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Im despairing alright because im pretty sure no-one else here is going to buy this game and it doesnt really work as a single player. I thought i was doing ok, i got to the boss of the first chapter and was whipping his butt but the floor gave way and we fell for a few seconds before landing in a room full of regular enemies. All together with the boss it was too much. But with other people... See i took the top route of the castle to get to the boss. If someone else has taken the bottom route they could have cleared out the room full of regular enemies for me. I even passed and elevator with a lever that was designed to bring the player who cleared out said room up to where i was so we could both go into the boss room together. Yes i could do it on my own i suppose but Soma (i havent tried anyone else) moves incredibly slowly and you only have 30 minutes per chapter. Multiplayer could be great, like seriously great.

So I was really looking forward to this. All the vids pointed to awesome. But the end result is pretty hit and miss. The good: Realistic ballistics and holding your breath waiting for that perfect moment is excellent. Then the shots themselves are addictive and never a bore. Seeing exactly how well you did, bones shatter, lungs pop, balls burst. Realising you can shoot an enemies grenade hanging from their belt. The bad: Hate the AI in Far Cry 2? It's that times ten here. Setting up your first shot is always a pleasure but as soon as you've taken it all enemies on the map have a switch flipped on their head and know exactly where you are. But wait, it gets worse. Why be armed with a sniper if the AI (now knowing where you are) can hit you a mile away with a world war semi automatic? The cut scenes are mostly awful too. A mixture of in game graphics and cgi. The final kill in the game is massively comical too, mostly because of a squishy noise and cut to black/credits. Unfortunately a large part of my enjoyment of the first and reason for buying this was for online battles. Death match style multiplayer is not present on the console versions. Instead we are left with co-op only modes and I didn't find these enjoyable. The result: While not a complete failure it's hard to play this game as intended with the AI as it is. The first Sniper Elite was a perfect mix of stealth and mocking the enemy which would only have an idea of your location if they'd had a visual. I did have a lot of fun along the way to the unintentionally funny conclusion though (I played it in a weekend), it's a damn sight (rofl) beter than Ghost Warrior and it's well worth a punt at a budget price.

I picked this up over the weekend, I'd heard it was really short so I figured it'd be a good thing to play before Bioshock came out. Either I play Crysis wrong or the talk of a 5 hour campaign was nonsense. I don't really know what to say about it other than it feels exactly like Crysis 2 but is actually fairly different. Crysis 2 was a series of puzzle boxes to play about in, do puzzle box 3 to move on to 4. Crysis 3 has a better flow to it, the areas feel a bit more sprawling, and if you are locked in it justifies it a bit better. You're back in New York but it looks completely different, it's like you mixed the first games jungle with the seconds city. It also looks and runs better than Crysis 2, at least in areas where there isn't lots of flowing grass. Enemies are still a bit too eagle eyed for my liking, I still feel hugely reliant on the stealth suit skill, which means I'm slowly luring people to their deaths. the bow is pretty good but there's not a lot of ammo for it. I wish they encouraged verticality a bit more, the game is way less flat than Crysis and Crysis 2, but it's rare you can actually climb any of the structures. And they still haven't explained what happened to Nomad at the end of the first game, in fact that you're playing as Prophet again confused me for a while, I think I might vaguely remember what happened there though. I doubt there's going to be a lot of takeup for this on here, but it's a decent game

From what I've played so far Revelations is actually very good, it's a bit of a mix of old RE style and the new RE style. You can strafe, even without the circle pad, and provided you make good use of the scanner ammo is less than sparse. The flip side though is that you're very much dealing with monsters rather than villagers, it's rare they attack in groups, and the tone is creepy rather than high tension. Revelations is paced for the 3DS, you've had chapters in Resident Evil games for a while but here they feel a bit shorter, early on at least, and give you a nice little recap when you boot the game up again. The one thing I will say about this structure is that 3 hours in I'm still unsure if the game has really started properly. I began playing as Jill in the tutorial mission, then as Chris for a while, then I think Jill again with some more new features rolled out (it's a bit jumbled), then I played as Jill's partner in a flashback. In fact half of what I've played has been a flashback of something or other, each time to a different time. Hopefully now with a boss beaten, and a Chris level seemingly on the horizon the game will start to settle down. In terms of resident Evil tropes Revelations handles the limited inventory slightly differently. Now you aren't just dumping stuff in one big bag, instead you can carry a certain amount of health, a certain number of grenades, and annoyingly a limited amount of ammunition. This might be a design decision, you revisit areas so had you completely picked it clean on your first run through there's a chance you'll have left yourself short on a return visit, but the capacity (which can be upgraded) is pathetically small. On that note weapons can be upgraded at certain points, with the scanner being fairly useful at finding the bonuses you'll need. I'll admit that once I realised I was going to have to back track and revisit areas my enthusiasm for Revelations took a bit of a knock, but all in all I've really enjoyed it, certainly more than what I played of 5

I know you do son, I know you do. And you used the wrong write you big bell end. I bought it too, made the crazy mistake of only buying it on one console. I am struggling to enjoy it again at the moment, i thought I would love to play this game again as it's been a few years but I'm finding it incredibly dated. I shall play again on Thursday (when I finally get some time to play games again) with the knowledge of what it is and not what I thought it was and see if we get along then.

I think that's all the tags for this, basically it's out on just about everything. Child of Light is actually a surprisingly complex rpg, even if it is a bit on the easy side. During combat you and your enemies share a movement meter. Once you get towards the end of the meter you can cue up an action, that action takes a bit of time to activate. If you manage to land a hit on an enemy whilst they're activating their move you'll interrupt them, sending them back down the meter. You also have a firefly who can slow down enemies as they charge, heal you a bit, and pick up items. If you have multiple characters you can switch out characters, this doesn't spend your turn so you can still perform an action with your new character Out of battle the game starts off like a simple platformer, but then you learn to fly. There's still the odd puzzle element to the map, items to find, even alternate characters it's apparently possible to miss (Brad missed one on Giant Bomb). There's gem stones you can equip to add perks, things like fire damage or resistances. It sort of feels superfluous with how easy the game can be but it's nice that it's there. It looks amazing obviously, and the soundtrack is great, made by someone respected but I'd never heard of her anyway, I'm really enjoying it, it's not the greatest rpg ever, it's just missing something, but it's pretty good so far

First off it's slightly different from the demo, for one the intro is much longer, which lets you see more of Arkham and see more of the Joker. The game itself starts off with the same tutorial battle against the goons, and is the same up until you beat Zsasz. In the demo you then do some more stealth stuff, here though it takes you through some basic climbing stuff and a bit more fighting, before you move onto the 'boss' fight against against one of Jokers mutated henchmen. The fight is a massive anti-climax, it's really just to teach you to dodge, which might be for the best as the camera is a bit like Gears' (right behind you) and so it's a little hard to manoeuvre around. I thought I'd worked out the tactic to beat him, but well I'll leave it to you lot to find out. It's pretty good so far. At points it looks brilliant, at points the ps3's lack of AA shows through. Characters faces are still bizarre, the the environments are really well fleshed out, it doesn't just feel like a crate has been dumped in a room to fill it up a bit. I've just got to a bit where I have to backtrack. On the way through I noticed rooms, items and areas that I couldn't access yet, so my guess is that Arkham might not be all that massive. Although there's every chance it is, and the game is just longer than I'm expecting

Managed to put a little bit of time into this this morning. I am absolutely staggered at how good it is for now. Bearing in mind I've not played a mainline FIFA since '14 or '15 this just feels exactly like a mainline FIFA game, doesn't seem to be any compromises at all, feels like the real full-fat FIFA experience to me. I was playing in Docked mode in 1080p and it just felt exactly like I remember FIFA feeling like when I played the last on XBOne/PS4 in the past. I only thing I really noticed as 'missing' is the PL-partnered presentation over the matches, instead they use that older more blocky style that was in place before 2016 or so, I only knew this having watched some FIFA 16/17/18 preview videos but as I haven't played one for a while, again, it felt just the same as I remembered and lets be honest, it matters very little. Only had time to mess around in the menu's, do a bit of team management and controller setup and do one online game. Looked through all the menus and everything looked like it was in there to me apart from the single-player story thing that they came up with last year, didn't touch FUT yet so don't know how many packs you get to start with or anything but yeah that's definitely a huge inclusion right there, will have to have a word with myself to make sure I don't buy too many packs The game itself felt just like FIFA really, more fluid than I remembered maybe? Some of the technical little touches you could do, being able to lean in and shoulder-charge players off the ball and things like that felt new and the ball/player physics felt way easier to zip the ball around in, less glued to the feet than when I last played for sure. It will definitely take me a while to get used to the controls again, I'm so used to playing FIFA on xbox/PS controllers that learning to play on Cradled JoyCons will take a bit of time to get used to, it feels great to play though, just got to retrain my brain to the new face buttons. I'm quite pleased I didn't lose my first game online though despite a hell of a lot of wrong button presses! I'm sure it'll come back to me.

Finally Trine has come out on PSN, and rather than the £10 the devs hinted at way back when it's actually £16 (or £17 I forget), which is actually cheaper than Steam still but disappointing all the same. Obviously whether it's worth it depends on the content that's in there and how good it. Also I had £4 in my account still which softened the blow a bit. The game is really good, and shows it pretty quickly. You start off as the thief, who can grapple to certain items and fire arrows, which are a bit shit truth be told but I'm sure will prove useful later. Once you touch the magic stone with her you take control of the lecherous and lazy wizard. The wizard can use a pointer to grab things out of reach, such as platforms or blocks, and he can also create blocks which adds to the puzzle element. Then there's the knight who has a shield on the right stick and a sword on the shoulder or square. The presentation is a bit weird. Some parts of it seem a bit cheap and unfinished, things like the load screen and menus, but then the graphics and voice acting are brilliant. That said there's been a few other things, firstly the knight glitched along while i was walking backwards with my shield up, and secondly a large block i had to pull down got stuck on a wall and wouldnt fall, so i had to force my way through the obstacle. It's really good fun though, the combat isnt perfect, but it looks like you'll be able to use the scenery to help you. There's lots of collectable to find, and some levelling up, which isnt explained all that well yet. Hopefully it's a decent size though

I'm two and a half hours in so far so these are just glancing impressions that I'll go into tomorrow when I've played a bit more. It's not like a DLC. There's too much effort that's gone into it. However, some of it is incredibly lazy. Not going into it here, but some is just monumentally lazy. The o2 mechanic isn't as stifling as people are making it out to be. In fact I'd go as far as saying it's actually a good thing, I'll detail why when I've played a bit more. The characters talk a lot. Your avatar isn't silent. Outside of the usual spoutings they do they have actual lines referring to the story. Some of the level design is atrocious. Truly maddening that there's parts that have managed to get through game testing and into the final product. The writing is very high caliber. It's actually very funny and isn't above poking fun at itself, real world issues or the player. I'll be back with more in depth impressions when I've played more. If you've got questions about the game leave them and if I can I'll answer them.

Anybody else played this? Im about 4 hours in I guess, I'm not in love with it. It is slowly getting better but it's a hard game to go back to after the high of Syndicate and the change of direction that was Origins. My fault of course for not playing them in chronological order. Still, in order or not, the game feels like it lacks a flow. You sail everywhere in your bloody great ship, you slowly pull up to your destination, often stopping too far away then you have to jump in the water and swim to the dock and then you can carry on with the next bit of the story or whatever you are here to do. You do unlock fast travel shortly in to the game but obvioulsy you can only fast travel to places you've been. Also, the controls are clunky. Or clunkier than recent attempts. And you cant enter in to sneak mode either, the game does it for you when you are in bushes and the like. I don't like that. Story wise, you are Shay, you have a terrible Irish accent and the rest I couldn't give a single fuck about. I do like it now more than I did an hour in though, it does have a quality that makes me want to continue playing. It'sgot that big map to explore, it's got those treasure icons and collectibles all spread out, good old sandbox fun if that's your bag.

Its a hack and slash game by SUDA51. Its arty and abstract, its creepy and weird but I'm not enjoying it as much as I wanted to enjoy it. What annoys me the most are the cut scenes. Its not that the story isn't interesting, its just that the cut scenes that portray it are unnecessarily drawn out. Lots of lingering camera shots and silence which I'm sure is all arty and different but... here is a game full of potential arcade action that I'm itching to play and im getting a close up of someones face and get to watch them really slowly turn their head. SKIP. The game play is decent enough I guess but its nothing new. And its doesn't feel extra polished either. Mondo controls well, pretty responsive in both movement and action but the scenery can feel a little clunky. A lock on would have been nice but the combat works pretty well without it. I dunno, its just another hack and slash game wrapped in a really fucking weird package. It has a really odd colour pallet sometimes, at certain time it does just make it look like the contrast is up far too high. The Gigolo mini games are pretty funny, trying to catch a glimpse of your dates tits and nether regions whist she's looking away made me laugh. You have to put on some glasses so you can see through their clothes to their underwear. That alone would have been a good game. I played through on easy because I'm rubbish at this genre, although I did find the first boss (on chapter 3) ridiculously hard, i died three times. Once the level had finish I found that I had upped the difficulty to hard, so I didnt feel quite so shit. Im going through again on Normal now, there are 12 chapters and I'm half way through again. Once I have powered up Mr Zappa enough on my Normal run I was going to up the difficulty to very hard, the combat may take on a new tactical level and make me appreciate the game all over again. We shall see.

Huh. No impressions? It doesn't surprise me, it's not really all that great. But I have been playing it due to it just being a couple of quid on PSN at the moment so I decided to finally give it a gos since I have been planning to. Now, I've not played the first one so I don't really know these two guys. I understand they are meant to be total shits, but they're not as bad as I was expecting. They're not as irredeemable fuckers as I was expecting. They seem like characters who exist in a shit world and are trying to get out of it; they're a product of the shit world. I think I was expecting them to relish in their shit more, but so far they come across a bit GTA protagonist-y. I could talk about the game more but I can't say more than it being an okay third person shooter. It has some AI that doesn't offer up much of a challenge except for the times it accidently gets the upper hand. I suppose I have been playing on hard because I'm that cool so that's why I am dying a bit. But it isn't because I feel like I'm getting out smarted. The gunplay feels okay except when you're using assualt rifles. The game has some wierd ruls: handguns seem to be the best for long range (except sniper rifles) and assualt rifles, which gaming has taught us are mid range weapons, are really shit at anything but short range. All the automatic weapons act like an Uzi or something; all kick and noise and not much else. I've actually decided to rock the shotgun mostly as it's actually pretty good at mid range... and shite at short range. I have no idea why they have changed the logic of how guns work in video games, it's certainly not to make it more realistic. But it just doesn't feel all that great. I think the only thing I like about it is the style. I do really like the camcorder style. It's claustrophobic, ugly and low key but really intimate to the violence. It's really great. It suites the game alot and they really commit to it. I just wish it was attached to a better game. It's not awful. Some of the levels are actually well put together and offer up some satisfying action, at least as well as the game itself can offer. So I sorta like it. I think the game it reminds me most of is Spec Ops: The Line. It has similar issues, but I don't think Dog Days' story and stuff is not quite as bold and subversive as that, and the shooting isn't even as fun to be honest. But it's nearly there. If this game played like Max Payne 3 we'd have a real gem on our hands.

Put a fair bit of time into this over the past couple days, think I'm around 5-6 hours in, about halfway through Episode 3. First thing I noticed was the step up in visuals over Rev 1, you can definitely tell this is a newer cross-gen title built for consoles with the lighting, particle effects, enemy designs and a lot of the texture quality being a huge step up from the first game, facial animations are markedly improved as well. The whole game though is vastly different. Rev 1 felt very contained to this one ship, very stuffy and claustrophobic - in a good way, it gave the ship an identity of its own - you do explore other locales sure, but the meat of the game is what happens on that ship with Jill and Chris. This though, feels totally different. You wake up with Claire in this Prison area, find Moira, you've both got these bracelets attached and there's someone listening/watching your every move. It's all very Saw and the look of it is very industrial, there's no other way to put it, it's very grey and rather bland. You do make it out of the Prison after the first Episode and the game picks up after this, but the environs still don't really wow me, everything has a generic kind of look about it that will feel familiar to those that have played RE4/RE5. I definitely appreciate the variation though, but wish the variation wasn't Prison to factory, one grey area after another. You seem to be stuck on this island in the middle of the Ocean, got serious Code Veronica flashbacks playing as Claire and all, but the island just doesn't have as much character as the ship from Rev 1 as of yet. I do like how they've tightened and mixed up the combat though. Being able to switch characters on the fly is great and leads to some cool puzzles along the way, I reckon playing with another human would be fantastic but the AI has done a competent enough job so far. The shooting feels less floaty and the bullet impact on enemies feels far more visceral and satisfying. The inventory management feels much sleeker and easier to pull off too, combining items into various bits and pieces and passing items between the two characters is much improved. So overall, I'm enjoying it, but can't help but feel it lacks a bit of character compared to Rev 1, it's just not that memorable so far, but hopefully it improves. I will say I'm liking the dual plot-lines and time periods, definitely keeps things feeling fresh, just wish you didn't have to repeat a locale with Barry after already going through it with Claire. A few pics:

I never did get round to playing the first one on the Wii but that can be said for a lot of my Wii collection. A rainy (and jobless) Thursday last week however prompted me to unwrap the second one (part of my 360 backlog). So its Mickey and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey with a paintbrush that can use paint to fill things out or thinner to erase stuff. Oswald has a remote control that shoots electricity so as to open gates via control panels and he can also shock enemies with it. You traverse between hub worlds, each laden with NPC's that give you seemingly no end of stuff to do via sidequests. The hubworlds are connected by projectors that are basically 2.5D A to B platformers full of tickets (the in game currency) and little secret routes hiding more goodies. It's littered with little problems, depth perception being one, inconsistent jumping being another and camera angles to drop on top. I often felt that each jump was too high for Mickey, he can double jump but even then it felt like I was clipping through the top of platforms as opposed to landing on them. Oswald is also a complete cunt, one of the dopiest NPC's i've ever had the misfortune of having no control over. He has knocked me of platforms to my death, gotten stuck about 8 miles away leading me to back track so he can navingate the simplist of obstacles and he sometimes outright refuses to stand where I need him to 50% of the time. Mickey can throw Oswald in the air and jump up and catch his legs so they can glide to far away platforms, problem here is Oswald always goes far too high up in the air to start with therefore you have to wait five or so seconds for him to slowly float down so you can grab him. And that's fucking annoying! Yet... despite these irritants, it's a good game which is not at all what I expected. I really enjoyed it. The platforming was fun and the bosses were fairly inventive. I found loads of secrets and it turns out I didn't find even half of them. I felt like I ploughed through it a bit too quick but I do find myself wanting to go back and explore a bit more. Your actions have consequences as well, depending on how nice you are (by using paint to befriend enemies instead of thinner to destroy enemies) so it does warrent another playthrough if you feel so inclined. There are costumes and badges to collect, photo's to take, gremlins and spirits to find. I just didn't expect the game to be such a package. Reckon i might check out the first one.

Well so far, I'm doing rubbish. I've died maybe 10 times so the captains keep getting stronger. I am upgrading my abilities slowly but so far it's more frustrating than fun. My one true criticism so far is that the text is really tiny and when moves have come up I've had to guess whether the button is R1 or R2.

I'll just put a general thread down for Xrd. I'm currently playing - Revelator - though there was - Sign - that came out last year (or the year before maybe?) to keep you up to date. I don't actually think there is much difference in the versions apart from a couple of new characters, some on disc that were DLC in past version and some other minor changes that spruce things up a bit more in-game. I think one is the ability to cash in your 'Burst' to make a stronger super and not you can tech throws. I'm sure that stuff makes a difference to those that play a lot, especially the throw tech-ing, but it isn't as dramatic a change the series usually sees with each iteration (from what I've been lead to believe). I don't really know where to start describing it. In a way it's kinda easy because most attacks chain so you can mash out combos that look cool, and most special moves can be used an an ender, much like any other fighting game. What I'm finding unusual so far is just how long these combos can go for. When I was messing around I discovered I could cancel a special move into another then into another which would make the opponent bounce on the ground left open to juggle some more. That is unheard of in SF so even getting in the mindset to do that is odd for me. Having it that open ended is scary. But it is all in the mind as from I can tell there is some major damage scaling with long combos so I suspect it isn't so much about doing optimal damage but showing off. There is a lot of movement in GG as well, what with your air dashes and stuff but it does mean I have no idea how to be defensive other than be as wacky as the other guy. I'm sure there is a method to the madness that happens in a GG match but I haven't found it yet. But it is a lot of fun even though I've not totally grasped it yet. The game looks amazing. I still can't get over what they did to the Unreal Engine to get it to do this. Special mention goes to the tutorial as it is a lot more fun than any other. It basically turns the game's mechanics into a mini-game that gives you a good idea of how the things are working. There is also a more challenging mission mode that teaches you match-up specific techniques and common tactics used by certain players. It is all very educational. But at the same time I still don't think it prepares you for going against someone. Like any other fighting game the best lessons just come from diving in and being mindful of what is happening, but it does prep you better. There is a lot of game here but it is mostly tutorial stuff. There is an arcade mode to go through which alters it's difficulty from match to match by how well you're doing and there is a 'M.O.M' mode which I don't understand at all but doesn't seem all that interesting in my opinion. There is also a story mode which, again, is just watching anime. So I guess it's not a game to get unless you do want to learn it. It's not like Mortal Kombat where you can get a lot of enjoyment out of it without getting competitive. I wish there was more of that here. But it's fun. I'm giving it a college try. I've not won a game online yet out of 10... I did take a round once... But it's fine, fights are close, I'm just not pushing the envelope and the only people that play it clearly have a decent grasp of it so things could be a lot worse. I just need to improve my muscle memory and know what to do to defend then the wins will roll in.

Played the first 90 minutes or so of this earlier. Been wanting to play this for absolute donkeys years but missed the boat on its first 360/PS3 release, got it on PS+ but by then my PS3 was unplugged and in the cupboard, so just been biding my time for it to get to a price I'm comfortable paying on Steam. I never played the NES original so have no reference for how faithful a remaster/remake etc. it is, I vaguely remember them saying they got the original voice actors back but I'm not sure of that. Anyhoo, the game is pretty good, I roughly knew what to expect by watching footage years back, I knew about the pogo stick beforehand and am familiar with the characters from watching the TV show as a kid, got a kick out of hearing the theme tune when I first booted the game up. The gameplay really surprised me by how tight it controlled, it controls really nicely and I got into the Platforming very early on. Not really sure what the point is of it other than get a shit-load of cash and the level selection seems rather limited, but yeah I'm having a great time with it I have to say, reminds me of DKCR a bit with the hidden paths that there are to find, it has actually exceeded my expectations in a lot of ways. Had to restart after getting stuck on the first 'proper' level though, bloody hard it is! Feels like it has retained its NES-era difficulty for sure, can't imagine how difficult it would be on Hard! So yeah, restarted after getting stuck on the first level and went through the tutorial and eventually completely the first Amazon level on Easy. Will pick it up again tomorrow.

I tend not to read or watch too much about a game after its peaked my interest so i had no real expectations of this. I picked the big black dude who's speaciality is cracking heads like a mufucker with blunt weapons. Ive changed the fighting system from digital where you press R trigger to swing your weapon to analogue where you have to hold the L Trigger to initiate 'fight' and the flick the right stick from one direction to the opposite. This way you can target limbs, specifically heads, and im getting a few one or two hit kills now, as opposed to a flurry of four or five strikes before. The instruction booklet does a piss poor job of explaining analogue controls, i had to look it up online. You level up by gaining exp. Exp is gained by competing quests and killing zombies. Each time you level up you get skill points to spend. You can improve your characters Fury (like a beserk mode), weapon ability and health management. Im going to concentrate on Fury as the dominant stat, its super handy when your backs against the wall. Its like Doom, you go all hazy and basically rip through enemies with one hit. It feels like Farcry, whereas you move from place to place, talking to people, sneaking around, driving cars, just on an island full of zombies instead of Africa. Fights like Oblivion/Fallout, you can move in all directions whilst swinging your weapon so you can start the swing, move in to an enemy for it to strike and then move out for defence. You can also mod weapons at workbenches (seen that somewhere before) but they weapon construction so far feels more like Dead Rising, like mixing a baseball bat and nails. And last game comparison, but the collectibles are like Bioshock. They flash in the dark so you an see them and your collecting drinks, food and handy bits to make weapon mods. Also you collect audio diarys. You have your main quest line but im only a couple of hours in and i have about 10 sidequests on the go. I have had one problem so far, i picked up a necklace somebody wanted with the intention of returning it to them later when i finished some other quests in the area. Didnt really think about it again, but i naturally came across the hut where i picked the necklace up in the first place and the mini map indicated there was something for me to collect inside. Sure enough, the necklace was back on the shelf i first collected it from. Thinking back, the woman who requested the necklace was back at base where i had been ten minutes before and an icon would have appeared on the woman reminding me to hand in her lost goods. Hope that sort of shit doesn't happen too many times. Anyways, so far so good. Its suitably tense in places, scared the shit out of me a couple of times when zombies have come from seemingly nowhere and screamed in my ear before grabbing me. I also still approach fights with nervous caution. On i play.

Literally just finished installing the game now, downloaded the Nuketown 2025 map and the 26MB day one patch. The first thing you hear when you boot up the game and watch the intro is Elbow's The Night Will Always Win. More impressions will follow when I've had some games. I'm looking forward to digging into the new perks system.

Not the new one, Berseria, but the last one, Zestiria. Come on, make an effort. After finishing 2016 playing a string of indie games I think this is going to be my palette cleanser to start 2017. Zestiria received quite average reviews and by all accounts is a fairly average entry into the Tales series. I've played four hours and it's very much a by the numbers jrpg, It certainly doesn't feel like a blockbuster jrpg like Xenoblade Chronicles on the Wii. The graphics are probably somewhere around the level of the Wii, the music is generic, the combat is awful. But god damn, it's still good. While looking and sounding generic the game still has everything you could want from a jrpg. Probably most importantly, it has a heavy focus on story. So there are regular cut scenes, and the game occasionally throws in some gorgeous animation. Like this cut scene, which launches the game properly after you've played the opening couple of hours. You won't find that in Dark Souls. Best of all, you can play the game with English text, but voiced in Japanese. Japanese is a very phonetic language, words are spelled exactly like they sound, so it's easy to look up (and learn) words just from hearing them. This is a really nice way to learn some Japanese, as opposed to playing the game with Japanese text, which would be tortuous. Another element of Japanese is that boys/men speak differently to girls/women, so playing a jrpg is a really good chance to listen to these speaking styles. Also, it's interesting from a translation point of view. I don't know if the translation here is typical of all jrpgs, or all Japanese games, but this is far from a literal translation. I'm only talking about the parts where there is Japanese audio to compare with, mostly cut scenes.. I think the exposition elements of the dialogue are translated quite literally, but for the rest of the dialogue I would say that the translators have in a way written their own script, using the Japanese script as a base. Obviously it's a conscious decision on their part. In the examples I noticed a direct translation would have been slightly more boring than what they wrote. I shall keep you informed of my opinions on the game.

Destiny!?!?!?! So After the first single player mission, which was alright, some very nice views, then it takes you to the mass effect citadel thing where you can buy stuff. Such a bewildering array of stuff, like playing dota, or borderlands, it's hard to tell what the hell is going on and what all the stuff is for, what do all the stats and numbers mean? I don't really like stuff like that, but if I play this as much as previous halo games I'll probably at least eventually understand some of it. Then did some multiplayer for probably a few hours, had to sign up to psn+ first as I'd let my subscription run out. The hover bike things are really cool. There's 2 maps, one quite small and another bigger one with vehicles. You can't use your hover bike on the smaller one don't seem to be able to board vehicles the aiming is like cod, hold left trigger to look down the sights, which is strange for halo, although I guess it's not halo so... There's lots of differences really. It still takes some time to kill someone, so that's good. Grenades are weird, it's like an ability that recharges over time, which is fine until you respawn and still have to wait for your grenade to charge, which seems odd. You can permanently have a good weapon like a sniper or shotgun, supposedly limited ammo, but if you know what your looking for it's pretty abundant - green ammo boxes. I don't think I've unlocked power weapons yet- these are similar as you have them but with no ammo, then there's an ammo drop occasionally or something. The starting gun is a assault rifle type thing but I bought something that worked more like a dmr or battle rifle ASAP. It's wired using the scope in close range gun fights in this, but probably just because I'm not used to it. The only game mode is 3 plots territories style thing. There's different class people, mine had a sort of odd double jump where the first jump is normal and the second is a sort of jet pack/ hover which seems like it would leave you open to be easily sniped while hanging around in mid air. They also have special power things that recharge I don't know how, mine was a ground pound, just like playing Mario. The player levels affecting multiplayer is a big area of concern for me, as is everything having different stats, I have faith bungie will sort it somehow I guess, but anyway I was level 5 for most of my time playing multiplayer and killed lots of level 8 people but it did seem like the odds were stacked in their favour, for example shot gunning then punching someone of the same level seemed to be enough for a kill, but players level 7/8 you seemed to have to get at least one more shotgun hit in. And in halo, all the weapons are the same so if someone kills you with a shotgun you know why you died, because they waited for the right time to shoot or whatever, but in this people fighting with shotguns may have completely different stats so you haven't a clue if it was because of a more powerful gun, or one with a better range or whatever, so it loses some of the tactics maybe, although too early to say for sure. Anyway most importantly I guess it plays really well and I had a lot of fun, after some initial confusion, can't wait to get back on it tomorrow. Sorry for all the rambling/random points, I'm really excited to play this. Thanks again to mr lakitu for the code! Oh and I was just finishing for the night and joined Ed for a quick dance. There's a dance button, amazing! All games should have a dance button. Also there's some impressions from Ed and Sly in the other thread so I'll try to bring thoes over below...

I'm playing through Shadow of the Colossus while I'm between games, note I'm not playing through Ico because I don't think it's very good. The shadows snatching Ico away (or whatever she's called) gets actively gets in the way of your goal, which is the point of them, but it doesn't make things any more fun. The HD'ed up graphics do look a lot better but they don't fix everything. You still clip through things, textures and landscape still loads in, but it's impressive how much detail was in the ps2 version that we just couldn't see. The chief thing the graphics have sorted out is the framerate which varied from an annoyance to a real problem, now it runs nice and solid. Going back what I hadn't really anticipated was having issues with the controls, but some of it has now become slightly counter-intuitive. For example, pulling yourself up to a ledge needs you to press the jump button, not up, same with correcting your position, less seems to be more. What it means is sometimes climbing goes really smoothly, sometimes it's an absolute ball ache. I struggled so much on the first colossus that I assumed I'd forgot the controls, but then all of a sudden I could just climb freely. I'm getting through it quicker than I expected, the game clock had me at less than 2 hours and I've beat 4 colossi, but I guess I've still got vague memories of how to beat them

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

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