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The Solus Project is an environmental survival-adventure game, currently cheap on Steam, GOG, and Xbox Marketplace, in which the player controls an astronaut on a mission to save mankind. Their spacecraft crashes on an uncharted, alien planet, Gliese-6143-C, while on a mission to find a compatible world for a colony, after Earth is destroyed by a giant meteor. You can play as male or female, and have to survive on the planet and faces factors such as hunger, thirst, body temperature, and weather conditions. You explore the planet, which is full of temples and other interesting places. Your character is the lone survivor of the crew looking for a colony, and mankind is on the verge of extinction. Plants grow, burn, and rot. Weather changes from scorching heat to chilling storms, and the wind and humidity are unforgiving. You have to scavenge through the wreckage of your ship, craft items, explore vast areas, monitor your health, and sleep regularly. You're choice of sleeping place matters as you might freeze to death. There is something mysterious happening of the planet as well, and you have to explore to find out who or what it is.

Anyone else given this a go? This is one of this month's freebies on PSN and although at first I didn't think much of it, after a bit more play and some online, I think it's a really cool twist on Tetris. There's different modes to play but the simple description is Tetris with physics. The big change is that you can move half steps left and right and rather than compete lines to get rid of them, you either build up to a finish line or fit as many pieces as you can in a small area. All the while dealing with the fact that physics play a big part and your construction could fall apart at any minute. I've played some online matches and it seems to work pretty well.

I have to stop playing Ziggurat a second to tell you about Ziggurat. It's not a game for everyone but I'm really addicted to it. It's a dungeon crawler in FPS style, always limited to 5 floors. It's randomly generated so the same sort of rooms will appear on each floor, you just never know what type of room you will be wondering in to, it's often in the later stages a minion room full of enemies but there are trap rooms, puzzle rooms, secret chest rooms to name a few. The aim of the game is to get to and destroy the boss on the 5th floor of the Ziggurat. The Ziggrat which is a test maze used by a cult of wizards to weed out the average and find the exceptional. To pass each floor the basic requirement is to find the portal key (which is always in a room on it's own but could be anywhere on your current floor) and use this to summon the boss in the dedicated boss room. You can find the boss room before you find the portal key room but the boss cant be summoned without the portal key. Upon destroying the boss, a portal appears and leads you to the next floor. Each floor gets progressively bigger and and the enemies become stronger, later stages introduce some other room types like Obelisk, where you must destroy stone Obelisks that appear whilst the room continus to spawn enemies. All exits are locked untill you have destoyed all obelisks and enemies. You start off wit just your trusty wand but as you progress you can pick up another 3 weapon types. Your wand is unlimited but weak. The other three weapons run off mana, dropped by killed beasties, and must be constantly replenished. Your character can level up by collecting knowledge gems which are dropped mostly by slain enemies. Upon each level up you can pick one from a couple of different perks to aid your survival and it's the wealth of perks available and their varying effects that add a depth to this game. You can choose how to buff your character, for example you can pick to gain more health from potions, you can get a battler cry at the beginning of a fight that gives you extra health, you can choose to increase the mana pools of your varying weapons. You can also choose to do more damage when you drop to a certain health percentage, you can trade in your current weapon stock for a new set of random weapons that have extra firepower, the downside of this is that the fire rate could be a lot slower making some small minion rooms a lot harder. To add to this, each perk can be levelled up itself by picking the same perk again (obviously if it's made available to you) when you level up next time. Each perk can be upgraded 5 times. So do you pick a particular type of perk and make it strong or go for a wealth of abilities that arent strong individually but collectively make you a badass? So you have a choice of how to play the game, peg it through, hoping your lucky and find the portal key and boss room pretty close together so as not to take too much damamge from the rest of the maze or take you time, level up and become more powerfull but potentially fall victim so some fucking tough ass rooms. The real challenge (and addiction for me) has come with the different types of characters available. I think there is possbily only one from the start but you can unlock a total of 16, each with differing abilities which can make each game fiarly unique. For example I just beat the game with a Vampire called Corvus. His energy constantly drains but he gains health by collecting knowlege gems which are normally only for levelling up. Each time I levelled him up it was important to pick perks that aided health restoration (like battle cry or one where damaging in game objects add to your health). I got lucky and had a perk where collecting knowledge gems not only added health but also added mana for my weapons. It started really fucking hard but got easier as I progresseed, I was like a God when I got to the final boss on the fith floor. Other characters have a stong wand attack but shitty mana pools for the other more powerfull weapons, there's a thief character that is really fast, a wizard that has really strong weapons but shitty health or a dude who relies on his battle cry at the beginning of a fight to inject mana and health but knowledge gems and mana collected dont add much to their respective pools. Fuck me it's a deep old game once you get it. I could understand the point of view that it becomes repetative after a few rounds but I'm addicted. It takes between 45 minutes to an hour for a successful run. I've beaten it with seven different chartacters (they unlock as you progress by killing a certain amount of enemies or dealing a certain amount of total damamge) but I want to do it with all of them. I've got one more dude to unlock. Anyways, im off to play again.

First of all, I'm surprised there was no thread about this game, seeing as it's five years old. I can't be the only Trekker on the site! I tried this came when it first went free-to-play about four years ago,and thought at the time it was a fun romp, but nothing I'd want to dedicate a lot of time to. At that time, I played through the single player tutorial,had a bit of a giggle, and left it at that. I went back to it this week,almost by accident. I was farting about on the net, and came across this article about how Cryptic Studios had erected a couple of memorials to Spock within the game. One on Vulcan, one on New Romulus. So anyway, I thought this was a great idea, and quite fitting. The memorials will be there as long as the game is running,and the servers are supported. And then I got to thinking I'd like to go see them. A ten gigabyte download later, and I'm running through the single player tutorial again. Only this time it's much different. You see, STO is done in seasons, with the main story changing every season. The game is now on season 9, expansion pack 2. The main story (Trek Nerdy bit ahead, sorry) is that Captain Harry Kim (of Voyager fame) is heading back to the Delta Quadrant with a Federation task force. The Klingons are at war with the Federation, Romulus has been destroyed (as at the start of the JJ Abrams reboot) and the Romulan Empire has relocated to New Romulus. The Dominion is rebuilding it's fleet, and the Borg have started making excursions into Federation space. The game itself is split into two play modes. The first it space ship battle, with an emphasis on power distribution within the ship. It is, for example, possible to reroute power to the ships shields during combat, but at the expense of other systems. E.g. your ship might not turn so fast if you use power from the engines, You start with a small ship, of the faction you choose (Federation, Klingon, or Romulan) which will have three weapons slots, and do warp five. During your tutorial, any ship you fight will be within your abilities as long as you keep turning and firing. The second game mode is a third person RPG/Shooter. Your character (designed by yourself at the start) can beam from your ship to various planets and star bases. At star bases, you get your missions from the Admiralty, and modify your ship, hang out with other players, etc. During your various missions, you'll pick up star ship parts, armour, weapons. You can sell these, or use them yourself. I'll get into the games currency in a mo. Up until this point in my description, no money has been paid for the game. While on planets, you can interact with characters, visit sights, etc. Also, many planets you visit on missions will involve ground based shooter combat. Now, the main currency of the game is called Zen. Zen can be earned within the game very slowly, or bought with real money. About £4.50 will get you 500 Zen, although as with most virtual currency, it's sometimes better to buy from different countries, or look for deals and codes. Many of the things you can buy will have a lower level cap as well as a Zen price. This prevents a wealthy newcomer buying the most powerful ship in the game, for example. To give you some idea, 500 Zen will buy you a Constitution class ship, similar to the U.S.S. Enterprise as flown by Kirk and Co. Other currencies within the game are Dilithium, Energy Credits, and Gold-Pressed-Latinum. GPL is used for in game gambling. Dilithium is used when buying parts, weapons, etc. It's part of the price of many things, and also can be hard to earn. You can use Zen to purchase Dilithium. But also you can use Dilithium to buy small amounts of Zen. Energy credits are spent when buying stuff, and earned from selling stuff you don't want. It is possible to play the game without spending real money, but it can be a grind to get the Zen, and Dilithium you need. It also cost money to change your uniform, once you've chosen it at the start. there are some lovely uniforms to be had, with everything from the original series green wraparounds, to custom futuristic uniforms, but most cost money. I think it's the same with every free-to-play online RPG. You get a lot of game for free, but the stuff you really want is paid content. Onto my personal game. In Star Trek lore, any person in charge of a ship, regardless of actual rank, is called a Captain. My character is a half Betazoid, half Vulcan female called T'Gara. I chose her on the age old principle of if you have to spend hours looking at someone's arse, it might as well be a nice looking arse. She is currently Level 7, a lieutenant, and in command of the U.S.S. Thunderchild, a Miranda class vessel. I have passed the tutorial, and have been playing online missions within my level. There is a story to follow, but you can go anywhere, and do random missions. Each mission takes about 30 to 40 minutes, which I think is a nice time for drop in and drop out gaming. Also, there are fleet missions to do with many online players. A task force stopping a Borg invasion for example. There are the usual clans and stuff if that takes your fancy. All in all, I've been having fun with this game. I like the way it breaks up the space combat action with away team missions. It's a nice paced game, not overly difficult, but challenging enough in the right places. It looks nice enough in space, although the third person view can look a bit cartoony. But I like it so far, and I might put more time into it. Maybe I'll even lay out some cash. .

I might be the only one who has this? I think it came out a month or two ago and is currently on sale for about a fiver so bought it last night. It's pretty much a love letter to old 8-bit computer games, not like the American kind but the good old British stuff like Head Over Heels, Nebulus, Spin Dizzy, Marble Madness, etc. It's a pretty good puzzler so far and I'm very early on so judging by the trailer, I've got loads more to see.

Me and Sam gave this a go last night. It's a board game with multiple win conditions for 4 players. There's a lot to learn and tons of depth and just as soon as I thought as I was getting a handle on the combat, an AI player attacked me from a stealth position (so you can't see where they are on the board) and then the card battling system is disabled for that turn. So that was shit. You have to go round the hex board picking up quests and fighting the other players, plus other AI guards and creatures. The fighting is done with a dice system but you can also burn cards for better chances or more protection. The aim is to take over the king's position at the end. By the end, he will definitely die and you have to be in the best position to take his place, either by having more power and influence than the others, by killing him and surviving or by collecting 4 stones which will heal him. There's a lot to it and if anyone else is interested, this video shows it better than I can explain.

I think a handful of us have this now? I watched this video of it the other day and just had to have it: http://youtu.be/BAW-2Fl5KLE I've only played a couple of matches against AI which isn't great, to be honest, but I think it will be pretty special with a group of us. It reminds me of Rocket League in that it's like a version of football I can get behind. It really does play like "Asteroids meets football". You move with the left stick and only use one button to either tap for small shots or hold down for different strengths of shot. Or hold down even longer and make a solid block appear. That's pretty much it. I'm off for a few days from today so if anyone wants a game, give me a shout.

HAWKEN is a free to play game and i'd describe it as a budget mech fps. Think Titanfall, always in the Titans, but don't think Steel Battalion, It's not that slow paced. It doesn't have AAA monies thrown at it and looks to have had a troubled upbringing: Developer(s) Adhesive Games (defunct) Reloaded Games(acquisition)[1] Publisher(s) Meteor Entertainment (defunct) 505 Games (acquisition) I can't say that I didn't enjoy what I played. If anything it needs to be a bit more in your face and make you feel like you're a badass. A little like rocket leagues boom goals or Battlefields/CoDs levelled up sounds would have been nice. To begin with it just throws you straight in and doesn't tell you the controls. I played a few matches before realising holding down O/B replenished your health. Killing an enemy mech has them drop energy which also replenishes you a little. You can't go in guns blazing either as you're overheat and I'm not sure if this blows you up instantly or if you just become completely weak to attacks. The starting mech's 'special' allows for a short time of keeping cool whilst shooting your machine gun with L2 and your rocket launcher with R2. L1 boosts in in whatever direction you're holding so it's also a dodge mechanic and R1 allows you to jetpack around, both of these uses your fuel which replenish when not in use. Graphically the arenas a bit horrible and muddy. It does the job I suppose but a little more spit and polish would have been appreciated. The mechs themselves look ok and there seems to be plenty of them. What there isn't plenty of is players. A few of my matches were terribly one sided. Some were 4 vs 1. A message would pop up begging you to switch sides to make it more even which is embarrassing enough but the message itself was bugged or something and would say something like "Press ['outerboy_autocorretion'] to switch sides to make it even". Maybe there are players there but the match making system is tosh. The first time you start playing online you have to select a region and from what I can tell you couldn't select to include all. The rewards from finishing matches is confusing to me but I'm new to this free to play structure. From what I can tell it's a rip off. It seems like there are 2 kinds of credits. Blue earned in game and red only available using real money? For example, everything in the menu for customising your mech was only available if you had red credits available, while other sections had the option of using either a lot of blue credit or some red. I could have just explained every F2P game ever but I didn't seem to be getting very much back for my time playing. Although admittedly that was only for just over an hour I should have come away with some treats to make me want to jump back in as at the moment I'm on the fence about it. 3 mechs (out of 5).

I can wholeheartedly recommend The Lion's Song because the first episode is free. It's a story game with a small amount of interactivity, similar to To the Moon or A Bird Story, but the graphical style as you can see is totally different to those games. It looks very nice. The first episode is a short story that will take less than an hour to play through. It's not a dramatic story but it's enjoyable to play through.

This is the game you got this month with PS+ and I think it's the best thing they've put up in ages. Furi is all kinds of games. It's a twin-stick shooter crossed with a Ninja Gaiden style brawler that has almost Punch Out style bosses. And the fights are just with bosses; guys and gals like you with unique attacks and patterns. Fights are long, but escalate well making them not seem like a chore, except maybe when having to repeat certain parts if you're unsuccessful since some attack phases require you to just dodge stuff while you wait for an opening to strike. The fighting feels pretty good. It's maybe a little sluggish but apparently a patch is on the way which is good because the dash would be better if it came out a little quicker. There are no combos or anything to learn as you just hammer the square button to use your sword. It's more about timing and being in the right place, as well as taking advantage the parry you can do. You can also use the right stick to shoot in any direction, and all attacks have a charged version by holding down the button. It just all comes together to make a really cool game. The enemies attack patterns make things more interesting and they are the most creative examples I've seen in the genre for a long time. Visually it lacks a bit of polish but the art direction looks amazing at times and the soundtrack is spot on. It has that haunting synth sound that is really popular at the moment and shows up a lot but there is just something in how it mixes with the visuals that shows your game doesn't have to look like Hotline Miami or be an indigo and neon racing game for it to work. I mean, some of the game does look like that but each boss comes with their own environment so its used along with a different look. The story is presented mysteriously but not in a way that's obnoxious; it's quite pulpy. So yeah. This is definately a cool game. I think it's worth trying out. It is hard but... y'know: hard games are cool.

I can't find a thread for this, in some ways I'm not surprised because why it seems like the sort of thing a few people would play, it was way overpriced. Gone Home is kind of a discovery game, you don't really do a lot, but the more you search the more you'll find and the fuller the story will feel. It's set during the 90's, you play as the elder sister of 2 just returning on short notice from a year in Europe. Your family have just moved in to a new house, you arrive late at night and explore as your character the house as your character does. I'm not going to go in to the story because anything I say about it will mean something you don't have to discover, but it's pretty interesting. I can't say I agree with all the praise the game got, the 90s nostalgia is pretty funny, and there's a good atmosphere to things, but I'm glad I waited for the game to be on sale

If you've played the last one, Crimes and Punishments, then you should know what this is all about. If not, it's an adventure game where you have all sorts of choices about the cases and can actually get it completely wrong or decide on an outcome way before you properly finish the case. This is very much a follow-up, but they've changed the character models and voice actors and added some extra action sequences. There seems to be more an open-world approach too but not too drastic in that direction. I'm only 2 cases in so far but it's been good stuff, more of the same. I'm sure of you're not as arsed as me it'll end up dirt cheap or free on the Plus or Gold things eventually. But if you like a good detective game it's worth picking up.

This has been out a while but I've been playing it lately. Did anyone else? It's what some may call an 'old school' shooter. I started fairly unimpressed with it at first. The shooting felt a bit floppy, the swordplay which is also a big part of the game didn't become immediately apparent how to use effectively and it has a really obnoxious head bob for some reason. I'm not susceptible to motion sickness in games but I guess this game proves otherwise. But I stuck with it as there was something keeping me playing, and in doing so I unlocked more skills, moves and perks which started to show me that it wasn't as dumb as it looks. The game has you learning magic and moves for your sword that are pulled off by double tapping in a direction with the left stick and the pressing the left or right trigger. It gives the game a brawler/shooter hybrid feel but on a controller those inputs don't work that well. I can see it working well a keyboard but this is something that hasn't translated well. I'm now more used to it, you basically can't put in the input too quickly, but it took a long time to pull these moves off consistently. This was released as a budget game but so far it feels as long as a campaign in a retail game. But it does have very limited enemy types and it's only really the levels that stop it getting too repetitive since they do get smart with the kill rooms and the drip feeding of new skills also gives you more things to play with in similar scenarios. It's not just the head bob that is obnoxious, though. Shadow Warrior is a reboot of a game from the 90s that was a stablemate of Duke Nukem so of course the game tries to be funny. Credit where it's due; it sometimes - sometimes - is. But expect typical dreadful video game humour; all smart arse quips that aren't that smart, dad jokes and dank memes (there is a 'all of your bases are belong to us' reference for no reason. I wanted to eject the game from my PS4 and eject it out of the window when that happened, but it's yet another downside to the digital future). I'm drawing to the end now, I think. The game is quite fun overall, though.

So you drive around and stuff. Its like the first grid, but with better handling. The handling isn't the best still, still feels a bit odd, but from what I remember of the first one, I like the handling better in this new one, was getting quite into it last night using the pad. Its a bit floaty and twitchy, but decent fun IMO. There's a number of different events, like time trials, races, elimination, overtake challenges, so that's good to keep things interesting. the overtake challenges I was stuck on for a while, seem like a difficulty spike, although they are optional I think.. There's 3 types of car, drift, balanced, and grip - they all handle pretty similar though, just as described really, you can still drift the grip cars but it's just easier to drift in the drift ones....the game keeps telling you to drift, so I expect it's not a terrible idea like it would be in a more realistic game, well for going fast anyway. Its difficult to tell which cars are best from looking at the car select screen so I'm just randomly picking stuff at the mo. are the cars better as you go to the right maybe? there's a mix of pgr style city tracks and racing circuits. The graphics are really nice on Xbox, runs smooth enough too. The story is really stupid but that's expected. Yo I seen your vids on YouTube, let's form a worldwide racing league innit. Tried with the wheel today and I think it works better on the pad maybe, wheel would usually help with twitchy ness but here it's still really twitchy, and the force feedback isn't great, still does give some feedback info though. And I did get into it a bit more with the wheel too, so it's not bad on the wheel. Due to preorder bonus tracks, I canceled my order and just rented, enjoying it so sort of wish I hadn't canceled it now, plus it has online pass so I can't play online now- except for a 48 hour trial. The version of brands hatch in the game is the short version - the one I like anyway. (long version is a preorder bonus) So anyone else get this? Like it?

Started playing this last night. It hasn't come up as a game to play in the monthly thread yet (though has been suggested) but it's a good time to bring it up as is about to be released on PS3 and Vita. It's a platform puzzle game so I'm playing with a pad as I hate playing games like this with keys. There is a story running through it, it's very Valve/Portal-like and has Danny Wallace doing the narration which is quite funny. I'm sure people dislike him but I like him in this and found him ok in Assassin's Creed (2? Brotherhood?). I'm a few chapters in so won't spoil too much but the generic square or rectangle shapes have lots of character (in the narration at least) and it's a lovely looking game with nice shadow effects and a brilliant soundtrack. It was made largely by one guy on his free time while he worked in a big studio. Well worth picking up and giving it a go. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpsZaExywRk

This is up for free on PS+ right now, and I played it, so here is some impressions. I think I just want to vent. Man, do I hate this game. And for God's sake did I not want to hate it, I didn't want to be that guy. Table Top Racing is made by X-Wipeout folk, and that game rules so, so much. And after Sony Liverpool was dissolved this was what came out. A total mess. I'm heartbroken. It looks like Micro Machines from the 90s. I'm from the 90s, and I liked those Micro Machines games. They should have me in the palm of hair hands, nodding to a game from the 90s with me, as desperate as I am to hold on to my youth (got ID'd last week, I'm still a teen really). But no, this game is really, really confused. It is a lot like Micro Machines in a way. The tracks take place on table tops and its all small and cute, avoiding bread sticks and stuff. But, one of the 'cars' you can buy at the start to race in is the Breaking Bad meth wagon (it has official licencing) so I dunno what they're going for with tone ( Coming from a Mobile origin I guess who cares?). But screw all that: It's about the gameplay. That's what gamers tell me. Even though it is Micro Machines in presentation and has adult content officially licensed in a game that doesn't warrant it... and has a soundtrack that tries to beat Motorstorm: Pacific Rift despite in wubs despite not building up the atmosphere to make it work. The game itself is just shitty. It's a crude mobile port. Knowing it came from a gyroscode design I do respect it in a way. It's a Mario Kart style game that solely requires knowing the tracks for the best racing line, a lot like Wipeout I guess, but it is just executed in such an unsatisfying way; a way that is so unfun, especially compared to Mario Kart which it clearly tries to be as well; a game where it is more fun the faster you go thanks to the drift mechanic. This game punishes going fast in a silly way, despite presenting itself as Micro machines, at least visually. It's like it requires you to drive carefully, be sensible, hitting those apexes right (in a game where you drive through billiard balls like they're paper, with wubs, driving a meth van, with Mario Kart power ups). It's just all wrong. Play it! Tell me it works! I just can't believe these veterans got this so wrong, or they don't care anymore and just want to make something to tick enough boxes for loads of people to work. But this shit doesn't click, and it won't work on a large audience.. I guess they looked a Rocket League and thought they had the game to be this year's version. I expected better from these guys. Fuck this game. It's the fucking worst. Fuck this game. I've not hated a game this much in ages. Thanks for that, I guess.

Just thought I' d talk about a game I've been playing. I saw this on Steam as a pre-release beta, and as I'm a fan of Ghost in the Shell, I thought i'd give it a go. You play a member of Section 9, an elite force of cybernetically enhanced combat operatives responsible for protecting society and fighting terrorists on the streets of a futuristic Japan. It's a squad based tactical online FPS. As a cyborg, you have certain abilities such as heat vision, or active camoflage. However, there is also the opportunity to share your abiltity temporarily with your squad mates, or receive their power. I think it's still in beta. It's free to play, but you can buy early access packs for it. It's not too bad.

Played 10 hours of this so far, mostly with Sly and Small, absolutely loved every second of it I must say, and a whole lot more than when I played the Alpha in January. The game looks bloody stunning on PS4, the frame-rate seems to be 30 but incredibly stable (had no noticeable hiccups at all) and I haven't seen any bugs whatsoever, someone who I was playing with a bug right at the beginning (I think due to server overload) where everyone was queuing up to enter a button on a computer terminal to complete an objective in the Tutorial, but apart from that I've not noticed anything personally, just the odd bit of pop-in every now and again which is an extremely minor fault. Everything just looks so much better than the Alpha I played in January, I guess that's to be expected as that was running at 900p on the 'Bone apparently and the frame-rate, stuttering and screen-tearing was horrendous back then, but now, on PS4 at least, it's just buttery smooth, easily the most polished and stable Ubisoft game I've played in quite some time. As for the gameplay, well there isn't too much different here if you played the Alpha and/or Beta I guess, but the gunplay in particular (to me) feels slightly better, and more satisfying when you pop a headshot, it has almost that Destiny-level of Headshot satisfaction now which wasn't present in the Alpha I found, the main missions are fucking amazing (especially with friends), all seem rather varied and there's tons of them, tons of side-missions to do and that's not even mentioning the Dark Zone which I haven't been able to access yet (only got up to Level 10 earlier today). So yeah, an incredibly impressive first 10 hours with the game, can't really see me changing my mind, but we'll see I guess, really wish I got the Gold Edition when it was on offer on Amazon now because I just know I'll want that season pass. Also, Me and Sly played a few hours with Jim-fucking-Sterling-son and made it into his Division video , it was an honour playing with the man, the myth, the legend himself a couple nights ago: http://youtu.be/rP7YJYk9ubM?t=23m24s

I picked up the early access of Divinity Original Sin on Steam last night. My early thoughts are mixed. The game is way to early on to even be on early access. The character creation is currently set on default, so you can customize your character. They stripped female armor art work out of the game due to an overwhelming outcry from Tumblr's social justice feminist, which has made using the forums to give input on make the core game better completely useless as you have leftwing and rightwing morons trolling each other. Honestly I think people should be focused on other things at this point in development. My short list right now would be. Loading screens that take for fucken ever Janky and broken controls Muddy textures How the game manages resource's to improve overall performance The fact that the only enemy I have seen are giant fucken "Genji" crabs If people put political posturing aside and try to make the core game better then Larian Studios will have a very special game on their hands.

So this was one of the earlier successes on Kickstarter before (or around) everyone started doing. It's a 2D platformer in the style of classic NES games and it's made by Yacht Club Games who are a few ex-Wayforward people. They left over a year a go and Wayforward games aren't quite what they were; coincidence? I say probably (definitely). Since NES games are the inspiration for Shovel Knight it does play things basic. You play with two buttons and a D-pad; one jumps and one shovels. But you also press down and shovel while jumping to do a downward attack and you use that to bounce off enemies. That's what you mostly do and this game, and it stays damn fun while doing it. They've clearly explored a lot of possibilities with your basic abilities. Enemies are either really defensive knights who can be hard to hit or simpler enemies just placed in awkward places that make things difficult (or fun) for you. It's design we've seen before but maybe in not quite this way. You can also make life a bit easier for you by using items you get through the game. You use them by pressing up and shovel, like Castlevania, and the properties of these items are like the ones you find in that game. That's what Shovel Knight is. It's NES games you know put into one well made game. Specifically it's Konami and Capcom NES games that are the big inspiration: pre-SotN Castlevania and Megaman are clear inspirations, as is smatterings of Ducktails and Zelda 2. But it plays a nicer game than those NES games. It controls well, and does actually look a lot better than those games. It's more TurboGrafx than NES. It also has some more forgiving design choices, like the checkpoints, which can be destroyed for more money to buy upgrades but then you lose them for good (like, they're still not there when you pass them after you've died). That's a cool risk/reward mechanic but I think you can still get a lot of gold without having to destroy them, from what I can tell now I'm at the end, so I suppose it's a case of how fast you want to upgrade your stuff. And when you die you lose a percentage of your gold but it can be picked up again if you don't die on route to where you last died, 'cos Demon's Souls. But overall it's a really fun game in a genre that the indies have explored a lot at this point, but I'd say it's one of the better examples. It's made by people ball achingly passionate about that era of gaming and they've crafted the ultimate love letter with Shovel Knight. That's really cool, but it does mean the game struggles to find it's own identity. I wish they laid off the references as it didn't need them since the game's mechanics were all reference enough. Bottom line though is two thumbs up. It's got some awesome bosses and nice, thick, treacle-y chiptune music. I should go finish it now... Oh, it's pretty fuckin' hard if that needed to be mentioned.

So I got this a bit ago when it was on sale. I wanted a fighting game to see me through to SFV, and I've also wanted to get somewhat adequate at Anime Fighters (a sub-genre, not necessarily fighting games based on animes; just ones that are execution heavy and have air dashing and stuff in them (some say even Marvel Vs Capcom is an Anime Fighter)). And it has been working. Thanks to playing this a little my SFV is a lot more confidently aggressive than my SFIV... but this shouldn't be about that. What is BlazBlue like? It's really fucking complicated; more so than I remember. I did play the very first iteration of BlazBlue and had an okay time but I only played it a little and I wasn't as versed in this shit as I am now. Now I just see fucking madness when I try to understand it. This game is made by Arc Systems Works: they're really cool and insane, and they put air dashing in everything, as well as multiple gauges and systems in games you remember being much simpler. I love this stuff, but put in fast action games I just can't keep up. I try, but it oftentimes doesn't work out. I dunno where to start explaining how this shit works. I guess basically you have an 'Overdrive' gauge that fills up quite rapidly where you can either use it to make your special moves more powerful or use it to break combos if you have the rotten luck of playing against someone who knows how to play this game. You also have a multitude of special moves: a general one, the general one while in 'Overdrive' and a special one you can instakill with only under certain conditions. You have to do so much reading while fighting here; scanning all the bars and meters, knowing what it all means and what you can do while you have some anime folk air dashing around. It's very overwhelming. And on top of that the characters are really different. They're not Guilty Gear different (another Arc Systems Works game for those that think BlazBlue is too easy) but they do have their own unique mechanics. This is something SFV does as well and I imagine they've been copying Arc Systems' homework but doing it in a much more manageable way for the layman. Basically you have some characters that use different kinds of traps to play that way, or people who have complex but very effective mobility if you can 'get' it, there is a girl that homes in like a 3D game Sonic... etc... it's full of character unique mechanics. I've not scratched the surface myself. But overall it is just fun to play. There is a lot to discover in this mess and I will be slowly using it to help me 'git good' at fighting games generally. I'm not sure I'd recommend it to most folk. If you want something like this get Persona Arena. It's this kinda fun but for normal people.

From Kickstarter (2013) to Early Access (2014) to official release (2015), Sunless Sea came to be in a manner similar to many indie games in recent years. But even in Early Access it got brilliant reviews and was one of RPS's best games of 2014. Eurogamer gave it 10/10. Those endorsements were enough to pique my interest and I've finally gotten around to putting a couple of hours into it. My early impressions are that it's brilliant. Like I said in the Westerado thread, I love games that are a bit original and this is another game that feels unique. Essentially it is a kind of exploration and survival game. The above screenshots are pretty typical. From the safety of the port of Fallen London (read: some kind of dark fantasy post apocalyptic world) you have to explore the sea, visiting ports to talk to the locals, collect stories, trade all manner of things, pick up quests and generally - discover. The problem is, the extent to which you can explore is limited by your fuel and supplies (food), which are not come by cheaply. Not to mention that it's a dark, dangerous world. In many ways, it's similar to FTL: Faster than Light - but if you read the RPS article you'll see that this is much more of a wordy game, more of an rpg, much more of a developed world than FTL. However, like FTL, death is pretty hard to avoid. When you die in the game you can bequeath certain traits and possessions to your successor, but not everything that you own. So far I've died once, when I wandered too far north and was mauled by some kind of monstrous iceberg that was doing way more damage than I realised and killed me in a couple of hits. I chose to pass on my sea chart to my next character, so the ports I have discovered are still shown on the map. There are actually two ways to play the game - permadeath, and a kind of soft death option (where you can manually save like a normal game), but permadeath is the default setting and the devs say that it is the way the game is intended to be played, so I've gone with that. Last but not least, the game looks and sounds stunning. Close to home the sea is brightly lit but the more you explore the sea is shrouded in complete darkness, so you will welcome the glow of an island you can dock at. And I love the colourful illuminations and designs of the various islands and flora and fauna. As you would expect, the soundtrack is minimal but fitting, and just generally excellent. You can listen at bandcamp.

This is a Super Meat Boy type platformer but oh so much more psychedelic. It fucks with your brain in many ways, it gives you powers, then takes them away when they have already become second nature. It gives you a simple platforming task but bombards your senses with light shows and noise, It's fucking awesome for all these reason but it's also fucking hard. The music is slammin and when your die a chick says "Ooooh yeaaaaaa" in an orgasmic tone that makes you want to bust off. Sometimes a dude says it too, same result. Gameplay trailer: Me winning: http://www.trueachievements.com/gameclip.aspx?clipid=38304519

Apologies if there's already a thread for this, please merge if there is! I think a few of you have played it. I just played an hour and a half of it there, it's brilliant. It's like playing through a novel. I have no idea how long it is, or if the ending is satisfying, but it's a very interesting game to play. Well you don't really play it so much as watch it. You have access to a database of police interviews (brilliantly acted). You find new videos by searching for information or words that came up in the videos you've watched. All of this is completely up to you. The game has a very minimal interface. The sparse music is nice and the occasional flicker of a face on the screen is quite spooky! I've been taking notes with a pen and paper and have covered two envelopers front and back with words to search for, and almost another a4 sheet! So far the story that has developed has been very interesting, and I've unlocked 5/13 of the game's achievements. Great stuff.

So I guess I'm probably the only one that got this, but I'll put some impressions up anyway. Dived in just after release last night for a couple of hours, mixed impressions to say the least I'm afraid to say, although I would lean slightly to the positive side. Purposefully wanted to play all the different modes that weren't in the beta so started out with a few games of Fighter Squadron, overall impression was good but at the end of my first few games with it, it was already getting a bit repetitive and just felt shallow to me, there's not much to it, just fly around and dogfight with people, there are Hero ships and stuff you can play as, but I didn't get to play as one. Quite exhilarating at times though and the Star Wars fan in me got a kick out of piloting these famous ships, but I just don't know how long the fun will last. Next mode I tried was Blast, which is Team Deathmatch. Absolutely awful this was, it was ok on one of the maps I tried which is like a large factory type map, but on all the others they just didn't really seemed to suit it, the shooting is just too imprecise to enjoy a mode like this and I just didn't really get a kick out of it at all, it was like playing an extremely shitty CoD clone really. The last nail in the coffin for this mode was the Endor map, I'm sure it's a great map for Walker Assault and Supremacy, which are the bigger, more traditional BF game modes, but for something as tight-nit as TDM, it was just atrocious, trees everywhere, no real focal point to the map, endlessly getting spawn killed and shot at out of nowhere from Snipers hiding in trees and bushes, just awful, no fun at all to play, and will not be going back. The last mode I tried was Droid Run, this was much better, and is similar to Domination from CoD, first couple of games weren't great as the randoms I was playing with weren't bothering with the objectives so the matches ended pretty quickly (if you capture the 3 droids the game ends in 15 seconds), but the last 2 or 3 were awesome, reminded me of Domination in CoD as I said, fast-paced, lots of struggling to turn the tide of battle on either side, lots of tension as you capture the droid for your team, was pretty great I must say and can see myself spending some time in this. Hopefully get round to playing some more tomorrow night/morning, going to try a few more game modes and see how I get on, saving Supremacy and Walker Assault for last!