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A bit surprised this doesn't have a topic yet as I think the other games did have a few fans here. But then again I bought this on release and only now felt in the right mood to play it, so maybe it just came out at the wrong time. This immediately feels a lot more like 1 than 2, which is most likely a byproduct of it being made by Deck Nine (Before the Storm) who feel probably more comfortable reproducing what worked in the first place and a desire to, well, get back to what worked in the first place. Alex, the protagonist, is extremely approachable in an almost ironic way as she's a bit of introvert with a loaded background, so not unlike Max from the original. Setting the game in a small, rural area in some fictional part of an American mountain range gives it a very idyllic and soothing feel where standing around and rotating the camera is a joy in itself. A byproduct of this is that it also goes back to a fixed cast of NPCs with their own jobs, motivations, backgrounds and personalities. It is not without its faults – Alex' superpower is 'just there' and I find it baffling how the promo material spoiled this game's Aerith moment – but I felt right at home from the first minute. It's just a wonderfully cleansing experience, though it'll probably throw some existential angst in my direction soon (I'm only on chapter 2). One other thing I want to point out is that it looks phenomenal. The lighting, use of colours, the significantly improved facial animations all result in this not being the best-looking LiS title but a genuinely beautiful game even by other standards. It's also the first game in which I actually noticed Raytracing (which can be activated in Performance mode, too) when looking at the extremely realistic reflections on Alex' glasses. They look so good in fact that they almost clash with the slightly dreamy and soft art style. Playing this amidst the recent Square Enix news feels a bit bittersweet as well because I'm unfortunately not expecting them to finance another one of these anytime soon. So I'm definitely taking my time with it and enjoying the ride. Edit: Glasses

Maf refused to create the thread for the weird Russian nun game I put about 4 hours or so into it the other day, cause the description sounded pretty weird. Anyway it's sort of a third person narrative adventure with a focus on puzzle solving and platforming. It's set in a surreal realisation of 19th century Russia. You're playing a nun at this like Orthodox covenant, everyone hates you for some reason. It blends together a few styles, mainly the TP narrative thing mentioned but also 2D platformers, which indicates a split in the period of the narrative (the 2D bits are the main character's memories). The 3D sections is fairly standard block pushing type stuff, but also an interesting environmental manipulation gimmick involving prayers and shame, it's like the environment gets all DmC for a bit. There's a few strange things with the setting, a kind of steampunk thing going on and one section with unreasonably huge fish. It sort of straddles the line between feeling like this ironic sendup of... something but also using genre conventions from games and maybe some eastern european cinema to chat about guilt, religious conflict, sexual repression, v. standard stuff. It's alright, I expected it to be weirder tbh. Make sure to light up these Christ icons so you can get a high score and level up your Christian guilt skilltree (points are pointless)

Played roughly five hours of this over the weekend. It's very similar to the first game to the point where I was thinking of just hijacking that other topic, but I'll play by the rules. When I say similar, I mean that you play as the same character, in the same world, meeting up with the same NPCs. It's been too long for me to remember if the world is actually 1:1 or rather some sort of "remake", but I think it's the latter. The story is a bit weird (alien invasion, protagonist gets infected, mumbo jumbo) and there's absolutely zero explanation as to why he has to start from scratch again in terms of skills and abilities, which I actually found very charming in an unapologetic 'I'm sequel to videogame!' kind of way. The biggest difference to 1 so far is that you don't start off as a walking paper cutout. Sure, most of the enemies can and will kill you, but against mutated rats and insects you actually stand a chance. I see this as neither a good nor a bad thing. It's obviously designed in a way to be more approachable and short-term rewarding, but I actually enjoyed the feeling of being at the absolute bottom of the food chain in Elex 1 and having to rely on Quest XP to level up or companions to do the dirty work for you. But I realise just as many if not more people will prefer being able to swing a pipe and do actual damage from the first hour onward. There's a couple of cool little details I noticed about NPCs. For one, they use that Uncharted system where, if someone in your party gets interrupted during dialogue because a combat encounter happens, they actually finish their lines later when everything has settled. There was also one cool moment where I saw two NPCs talking to each other and I pressed the button to talk to one of them. She then said I shouldn't interrupt her, finished her discussion, and then went back to me to scold me before the actual dialogue branch started. I've actually never seen that in an RPG, or any game for that matter. It also negatively influenced my standing with her, as there's some invisible relationship thing with major NPCs going on, too. Of course this being a certified eurojankTM game, you have to accept that it's not a looker, that combat is still very wonky, and the unusual unpolished aspects that come with it. But I'm really enjoying it so far, particularly as I've always liked PB's dual progression system with skill points and trainer perks. Makes the whole thing a bit more tangible as it bypasses the illogical construct of the classic RPG fundamentals. Not that this is an issue in other games, but it's a design idea I find very clever. Sidenote, this is also their first game that runs almost flawlessly on console. Performance mode on Series X only ever drops a few frames in very busy village settings, otherwise it's rock solid. Definitely not a game for everyone, but I think shiny and dwarf and some others might enjoy this. I'm not sure if I'd recommend playing both Elex games and I'm not far enough into this to say which one is better. So far this seems a bit more streamlined, but I've also read that the mid- to endgame is inferior to the original -- guess I'll see, but so far, so good.

Roller Drome seemed to get talked about a lot right before release, then no one mentioned it again. It's a CEL shaded roller skate arena game with similar muted colours to Sable. Presumably deliberately it reminds me of old 70s genre films. The concept is kind of Running Man, you enter arenas and have to shoot the house players. To reload you have to do tricks, this refills your ammo, killing enemies gets you health back,and there's a bunch of different enemy types. I wasn't feeling this originally, it just felt flat and boring, frustrating even. Movement can be a bit odd, you don't control your momentum, press forward to start then leave it, concentrate on steering, jumping and tricks. Get close enough and there's an auto aim to shots, with some of the weapons having slight tricks to them. There's a dodge, time this with the slow down time mechanic, usually used for aiming, and you get an extended period of slowed time. There's challenges to the levels, things like performing certain tricks, kill enemies with certain weapons, and I think it's this stuff that was annoying me. It's probably best to just beat a level then revisit it and try to get one or two challenges each time, that's not how I was approaching it. You need to beat a certain number of challenges to unlock the next set of levels, so I was trying to beat everything all at once, you just don't have that sort of control early on, or I didn't, I did much better when I came back after a break and went back to the earlier levels. I'm still not sure I see the really high scores for it, but when it does all click with you it is fun, really fun at points

I got this as a rental yesterday,took about 8 hours to update the damn thing. And there’s more updates on the way already. I’ve only played a couple of hours,so can’t really judge it yet. But the lack of NPCs really is an absolutely stupid decision. Elder Scrolls Online managed it fine,so I don’t get why they went that way with this. I only saw one actual player, who tried to kill me,but as I didn’t shoot back he couldn’t do F all. I was busy getting past the tutorial that I didn’t interact with him,so he got bored and left me to it. Oh,and Bethesda’s reaction to people pissed off about the poor quality bag in the Power Armour Edition is gobsmacking. “We made it out of cheap material,as we couldn’t afford what we advertised. Here,have 500 atoms. That gets you pretty much sod all”. They’re really trying to piss all their goodwill up the wall.

I'm a few hours in, steam says 6 hours but it's closer to 4 with AFK. I'll say so far it's not what I was really expecting, which I mean in both good and bad ways I guess. Firstly it's not really a BGS take on No Man's Sky, or Elite or any of those games. It's not really like Skyrim either though, so far. What it feels more like is a Bethesda take on Mass Effect 1, in that it's an open 'universe' game that's very fragmented. You have central hubs which contain lots of quest givers, then menus which connect you to the rest of the universe. You have bespoke planets like Mars which contain a small open world and settlements. You go in your shuttle and take your pick from a map, and you end up in front of a skybox which represents the nearby planet you're orbiting, and there's some random encounters that can happen out there So that's the way the space travel works in this. You can also immediately just travel somewhere by opening the map whenever you want. That seems kind of spoiling the fun to me though, like a way of making things feel small. In a sense, this is pretty disappointing. Not because it isn't a massive seamless space sim, but moreso the way all the transitions are handled. It seems kind of dated and disconnected. Taken in context it might not turn into such a big deal when the rest of the parts come together and questlines progress. But it does feel a little bit of a misdirect by Bethesda, intentional or not, as to the true character of this game. But in any event Mass Effect 1 is an extremely good game that holds up, so its take on space exploration isn't a bad one to ape. Question is does it work well within the framework of a Bethesda game The setup is pretty dry. It also kind of feels like Mass Effect a bit. You get your macguffin and a companion goes with you. Reviews have said it's a good idea to prioritise the main quest, for gameplay and progression purposes. I don't really know why, but I did plan to mostly stick to it with the odd sidequest rather than drag the pacing out so that's fine. But the universe is not level scaled like Oblivion and Skyrim so at some point you will presumably be forced to do optional stuff to account for that. Also just in general, mainlining a main quest in these games seems like shit advice, you want to weave those sidequests in as well One thing I like: your companion can input on dialogue interactions. Went to a sort of Mos Eisley place on Mars where my companion butted it and haggled with another NPC. This was a sort of tutorial for this mechanic, but it would be an interesting example of the game's flexibility if these quest interactions also extend to the other optional companions you can find. I don't know that they do that for a fact, but you would reckon that they do. Another thing I like is this one quest early on where a guy asks you to find some patient data he misled, and just tells you the general area he lost it in. No waypoint for this quest, you just sort of wander around and it forces the player to take in the environment and incidental dialogue, as well as read signs and develop a mental map of the area layout. Not that the dialogue is riveting or anything, but it's a minor pivot back towards the design of stuff like Morrowind where the world was the point. In terms of reactivity, I picked a trait called 'Serpents Embrace' that made my character addicted to grav jumping or they take a debuff (and a buff if they do grav jump). I completely misunderstood this when I picked it, I thought it meant I had to literally jump all the time, but it means warpspeed jumps with your space ship. Doh. Turns out this also means they are a follow of a thing called the faith of the serpent, which is a pretty edgy backstory for an introverted chef. I got unique dialogue options during one quest because of this, so maybe there's more things like that which branch out and lead to different options. I also like how gravity effects the combat. You can cyberpunk style spring jump over buildings and lightly glide an explosive down a hallway, gently carried by the low gravity of Mars, like a spicey present for the space raiders. It seems like temperature might also play a part in outworld exploration, but I'm not sure in what way really. In terms of hubs, the first hub is a bit boring. Too green. But the 2nd one I went to on Mars was pretty cool and reminded me of Omega in Mass Effect 2. Also seems to be the place where you can take jobs from bounty hunters, if that's the way you want to point your character. Things I don't like, exploring the surfaces of planets seems mad boring. It's just a bunch of fucking rocks, the lack of a Mako is keenly felt. At the very least tho they have different environments. I took a radiation debuff on the surface of the moon which apparently fucked my suit up. Another thing I dislike though it's subjective, they put a weird filter on the game in certain worlds. The starter hub area has The Matrix filter on it. Shit's green all the time. The Mars area has a red filter. You can walk in a room and see the filter fade in and out, it's very weird and overdone and leads to a blown out look. It doesn't look good on OLED, looks fine on LCD though No HDR btw, at least not on PC. You can get auto hdr working using a weird work around, but it looks bad and make things more blown out so IMO stick with SDR. Apparently it's a similar situation on Xbox

Since this was available on Game Pass day one, I jumped in over the weekend and finished it on monday night. You control Harold, a depressed handyman on a colony ship which left Earth several generations ago to find a new home, but which crashed on an ocean planet and is now an underwater city for the inhabitants. I thought it was going to be a 2D adventure game style affair, but there's not really any puzzles or challenge involved. It's much more a narrative game, you go around the ship talking to people to tick off items on your to-do list which moves the story forward. I imagine this could disappoint some people, as you don't really 'do' a lot else. It's a pretty slow-paced game as well. I've seen Wes Anderson's name bandied about a lot in articles and reviews, and although I feel some of it is rather a surface level reaction to the look of it, there were some moments especially towards the end that I think would be right at home in one of this films. It looks incredible, from the clay model style characters, to the ship locations. It's also got a nice, low key soundtrack. I really enjoyed taking my time wandering around the ship, talking to people and the gentle pace that the story moved along. I can also see why that won't be everyone's cup of tea.

So, straight off the bat this game is weird... As in... It feels like I've been dumped in to the middle of a story and have no knowledge of what's gone (or going) on. It seems like it's a cross of every recent weird TV show or film from recent times, there's touches of Inception, Lost and God knows what else in here so far. Jesse (the main character) seems fine so far, she handles well enough... Shooting seems a little loose but I've turned off a couple of aim assists so that may explain that, I've only unlocked a couple of abilities (like launch) but that's opened up combat a little... I'm enjoying what I've played so far. Oddly, the game this most reminds me of somehow is a Dead Space game but I can't quite put my finger on why... I'm definitely interested to see where they take the story in this as so far it's weird as fuck and I have no idea where it's going.

Backlog time! This is one of those projects that came out of Riot Forge, the unfortunately now defunct initiative from Riot to establish the LoL universe beyond the base Moba. In this case, we're looking at a relatively classic, linear action-adventure title, made by Tequila Works (Deadlight, Rime, Gylt). On surface level it looks a bit like a companion game à la Last Guardian or Majin and the Forsaken Kingdom, but it works a bit differently in the sense that you control both Nunu (the kid) and Willump (the blue Magic Yeti) in predetermined sections. So there's no manual switching or anything like that, which makes the entire thing relatively streamlined, but also rather simplistic. Nunu can play the flute which allows him to manipulate certain objects to solve puzzles, whereas Willump comes into action for, well, the action when you have to fight. There's also a bit of platforming which both can take part in and a multitude of other little gameplay gimmicks to mix things up, some of which born out of the most unexpected inspirations (Katamari). They can also both throw snowballs, either at each other for fun or to interact with distant objects. Overall its systems, mechanics and difficulty level suggest this is very much a game aimed at kids, with the writing also mimicking your usual tales of family and friendship you'd see in an animated movie. For me I looked at is as a light palette cleanser type game and for that it worked really well. There is a certain amount of ambiguity about the antagonist, resulting in a conflict based around perspective rather than just being black & white, which is a neat touch that goes a bit beyond what you'd expect. It's a cute game overall, 7-8 hours long so doesn't overstay its welcome and even has a few cool surprises up its sleeve. The beginning is a bit bland, both visually and in terms of gameplay, but the latter half really picks up in both of these areas. Not a must play or anything but if you like some simple, well-made classic videogame stuff, this is a nice little project. And also probably a good pick for the intended audience, because it has so many different gameplay elements (platforming, puzzles, combat) that it's a good appetizer for what videogames are about. Forgot to upload some screenshots, I might edit them in later if I don't forget.

I want my mummy... Spent a few hours with this through Game Pass (Xbox obviously)... think I played Innocence toward the tale end of last year and so far this feels nicely familiar. I'm up to Act 3, the first act being more or less a tutorial and the second playing pretty much how you'd expect. Things start harmlessly enough but it doesn't take long for things to fall to shit and the whole world wants Amicia dead for reasons... this time she can fight back a little more, she has a stealth attack and can knife enemies, I haven't got her Crossbow yet but like I say I'm only up to Act 3. You can also break line of sight and hide again if discovered, I can't remember if this was a thing in the first, if it was it was bloody difficult. Some of the views look stunning and so far it's played nicely... there's no performance or graphics mode so I'm not sure if it's locked to 30fps or not... think I saw somewhere that it's 40fps if your display supports 120hz (mine does so who knows) I ended up really liking the first so I'm looking forward to playing more of this.

Helldivers 2. I've put a bit of time into it now. Here's what I think. It's almost all good. Movement and shooting feel great. Shooting has a mechanic I've never seen before where you have a reticule that is fixed where you aim, and one that moves around it depending on how much you are being rocked. If you are springing about the actual aim goes all over the shop, but if you take a knee and control your bursts it stays accurate. It feels really good for the most and makes you really think about your positioning and shooting, especially when the terrain dictates how you must commit or respond to a conflict. The fights are mostly regimented even with randoms, with people cycling in and out as fights bubble over the map and keeping some sort of structure. When it gets really mad and people start scattering it becomes a bit of a mess, but that's part of the charm in that sometimes you're going to be pressed. I've had games where I have seen people be bait for the entire run, and then I've had dives where it was me that was basically being the lightning conductor that everyone thanks for keeping the attention of the more dangerous mobs that require flanking and precise fire to kill. Only 2 factions in this game at launch. Robot and bugs. The way you fight either faction is very different, I feel like the bugs are more a case of zerging the best they can and just absorbing lots of gunfire, whereas the robots it becomes a bit more tactical. Not that they take over or anything like that, it's more a case of them shooting back and having more offence compared to the bugs defence. They have defence as well, but generally it's just a well placed shot that takes them down. The map from the previous game makes a return, but I think it's altered somewhat to before. For the uninitiated, it's a big circle broken up into tetrominoes. Super earth is in the middle and the factions are on the outside, you fight them towards the outside of the circle, conquer their world and that takes them out of the game until the war is over. If any faction makes it to the middle of the circle, it's a collective game over for everyone. I think they have altered how this works in some manner, because previously although it was tetrominoes you had a linear progression between the middle point and the far edge. Now it looks like any adjacent tile can be invaded so theoretically even though you only have 2 enemies, they can approach Super Earth from any angle. I might be wrong there, but this is how I am reading it. The only other explanation I have is that Arrowhead plan to put 2 more factions in the game so you are fighting on 4 fronts. That's just speculation on my behalf. Other changes you might want to know about. A lot of the strategems are now infinite and just have timers on them. If you played the previous game you would know that if you called a heavy weapon down and you lost it, that was it. Now it's very much a case of just wait for your timer to run down and call another in. In fact sometimes this is preferable if you are running low on ammo. Some strategems have had a rework. The ammo one now has a global cool down and has 4 ammo slots in it. For me this is a mixed bag. Some people are awful at just calling them in the wildest of places. And then you are fucked because your ammo is miles away because the one person that refused to come with the group has all the ammo and you have to wait it out. Or you have people chucking them into areas that are too hot to get ammo. It's just the usual 3head and selfish plays you can come to expect. Same with people walking under air strikes, or throwing air strikes on places you need to traverse though. It's not always like that, everyone is different. Some teams are well oiled and consistent, some are dog shit and couldn't give a fuck if you kill all 3 team mates as long as it means they have full ammo and kill that one bug. Reinforcement has also taken an overhaul. Gone are the infinite call ins, now you have 10 drops for one player with an extra 5 added on for each extra player. You can bolster this with some loadout stuff, but once those lives are out, that's it. Unlike Helldivers 1, if all players die, it will drop all players back into the field if you have the lives to do so. Unlocks are done via a few methods. Gone are the unlocks for beating certain missions, now everything relies on samples, credits, medals and the games premium currency super credits. There's a season pass that's not really a season pass, but it is a season pass that has loads of different weapons and stuff you can unlock, as well as armours and other gubbins. This uses medals which are earned through play. The paid season pass I think can be bought for super credits you find or unlock through the normal battlepass and has all the things you would expect in it, flashier customisation and some weapons that are similar to the free ones you unlock, but not really? For instance I got an explosive assault rifle from a dead body and although the bullets exploded, it was way slower on the fire rate. I sort of preferred the vanilla one if I am being honest. Speaking of weapons and different stats, you can hold reload and alter the fire rate and magnification. If you do intent to play this, or already have it, you can also look down your gun in first person if you aim and then press middle mouse button. I assume that will be a stick click on controller. Helps for those extra long distance firefights. The other currencies can be found all over. There's credits that can be gotten that allow you to buy more strategems. The other thing you can collect are samples with allow you to make the ship that is dropping said drops more efficient. Mostly the perks are just stuff like they have a smaller call down time, or a quicker cool down. Some are more specialised like making the centre of explosions larger for more destructive possibilities. I feel like the asking price for these is a bit of a piss take actually, and also I have a sneaking suspension that the difficulty wall I mentioned at the start has migrated here, as there's different rarities of sample and I am suspecting it may be a case of the rarer ones showing in harder missions. Bad points then. The servers are pretty fucked at the time of writing this. I just played an hour before writing this and had a few disconnected games. Once I got in it was all fine, but those frustrating moments looking for a match only for it to lag out. The only other really bad thing I can point out is it makes my PC sweat like crazy. Even RDR2 on ultra isn't putting my hardware under this much pressure. Some optimisation would be nice. It is a very pretty game and there's quite a bit of destruction going on in it, nothing that will blow you away, but yeah, it all has to be accounted for performance wise. It does look very pretty though, I'll give it that. Will Helldivers 2 have the legs to carry on being the game that I hope it will be? I'm not sure right now. I think it has more mass market appeal than a lot of other 4 player co-op shooters, but I think that it depends on Arrowhead being compliant with listening to what works and what doesn't in regards of the game and adjusting accordingly. We're still heavily in the honeymoon period right now, and I am thinking that it could be a long running thing, but the ball really is in their court and they could smash it or they could fumble it really hard depending on what happens.

Booted this up for the first time today just for a look see... played for a couple of hours and completed four levels. For those not in the know it's a Steam punk (I guess) take on Westerns mixed with Vampires which I thought was going to be much more shooter orientated than it is... it's actually much closer to the newer God of War games than Gears of War, shit, you even open and smash chests the same way as Kratos does. So there's a definite leaning towards melee combat over ranged but there's Guns involved obviously being a Western. These work on a cool down rather than relying on ammo drops and are mainly used for hitting exposed weak points with the rifle or chip damage for the pistol then there's the sawn off which is great for obliterating shields... all standard stuff for anyone who's played a third person adventure game anytime recently. So far in terms of levels it feels very old school with very linear levels designed to funnel you from one encounter to the next. As for looks it's been a very mixed bag so far, actual game play looks ok, I'm not sure if it's a design choice or what but there's a really weird glow with everything... fire sources are ridiculously bright and this isn't even an hdr enabled game and then you have the cutscenes which everything just looks muddy and crushed to fuck... I'm not sure whats going on there. Funnily though the pictures I'll post look a damn sight better then they do on a tv.🤷‍♂️ So a bit of a mixed bag... plays fine, looks a little ropey.

So after, what? 9 or 10 years Dead Island 2 is finally here and you know what?... I'm having a pretty decent time with it. The first thing I'll say is it feels like an Xbox 360 game... and it's a matter of opinion if that's a good or a bad thing. For me after Dying Light 2 tried to do far too much (in my opinion) having a game that just wants me to hit things until they fall over in a bloody mess is more than OK. The other thing I wanted to say is the opening hour or so is pretty bad... shit weapons that break way too easy and spongy enemies that hit way too hard... or maybe that's my own fault for picking the poor, frail girl character... who knows... anyway things liven up when you get your first real mission and access to a workbench. Anyone who's played the original games (or the Dying Light games) will feel right at home with the modding of weapons and such, electric swords and and flaming golf clubs... all that good stuff. The flesh system is really cool, thwacking a zombie in the face and seeing its jaw dislocate and detach is pretty mind-blowing and adds a lot to the melee combat (not found any guns yet) The other cool thing us being able to use liquids... I was doing a side mission and reached a part where ther was about 10 zombies banging on glass doors trying to get in... noticed a fuel can and explosive canister, picked up the can and poured fuel the entire length of the doors, hit the canister which ignited the fuel and blew out a window which allowed the zombies to walk straight in to my pre-made Inferno... no more zombies.😂 I've also just picked a perk for a pipe bomb... which is hilarious. Anyway, I like this game, admittedly I've only put around 5 or 6 hours in so far so we'll have to see if it can hold my attention but it's off to a good start.

I'd never heard of this before, but it looked awful so I downloaded it for a laugh. Honestly, I haven't even gotten into the gameplay yet, but it's the most PS2-ass game I've ever seen in my life. It has boob jiggle, a la Dead or Alive (also apparently from some of that series' devs), and this is introduced in the first cutscene. The animation, even in the cinematics is janky, stunted, and exactly like you'd expect from an early 2000s title. If you'd told me this is a Remake or remaster from that gen, I wouldn't have been surprised. I hope this creeps into so bad its good territory.

Well, this is officially out now, I got my code from CD Keys around 7:30pm yesterday. Pre-loaded straight away after that on GOG Galaxy (28gb install), and after I'd watched this week's Game of Thrones I fired her up, played the first hour or so (headphones ran out of juice otherwise I would've played more) can't really give any thorough impressions just yet but the combat still seems a bit shithouse to me (never liked it in The Witcher 2) and the graphics look pretty incredible (despite the downgrade) in almost fully-Ultra settings on PC. Just within that opening hour I've found myself wandering away from the main quest, exploring little villages and cubby holes so it bodes well for the rest of the game, shall give it a proper run-through later today.

Yakuza is undoubtedly one of my favourite gaming franchises. It’s been consistently excellent for many years now. Yakuza Zero is one of my favourite games of all time. So,I’m always up for more. This entry has shifted from the usual over the top action, to an RPG style. Quite the difference. The reviews have said that it’s paid off, for the most part. Though there are some massive difficulty spikes near the end, that require some hefty grinding. Anyway, I’m a couple of hours in. There hasn’t been much gameplay yet, it’s almost entirely cutscenes thus far. Yakuza games always start slowly, this entry apparently takes about 10 hours to get properly started. Another new addition is a brand new character, Ichiban. He seems decent enough, though it’s too early to say how he compares to Kiryu. We will see how it plays out.

This will absolutely not get overshadowed by FFVII. No chance. Played this for I'd say about five hours now. It has the slowest beginning I've seen in a game in a while, to the point where I started wondering around the 3-hour mark if I actually like it. It does, fortunately, find its own rhythm shortly after that and removes the leash around your metaphorical neck. I'm not saying the beginning is bad, but just in case anyone wants to give it a shot, be ready for a relatively prolonged prologue/tutorial cocktail until it gets going. The game itself is probably best described as a very talkative action RPG, not unlike Vampyr which I presume was made by mostly the same bunch of people inside Don't Nod. You arrive in a cursed area in 17th century America as so-called Banishers (old-school Ghostbusters basically) to help out a friend, then everything turns to shit and you have to find out why and how to fix things. It has a relatively desolate atmosphere but there are some light-ish elements sprinkled in, mostly through the dialogue between the two protagonists. The bearded guy, Red, is surprisingly charming and likeable despite his gruff and generic design, whereas his girlfriend/wife seems a bit cool and distanced so far. I'd take a guess and say it's deliberate for now. All the talking you do usually leads to a quest or two and it's here where the game starts to differentiate itself from its ilk. Every quest seems in some shape or form linked to a lingering spectre, which ties into the whole curse narrative. While you do some detective work you often find out things aren't quite what they seem and by the time you've connected all the dots the game ask you whether to release/punish the ghost or the living person who initiated the quest. Each has a very profound impact upon a certain key element of its story which I won't spoil here, but think of the Little Sisters in BioShock, but not as black-and-white and significantly better developed. So far I've had to make three of those choices and only one of them was somewhat 'easy', so in that regard I think they've done a good job. When you're not talking you're fighting and I have yet to make my mind up whether combat is good enough or not. It feels very limited early on but I have unlocked a couple of stuff now (some through progress, some via a skill tree) that starts giving me some idea how it wants to be played. You can switch between two characters at all times, one corporeal, one ghostly, and combat treats this feature more or less like two stances. Enemies are either weak to one or the other, certain well-timed switches give you extra attacks or added benefits, like blocking a corporeal attack and then countering with a powerful punch in ghost form. It doesn't quite flow as well as I think it should, but then again there are so few combat scenarios in the early hours that it could just be me not properly getting used to it yet. There's definitely potential, despite some lock-on targeting issues, and I'll hold off judgment for now until I have more tools and experience under my belt. Visually I think this makes a good case of AA being absolutely good enough and the whole discussions we recently had about the state of high-profile games. It's a pretty game with a very distinct look that's not quite immediately apparent from videos and screenshots. Switching forms looks very satisfying and stylish without being flashy, texture work is sharp, it runs at an almost locked 60fps in performance mode unless it needs to stream in some data. Facial animations are the weak link in its presentation, but other than that this is a nice-looking game. I'd also like to quickly mention that unlike some info saying otherwise, this is not an open world game. The world is interconnected and you can walk through it without loading screens, but its areas are linked and stitched together via premade pathways, not unlike something like Fable, the last Tomb Raider games or Kingdoms of Amalur. Which is a good thing IMO, just pointing it out here.

So, this is out in the wild now, played the opening 2 hours or so earlier and, unfortunately, I've got kind of mixed feelings about it. The first 15-20 minutes or so is an incredible introduction to the game, incredibly cinematic, production values through the roof and sets up the start of the game perfectly, but after that everything kind of went down hill a bit for me really... I can't really put my finger on why, really, just not a lot excited me in that opening 2 hours that I played, I was actually pleased when my session on the game came to an end, which very rarely happens to me with games nowadays, it could just be open-world bewilderment to be fair. Quite a lot of open-world games I play, I find them quite hard to get into in the opening hour or two because you're bombarded with information about all sorts of systems in the game, bombarded with side-quests, tutorials etc. and I get a little bewildered by processing all this info and it just takes me a while to get my head around things before I get to grips with the gameplay systems and hopping around the world, so it could just be this to be fair. The biggest addition to the game is obviously the Batmobile, it's cool, and the interactions you can have jumping in and out of it, ejecting into a glide from it etc. are incredible, but the 'Battle mode' or whatever they call it is incredibly dull, I've only used it a few times, but so far I just took down a number of identikit mini-drone tank things in it, and it just felt like a chore already, the handling of the Batmobile is quite loose as well, but it's nice enough to handle, I never know now whether to use the Batmobile to get to my next objective or to glide there I really like that a lot of the gadgets that were unlocked through the story and that you had to upgrade in the previous games are now unlocked from the start, the gel, rope launcher and other bits and pieces are really cool, but the star for me is the upgraded grapnel being included from the start, it annoyed me so much in the previous games when you had to upgrade the grapnel so you can press A twice continue your glide over wherever you've grappeled to, annoyed me intensely, Rocksteady have definitely kitted you out with a lot of the stuff you'd only find half-way or three-quarters of the way through in previous games, it does give you the feeling that you're Batman at his prime. Did a few side-missions too, 1 Riddler race, probably my favourite that I've done so far, really cool, bit of challenge to it and some cool mechanics Rocksteady have put in there, there's a Murder mystery type set of side-missions which were in previous games that are interesting but more of the same really and ones where you have to rescue/find some Firefighters for reasons I'm not sure of. What annoyed me slightly, was that in the Riddler missions, I was under the impression that they'd completely taken away the annoying Riddler trophies of previous games, and replaced them with these races, but no, it seems you still have to collect Riddler trophies, this time to unlock more races, seriously cannot be fucked doing that. The graphics haven't really impressed me as much as I thought they would either, I mean, don't get me wrong they look good but I expected them to be jaw-dropping from what I've seen of the game thus far, and it just wasn't really, there's a moment where you look out on Gotham from a tower right near the very start of the game, and the vista and draw distance is incredible but the textures just aren't quite up the level I thought they'd be, the rain effects and particle effects are cool but the rest is just a really shiny Arkham City, some of the small bugs that affected those games like Texture pop-in also make an awful reappearance in Arkham Knight, I was literally standing on a roof top about 100m away and the big building across from me had awful muddy textures right up until I glided really near it, that's unfortunately the pitfalls of still using the Unreal 3 engine, Rocksteady. Very early days into the main-story, but it just isn't gripping me at all at the moment, being forced to do a load of challenge-tutorials half-way through a main-story mission is no fun either and completely took me out of the zone, I guess Rocksteady thought I need to learn all this shit for the mission ahead but it just felt a bit haphazard to me. These are very early impressions though, I've played every game in the Batman:Arkham series and have a somewhat mixed history with them, loved AA, thought AC was incredibly overrated and preferred AO myself, will give this a fair crack of the whip, but so far, it's more AC than AA which is what I feared, will put some more time into this later today.

So, Wanting to take a break from Destiny, I've had a go at playing Warframe on the PS4, and I have to say that so far, I've really enjoyed it. It's a 3rd person shooter, that feels part wat between halo and Mass effect. There's a (ludicrously expensive) paid currency if you want to go down that path, but everything is obtainable for free, you just have to wait for it. Has anyone else played this?

Ok. So, the knives are well and truly out for this one. IGN has been quite savage, though it didn’t really help itself by saying “We don’t like killing the Justice League”, in a game where that’s literally the name of it. I loved the Arkham games, but right from the start, it’s clear this is a different kettle of fish entirely. You start of as Deadshot, one of the 4 playable characters. He has a jet pack, which he uses to zip around the area. After killing a few enemies, you switch to King Shark, the ‘tank’ of the team. Shark doesn’t use equipment to get around, he can do a massive jump, then dash in the air up to 3 times. Next up, is Captain Boomerang. His mode of transport, teleporting using boomerang’s(funnily enough) took some getting used to, and didn’t quite feel right to me. Finally, you briefly play as Harley Queen, who uses a drone/whip gun to ricochet over the place. If Boomerang felt weird to control, Harley was the toughest of all, in my opinion. Soon after her section, you’re finally given the choice of who you want to control. I went Shark, as being a tank is my jam. After that, a massive battle ensues, where you have to survive for 2 minutes. Amanda Waller, your ‘boss’ says she will teleport you out of there in a few minutes. But then advises that “You have a shield, but it’s not self recharging”. As this is to discourage “Hanging around”. The only way to recharge your fairly low shield, is to shoot enemies in their feet, then melee attack them. Some enemies are shielded, which is only broken by a melee hit. Ive got a little further than that, but the urge to return to Infinite Wealth became too great. I can tell you one thing that is bullshit: the “always online” requirement. Ok, so they’ve said they’re working on a patch to remove that. But prior to the game’s full release yesterday, there has been two occasions where sever issues have rendered this utterly unplayable. And that just sucks balls. I’ve already encountered Kevin Conroy’s Batman, and it’s just a powerful performance as he always was. I’ve seen fans saying that this is an “insult” to his character. Personally, I feel that’s bang out of order. To many people, Kevin WAS Batman, and he wouldn’t have done it, if he didn’t believe in it. It’s most definitely not an ‘Arkham’ combat game, despite there already being several nods to that series’ universe. Still, from what I’ve played so far, it seems decent enough. How it will fare going on, well, we will see…

I played through the opening of this, so far better than Avengers I think. The tutorial, which is extremely pink and blue, is a fairly lengthy thing which introduces you to characters which of course you already know about because of all the movies and stuff init. It's mostly a slightly adjusted take on those movie characters, I say that as if I know what the other versions of the characters from the comic are like. Anyway it reminds me of the movie is what I mean, except the guy who plays Mario isn't in it which is a bummer. But I think it's good, not incredible cause it's hard to get a read of whether the fighting turns into something more than what you see at first. I'll say being able to run a game that looks good at 4k dlss and runs at 60 presents a much better impression than watching a stream that runs at 640p and runs at 15fps. I dunno about the console experience, but I do know my experience right here is pretty good *discreetly flexes* As filler tutorials go I thought it was pretty well paced and I was pretty engaged by it, which is saying something cause it really does feel like a 360 game. But it gets away with feeling like a 360 games cause they don't make 360 games anymore, and 360 games didn't run at 4k with ray tracing *dabs*. One screenshot I wanted to get is the little bear guy standing on tree man's back cause I thought damn I like that, but it was in a really dark room and I didn't get the chance. Anyway the rabbit stands on the tree man's back, that is good. I tried to take screenshots but unfortunately they are all super dark cause of weird HDR nonsense. So imagine these screenshots not looking shit, this is what the game looks like (good, not shit) I can't say that this is like game X with a bit of game Y or anything like that cause it's too early to say. One thing I'll say is that it has a stagger meter for certain boss type enemies. Drax (who destroys) has an ability that induces heavy stagger damage. Gamora (the deadliest) has an ability which deals heavy raw damage. Groot (therefore he is) does stuff with branches, uh traps enemies I think, I dunno. Racoon (not a racoon) does ranged attacks. But to translate it in terms I do understand, Drax is Focus Strike from FFVII Remake, Gamora and Racoon are the big attacks that you do when stagger is put on them. Peter Quill (middle name Joseph), he flies around and shoots stuff. The melee part of his combat feels like shit, but this is the level 1 experience. Very early on he unlocks an ability to do a timed powerful charge shot while his guns recover from their Mass Effect cooldown. Kind of a reload that's active, or something like that. I think another game did a thing like this before, I forget. I can't easily follow the flow of fights but I would say having this run at a high framerate is a must for that reason. It's so messy, the way you queue up the skills is a bit clunky. But that's the level 1 experience. It's a very air dashy type game, like a B tier Platinum games joint or something like that maybe. Anyway I'm engaged by the sum of the parts rather than the constituent ones so I will stick with it. Better than Avengers anyway, well the opening is. Also trust me the game looks a lot better than these screenshots, thank Windows HDR for fucking these captures up. Or maybe the brightness adjustment in the game itself, I might try and look into seeing if I can fix that.

I've put a good bit of time into this, playing ranked and with some ppl on rllmuk, enjoying it enough I'd figure to write something about it. Thinking along the lines that it has a free tier, so there's at least a small chance others might try it out and there's an RPG set in the same world coming out in a few weeks, which presumably connects into the story of this (tho I've zero inclination to try the story out tbh). If not, oh well The free version cycles in 4 characters each week, which is a great system and I recommend downloading it to try out. I've been playing the paid version and started off with the character Nier, who's a puppet master, then went to Narmaya who's sort of the Vergil archetype, all zippy with a katana. It's got simple inputs and technical, but unlike SF the game is very much built around the simple inputs (which wasn't the case with versus). There's a 10 percent damage reduction when using a simple input in neutral, but this actually doesn't really matter at all as most of your combo starters will be from normals anyway and the damage reduce doesn't affect skills in combos. There's also a cooldown system and stronger versions of specials have longer cooldown values, so you've got to account for that in your combo routing and general gameplan. I'm finding that a hard aspect about Narmaya, cause she has the most specials due to her unique stance switching mechanic It's got some weird things about it which I'm not super clear what I feel about. It's got a dodge button, and character's blockstrings seem much more plus to a point that the game is balanced around you knowing the timing of when to dodge, and punish accordingly. Sometimes which takes a bit of getting used to. It's got a kinda drive impact style mechanic where you spend 'bravery points' to extend combos, inflict guard crush and also to escape from bullshit blockstrings and combos. When you spend them, you take more damage, so it's a risky thing to do. But you can get them back with super, so there's some interesting decision making I guess What mary won't be pleased to here is that there is a free drive rush mechanic in the form of dash light punch, which costs no resources and leaves you plus 2 on block. Anyway, it's free to try and you can really get to grips with the more basic characters fast. This is sort of a 2nd wind for this game as it did not do well on initial release due to delay netcode and the pandemic killing locals. You definitely don't need to understand all that plus frame bullshit I said to just mash buttons and have fun with it. The only thing you've got to lose is your dignity when someone walks into the room and sees the weeb shit you're playing

Firstly, I cannot believe that there isn't a thread for this game. I know people bang on an on about this game, so I thought there would be one already. I think it is kind of weird that one of the FF haters is starting this topics as well, but there you go. Right, lets get some things laid out on the table. I hate JRPG's unless they are Pokémon, as that's the only one I have been able to understand the mechanics of how everything works because it is nice and simple to learn, and hard to master. I really hate how everyone goes on about how awesome this series is, all I see is turn based fantasy shite populated by people who have hair the size of a fridge freezer. I had very low expectations of this game, I was expecting to play ten minutes worth and call it a day. However, I was wrong. After persevering with the frankly crippled controls outside of battle, I find myself enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would. The backgrounds still look nice after all this time, and the music is really good so far. The FMV has also held up well for such an old game. the "in the field" graphics and animations are bloody horrible though, it is hard to tell what is happening sometimes as the polygons creating the characters wildly move around the screen. I'm also hating on the save locations, I really hate games like this that make you use save locations instead of letting you go into the menu and save. For all it's short comings, I am liking this game. It has impressed me more than I though was possible and I look forward to spending more time with it, if only to find out first hand what happens with the story. What are your thoughts on this game? Another thing as well please, can we keep this spoiler free? I know certain people die and that, but I don't know when or why, and I would like to find out for myself. Thanks.

Played the demo of this on Friday and thought I’d give my thoughts on it. Played around 40 minutes to an hour and I definitely would’ve liked longer with it which is a good sign. Graphically it’s very colourful, it reminded me quite a bit of the game Rime mixed with a more cartoony AC Odyssey with a sprinkling of Zelda. To play it’s immediately reminiscent of AC Odyssey. The way the combat system works with all the special abilities is very familiar, but it is definitely more flamboyant and less grounded, it feels like the system has been jazzed up and some of the moves you can pull off are a little closer to DMC than the weight of AC:OD. The way all the landmarks and points of interest are pinned to the top is very similar to AC:OD as well but then a lot of games use that system nowadays. The most interesting aspect to me was the puzzle aspect. I only came across one in my short time with the game but it was a nice surprise, reminded me a bit of some of the puzzles you’d come across in BOTW and was satisfying to complete. The way Fenyx moves is very familiar to BOTW too, there’s a stamina bar that depletes as you run and climb. She sprouts wings when you Glide which looks and feels very similar to Link’s glider in BOTW. It has a playful sense of humour to it as well. The way the demo plays out is that Zeus and Prometheus are narrating a story but keep getting it wrong, so things change on the fly for Fenyx as they adapt their stories in an attempt to get things right. The two have a lot of character and are nowhere near as stoic or uptight as some of their other interpretations in games over the years. Overall I was impressed with it but needed more time real to nail down a recommendation. It’s a lot of fun though and I think it will be a great world to get lost in but I can’t shake the feeling that it might be a little bit unoriginal and not doing a lot of new things per se. Saying that, I’ll definitely keep my pre-order after playing the demo, I love new IP and want to play some more after this brief taste.

I picked this up on the pc the other day for a fiver, supposedly the story is great, clever even, but the game itself is a bit so so. Which so far is about where I am with it, it's a less fun MW. I'm also struggling to sit and play it for an extended duration, as soon as a checkpoint ends I feel the urge to turn it off for a while. The story is fairly interesting so far, it's not hit the twist yet, but knowing that something terrible and fucked has happened is enough to keep you interested in what's going on It looks fairly good, the AA isn't really doing enough considering how many hanging wires there are. It's pretty well acted too, it's been Northified so you'd expect that, but he seems to be the worst of the 3 main ones so far