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The Good old days when (western) box art was largely unconnected to the game itself. But Japan was more on the money... Anyway, at time of writing I'm an hour at most away from the ending. So I should probably give some indication I've been playing anything at all for the past few weeks. Fun fact: I played this upon it's original release (1994) but never played the original game until the 2004 GBA remake. As you can imagine, I have a natural bias to the sequel. I still adore this game. Mostly I find the "jank" is associated to the control scheme. You have to pull up a menu to do just about everything. Every character can only hold four items (one of those is typically a weapon) and it just generally slows the whole process down. Funnily enough I've found the game wide secret largely on my own. Mithril. You find pieces of Mithril on the world map and in hidden treasure chests. There are fifteen in all. But there is an early point of no return in the game that means you can miss three of them. Those ones I always miss. Jump through a few hoops later and you reach the Mithril Blacksmith. Get ready to save scum if you want the best aka Ultimate weapons, though. The RNG is abysmal. The cast is quite expansive in this game. Which is quite standard for an SRPG. By the same token, a fair few aren't worth even using in your team at any point (points to Skreech, Birdman number two). You'll note from above some have alternate portraits. Due to the class promotion system in this game. There are also secret added items that grant some characters a new class promotion. For example, Kazim (sixth portrait on the top row). He can be promoted from Mage to Wizard at level 20. However, if you hold off on that for a town or two. You find a Secret Book which can make him a Sorcerer instead (this games Summoner). This applies to several classes of character. But you don't need to fret over it if you miss these items. The ultimate class promotion of the Centaurs is Pegasus. If you miss the item in the Centaur town. The Pegasus Jaro (the blond, seventh from the end on the bottom row) joins you by default later. Naturally, these characters won't be as strong as your initial characters would be in these classes. As an aside, much like the first game. I really don't get the fixation these games have with the Centaur class. There are five of them in this. Six or seven in the first game. There is very little between any of them. So yeah, on to my last two bosses of the game - Odd Eye and, King of the Devils, Zeon. I remember the latter being a chore. I've set the game to Hard mode. The 'Super' and 'Ouch' Modes beyond that seem really unnecessary to me. Since it isn't like you get anything extra for the added struggle.

appropriately this game is a bit nonsensical. Fortunately, as someone who's only watched what's on Netflix, the plot for story mode takes place right after the 2nd series ends. A young Speedwagon appears as Jotoro, Joseph, and Jean Pierre are attacked by people that had previously been defeated and killed, and explains that he's travelling through dimensions recovering the parts of a holy corpse that will close the rifts. Basically, it's a way to have the various Jojo's in to the same story, with young versions of characters being playable The combat is a bit strange. It's made by the people that make the Naruto games, and plays kind of similar with relatively large 3D arenas. The combos seem pretty basic, but you can by new moves, I'm not sure they fit in to the combos, so you're pressing L1 then a face button to do them, I'm not sure I see the benefit of using those moves over the basic combo, but maybe it will open up or become apparent as I play more. There's a flash move that needs to be charged up to use, this acts as a way to break out of enemy combos. There's a button that, if your partner reciprocates, will mean you both target an enemy and if you do enough damage will launch a special. Jotoro teaming up with old Joseph for their move is genuinely funny. I think this is tied to a super move, where you dash at an enemy, and if you connect do a really powerful move... honestly, I'm not sure what's going on with half the meters in this game, it does tell you, but before you've really encountered it so it doesn't go in. it's not bad, but the fights do drag on a bit, I'll stick with it for a while though and I'm aiming to at least finish the story mode

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

Not just for @bellow, but in general. With the recent multi-platform re-release, it is as good a time as any for those looking to return or jump in for the first time to one of the least contentious fan favourites in the series. With a little something, to set the mood... (Yes, this was a real thing)

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.

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 just realised we don't have a thread for this. It came out in Japan in 2014 but only came out over here last year. As you can see by the tags, it's out on pretty much everything bar PC. For anyone that doesn't know, Puyo Puyo is Mean Bean Machine and it mixes that with Tetris. The game modes are insane. You can play against people playing one style while you play the other one (or the same if you like), you can play a weird hybrid mode where the two styles are combined and you will get Puyos and Tetris pieces in the same zone, you can play an alternating mode where you play one style for say 30 seconds and then it switches to the other style, or you can play a puzzle mode where you have to fill in certain puzzle shapes. I played quite a bit in multiplayer over the Christmas break and it gets really fierce and fun. I wouldn't recommend playing online against randoms because fucking hell. You can view replays of other people playing and they are like machines.

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.

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.

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.

This arrived early wooooo! Nice surprise because i thought zavvi would be slow at delivering, had to get up early and wait in for it at my parents, but it was totally worth it. Anyway yeah I'm really enjoying it so far, but even though I'm a fair few hours in I'm still doing tutorials, lots of story/setup, and some mini dungeon stuff, so early days still. There's been some funny stuff in there, mainly the responses you can pick, but not loads so far. The presentation/graphics/music is great as expected really. The guy in the velvet room sounds odd/different. Something this has from other SMT games that I'm not sure the persona ones I've played have properly had, which i always thought sounded cool, is talking to the bad guys. I like it. As expected it's pretty similar in gameplay and structure to persona 3 and 4, there's a map/school to run round talking to people and social links and stuff, and dungeon where bad guys are battled in turn based combat. So there you go. I'm sure some people will be picking this up so hope you guys enjoy it maybe i shouldn't have started this as I'll probably just skim read it till I've finished the game now, which will probably be a while.

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.

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.

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

Started playing this a few nights ago thanks to a free 30 day code I received from a guy on another forum, always wanted to give it a go but didn't want to pay the money to take the plunge I suppose. Decided on a Female Miqo'te (Seekers of the Sun) Lancer with the Oschon Guardian, I'm situated in Phoenix in the Chaos server, Level 8. No idea really if any of what I picked is any good. The game put me into 'Grimaldia' which is a set of forest cities. As for the game itself...still undecided really, very early days 4 hours into an MMO but I like a few things about it and dislike a few things about it really. The world itself seems cool, the servers are stable and even though the graphics aren't upto 2015 standards really it looks alright, runs incredibly well at 1080/60 and I've been using the GamePad throughout without any major problems except I can't seem to find an option to invert the right analog stick which is annoying, but I've got used to playing in default now, despite it not feeling wholly natural. The way they introduce you to the game is very good, you're definitely eased into it, in one little secluded area of the map (Grimaldia), everything is told to you simply and tutorial boxes pop up for pretty much everything, there is still a lot to take it but it doesn't feel like you're bewildered or bamboozled by information and the world itself like other MMOs I've played in the past. Only really explored Grimaldia and its surrounding but it is pretty cool, the scenery is nice, the buildings have a lot of character to them and its cool seeing people potter about with Chocobo's in tow (how the fuck do I get one of them?!). My main gripe though at the moment is the quests, they're all very fetch-questy and traditional MMO staples as 'kill 6 of this creature', 'deliver a message to this person', 'go round up these naughty people and tell them to come back' etc. the coolest one I've done was some woman that was being accosted by this bloke that was a criminal and asked me to meet with him on the edge of town instead of her to see what his deal is, every other quest has been incredibly forgettable and dull, I've played 4 hours and these quests just keep popping up and up and up, they don't seem to go away, but there's not really anything else to do so I keep on just doing them regardless. I didn't understand why I couldn't complete some of the quests earlier, the little 'complete' box was not able to be clicked so I just left these quests uncompleted and went to do some others, tried again later into my session and realised if I pressed left or right on the d-pad I could select a quest reward, once selected the quest was able to be completed felt so stupid. Another stupid moment I had was when I had to get Level 5 gear to do a quest, went to the shop, dropped a load of cash on a set of Level 5 stuff and then realised after that I could've got all of it from the quest rewards I was missing all that money wasted, oh well :oops: Not sure about the Fate-public event quests either, it's a cool concept and when they work and loads of people come to one spot to batter some cunt its a nice spectacle but most just get in the way and are annoying really, only had people turn up in 1 or 2 out of all the ones I've attempted. The combat is really cool though, I mean you can just sit back and just press 1 button here and there, it's not very involved on the face of it, but you feel involved in it which is the key thing, and it feels satisfying enough that when you defeat a tough-ish enemy you're slightly elated. There's definitely something compelling about it though, it just feels like it could be a standard RPG at the moment, it doesn't feel bewildering at all really and I'm just pottering about doing quests, thinking about upgrading weapons, armour etc. like I would a regular RPG, I do hope the quests get better the further it goes on though as I think I'm out if it's another shit-ton of hours of these quests.

After finishing the last Lego game I played (whatever it was) I swore i'd never play another Lego game again. Then I bought this one in the sales (ages ago). I'm glad i'm an idiot that just buys anything for cheap because this is bloody good. Definately for fans of LOTR though, not exclusively but you'll get a lot more enjoyment from the game if you love the world it's set in. The puzzles are genuinely enjoyable, not once have I felt like i'm just playing to get through the levels like I have in previous games. It's full of usual Travellers Tales humour, both in the gameplay and the cut scenes. Oh, the cut scenes. Ones I actually dont mind watching (which is lucky as in Story Mode they are unskippable), a lot of though has gone in to them , they use sound bites from the films that brings them to life. The entire musical score is from the films too which adds to the atmosphere immensly - love that music. So yeah, super impressed especially as my expectations were so low. I think i have two more missions before Story Mode is complete. You can then go through in Free Play and mop up all the collectables, that's possibly where the fun may run out for me but I can't complain at what I've got out of a game that I paid less than £4 for.

I think some others have been playing this. Any thoughts. I think I quite like it so far but it doesn't feel as sturdy as Ridiculous Fishing or Luftrausers (other Vlambeer games) but I put that down to this being made in Game Maker. It feels like some production values are missing. But that's my only gripe, really. It's some good shooty fun with solid action and loads of Vlambeer screen shake. It's one of those games that has Rogue elements in it except this is a top down dual stick shooter. There are randomly generated levels though the themes are always the same and the same bosses always turn up. You have a bunch of characters to unlock that have different properties. It's a simple enough game. It is hard, though. I've got to the point where I can pretty confidently go through section 3 but I can't get past 4-1. I just get destroyed by the sentient crystals that fire lasers pretty rapidly. I tend to use the purple crystal dude who has more health and can throw up a brief reflective shield. I reckon he is a newb character but this game is pretty hard so I have no shame using him. I've been mostly playing it on the Vita, usually before work for 20 mins as it is pretty pick up and play. It's like Galak-Z in some ways except that is more complicated and does require longer sessions but I think they compliment each other well.

Got my copy through the post today from Simply Games, after I finished installing it I dived straight into the Multiplayer, pretty good, incredibly addictive as always, and extremely similar to the beta a few months back, I'm nowhere near as good as I was in AW unfortunately, and have only had a handful of games where I've got a positive K/D ratio but I'm still enjoying it, was mostly playing Ground War (alternating between Safeguard, TDM and Domination). As I've got limited time for this before F4 on Tuesday I don't really know what to do in it, I was hoping to Prestige it by Tuesday but there's seemingly no 2XP so that'll be quite a difficult task, I've only levelled up to Level 10 in 3 hours so it'll take me another 20 hours at least to get anywhere near Level 55, so I may just pack it in and make a start on the campaign or try out a bit of Zombies. I briefly tried to start the campaign today, just as an experiment to see what happens on the matchmaking side, pleasingly it does have matchmaking in co-op which means I can play with randoms if needs be if/when I eventually get round to playing it.

Despite this game being just awful I was still getting a bit of enjoyment out of it, that is until I hit a bit of a wall with it and I had enough. It's a very hard game to like. I'm astounded that when this game was made it still turned out the way it did. Early on one Japanese developers started using the Unreal engine at the start of last gen there were some games with poor performance. I heard instructions on how to use Unreal were never translated into Japanese so most just blundered through with trial and error. This game seems like no-one told them what had been learned so far. It has some horrible graphics with a very choppy frame rate that can be an eyesore when trying to track the action in a third person hack 'n' slash. It's also not very responsive. There is a countering system that I barely used due to a bad camera that made it hard to see where attacks were coming from as well as the previously mentioned choppy frame rate. You can fudge your way through the combat since it does have RPG elements that make it possible to grind experience, money and materials to upgrade yourself and your weapons and just plow through that way. It's pretty bad in a way I've not seen in a long time. Special mention also goes to the large enemies that aren't clear to read and have moves that are hard to dodge, and deal loads of damage, and take loads of damage. They are the worst. So why did I stay with it as long as I did? Well, everything else is really good. As bad as the graphics are they are just functional enough to create a good sense of place which is heavily amplified by the music. For those that don't know it's the same composer from NieR, and some of the leads from that worked on this, and you can tell. It's not as good but it does follow those lines well. It's a strange one. As for what you do you are a lady called Zero and you are tasked with killing your sisters (One, Two, Three, Four and Five) with the help of your pet dragon who has the personality of a little, naive boy. The sisters all have male disciples you get when you defeat them. So kill sisters and get their boyfriends. Despite being very violent and often melancholic it does also throw in a lot of smutty humour but it does it with a brashness that does come off pretty well and there are laughs to be had (unlike when a lot of nerdy stuff tries sex humour). It juggles those three things well. There are some subtle character arcs in Zero and her boyfriends, too. It's just a shame that it is tied to a game that is difficult to forgive. I'd be okay with it if the action was a bit tighter and it performed more stably as it's a bit of a head ache to see through to the good stuff. But I'm still glad I played it. I wouldn't recommend it.

For those that dont know... Guitar Hero is back... and its Live! Most pressing, the fucking buttons have changed, they've changed the fucking buttons. Gone are the five colours in a row. Now they're all the same colour, theres six of them - 3 at the top and three directly underneath. In theory this is easier but my brain doesnt work that way yet. They symbols are obviously different as there are no colours to match them with so you have plectrum shaped icons that are either black or white. Black are the top three, white are the bottom. You can also power chord by hitting top and bottom together. Ive gone from half decent to being a bit shit again but I spent an hour and a half practicing last night and i was getting better, i was able to do two quick notes on the top and a note on the bottom then switch back up to the top (then power chord) relitively pain free. Still, when it gets fast I was fucking up here and there. So it's a long road ahead to re-learn shit to a point where your brain just does it for you but I am enjoying the experience thus far. The two main modes of gameplay are Live and TV. Live is career mode, you play as part of a 'real' band to a 'live' crowd and jolly on through becoming more awesome and visiting bigger venues getting all famous and shit, same old story. TV is a bit different. TV is a constantly broadcasting network of channels that you can hop on to at any time and play track. It's like an interactive MTV channel, but here there are about 10 channels showcasing different types of music that you can flick between. There are always people to play against wether they are online or offline, I guess it just selects people around your skill level and you have to try and beat their score. The higher you finish the more exp and coins you get, the exp is for leveling up and unlocking skills you can upgrade (i've no idea what these are yet, im level 6 and you unlock your first skill at level 9) and coins are for buying 'plays'. The game did explain what this entails but i didnt read it or listen to be honest and it hasen't really affected me so far so fuck it, I'll find out what it is later. Look, amongst all this shit is Guitar Hero. I just wanted to play Guitar Hero again. And I am. And it's good fun.

Yea, it does look fantastic huh? I worry about how long it will stay fun though. Ive also played up to the second Devastator fight and it's very samey. My only other gripe so far was when I was chasing Megatron as a vehicle, I could really have used a fixed camera point instead of having to do the camera as well as steer, dodge and attack. Took a bit of the fun away. Fuck me there are some stats as well, weapons and equipment and synthesis and investing in tech, it always takes a while for this shit to sink in to my stupid brain. But so far it's pretty god damn fun. Onwards!

yeah so, i like this, it's a bit different to previous mgs games, in that the map is massive and you do missions in smaller parts - and you get a horse to ride around on - bit like the witcher 3. controls are confusing like normal, but pretty well explained. there seems to be a lot of scope for sneaking and doing things differently which is cool, but i am a bit rubbish at it and often get spotted while trying to be sneaky and end up killing loads of people - which is what i usually do in mgs games. doesn't seem to be an easy mode but it's not been too difficult so far. there is a chicken hat you can equip that stops you getting spotted a few times after you fail once or something - that might be the easy mode - unclear. you can hide while riding your horse by sort of hanging off one side of the horse, i thought that sounded ace so... the into/prologue part is a sort of long interactive cutscene, which has some funny/cool bits, and some rubbish/boring bits imo. after the first bit there hasn't been that much dialogue/cutscenes which is odd. but i'm not too far in so there's still time. extracting stuff is awesome.

This is out on pretty much everything right now, bar the 360 I think. It's a bit of a Rogue-like (or lite) 2D platformer so a bit like Spelunky. But also stealthy so a bit like Mark of the Ninja. You have 100 days to build up your abilities to pull off the final heist. Each heist makes a day tick down, each time you die another burglar takes their place and also takes a day off. When that burglar does, the abilities and money banked remains but money collected in the run gone wrong will get lost. It's good fun so far (I've got about 20 or 30 days in) but I've had some horrendous runs where I've fucked up badly about 10 times in a row so will probably start from scratch a few times before I see the 100th day. I was struggling at first until I watched this video with the developer: What I learned is that the basic hacking is the first thing you can afford, and you should buy that rather than try and save up for other things first. The money needed for most upgrades is obscene at first but you start off only able to rob from poor people and so the money you get out will be low to begin with. But on the other hand, security in the poor areas is quite basic so it's easier to rinse them out. Until the game recognises you're doing well and starts throwing more stuff your way, like mines, tougher enemies, etc. The best thing I learnt for myself when I was playing yesterday was to shut the doors rather than leave them open, so you can control where the enemies will go better. The art style is pretty great and the procedurally generated Victorian style names are superb.

So, I know this probably won't be a popular thread, but I started playing this on Saturday and thought I'd create this to jot my thoughts down. As a general rule with the LEGO games I try not to play too many too quickly, as I feel the repetitious copy n' paste nature of the games and the way they're designed would condemn me to tedium if I played some back to back, its been quite a while since I last played one actually, the last I played was the excellent LEGO Marvel Superheroes on my PS4 back in the Winter of 2013 when it had just come out, really enjoyed that, and the only previous LEGO game I'd played before that was the equally excellent LEGO City Undercover on the Wii U. I dabbled in LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Star Wars back in the day but never really enjoyed them until I played City Undercover on the Wii U, the humour, the city and the gameplay really clicked with me in that game and I ended up enjoying it FAR more than I ever imagined I would. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent here, needless to say, LEGO Jurassic World is the first LEGO game I've played in quite a while, as a massive fan of the Jurassic Park franchise it always seemed like a no brainer to pick it up, I think the LEGO games resonate the most with you if you're a fan of the subject matter in the game so I thought it would probably be a reasonable assumption that I'd like this if I bought it, and....4 hours in, that assumption seems to be correct. In LJW you get the chance to play through all 4 films in the series, however, only JP and JW are unlocked from the start. Being the JP fan that I am, I wanted to start back with the original JW, after I was done with this I moved onto the slightly maligned 'The Lost World:Jurassic Park' which struggles to live upto the heights of its predecessor, but is still a pretty good film in its own right. I think for anyone that's a fan of the films, you'll love this game. From John Williams' spellbinding score to some of the original actors' voices being included in the game, everything feels like an authentic JP experience, just in LEGO. Whilst I've a relatively short history with the LEGO games I've noticed in the 4 hours I've spent with this that there doesn't seem to be too many puzzles anymore, in Indiana Jones, SW, LCU and LMS I would find myself getting stuck on the odd occasion, not knowing which gadget/ability I needed to use a specific point in a level, and where to use it, but everything seems really straightforward in this, they seem to have taken out any difficulty the puzzle-elements of the game had, the other new addition is playable Dinosaurs, and yes they're as cool as they sound! The playable characters definitely aren't as memorable as the ones in LMS though, that's for sure, I was struggling to remember who some of the peripheral characters you can play as in the game were, obviously the main characters through all 4 films are recognisable, but beyond this I had no recollection who some of them were, a far cry from the spades of recognisable characters in LMS. So, yeah, just wanted to give a few thoughts on my opening 4 hours with the game, don't expect anyone else picked this up, but its been pretty cool so far, a nice relaxed easy going game that should keep me occupied for a few days, but nothing more.

Yep, that big new release everyone is talking about It's a motorbike game, which will probably be news to some of you, and it's by the people that do the MotoGP games. I can't tell a huge amount of difference between the 2 but then I'm not really an expert. It's kind of focused on buying bikes. You earn credits for winning, and you can upgrade your bike, but you'll be locked out of certain classes until you buy more. Other than that it's fairly open, if you can afford a superbike then there's nothing stopping you buying one and playing those events. The one bit of structure is the world ranking, a ladder to climb by finishing races. The ultimate aim is to get to rank 1, but along the way you'll hit certain milestones that will open up Elite races. These will reward you with a new bike, although usually you have to buy a bike to enter them, which you then spend money improving, meaning you never touch the new bike you won Here's a video I done. The mic is a bit blown out because it was recorded by the capture kit directly when it shouldn't have been