlled by an entity and they turn to the camera when referencing this entity) and it also has this weird turn-based map system between fights. There's other stuff. Sparking Blast and how the online seems to be kinda borked at the moment in that the games run fine until it kicks you out of the lobby for no reason, but this will do for now.

This just came out a few days ago on PC (not seen any info about a console release?), it’s really good imo. It’s like a turn based tactics game with some emphasis on moving enemies around and throwing them out of windows, a bit like into the breach, but also quite a bit different too. But that’s why when I first saw a video of it I was interested in it because I really really like into the breach. you basically setup all the moves of your wizards, and can see what the enemy will do before ending a turn you have the chance to rewind move by move, but when you end the turn that’s it for that turn you can’t go back any more. You have lots of special powers like one wizard bouncing a laser type attack between enemies pushing them in different directions, preferably all out of different windows. at first I was struggling with the different abilities and making the most of them but I’ve got into it and using the abilities better now, at first I was getting through the levels ok but struggling with the extra objectives, now I’m getting a lot more of those done too but not always, they add to the difficulty so it’s not too easy. so yeah it’s very good the writing is funny too. ~£15 with a launch discount on steam.

Got Ubisoft+ to play this and 3 days early. I’ve put about 7 hours into this now and I’m quite enjoying it but some of the bad does come in dribs and drabs. Too much of the game so far has been stealth sections in which you cannot use weapons and if caught you surrender and are pushed to the beginning to have to do it all again. Someone at Ubisoft must have thought the stealth section of Ocarina of Time was the best bit 😆 When not doing this though and playing along at a leisurely pace in cities or travelling the large gorgeous world it’s quite a blast and I look forward to getting more into it.

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

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.

Played an hour of this so far and agree with the above. It's very Souls in combat, but if those games disagree with you due to the lack of direction, this is more like a proper action RPG with main quests, side quests and a compass type thing in the UI that shows where you need to head to do your thing. I have no idea what's going on in the story as I wasn't really paying attention, but it also seems a bit intentionally vague as well. Art style seems cool, but not sure how I feel about the lack of faces.

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.

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

Had this lying around for a while and decided to give it a go at last. I'm completely unfamiliar with the original, I know it melted video cards back in the day and I do have the remaster/remake, but never got around to playing it. So I couldn't tell you whether this was a sequel or a reboot or something in between (though I think it's a sequel). In any case it drops you on an alien planet as a dude with no memory, gives you a jetpack and a gun and then asks you to talk to aliens that are surprisingly open-minded about a human running around and shoot a couple of spiders (or rather tons of them – I played for 2 hours and already killed 200 enemies). Fundamentally this is an open world game designed with late PS2, early PS3 design principles in mind, there's a couple of points of interests your map reveals by you running around close to them and completing them usually results in immediate rewards like a larger health bar etc. There are shades of RPG in that you have two separate skill trees for traversal and combat, each of them using different kinds of XP so thankfully it doesn't force you to choose between cool Jetpack stuff and cool shooting stuff, but rather how you prioritise developing either independently. The early game is super talkative to the point where I think it's maybe a bit overdone. Think ME1 Citadel but without the smart word-building. It does a somewhat good job of introducing its own lore and vocabulary (in a nice touch, you can make a glossary pop up mid-conversation) during these early moments, but you will feel relieved by the time the world opens up and you can wander/glide around on your own. I have invested zero points in combat so far but the shooting feels good (even if movement not always does), thanks to some aggressive auto-aim on console that works almost like a lock-on (you can turn it off if that's not your style). There's also an energy shield at your disposal that works as expected and can be used as a melee attack up close while the Jetpack can help you dash around on the battlefield. There's also some super attack that freezes enemies around you – so definitely more than enough tools to have some fun, though I admit none of them are really necessary when fighting spiders. Though I presume that will change as it goes along and enemy strength increases. Visually this is a splendid production that yet again proves we don't really need AAA budgets, with really beautiful flora and some great use of bloom and diffuse lighting to give it that distinct alien 'Outlast' shine. It doesn't, however, run super clean, at least on console. Quality mode feels a bit sluggish and Performance mode has frequent dips in busy areas and screen tearing. It doesn't bother me too much and it does talk about some VRR thingies in the options, but I can't try those out with my TV. The other downside of its presentation are rather dated character models and animations, though that's usually the case with these mid-budget games and I really don't mind it at this point – especially when the writing is very early 2000s anyway, it's not like it'd pull you in with masterful dialogue anyway. But so far this makes a really nice first impression if you go in with the right expectations. (Not a glitch on the gun, it just looks that way.)

Spent a few hours with this over today and Friday (through Game Pass on Series X) and it's OK... I've seen it described as a Souls-lite which is a fairly good shout to be fair, this actually has three difficulty levels though which is nice for a game like this (although you can't earn achievements/trophies on story) and so far it's been pretty manageable even for someone as crap as me at this style of game. You play as Nor and her companion Enki (the magical god fox)... it plays much as you'd expect with melee combat mixed with a little gun action. The gun can be used to knock enemies out of unblockable attacks and such. It has a cool risk reward thing going on where different actions in combat will raise a percentage multiplier and you can keep that going for as long as possible before you choose to "bank" your reputation but take one hit and the percentage is zeroed and your reputation is banked minus the percentage. Reputation can be dropped at death and needs to be collected again before another death. The story so far has been a bit meh, something about the Undead and bad gods blah blah... tbh I've yet to play a game like this that actually had a good story and the voice mixing isn't helping much considering a couple of the characters seem to have voices that consist of pure bass and just seem to rumble more than anything else. I kindve feel a little hooked on it so far though... unless there's a massive difficulty spike along the way I can see myself slowly plugging away at this.

It's a bit like deus ex/dishonoured but less stealth and more scary. i really like those games so i really like this game. it's also less level based as you can explore the whole space station. you can get powers to turn into a cup, although i didn't really use them. and i say it's scary but its maybe more that the music is scary, it put the fear of god into me and i had to keep taking short breaks to calm down, had some less intense music been playing i think i could have halved my completion time of around 33 hours. oh and you can do stealth but i didn't so not sure how viable it is, but it didn't seem as viable as in deus ex/dishonoured. you get upgrade points that you can spend on special powers/more health and stuff. some of the powers seem cool but i didn't really use them, i went for hacking/repair/heavy lifting stuff to open up more areas. some of the enemies can turn into in-game objects, like a book or projector, which can be quite freaky. the crafting/materials system is nicely implemented, didn't spend much time messing about in the inventory. the gloo gun is pretty cool, freezes enemies and can be used to aid platforming, although the platforming controls are a bit hit and miss. my basic tactic was to gloo gun stuff then shotgun it in the face - i was playing on easy mind so that might not be as effective on higher difficulties. the story is really good and intriguing, although the end was a little disapointing. lots of interesting side missions too. and the game makes you think about your choices, some side missions i didn't do because i was concerned about the consequenses. i played it on pc, my pc is old (2500k) but with a modern-ish graphics card (970) and the performance was great, looks really nice and ran really smooth, except for 1 room, where even on medium it was a little choppy. so yeah i liked it

So this has a demo out, presumably on every system, and it's relatively chunky at around 90 minutes to two hours. Turns out it's pretty neat and I actually bought it on a whim after the demo ended. One thing I noticed right away is that despite there being lots of discourse about it, most of it was so focused on its technical side that I never really knew what kind of game it actually is. So I was a bit surprised to find out that it's not a linear run & gun shooter, but more of a story-driven adventure with (very) slight Metroid elements, platforming sections, a couple of (easy) puzzles, a skill tree and some downtime sections where you talk to NPC. Not saying a straight up shooter would have been worse than this cocktail but the fact that there's more to do than just click on heads was a welcome surprise. I also really enjoyed its opening act – the story is a relatively trope-heavy YA mix of different things, but it's surprisingly engaging IMO. On the gameplay side, while it's not all shooting, the shooting part is still the meat of it, with every aspect of the skill tree boosting your combat prowess. As the Avatar Unforeseen, you can wield all four elements three magic types, which means you have the funky equivalents of a rifle, a shotgun and an SMG build into the gauntlet on your hand. Per magic type are three subtypes and there's a bunch of other stuff like Overdrive and more powerful spells filled by a mana gauge. It can feel a tad overwhelming at first but you'll soon learn to wield them properly, pick out snipers with blue magic (rifle), pull in supports to finish them off with the red magic (shotgun) and slow down brutes while pumping them full with green magic (SMG). I do want to point out though that it's a very static game in the sense that all the horsepower of the console is being used to make it look as pretty as possible. There are zero physic toys available here, the world is purely decorative. I'm not too bothered by this but it does feed into the discussion that hardware resources are being used for ultimately irrelevant things today. Speaking of, visually it's really stunning, as expected. I think there have been a few patches since release that increase the native resolution and make the upsampling a tad less aggressive. It does look sharp, but I'm only on 1080p, so hardly a high-end benchmark situation. But it also runs a but sluggishly at times and can only really hold the 60fps target in closed-off spaces. Which I think is the exact opposite at what it was at launch, when it was locked to 60 no matter the cost. Probably would have preferred that to be honest, but at the end of the day it's not a dealbreaker for me. But so far, so good. I wish the demo had come out a bit sooner, because I think it might have helped selling a few more copies and avoiding the unfortunate downsizing of the developer. Getting greeted by this when booting it up feels really bittersweet now:

It's hard to explain The Cub without being reductive. It's kind of a really pretty Limbo, except without the puzzles. The most striking thing about it, without doubt, is how it looks. It looks like a cartoon, the devs have done an amazing job with it. It's even got the choppyness to the animation, without it being too overbearing. The characters look great, the backgrounds look great, and there's even a few bespoke animations that are only used for set moments. It runs really well too, my desktop hitting it's max framerate on a game like this isn't a huge surprise I suppose, but it was locked at 60fps on Steam Deck too Gameplay features a lot of platforming, nothing especially challenging, we're not talking Celeste or whatever, but you will likely die a few times. Often this will be because you have to encounter something to know it's coming, the mine cart section for example, it's just a case of failing until you learn it. It's also where I noticed a did of animation delay. Pressing to duck actually takes a few frames to happen because The Cub animates to duck. That caused a few deaths. The double jump either gets taken away from you at points or it's more temperamental than it should be. Similarly there were a few times The Cub didn't grab ledges. It adds to the feeling that the platform mechanics aren't quite there The rest of the game is made up of stealth, chase, flying and a couple of swimming sections. With the stealth it's not always clear what will act as stealth, a problem from the art style I suppose, but it's not too frustrating. Which sums up the game I suppose, you'll die a decent amount, but it isn't hard, it's just a case of learning what to do A word for the story too. Humans have fled earth, they're now Martians and are taking trips back to mine resources and play golf. The Cub is a mutant who has survived on earth. The catastrophe that made earth uninhabitable was caused by late stage capitalism, and the rich abandoned the rest of us to die here. There's a ton of moments that are pulled from the headlines, I suppose your mileage with that will vary. All in all The Cub is a decent game. It came out earlier this year and had a pretty significant discount on Steam during the recent sale. It's a few hours long, nothing too demanding

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

Minishoot' Adventures (I don't know why there's an apostrophe in the title) is a mashup of a 2D Zelda style game with a twin-stick shooter, and it's amazing. I played the demo during the recent Steam Nextfest, then bought it during the summer sale. The demo appears to be still available, and even at full price it's good value at under £13. The plot's about as light as you'd expect from this type of game, but it plays brilliantly. The movement and shooting feel great, exploring the maps for secrets is satisfying, and the abilities and upgrades to your ship as you progress are fun. I 100% completed the map, and beat the "true" boss in a bit over 13 hours. It's seems like it's only on Steam right now, but it absolutely ought to be on consoles. Here's hoping.

So, this is the new game from the Civ and XCOM developers, Firaxis. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, it is a turn-based game. It's safe to say it's more closely aligned to XCOM than Civ though, but this has an ace (or many aces to be exact) up its sleeve that differentiates it from just being a Marvel XCOM game, and that's the largely divisive (from Previews) inclusion of Cards into the combat. As a result of the cards coming into play, the game isn't as rigid or locked into a grid like it is in XCOM, you're free to move somewhere within the little combat arena you're placed in once per turn, with certain placements being preferable, scoring knockbacks or environmental attacks. You can draw three cards per turn, but certain cards do get refunded as they're used up, giving you an additional card or two per turn, you can also redraw any card you're not happy with twice per turn. A lot of the cards so far are quite basic, in that they are 'standard' kind of slash/punch kind of moves, but they do come with additional benefits like knockbacks, chain attacks, inflicting bleed damage and the ilk, on top of these you've got ability cards which gives you and your team buffs as you fight and hero cards which are much more powerful and usually allow you to take out multiple enemies at a time, the kicker being that you need 'heroism' to use them, which is gained by taking out enemies. The enemies themselves have been fairly standard grunts for the most part, if you imagine the basic super soldiers from XCOM, then it's pretty much the same here, just they're now Hydra Soldiers. The bosses have been more interesting as they're now various Marvel villains instead of snake-creatures or something like they were in the XCOM titles. As established in the paragraphs above, the game shares a lot of DNA with XCOM, and that's no bad thing, the animations, certain effects you can pull of like the knockbacks mentioned earlier and the environmental attacks all look and feel very similar to XCOM but they've now got a more grandiose superhero sheen on them. You'll head out on missions from the 'war room' with yourself ('The Hunter') and two other heroes chosen at random to assist you. You'll about your task, fight a boss or retrieve an item at the end of it and then return back to your base. It's in this base segment of the game where you can see where Firaxis has been far more ambitious than their previous title. In XCOM, the base was an important part of the game where you'd build new sections, invest research points into them to help bolster certain specialisations, new weapons and all that good stuff. All of this DNA is contained within the 'Abbey' in this game, which is a huge Cathedral with sprawling grounds for you to explore to your hearts content, you explore this in 3D in your role as the Hunter, gone are the days of a 2D plain, seeing all your little soldiers move into their newly built wing. It's super impressive and such a great feeling 'base' right away that really makes you feel at home, all the segments you'd expect to be there are in their place but there's also tons of secrets to explore and a sprawling grounds containing blocked passageways which will likely reveal themselves to me later on. The Abbey has the feel of the School in Fire Emblem Three Houses or the Normandy in Mass Effect to it. This also takes inspiration from those titles in the new social links system, where you can sit down and hang out around the Abbey with your new team mates as you assimilate and get used to your new surroundings, doing so gets you friendship points which levels up your bond with your squad mates as the game goes on. I'm not too far into the game but I assume the more it goes on the more activities around the Abbey get unlocked and some of the more mysterious bits and pieces I've seen so far unveil themselves. The Abbey is the most ambitious element of the game and is almost a game unto itself, it makes me realise why it got delayed a few times. So yeah, I've loved my time with it so far (probably about 4-5 hours) and can't wait to play more, it's a real breath of fresh air compared to some of the other stuff I've played lately. To be continued and pics added.

So it's like a top down/isometric sort of rally game, with a nice basic/stylish graphics, it's great, the handling is spot on imo, it's on the realistic side but not as hard as dirt rally because of the wide tracks with lots of run off area (cut pretty much every corner), and there's a lot more scope for some nice power slides and opposite lock. its great fun. a trailer might explain it better: the leaderboards seemed to work at first but then seemed a bit broken, so hope that gets fixed, not that i have any friends on the epic store (think i'm 'spatular-' if anyone wants to add me). it's pc only at the moment but i guess it might come to consoles later. it's on steam for just under £20, well about £17.5 with initial discount, it's the same on the epic store but if you claim rocket league for free you get a £10 voucher so can get it for £7.5. might have been better getting it on steam for the leaderboards but don't regret my first epic purchase after getting control free with a graphics card and claiming 70+ free games on there. it's a bit hard to judge jumps because of the view but jumps are always difficult in rally games anyway. i'd like a normal chase cam and steering wheel support added, i recon it'd make great more-standard/not-top-down rally game too. these guys also did a game called absolute drift which is good fun - but also really hard to drift iirc - by default art of rally has steering assist on 100% i think, i haven't changed the default settings but am guessing turning that down makes it handle more like the old game. Anyone else going to give it a go?

Played about an hour and haven't got any of the Bioshock style powers yet, but it's done a pretty good job of teaching you some of the basics. The tutorials are hidden as gameplay elements (follow someone, play hide and seek etc), but a little on the nose for a while, once things start to kick off though it does a better job of setting things up so that if you want to do a stealth kill then you'll get an easy chance, if you want to do a drop attack then there's a convenient pipe above a guard. Or you could just walk up and stab people, whatever annoyingly on the pc it's got the same quirk Witcher 2 did, that it's 2 handed attacks mapped to the opposite mouse button, so the sword in your right hand is mapped to the left mouse button, while the gun in your left... Not a big deal but I did alert a few guards by dropping down and shooting a guard in the head instead of a nice quiet throat slit

FromSoft isn't messing around! Giant Mech✔️ Missile launcher✔️ Big gun✔️ Laser sword✔️ Jet propelled agility✔️ ..And go! This isn't Metroid however, this is your standard tool kit. Master it quickly. You get about the first couple minutes to introduce you to the controls. Then, you're on your own. Free to roam and battle as you wish. Your first objective has four markers, to be approached in any order. Naturally there is a lot of distance between each and From is quick to demonstrate that the enemies have the advantage. This is their base, you are the intruder. Be prepared to fight waves around any given corner. Some nice little Codec-like voices are your only warning the enemy has spotted you. The controls have come a long way since early AC's. After only an hour or so, I get what they were saying about taking what they've learned from Souls (more from Sekiro, really) and applying it to AC. Combat is fluid, reactionary and fast-paced. It all feels really intuitive, however. I imagine the first boss will be a rude awakening to any new to AC. I died a handful of times. But, this isn't Souls. This ain't no Vanguard either. I didn't defeat the boss by learning it's patterns, tells and counteracting them. No, I beat the boss by making the most of my own abilities. Your handler gives you one hint to dodge a specific attack. But it's more important than it seems. I mentioned Sekiro before, because you have the same meter system to the boss fights. Get the bar into the red with sustained damage and not only does this put the boss in a stunned state. But they take more damage too. Be careful that it does work both ways. Not to mention the cooldown to all your weapons and dodge/agility capabilities. This is all demonstrated in the first boss fight. When I "got it", I smashed the boss quite easily. I didn't get long to play today and likely even less time tomorrow. But just from the opening mission, I'm very impressed.

This game came out in 2021, but I was unaware of it until the current steam sale. It's a lovely, chilled golf-puzzle game. Over a number of different themed worlds, you complete golf holes, earning more stars for completing in fewer shots. Working out how to do some of the holes in 2 or 3 shots to get the maximum star rating is actually quite fun. Some levels have a hidden secret hole/cube/other object to seek out and hit with your ball, which will unlock an alternate path on the map leading to extra stars or a special hole. Completing that hole will add an extra hidden collectible "blue things" to some of the holes on the map, which are used to unlock access to more challenging caverns which make use of the various features and gimmicks you've played with on that map. They can take a bit of figuring out, but are very satisfying. There are only a couple of barriers to progress requiring you to have earned a certain number of stars to pass, or the caverns mentioned above needing x number of the collectible things. The requirements aren't high, helping the game to feel pretty relaxed (the final cavern at the end of the game only needs slightly more than half the total number of collectibles). I got right to the end without engaging much with the secrets, then went back to the first 3 or 4 worlds and completed a bunch of them and had a great time doing it.

I played 30 minutes of it. It asks you to create a bethesda account before even being able to play which is really annoying but you can get around by setting steam to offline. Anyway it seems good. Kind of more focused on just murder arenas from the look of things. But I'm totally ok with a game like that. You can turn HUD off but it's hard to play. The HUD is a bit much tbh, I need to spend some time figuring out what parts I can turn off. Playing on ultra violent