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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)!

A Soulslike from top to bottom, AI Limit adds a female protagonist that you can play dress up with then calls it a day. Honestly, that's a little bit reductive, but this game genuinely plays like My First Dark Souls. You run from area to area, battling with tough enemies along the way before eventually stumbling across a boss who seems to exist for no other reason than to make you question your life choices. To be honest, I reckon I'm about half way through now, and despite a complete lack of originality in concept, gameplay and everything in between, I'm actually mostly enjoying it. There are the occasional jumps from challenging into sheer frustration, but it's mainly my own fault. Whenever I lose focus I end up screwing up repeatedly. Combat is exactly what you expect. Light and heavy attacks, various spells, a couple of different defence strategies. Parry, dodge, defend, roll. All that good stuff. But with a sci-fi edge that leans into post-apocalypse. The looks are... serviceable. Like, you can throw a maid outfit on the player character if you want, but each outfit is tied to different stats and resistances, so it's not all about the titillation. I do like the almost cel-shaded look of the Blader you play as, and I do like the design of enemies, but there's also this filter that makes the whole game look a bit... I dunno, muddy? It's almost like the devs wanted to ape Stellar Blade, but didn't have the balls to go all out like that did. Along the way there are secret quest lines, hidden areas, random things to pick up, and something the game calls Corrupted Bladers - tough enemies that hit hard, fast and can mess up your timing a hell of a lot. Nothing is impossible to beat, but if you let your concentration slip, you can and will be absolutely battered, even by simple enemies. One thing I do really, really like over the SoulsBorne titles I've tried is the change to losing currency. Usually, you'll lose all your cash and have to retrieve it. This game takes a percentage of the currency off you and that's it. Right now, I lose 25% every time I die, but there are accessories you can equip that change this amount, as well as the total amount accumulated. It keeps the risk/reward aspect - a death can bump you back under your next level up amount, after all - but doesn't make it quite as frustrating, and also means you don't just need to bash your head against a boss over and over again to get your souls back. You can also use it tactically. Bump it up enough and you can let yourself get taken down for a quick shortcut back to the nearest branch (this game's bonfires). As someone who REALLY struggles with FromSoft titles and other similar games, the My First Dark Souls comment is really accurate. The fact I've made a modicum of progress, and only occasionally have to switch off because it dips from challenging to frustrating is what's keeping me going right now. For anyone with experience in this genre, I'd say avoid it, unless the style really grabs you. If you're someone who WANTS to get into this kinda game, but isn't up to the difficulty of FromSoft games, I'd say give it a go and see how you get on with it.

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

I’ve played this for 4 hours now. And the harsh reviews can honestly fuck right off. They’re way off the mark, in my opinion. Usually, Skill Up does decent reviews, but I don’t agree with his video review of this. He moans that unlocking “Knigthood” for all 4 characters is a massive grind. Is it bollocks. There are two ways to level up. All characters share regular XP, so you can freely switch between them. But each character has a 4th skill tree, Knighthood. This needs to be unlocked for each character, and you do so by killing 3 mini bosses, and solving 10 crimes. In my 4 hours, I’ve got Knighthood unlocked for 2 characters, and almost done it for a 3rd. The way he moans, it’s like it’s a huge chore. He also creams his jeans over Arkham Knight. Personally, I thought that game was boring as fuck. I’ve had more fun with this, than I ever did with that. I’ve also seen some people complain that one fight sequence has the rock remix of Livin’ La Vida Loca. To those people I say “Have you even played Saints Fucking God-awful Row?”. What a stupid complaint. Anyways. Combat-wise, this ain’t Arkham. There’s stealth takedowns, but I’ve not had opportunity to use them much. So far, there’s not the vast array of gadgets that Batman had in Arkham. But, each character has their own play style, and abilities. Robin has been quite fun so far. A lot of people got pissed off when it was revealed this is 30fps on consoles. I’m no graphics expert, and to be quite honest, I’m happy with how this looks on PS5. It looks pretty damn good to me. The story has been interesting so far, and it’s worth swapping characters, as they periodically have their own side missions, which further develop how they’re coping with the loss of Batman. So yeah. I’m having a great time with this so far.

Labelled as a stand alone dlc to the Robocop game from a couple of years ago, there's enough to Robocop Unfinished Business that it feels like more than that. Granted you'd hope for a little more variety in a proper sequel, not because the core shooting is bad, just that it's unchanged from Rouge City The plot is kind of The Raid or the more recent Judge Dredd film, in that it's set in a residential tower block and you're kind of working through it. It's actually where the lack of budget shows because you don't really get a sense you're working through a building, it feels a bit circular and unconnected from each level. The story is that someone has stolen Robocops chair thing, they clearly need it for something nefarious so Robocop tracks them down to an OCP owned apartment block. OCP have moved a bunch of people in but it's all a con, even ignoring the mercenaries that have now taken it over, the residents were sold a con and are pretty desperate. The game is still trudging around and shooting everyone. I still think Robocop is a bit too vulnerable all things considered, but it has to have some challenge I suppose. The issue I have is I tend to linger behind cover and try to pick off enemies, rather than wade in like I think you're supposed to. You get a couple of flashbacks to play through, even at least one none Robocop one. There's a couple of new enemies that I've seen so far, and at least one new weapon. It's been a little glitchy so far, although nothing game breaking for me, although it seems to vary with people experiencing worse than me (I was able to hold 6 health items at some point for some reason). It's still fun though, not as good as the main game, but worth a play if you liked that one, and there's a lot of game for the cheaper price

Speaking of RPGs with hard edges I've put 30 hours into this, though it's maybe closer to 25 hours on this attempt. I bought it years ago and found it one of the most baffling games I tried to get into, even though I generally like games with hostile worlds and mechanics. Tried it again the past week and now I'm surprised how much more typical it really is, at least in these initial hours. The background is that it was made by a very very small team over the course of 12 years, I think initially just one dude who had a background in TES modding (which definitely shows here in that it has its skill system, where you learn by doing). What it is is a sort of squad-management open world RPG, with a very amorphous structure, set in a post-technological world where you're given no quarter. It gives you basic tutorials for mechanics, but you have to pick your own objectives and be disciplined about completing them step by step. You don't just follow a questline, you make your own stories although there is a background lore to discover also. You pick a background, I picked wanderer which starts you off in 'the hub' which is this derelict town with destroyed walls and buildings, and a pub. You presumably can build the place back up, but lore documents around the area suggest that it's a regular target of some religious sect or something. So I didn't bother. You can also pick a starter character who's a slave and has to break out of jail, which sounds really interesting. There's an 'easy' one where you start off with a squad already, a sort of Mad Max one where it's like the wanderer but you also have a dog. You can even start off in a camp of cannibals, definitely not where you want to start learning the game cause if someone does manage to eat your arm off, it's gone forever (tho robotic prosthetics exist) This is a screenshot of most of the early hours, when I tried my hand at solo bounty hunting. These guys just left me like that cause they're racists, but other factions are more helpful So after realising that you can't play the game like that, I decided to become a farmer (which is what my character's proficiencies were in anyway, not slicing things with swords). Found some arable land near a hive village where I could grow wheat and grapefruit and turn them into rice, bread and fuel, also set up a small stone mine. Built a base around it and a small shop to sell surplus produce to wandering caravan traders. Spent the income from that on hiring more people from the pubs in nearby cities, but not too many cause it's not a large farm. You can script jobs for your characters with a sort of gambit style system, if they can't do the first job they do the next one and so on, and will go to sleep and eat when they need to and defend each other from weird dinosaurs. So once you figure this out you basically automatically generate resources and money. It's very satisfying when you get a self-sustaining loop going like this But one issue I have is I've totally neglected defense, and am reliant on the nearby town to defend me from threats. Some bandits already tried to extort me, I stabbed the leader in the face and he came back seeking revenge which nearly got hairy, so I need to buff up and get weapons if I don't want to have to pay a protection racket. Also I'm bored of the farming and want to be able to explore beyond this one weird forest I've spent most of the game in, so I have a team of 7 now, 4 labourers and 3 fighters, I had my engineer sneak in the nearby weapon shop to steal some buster swords, and we're going to hire a mercenary on contract for a few days to attempt some harder bounties. Which probably would really cut into the bounty itself if I don't do it fast There's a vid here of the slave background which shows off a really different experience to the one I describe, where it's more top down RPG Metal Gear Solid. The point is you can sort of mould the game into a very different role playing experience if the idea of base building and optimising your farm sounds dreadfully boring

The actual title doesn't contain Shin Megami Tensei in it, which is probably because it's already stupidly long, but it'd do wonders for brand recognition. Anyway, Raidou Remastered: The Mystery of the Soulless Army was a PS2 Devil Summoner game, and this is a remaster / remake of it, somewhere in between because it's definitely upscaled cutscenes and quite possibly game world but they've adjusted the combat and gameplay. Apparently, I've never played the original. The combat is more active than a usual jrpg, kind of like Ni No Kuni. In battles you're locked in the combat area and you, as Raidou, can use light and heavy attacks, shoot enemies to stop them dodging about, and increasingly lob some slowly recharging magic. What makes Raidou unique as a Devil Summoner is that he can summon 2 demons to help him rather than 1. These demons generally act on their own, although you can tell them to cast specific things, and you can tell them to not use magic if you're low on mp The MP system works differently too. Your team all share one bar, and your demons will constantly be using magic ideally, so you really need to recover MP constantly. Fortunately, using your light attack gets you MP back, although it doesn't do as much damage, so you want to alternate between lots of light attacks and a heavy to mix recovery with actual damage. There's a few other moves too, specials that can be triggered at points, and the ability to hide your demons when really powerful attacks are coming Outside of combat the story has been pretty interesting so far. A girl who asked us to kill her then got kidnapped by demons, so we're sorting that out. From what I understand each chapter is it's own thing. You use your demons out of battle too, occasionally to help with the investigation, sometimes just to recover items So far I'm really enjoying it. It's pretty easy, although I suppose how many fights you get in to determines that. You can avoid a lot, but it's probably not a great idea early on while the combat feels fresh, just so you don't end up having to grind for a boss

Haven't found as much time for this yet as I wanted between Elena and Switch 2, unfortunately. But I think I'm 10-15ish hours in so enough to form an early opinion. Bit of backstory, but according to EDGE this is a very loose, semi-spiritual sequel to Blade of Darkness, Mercurysteam's debut title (back when they operated under a different banner still). That game can be seen as the progenitor of the souls-like, even though Fromsoftware perfected the formula years later – a bit like the relationship between kill.switch and Gears of War in other words. I never played Darkness though, didn't look appealing to me back in the day and I've since found out it's ridiculously difficult, so I'll continue to stay clear. Playing Blades of Fire I think it's quite apparent that it does approach the genre from a different angle and outside certain mechanics that have been done to death since Demon's Souls – enemies respawning upon rest – they don't have that much in common ultimately. Combat for one is very much its own thing with every face button assigned to an angle of attack, which is both easy to grasp and also leads to some interesting, spur-of-the-moment combos, like swinging a big hammer around from the left and then swirling it around to either hit the enemy in the head or ramming it into their bodies from below. Holding a button executes a heavy attack, which depending on the weapon type has massive windup but usually kills any normal enemy with one blow. Some enemies are vulnerable to specific weapon types or only at certain regions of their bodies, hence the specific targeting. There's a lot more depth here, of course; some weapons like swords and spears can either be swung or used for piercing attacks, which is a toggle that quickly becomes part of your muscle memory. Defensively you have a dodge roll, block and a parry – more on that later – and the block also generates stamina. So while it does have this second infamous energy gauge, it's not some passive thing but just a bit of micromanagement you have to consider. Overall I think the combat is extremely well executed, feels great to play, really solid and satisfying hit feedback and quite gory too if happen to land a charge attack that kills. One of its biggest USPs and also seemingly a point of contention online is weapon forging. Every weapon you wield has to be forged and the process is a mix of putting together materials and completing a little minigame everyone on the internet seems to hate with a passion. I don't exactly love it either, but it's not that bad – plus you can skip it for weapons of the same type after you have done it once. The minigame itself influences how often you will be able to repair said weapon, because, yes, they deteriorate and can break. Usually not a fan of this mechanic (I never used good weapons in BotW) but as this game is so inherently designed around it it's actually kind of a neat feature. They take a while to break, you can always just forge a carbon copy and in my case I found myself using that opportunity to simply try something new when visiting the forge. Case in point I was wielding a spear for a long time to fight small, short-range enemies and by defeating a lot of them I unlocked the blueprints to forge their dual axes, so when my spear broke I did that and are now messing around with this pseudo-Kratos armament. It won't be for everyone but I rather like this 'loop' – and the forge is a cool place anyway with good music and some very heavy, clanky machinery that's fun to watch. The materials you use also allow you to go really in-depth in how the weapon is going to handle, as you can influence damage dealt, stamina consumption, even the parry window (shown in milliseconds) and more. It's pretty cool but thankfully all very easy to grasp, so while you can really dig into the micromanagement, it's definitely not rocket science. And while we're at it, parry timing, even when you really open up the window through forging, is quite strict. We talked about this feature before but it's not really prevalent here and I rarely go for it as a result – but the payoff is huge, as it's staggering enemies for so long that you can land a fully charged heavy attack even for the slowest weapon type. One aspect I have mixed feelings about is its level design. It's of course a significant improvement over the navigational nightmare that was Lords of Shadow 2, but depending on the location its labyrinthine nature can be a bit overwhelming. There's a fort you get to relatively early in the game, with a bunch of stairs circling multiple centralised halls, and some paths are blocked, so you end up never really knowing what floor you're on and what direction you're moving towards (the map is a simple 2D bird's view). Didn't quite enjoy that part, especially as you also have to protect a – thankfully both in gameplay and lore immortal – NPC. Every other area was quite enjoyable to traverse though, those have been more open-sky, woodland + ruins kind of deals, but free from any markers or guidance, so you have to run around a bit to find your bearings. I'm quite enjoying that, feels refreshingly old-school, so hopefully the fort remains an unlucky exception. There's also a sidekick I haven't mentioned yet because he doesn't have a true gameplay function like, say, Atreus in God of War. Instead he's some sort of in-game explanation as to why your logbook automatically fills with weapon blueprints and lore details. In a nice touch he sketches enemies while you fight, so the drawings in the pause menu become more detailed the more you combat the same enemy type. Other than that he's just there to talk a bit here and there but I'd like to point out that story isn't this game's strong suit, at least early on. It does hint at stuff but not much has happened yet. Visually I think it looks a tad dated, but still quite nice. Bit of a hig-res version of a PS4 game, targeting 60 (but not always getting there). They sometimes fill the screen with particles, like if every forest in the world had just burned down, but other than it's neat-looking and the art direction is strong as usual from the team. Anyway, long story short I think this is pretty cool. It's very AA, it has some faults, but the motivating forging and super satisfying combat are real high points. But it's also a game that demands a certain commitment due to how complex its level design is. I've heard it's pretty big so it'll probably take a while until I can give a final verdict. No photo mode and can't turn off the HUD either, so the screenshots are a bit meh.

Anyone else picked this up at some point? It came out first two years ago but it came out just after Nuclear Throne which is a very similar game so I passed on it back then, but it was on sale on Switch recently so I picked it up as I'm struggling in a gaming rut and for some reason, I felt like playing this. So the game itself. It's a twin-stick shooter and rogue-like, or rogue-lite if you like. You are tasked with getting to the bottom of the "Gungeon"; a dungeon that is very gun-themed. Bullseyes hang from the walls like sigils, revolver-like mechanisms teleport you around the area and other gun-themed devices litter the medieval style Gungeon. You make your way through shooting enemies (a strange bunch; walking bullets and shells with corresponding guns, knights, ghosts, a mini-gun wielding crow. These are the more normal agitators). To help you through these oddballs you have a diving roll with generous invincibility frames and one of the most varied arsenals of guns but in a video game (citation needed). You have four characters to chose from who start with different weapons, consumable skills and passive skills. Even more of both kinds of skills can also be found in the Gungeon along with the weapons. The Pilot, for example, gets a lockpick which means he has a chance of opening chests without needing a key, but if it fails the lock is broken and the chest is sealed shut. The Space Marine starts with a piece of armour giving him an extra hit point. I'm actually having quite a hard time with it. I can sometimes get to the fourth floor but I'm not sure if that is good or not. I did rescue a guy one run where he says he can let me skip floors but I don't know how far down I have to go before he lets me use the shortcut. I bet it's the fifth floor. And while I mostly do okay in the Gungeon itself the bosses can be a bit of a bullet hell nightmare and its here I usually mess up, even on the first boss on particularly bad runs. But it does have that "one more go" factor which is important in games like this. It's just fun to play, rolling through bullets, flipping a table for cover and shooting a switch that makes a chandelier fall on a bunch of idiots. And seeing what guns come up is kinda fun too, in an "I recognise that!" kind of way. Some guns are your usual, Uzis, AK47s, etc; and you also have wackier ones like t-shirt cannons, giant shells that fire shotguns, a barrel that fires fish, etc; and also references! A taste of what I've come across is Barret's from FFVII's arm cannon, Judge Dread's gun and the Proton Pack. And many more! Definitely one for the rogue-like likers out there.

Got to admit, when I had this recommended to me it raised an eyebrow, it just doesn't look like it's going to be any good. It is, however, great. It's got the same 2d sprites that face you no matter how you move around them that the likes of Doom and Duke Nukem had, but it doesn't play at the pace they did, and nor does it throw enemies at you like you might expect. The plot is that there's been an outbreak, a city has gone in to lockdown, with government death squads slaughtering anyone they see inside the zone. You play as someone who is in the zone, and have to fight your way through the infected, the soldiers, then eventually find out what the real plot is. It's played very tongue in cheek, with Max Payne style digitised comic strip cutscenes It's pretty short, about 2 hours, and it's fairly easy, although I would recommend saving from time to time because you can take a lot of damage quickly and I wouldn't fancy starting the levels from scratch. It's really cheap too, just over £2 in the sale

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

This is a Limbo/Inside kind of deal, more Inside but there would be no Inside without Limbo, you know? You play a young girl (so I read, it's in no way apparent) that awakens in the dark with a lighter as a solitary possesion and a raincoat on her back. Then it's all on you. It's dark and ominous, mostly slow paced. You make your way throughout the game, slowly discovering the place where you are seemingly trapped and avoiding/running from it's inhabitants. There are stealth sections that arent too long but there are a few of them, I actually enjoyed them. There are also running sections which can be a little frustrating if you fail as you have to do the whole thing again but they job, they're a little scary and come at the right times. Music is pretty cool as well. The only downside for me was the camera angle. It's set in the foreground and as usual it makes depth perception a bit of a pain sometimes, I had a few avoidable deaths because of it. I don't know if it's just because it's the more recent title I've played but I felt like I enjoyed it more than Inside. It's just as mysterious but it just felt like it was a tighter game. I beat it in two sittings so it's not long, maybe four hours although there's an achievement for beating it in less than one hour so that's obviously possible when you know what to do well enough. Recommended.

I did look for an old thread but it looks like one doesn't exist. I got it the other night on the Switch since it's the version with the free style switching. It's a cool idea that's in later DMC games and I thought it may be fun in this game. In the original you picked a style at the start of a mission. Basically the styles are Sword Master, Gunslinger, Trickster and Royal Guard. They all give you different abilities. The first two are fairly self explanatory while trickster is mostly about dodging and royal guard is a parry system. I do have a bit of a problem with it. It's just the way it levels. In later games you upgrade the styles with red orbs (which give you more moves), the same way as everything else, but here I think it upgrades by how much you use it. So I'm not getting the freedom I'd like without spending a lot of time in the Bloody Palace with the main goal of using a particular style a lot. So that's kinda disappointing since I forgot how it worked. I've forgotten a lot of stuff to be honest. I was having a hoot at first. I sunk in four hours in one session, going along quite well which surprised me as going back to Bayonetta kicked my arse. DMC3 is easier than I remember but then I got to a succubus type lady boss, which I think you get the guitar weapon from but I just can't seem to beat her. I don't seem to be doing any damage but she wrecks you with some of her attacks. I call bullshit, I think she's busted. But I'm sure I did beat her back in the day as I remember messing around with that guitar weapon. How I did it, I have no idea.

Hi Guys, Fallout London is a new total conversion mod for Fallout 4. It's free to download on GOG, but installing it is a bit of a pain in the ass. So I've taken it upon myself to write a short "How to" on installing this game. The reason it's a pain to install is it's made to run on an older version of Fallout 4, even though it's a new game. Most of what I describe below is how to downgrade your Steam version of Fallout 4 to install Fallout London. The first thing to do is to go to Steam, and download/install Fallout 4. Most people will have this game in their library by now. Then, go to GOG and download the installer for Fallout London. Once Steam has installed Fallout 4, minimize Steam, and bring up the Windows Run box with 'Windows Key + R' Type into the Run box "steam://nav/console" Next, you need to copy the following commands into the Steam console, one line at a time, pressing enter after each command. download_depot 377160 377162 5847529232406005096 download_depot 377160 377161 7497069378349273908 download_depot 377160 377163 5819088023757897745 download_depot 377160 377164 2178106366609958945 download_depot 377160 435870 1691678129192680960 download_depot 377160 435871 5106118861901111234 download_depot 377160 435880 1255562923187931216 These commands will force Steam to download older game files for you. But it will not put them into your Fallout 4 installation folder. You will need to do this yourself. This may take a while, depending on your internet speed. Once each command has downloaded correctly, you'll get a report that looks a little like this. "Depot download complete : "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\content\app_377160\depot_377162" (1 files, manifest 5847529232406005096)" There will be a report for every command you pasted into the console, so seven in total. Once this has been completed, open up your file browser, and go to "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\content\app_377160". Inside this folder, you'll find seven folders starting with "depot_" and a number. Open your Fallout 4 install folder in a second window. It's usually "(Steam Hardrive Letter)\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Fallout 4 Go back to the window with the "depot_" folders, and copy the contents of each folder to your Fallout 4 install folder, overwriting any files with the same name. Go to the Fallout 4 install folder, and navigate to the "Data" folder. We now need to delete the Creation Kit files added by the last update. Select all files that start with "cc". There will be several. Delete any file that starts with "cc". Next, on your web browser, go to https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods/42147?tab=files&file_id=253313, and download Fallout 4 Script Extender (F4SE). You might need to sign up for this site to download it, but it's free. Once it's downloaded, extract it with your zip program of choice, and copy the contents of the zip file to the Fallout 4 install folder, again overwriting any files with the same name. And the final step. Run the Fallout London install program you downloaded from GOG. point it to your Fallout 4 install folder, and click next. Then let it do its thing. A couple of final notes, guys. First, disable cloud saving as this mod might screw up your regular Fallout 4 save. And second, in order to play regular Fallout 4 again, you'll need to uninstall the game completely, and then reinstall it without the mods and patches I've described above.

Seems a lot (relatively speaking) people got this, so I think a topic here makes sense after all. I don't think this needs context, but just for the record: this is a collection that includes three classic Castlevania games initially released for the DS (Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia) as well as both the original version of Haunted Castle, an arcade game from the 80s, as well as a complete remake with SNES-style visuals and some other changes of this last game. I started with Dawn of Sorrow, because it's my favourite of the bunch and also the first one that came out (despite being placed at the bottom of the list in the menu). Plus from what I recall it's the one that made most 'use' of the touchscreen, so a good litmus test for this specific release, too. On Switch you can use the touchscreen if you're playing in handheld mode, so there's nothing lost there either way, but the alternative is holding a shoulder button and moving a cursor around, which is a less than ideal alternative. Thankfully the magic circles you have to draw are now also QTEs, but stuff like destroying ice blocks is a bit finnicky so I decided to play that section in handheld mode. IIRC the further you get the less frequent these gimmicks become, so it's only really a small issue in the first hour or two. We've already discussed the multiple screen options in the News topic so I'm not going to repeat those, but I noticed there's also a setup where both screens are displayed vertically, like they were on the original system. I think it would have been really cool to have that setup in Tate mode, but that's really just a nitpick because it would only really be useable on Switch (and maybe PC depending on your monitor setup). As you can see in the picture there's a lot of extra stuff in there as well, like the complete OST that works as a music player (and those games have some of the best tracks in the entire series IMO), a gallery which even includes the game manuals, and you can also choose which version you want to play (EU, US, JP and in Ecclesia's case, even the Korean version, though I'm not sure what's different about that one except the language). In any case, I've been really enjoying the little time I played so far. I usually only associate consoles and games I played as a kid with nostalgia, but the moment I stepped into the first area with its wonderful music I got hit by quite the wave of good old times. Absolute recommendation, these are classics for a reason and M2 did a great job of porting them over, as usual. Not to mention that we get a completely new remake as a bonus, too. [Also, a bit off-topic: while I was going through the gallery I noticed a promo picture for Castlevania: Judgement, which was on the back of one of the manuals back then. I wonder if they plan on re-releasing the 3D games as well considering we're now kind of 'through' with the 2D games. I realise they're not as well-regarded, but I think the PS2 ones are somewhat decent and Judgement, despite being a super broken and unbalanced fighting game, is quite a fun little guilty pleasure with a ridiculously good OST.]

Started this after I beat BG1 the other day, on 'core' difficulty which is like the default (no buffs or debuffs to damage or dice rolls, beyond which you naturally get). I've beaten the first dungeon and did two largeish quests in the first area of chapter 2, but have many others in the journal. There's a noticeable step up in detail, not necessarily visually but in that there's a lot more unique voice lines for each character over BG1. Characters tell you their backstories, they do this a lot actually and it's kind of annoying when you're trying to prepare spells and devise a strategy for a difficult room full of annoying snake mages and Minsc is yammering on about his hamster. But you can sort of see the start of modern Bioware here a bit, though it still feels a million miles away from something like Mass Effect 2 or 3 imo, which is where bioware got really good at this I think. The first quest I did after the tutorial dungeon, which was incredible long, was this one where you had to defend a keep of a rich aristocrat's daughter that had been taken over by trolls that required ice and fire attacks to finish them off. So they're reminding you early on about the importance in DnD of preparing spells and equipping arrows, and the baptism of fire which was BG1 and some of its late game fights have made me a bit more smart about this now. These are RTFM games, you have to read what things mean before hitting your head against stuff, like I did at times. And then you have to read again in game when you get a magic scroll, which is full of all this lovely and lore-heavy flavour text about what actually happens when someone makes themselves invisible or throws a massive fireball at something tbh, I struggled with the keep quest cause the game doesn't really tell you what level is appropriate for what quest, but I got over it when my Inquisitor Paladin found a +3 flail which applies Ice, Acid and Fire damage in the same dungeon, so sort of lucky that that is what I selected my +1 proficiency in. Then I devised a strategy which involved throwing Minsc into a room berserked to fight beetles that cast confuse, and spamming doom magic at the main boss in the next room so that my debuffs could hit it more easily, and his saving throws/THAC0 took a hit. THAC0 still sort of spins me sideways, as well as the way in which the UI will say something gives you +1 to your armour class, but actually make the number smaller, cause the way THAC0 works is it's the 20-sided dice roll you must get to hit someone with armour class 0, so if your THAC0 is 14, you must roll 14 to hit 0. If you're trying to hit armour class 6, then you must roll at least 8, if they're -6 then you gotta roll 20. Which you probably won't, so you need some buffs to even hit stuff. It actually took me playing an entire DnD game to even internalise these rules, which are simple but the way they are applied in reverse means they feel like they aren't. I never picked it up in PS:T cause you can skip so much fighting in that game. Not even going to get into what saving throws do. BG3 did away with THAC0 of course Right now, I'm playing two rival factions of the Shadow Thieves against each other, who are at war with some mages or something. I don't even know if I can complete this quest on my Paladin cause Paladin's lose abilities if they fall off the Lawful Good path, so if I can't then I might have to let Yoshimo go (and get shanked, maybe). There are also a million other quests in the capital city of Amn so I'm trying to avoid walking around too much cause they kind of bombard you a bit, compared with BG1. The chapter seems extremely open and I've had to deny some quests that would take me down an evil path, though they sounded interesting. The other quest I did was to defeat an evil gnome in a circus tent who cast illusions on everything, which is where I got hit by this. Solve it and you win maf's new monitor

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

Just by typing the title I realised they could just have dropped the "2" from it, nobody played the first one anyway unfortunately and it would look nicer visually. Anyway - I've finally started playing this over the weekend. Due to certain circumstances I didn't get as much time with it as I had hoped (see here), but I did manage to finish the prologue of sorts which takes about 5 hours. Lots of good things here with few negative stuff, but overall so far it's pretty much exactly what I would have wanted from a sequel. Fundamentally it's still Monster Hunter x Pokémon, meaning you gotta breed them all by collecting and hatching monsters from eggs. Those monsters will then accompany you on your travels and both help for traversal on the map due to their faster running speed or other special skills (jumping, cimbing, swimming etc.) and during combat. During combat you only have limited control over them, but each has its own tendencies, so switching between them depending on the enemy is the way to go. The basics of combat being rock-paper-scissors haven't changed, so you still use this feature to build up the Kinship Gauge, which is basically a mana pool that allows you to use skills and command your monster more directly by letting it use special moves as well. New to Wings of Ruin are weapon classes. In the first game your weapon only influenced the skills you could use as your character was more of a support for your monster, but this time you play a more virtal role and can target weaknesses with a weapon type that is particularly effective. An early example is smashing the rock a monster uses for a weapon with the hammer, or cutting its tail with a greatsword. Outside of combat it's a classic JRPG experience with semi-big HUB areas, quests, treasure chests and such. One thing I have mixed feelings about is the NPC partner that's with you most of the time during these initial 5 hours. I don't have anything against the character and she's certainly easy on the eyes, but it takes away from the feeling of it being a solitary adventure, with only you and your Monsters à la Pokémon. Now it could be that she goes her own way at some point but the fact that she levels up after combat and that some enemies have rather huge HP pools I get the feeling that it's designed to have a party of two (or four, technically) most of the time. There's been a lot of talk online about the technical side of the game. In context with the hardware it's running on, it's certainly less impressive that the original. Where MHS1 was basically a triple-A game on 3DS, this feels more of a budget mid-tier game that suffers from a low-ish framerate and some horrible pop-in. It's not without its charms though, as it has a very vibrant and nice style, the character models are great and during combat it really shines with impressive animations and effects. And the sound effect that plays when you land a critical hit on a downed monster might just be one of the most satisfying I've ever heard in the game.

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

I played the first hour or so of this. The game has a very bombastic opening although I think it was largely shown when they first revealed the game. The opening “escape” sequence is snappy, much faster than the opening of DOS2. Dialogue scenes now play out Mass Effect style which gives the game a slightly more AAA feel. Character creation is pretty breezy, I didn’t spend too long on it. You can choose from five different penises. I just made my character a human fighter. My main takeaway is - no crashes or performances issues. Long may it continue. After a few more hours I should be able to comment more on the differences between this and Divinity, but so far so good.

The long awaited sequel is here! And it's generally a decent follow-up. It takes place right after the original and it's like it's never been gone. It just confidently does being Psychonauts. It feels a bit tighter than the original but it's basic fighting and platforming for the most part but it's appeal has always been the imagination of the world and how it takes mental well being and makes these charming worlds out them and from what I've played so far it continues to do a good job of that. And with these new fangled graphics it makes it look really nice too. They really lean all of it into the art style they made in the original and I think it comes out well, it's a nice game to look at in a weird way. All Double Fine have done is make a Psychonauts game for 2021 and that's all I wanted, and that's all we got. Neat!

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

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

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

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