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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 started playing some of this. I'm definitely going to need digital foundry to hold my hand on what settings I should be turning on, the auto detect option on the game itself recommended I max the game out but that isn't happening. I figured I would settle for 30fps but the camera motion in this is really bad, it doesn't feel good. So I'll have to tweak that. Anyway it's very janky and hard to play so far. Everyone makes a big song and dance about DLSS but it dont play well with camera movement. I guess there is a hell of a lot of detail to be reconstructing all the time. Sometimes the game looks spectacular but sometimes I'm sort of finding it to look kind of terrible. Part of it is the game feels sort of weird. People phase into existence in front of you, cars render in front of you. Obviously there's weird shit with people t-posing but that's minor. At one time in a cutscene V was completely naked for no reason, that made me lol and makes me wonder if your model is always like that cause it's a FPS game and you can't see your tits or dick or whatever. Gameplay wise I find it hard to play and the HUD and text is such a bad clash of colours and design that I can't tell what's going on half the time or what the things I'm picking up are. This could just be the awkward teething phase but it feels kind of gross. The driving is also really swimmy. I mean I'm sure it gets good as you go in but yeah it's like kind of clunky in a really strange way. These guys did make The Witcher III I suppose. It feels like someone took Euro jank and gave it all the money but kept the jank. The game throws a million things at you at once and displays a bunch of info on your HUD that's hard to keep track of. It's not a very gentle easing into the world, it sort of just throws you in and you're constantly bewildered, well I am anyway. I'm confused. There's a lot going on here but it's not so much that it's deep just that there's a fucking lot of it and I can't be arsed to read it all. I played 3 hours of it, one of which was a big shootout. The shooting doesn't feel good, but it sounds good. Aiming is bad, there's a lot of control options to figure out so I will definitely be following whatever guide somebody puts up to fix the issues with it. Anyway it's cyberpunk, it does the Bladerunner thing. Pris is in it, sort of. That's what people wanted, a very Bladerunner-ey game. Except this is less chin stroking and more aggressive 90s Rob Zombie in your face all the time. Feels of an era This game is very hard to run, pretty much never see 60fps at the settings the game recommends for me. It's exactly the kind of game people were expecting, an absolute monster for both GPU and CPU. A new Crysis.

About time for some impressions, I think. So its a 2D fighting game made by ArcSystem Works, a studio famous for its 'Anime' fighting games. They usually have a lot of systems and movement options as well as combo systems that can be extended to let players do some crazy stuff as long as they have the execution to do them, which is usually quite hard to do. They have made it simpler here. The first thing is its very easy to 'get in' in DBF since you have a button that activates the 'Dragon Dash' which has you fly across the screen and home into your opponent, and it also goes through most projectiles so for beginners fighting each other having that is useful for swiftly getting in. But it is very punishable, so learning when to use it properly is an early lesson. It has a few mechanics to aid beginners because I'm sure they recognise that this is a Dragon Ball game and a number of people playing it won't necessarily be into fighting games, they'll just be fans of the show so letting them have a good time is a priority here. One of the other ways they do this is by having auto-combos (performed by repeatedly pressing the light attack (LA) or medium attack (MA) for a more powerful variant that ends in a metre costing super). They're not a thing I'm fond of as they won't teach you the game that well but they do make for some cool looking action. The auto-combos, in fact, are totally unique combos. In a lot of other games, they are the same visually as manual combos but do less damage. And since they are unique here its a shame to see them locked into the auto-combos and not be able to do them manually. For example, Frieza, a character I use has a really cool looking move in the first part of his auto-combo which launched them into the air. So what I sometimes do to mix things up is perform the first half of the A-C then go into a manual one when in the air. But I wish I had the option to do this move anytime. But while there is a very flashy and basic fighter there is a high skill ceiling here as well, which you will discover at the time of writing when you go online. It isn't as high as ArcSystem's other games but there is still quirky stuff. Since this is a 3v3 fighter you can call in a member of your team to do a one-off move and jump out again. Using these can give you the ability to get hits in and continue combos where you couldn't without. Or they can be used to cover approaches, help defend etc. There is also the little mechanic also found in ArcSytem's other games; the jump cancel. Its something I've always known about but I've not really put serious time into learning but if you want to get beyond hammering out basic stuff you gotta get used to it. Essentially any medium attack can be jump cancelled. A common thing to do would be crouching MA (which puts them in the air a little), standing MA (pops them up a little more) then hit up while the animation is still happening to quickly meet them in the air. Since you can only use your proper launchers and Dragon Dash once per combo link it frees you up to use them later in the combo and its the mastery of this that really frees up the fighting system as a whole. It's here where it really gets fun. I've not really played the story yet but I hope to get round to it soon (it's kinda bonkers it's about the Dragon Ball gang being controlled by an entity and they turn to the camera when referencing this entity) and it also has this weird turn-based map system between fights. There's other stuff. Sparking Blast and how the online seems to be kinda borked at the moment in that the games run fine until it kicks you out of the lobby for no reason, but this will do for now.

So I have about 5 hours in on this, and my first impressions are very positive. I'm sort of seeing everything that was promised in the reviews - from the incredibly tactile combat, full of balletic paries, dodges and blood soaked counters, to the lukewarm (though still effective) stealth - then to the leaf blown and colourful open world that delights the eye, but is still host to some of those ubi-like tropes, like enemy forts and such that, all of a sudden, seem to belong to videogame's past. Here, though, they seem very unobtrusive, and in the early game serve as necessary training grounds for the rather tricky combat. Or you could be like me - find a field of flowing pampas grass and practice against the winds of Tsushima, like a true Samurai.

The controls are really weird, I keep pressing the Touchpad for map and calling my horse with the wrong D-Pad button (thanks AC Odyssey). The gunplay doesn’t feel like it’s evolved since the OG RDR. It’s so incredibly clunky having to click in and out of cover and move up to the next position, felt like the analog stick was stuck in treacle. I’ve only had a few gunfights but every one has been a chore so far because of it, you just feel like just staying in one cover position so you don’t have to keep moving. I really didn’t think I’d be saying this but the R* game it most reminds me of is LA Noire. Early on there’s a cabin you have to search and I was just going around hugging walls and inspecting/picking up objects like LA Noire, you can do this with almost every richly detailed interior too. The quality of the writing, cinematics and atmosphere created though is truly phenomenal. The opening feels like you’re in and the attention to detail of the world and environmental design is astounding. I’ve been overwhelmed already with everything there is to do, I sat down and played Dominos at the camp for 40 minutes last night. I haven’t even discovered a lot of the side activities either, it has all been so bewildering that I haven’t quite got a handle on it. I’ve been a little disappointed with the ‘talk to strangers’ thing too as a lot of people in the only town I’ve been in have only had the ‘Greet, Antagonise, pull weapon’ commands which don’t really seem nuanced. I have had a couple of cool stranger interactions outside of the town though. Overall though, it’s just intoxicating and I can’t wait to dive back in and properly get used to my surroundings and all the different systems at play. The gunplay is easily my biggest grievance and if I don’t get used to it or it improves I feel it’s going to massively drag the game down in terms of enjoyment for me.

Continuing my Indie binge with Hollow Knight. Heard lots of good things about this game earlier this year and saw a Let's Play from Easy Allies of the first two-ish hours of it, has been on my Steam wishlist ever since. For those that don't know, it's an Indie Metroidvania game set in an eerie melancholic bug-world. I've enjoyed it quite a lot, being new to the Metroidvania genre I didn't really know what to expect, I've seen an awful lot of great indie Metroidvania games and kind of got turned off them in the past as there's just so many, I'm glad I gave this a go though because it's now a genre I'd like to explore more. For starters it doesn't hold your hand at all, you get a very brief control tutorial and are then left to explore the world. It doesn't explain anything at all, and if I hadn't of watched the EZA Let's Play I would've been a bit lost on where to go and what to do, luckily that gave me a brief idea. It was still a bit disconcerting exploring areas and not knowing where the fuck you are in the slightest, no map, no idea where the next Rest point is, no idea where the entrance to the next area is or anything though. Luckily you realise how the map system works pretty early on and then discover a vendor to add new areas to it, mark your location on the map etc. All incredibly useful. The gameplay loop is pretty similar to Souls I guess, if you die you loose all your 'Geo', you get Geo by killing enemies. The most innovative mechanic is that when you kill enemies you get souls that you then use to replenish your health, which adds to the whole risk/reward system of the game as it makes you want to attack more in combat in order to get more Souls to heal in the heat of a battle, it is a balance at times as your Soul supply can be used for other things too. You use a small sword for the combat (called a 'nail') which enabled you to hit enemies in any 360 degree direction, there's a lot of enemy variety on offer, when you go into a new area you have to learn their mannerisms all over again, there's a few areas with traps for you to fall into (similar to Souls) too, it always feels fresh and involving. It has that Souls feeling about it to about worrying where the next save point is, knowing you've got 1000+ Geo on you and whether to venture into the next area where a boss may be waiting or head back to a previous area and save. I won't give too much away but new mechanics are introduced as you go along that unlock new locales, one changes the platforming significantly and one changes the combat to a significant degree as well, the game never points you to these so presumably you could go the entire game without discovering them. There's also a system similar to the rings in Souls where you can get slightly more Souls when you defeat an enemy, a bit more health etc. but the slots are incredibly limited at this time meaning you have to choose very wisely which you want to equip. The game looks absolutely stunning, it has a really unique art-design about it, it's cartoonish but the backgrounds and levels managed to look realistic and give a very lived-in, ancient kind of vibe. By far and away the best thing about the game is the music though, it is just absolutely incredible and makes the each area feel special and meaningful, when you go to your first town and a certain song plays it's just so melancholic and haunting at the same time, it really is very special. The noises the characters you meet along the way make are fantastic too, they put so much personality in them just from gibberish and grunts. A few pics:

This is a bit hard then. Them load times too. Played half an hour, mainly been the same bit over and over.

Only played a few minutes before I go to sleep, but yep, pretty sweet so far. One thing I thought was really cool is that one of the menu options is you can change the appearance of the food in game. Could be as simple as you’re veggie or vegan and you would rather not everything be meat, but there’s also some silly options like “Castlevaniaesque” and “monster”. In related and weird news, IGN (or their freelancer) appear to have stolen an indie guy’s video review script. Apparently IGN hav taken down their review while they investigate.

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.

I've played over an hour of this now in about three 20 minute bursts. I like it but it is very different to Transistor (and the early parts of Bastion that I played). The game is part visual novel, part rpg. It's not as text heavy as a game like Sunless Sea (nor remotely as free-form), but the story is told through text like in the second picture above. Pyre is not remotely an action game. It's been described as a sports game in some reviews, but I think that's a bit laughably over the top. The "combat", known as Rites, does resemble a sport in that you have to take a ball and carry it into your opponents "pyre"...but I think this is the one element of the game that does resemble Transistor to some extent. Actually now that I'm typing this maybe it is closer to basketball than Transistor but anyway, I'm not going to call it a "sports" game just yet. During the basketball match (I've given up) you can perform actions like sprinting, jumping, passing and even throwing the ball into the enemy's pyre (oh my god it's basketball). If you don't have the ball you can cast your aura, i.e. attack an enemy. Each team has three characters and you can only control one character at a time. If a character is attacked they are banished for a certain period of time. Each individual character has stats that govern how much damage they do to an enemy pyre, how long they are banished for etc. Each character also has a skill tree and you can pick new abilities when they level up, and each character can also equip one "talisman" that has some kind of stat boosting effect. Those are the rpg elements. The visual novel elements are basically everything else. You move from point to point on the map (so far the game has been almost entirely linear) and this will usually trigger some kind of story event or conversation among your party that is told through text. In one hour I haven't experience much of the story but basically your characters are exiled in some kind of wasteland, and completing this rites ceremony seems to be some way to obtain freedom for them. There is no full voice acting (the characters make a few squables when they speak a la Zelda) except for the character who seems to control the rites, I don't know what it is but his voice seems to remind me of movies like Tron and Logan's Run. So far, it's an intriguing game, and you definitely can't accuse Supergiant of retreading old ground. Artistically, in terms of visuals and music, it's too early to comment but the signs are that this will match their earlier games.

This is just for the demo so far... release isn't too far away now though. I'm presuming this isn't too far in to the game, you start out already having met Carlos and entering the Subway train, after a brief conversation you're free to head up to the streets. First impressions... and it's a big one, HDR is vastly improved over RE2... I wish they'd actually go back and fix that but after a year its highly unlikely, anyway it's a lot better in this game. It controls very similar to RE2 but with the added dodge, I actually had to go and change the controller setup as I didn't like where they'd put run (clicking left stick) with the change it felt much better. Obviously it looks lovely, already it's a much more colourful game than RE2, shooting feels pretty much identical... all though I think they may have toned down the zombie dismemberment a tad... presumably because there's more on screen. I've had a good wonder around, it's got some nice little shortcuts you can open up to move around easier and I'm surprised at how many shops you could actually enter. I didn't actually get to finish the demo though... Nemisis killed me...? Everything is looking good to me so far, fingers crossed that shitty real life virus doesn't delay the game.

Got my copy early so gave this a go this afternoon after I finished The Inpatient. Starts off similarly to a lot of Monster Hunters, getting you into your camp quite quickly after a few scripted sequences, tutorials and lots of cutscenes. Spent awhile honing my character - went for my traditional ginger lady, had to change her hair as soon as I was able to in camp though as it just looked shite. Went for a tour of the camp and tried to take in where everything is, there’s definitely a lot to take in but I remember quite a bit of the layout already. Chose my weapon - went for the Insect Glaive. Tried it out in the training room afterwards and had an absolute blast with it, felt like Dante or Bayonetta or some shit, I was doing aerial gymnastics like nobodies business. Went on a quest after this to kill some jagras which was incredibly simple, cool to finally get to do my first quest. As soon as I finished all the online stuff opened up, I didn’t even realise the servers were online yet. Messed about a bit with the squads and checking out the new gathering hall which is fantastic. I’ve created a squad for us by the way, it’s called MFGamers - unsurprisingly - if you search for it whenever y’all get the game it should pop up, if not send me a message and I’ll invite you. Hardly got into it really, but it looks and feels phenomenal so far, cannot wait to get truly stuck in to some tough monsters in my next session.

Ok. So I’m a huge Dragonball Z fan. I first watched the series back in my 20’s, via the heavily edited Toonami dub (people never died, they got sent to ‘Another Dimension’). Years later I rewatched the American dub. And a few years after that, the Japanese original. I still have a lot of love for the series. So I was certainly interested in this. Visually, it absolutely nails it. It looks exactly like an episode of the anime. And it’s certainly a nice touch that you can play either with English or Japanese audio. It doesn’t get off to a great start gameplay wise though, with a pretty poor ‘training’ mission. I’ve seen a few videos of “stuff the game doesn’t tell you”. And a glaring omission is how to fight. Sure, you get three pages of a control pad, showing you what the buttons are. But there’s no explanation given in how to actually fight an enemy. I know, as a fan, that you have to charge Ki to perform energy attacks. But it doesn’t tell you that, so newcomers may be a bit puzzled why their special moves aren’t working. There’s a couple of prompts at the bottom of the screen (hold these buttons to do this move). But as far as tutorials go, it’s not great. I then experienced a bug which meant I had to reload my game. “Walk with Gohan to the fishing spot” I was told. Great. Except Gohan vanished, and after 5 minutes of searching it was clear he’d fucked off into thin air. Part of the game is open world, where you can fly around collecting Z orbs of different colours, to level up your abilities. Again, the game doesn’t tell you what these are for. Then there’s the Community Board, which is frankly a mess. You get a board, and when you meet characters and perform certain actions, you gain their icon, and can place them on your board. Putting certain characters next to each other grants you bonuses in combat. Some characters have their own board (Goku’s wife, Chi Chi, and his trainer Master Roshi). How do you add icons onto their board? I don’t have a fucking clue. It speaks volumes that the first time you access this part of the game, you’re barraged with about 6 pages of information. And I’m still none the wiser on what the fuck to do with it. Anyway, only a couple of hours in. Maybe things will make more sense as I go along. Or it won’t, and I’ll just mash buttons and hope for the best.

There's kind of been 3 types of Ys games over the years. The first couple you just bashed in to enemies, then they became hyper, isometric, all about attacking. Then we got to the 3D versions and it was still a game about going on the attack, but now what type of attack was important. You'd eventually gather 3 characters, a sword character (red), a blunt attack character (blue), and a piercing character (green), different enemy types are weak to different attack types, and you can switch on the fly to suit And that's how it's been for a few games now. Ys IX follows the same formula, but brings in a more traditional RPG structure. Previously side quests would task you with just getting certain drops, you'd get them from your home base, which was a tiny area, and that would be it. 99.9% of the time you were out killing things Ys IX is a little different, structured like a traditional JRPG, it starts slow, with the plot set up, then some short easy combat to ease you in, then a chunk more story. The world is no longer 1 small safe area then a world of combat, instead you're in a city, with combat, shopping, side quests, and exploration taking place throughout, I've not seen this in an Ys game before, even if it's fairly typical for the genre. You're eased in to the world with quests to visit shops and buy gear, it's a little slow going. There's still "dungeons", sections where there's nothing but combat and exploration, but now there's also little dimension pockets where you can enter combat and fight a handful of enemies, then just carry on with whatever you were supposed to be doing The tower defence style sections are still here, now you're whisked away at certain points to fight as a team, protecting a crystal, against waves of enemies. Not especially interesting, and the camera annoyed me a little with this, it maybe could do with being pulled back a bit so you see more of the field, but then they've not been too demanding so far, so maybe it doesn't matter also it's all anime goth now

I don't know how to give impressions on this without getting in the weeds. In terms of features it's an old fashioned 2D fighting game. You have an arcade mode (which is kinda interesting in that the better you do the harder the end boss gets) and there is a story that is literally an anime that you just watch, which is what the last game did too but it's still wild to me. There's also a pretty intense Mission Mode that does it's best to teach you the deeper mechanics of the game which if you're the studious type could work pretty well. I could do with spending more time in it myself but getting wrecked by someone using my character then trying to rip them off in the next match is more fun for me. It's the good netcode that saves it though. Well, the matchmaking is pretty rough at the mo but it plays really well in game. It just means there's always people to play with. This came online at midnight and I was ready to play it so I went to the east coast of USA since it was a more sensible time there and while it was a little choppy visually my inputs were barely delayed, if at all. I really hope they put this in a DBFZ2, in fact it would be shocking if they didn't. I've not saved many fights yet since I think I'm still pretty scrubby but my Gio is coming along a little. And this fight with Zato was fun when I wasn't put in the corner with all his nonsense:

I've been playing a bit of the campaign, and it is so much better than I was expecting it to be. It is called War Stories and is split into five separate parts following different characters and scenarios. I've only done the first one after the prologue so far, Through Mud and Blood where you and your squad are pushing forward in a British Mk V tank, and it was really good. It is quite poignant in places, and has great use of music. It looks bloody fantastic, too. Not tried the multiplayer yet, which says something of the single player as it's normally the thing I go for first in a FPS. If you leave it on the War Stories menu long enough, a lovely piece of music with a female vocalist starts playing and it is quite beautiful.

Started this last night, have probably put around 6-7 hours into it so far. I'm not going to go into too much detail as folks have already put up detailed impressions of their time with the demos. But, yeah, seeing as my expectations for this were pretty much 0 and I'd not played any of the pre-release demos, alphas etc. I have been pleasantly surprised. The graphics are what I noticed first really, it looks absolutely phenomenal. The voice acting and motion capture for all the characters just feels so incredibly lavish as well, all the performances are amazing and the motion capture just looks and sounds like one of the most realistic I've ever experienced. The hub world is reminiscent of Destiny's Tower but it feels much more Biowarey than I expected it too, it feels like much more of a real, living, breathing place than the lobby-esque workmanlike aesthetic of the Tower. Throughout the first few missions more and more areas of the Fort are introduced to you and you discover new people and places to see like a lovely plaza and bar. What has surprised me the most about the base is probably the NPC conversations though, you have multiple people to speak to after pretty much every mission you finish and talking to these different people to get to know them is a real joy, it doesn't feel like some throwaway exposition dump like in Destiny and other GaaS shooters, you do feel these folks have personalities. The 'action' part of the game I just felt like I was playing an Iron Man game really, there's not really any other way I can describe it. It felt fucking amazing to jump of of the cliff face outside the fort and just engage the thrusters for the first time. Combat itself feels way better than I expected too, although it has been very easy so far with me dying once and my shield being depleted on only 1 other occasion, all the other missions I've played have been a breeze. I have had quite a few bugs. Textures popping in some places - one time I was flying around and a whole environment was pretty much white and then spawned in around me making me crash -the helmet of your character not appearing on the cutscene that plays just before you go on a mission, a weird one where the subtitle box from previous dialogue stays on the screen and won't go away. I've also had quite a struggle getting it to run smoothly on my PC - which is surprising - I had to lookup a guide to get the settings right earlier and have actually managed to get a mostly stable 60fps with few dropped frames - before I was getting as low as 30fps in firefights. I actually haven't had the game kick me out at all though which is surprising, the servers and matchmaking side of things has seemed uber stable so far apart from the long loading times to get into a mission. So yeah. I like it and I want to play more. Apparently after 10 missions there's some kind of Wall that you have to grind to get up, but I'm not there yet so just enjoying the journey so far. It definitely feels way more Bioware than I was expecting and way more distinct thanks to the flight aspect. Lots of pics:

I'm playing Thronebreaker: Witcher Tales. It's okay, wander around, isometric view, gathering resources, making the side quest choice, and having occasional Gwent battles. It's Gwent that is the central focus, albeit disappointingly it's slightly tweaked from the W3 version - you start off with a compressed deck, and don't really seem to gain new cards in the same way as you did (by winning them). Instead there's a camp option, and you spend resources on them. Added too are puzzles, where you have a single hand one turn to complete different objectives - these are real head scratchers, in terms of understanding card mechanics. For now its just not really as enjoyable, as Gwent was in W3. Perhaps it'll open up later, but the limited deck is frustrating (and THB, I don't even recognise the cards from those previous played with in W3).

This is the collection that came out a year or so ago that has both the PS1 games in it. We have a thread for the Wii remake, which I'd completely forgotten about, but that seems to be an actual remake and didn't include the sequel. There's also a PS2 port, which I've played, and we'll get to in a bit, and I think that may have been a remake too. First off, I've played through the first game, Klonoa: Door to Phantomile, it's pretty good, and it looks alright all things considered. You couldn't tell looking at it that it was a PS1 game originally. The cutscenes are slow as fuck, there's an option to skip or fast forward them, but a bit of editing wouldn't have been the worst choice, so I've no idea what the plot is because I'm not sitting through all that. The game plays fine, for the most part, the design is pretty simple, early 3d platformer in that it's polygons that you traverse in 2d. You grab enemies and throw them at other enemies and items. Later this is so you can solve puzzles to progress, and these can get tricky, but also use them to double jump. Again, easy enough at first, you're just climbing up to higher platforms, but gets much tougher later. There's a few rough edges, some old fashioned elements with how hit and miss contact can be with enemies, particularly in the background, and it's tougher than something like Kirby which it's most similar too. The bit where it does show it's age is the movement. There's a very digital, block by block feel to how the game handles. There's no overstep to edges, grabs, or the game being generous enough to extend your jump so you make it when you maybe shouldn't quite. It's most noticeable in the more difficult platforming, if you're not precise then it's not happening, but as the world moves in the same stiff pattern as you do it can be a bit maddening. It's where that PS2 version I mentioned comes in. That's the version I've played the most, and I swear the movement is smoother than here. It's that era of Japanese exclusive remakes like the Sega Ages line, so I think it's a full remake of the game, and as such controls a little more fluid. It wouldn't amaze me if that's what the Wii version was based off. Maybe I'm imagining it, but while this is a pretty good version, I'd probably rather play that one

Wow, no thread for this? I'm surprised. Been dipping and diving into lots of different PC games and struggling to find something that really grabs me. This is it, I think. I'm only about 90 minutes in, so far it's an adventure set in a dilapidated world that feels marked by communism, or on the verge of some sort of ugly class upheaval. You're a very hungover detective who doesn't really know what's happening but there's a case you got to investigate. But maybe the real thing you got to investigate is who you are and what has happened to you. Sound familiar? I really like it so far. It's basically just a game about reading lots of text so far and passing/failing speech checks. I don't really get all the systems yet, but it's like PS:T through the lens of Jack Kerouac or William S Burroughs. Absolutely fucked up and manky but very beautifully written heaps of text everywhere. The screen where they show you all your perks/specialities is so aggressively wordy. I don't know if there is actually any combat in the game because every perk seems to be based around some personality trait

The very king of fighting games is back, and I'm head over heels with the little beauty. It looks and plays incredible. So much detail and so fluid in motion. I know I'll be posting in this thread in five years time, although tbf, probably as the avid spectator to online tournaments that I've been for 10 years by now. Truth is I've never been able to play the thing to any degree of competence, I just like watching other people do it. Having said that I've decided to do something I've never done when (trying) to play it. I'm going to go with grapplers. Maybe slowing things down a bit for myself might be more appropriate for my age - (advanced)!

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

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

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

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