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This is a cool, but not overly long, VR game. It's one of those games where the full price is probably a bit much to ask for it, but so much work has gone in to it and it's available to such a small audience they aren't ripping people off. I got it in the sale that's on PSN at the minute, and I'd say a tenner is pretty good for a couple of hours Pixel Ripped 1989 is a game within a game. You play as a young girl with a Game Boy style handheld, the game you play is a fairly simple, but pretty decent, action platformer, more Turrican than Metroid. You're sat in class while you play, so the 'game' is to finish the level without being spotted by the teacher. There's a spitball pen that you can use to activate distractions, buying you some time to concentrate on the level. Eventually the game starts bleeding in to reality, so you have to use the not-Game Boy to affect the world. The headmaster level is probably the best example of this, it's a great level, but if you die you have to retry the whole thing, 1989 I guess. On the nostalgia front, despite it mimicking the green screen of the Game Boy most of the games referenced and the sounds and images cribbed aren't Nintendo focused. There's a few Sonic homages, some Ghouls & Ghosts, Battletoads (fittingly, the worst section of the game). It makes sense, the developers are Brazilian, what doesn't make as much sense is how UK centric it is, I would have bet my house this was developed over here. It's cool, I enjoyed it quite a bit despite some frustrations during the boss fights. Some of them ask you to do quite a bit at once, and I found just darting about shooting while taking damage was as effective a strategy as any other

Won't be giving any lengthy impressions here as I pretty much covered the game in my R6:Siege Beta thread a few months back (can be found here: http://www.mfgamers.com/index.php?showtopic=40972&hl=%2Brainbow+%2Bsiege) and doesn't differ too much from the beta, largely I'm just going to address the improvement Ubi have made since the beta and comment on the other maps and modes that weren't in that. So yeah, everything is largely the same as the beta, the graphics are much better, the maps are more detailed (for the most part), they've changed the operator logo's (for some reason) to slightly more colourful ones and added a couple of Russian ones I don't remember from the Beta. In addition to this there's of course a lot more game modes in Terrorist Hunt and Multiplayer sections to play, and the addition of 'Situations'. Situations is basically a slightly lengthy, non-mandatory single-player tutorial, it's 10 missions that put you in various different situations, can be played on Medium, Hard or Realistic, you get a star each for getting 4 headshots, completing the mission with more than 50% health and killing 2 enemies whilst aiming, for each star you get 200 renown (R6:Siege XP) which you can use to buy new operators to use or upgrade/customise weapons. Terrorist Hunt, which was in the Beta, but only had the 'classic' game-type where you go in and have to clear a map of enemies on whichever difficulty you choose, there's quite a few more game modes in this such as attacking or defending a bomb or area, rescuing a hostage from a group of Terrorists etc. Incredibly similar to what was in the Beta, but the different game modes add a bit more variation this time around, it's good fun, and a decent distraction every now and again, but not as good as the PvP, the difficulties seem a bit strange as well, Realistic is almost impossible and I've failed every time I've tried, but Hard is too easy and I've succeeded every-time I've tried, so there needs to be a better balance there in my opinion. Multiplayer, now categorised as 'Casual' and 'Ranked' play-types, with Casual being the only option open until you reach Level 20, it also seems to me that the only game mode you can play is variations on TDM (defending/attacking a bomb, defending/securing an area) as in the Beta, there's not been any hostage rescue or anything for me so far, and you have to reach Level 20 to unlock these additional game modes it seems, which is slightly annoying, but the game is so good you probably won't care. A huge amount of maps now in MP, 11 in total and I've probably encountered 8 or 9, 3 of which were in the Beta (House, Embassy and Hereford), all of the maps I've played are absolutely phenomenal, a lot tell a story without actually telling a story (if you get what I mean), some of which make me think there was meant to be a story-mode at one point or another but it got pulled, because of the stories the maps tell by themselves alone. Thankfully, Ubi have managed to address the server issues that dogged my time in the Beta a few months back, haven't had any disconnections, and haven't had to wait a long time for the matchmaking to get me into a game thankfully, have had a bit of lag and a few glitches though but only in a couple of games. Just as tense, just as tactical, thoughtful and filled with suspense as the Beta, and probably the best Multiplayer game of the last 5 years, the moments in it when you outsmart an opponent through quick-thinking and planning are incredible and fill you with a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction that barely any other MP game can give, it's a shame that no one will play it. Highly recommended, if you are even in the slightest bit interested in squad-based tactical shooters, then get it.

I'm never quite sure, when browsing the PS Sale that I clearly bypass the highly reviewed AAA games that I've never played, and turn to something niche, but it's often the way it turns out. Couldn't find a thread for Elex but I know a couple of the GamesTM people played it, so thought I'd give it a go. Seems a bit overwhelming in the early stages, 2-3 hrs in, wandering off gets me quickly killed, whilst walking around picking up quests in the barbarian village is a big hit & miss (no way to access inventory or map without using that item they don't want you to use....) But I'm reassured from reviews that after the first 5 hrs or so it gets a whole lot better.

Put 4 hours into this earlier. First thing you notice in an uncharted game is the graphics, they blew me away and left me flabbergasted once again, this is the first Uncharted game I've seen in 4K HDR and it is absolutely fucking magnificent, I could write paragraphs and paragraphs just about the level of detail in this game and the lighting, it is quite frankly ridiculous and I don't know how they manage it, ND are truly gods among men. The first few chapters are basically the PSX 2016 stage demo, there's more buildup to it and little details like the Chloe not wearing a hijab but yeah you make your way through an Indian city at night whilst a war is raging all around you, everything just looks so amazing I was stopping every few seconds and panning the camera just looking at how incredible everything looked. Anyway, you reach the part where the PSX demo ended and this sequence goes on a bit longer, you steal something, get caught then run away from the chasing Indian rebel army using the rooftops and zip-lines all whilst it's thrashing down with rain, thunder and lightning around you. Once this is over you enter the main area in the Indian savannah, think Madagascar in U4 and you've pretty much got it. It looks almost exactly the same as that, you have a Jeep to get around, there's places to winch the Jeep to get into, enemy encampments dotted around, exotic animals to fawn over and all that good stuff. Where it differs though is you're mainly left to your own devices to explore. There is an overarching objective to find three monuments to Indian gods in some tombs dotted around the environment but you can go where you like, find loads of treasures, pick up collectible tokens to unlock a reward and much more freedom overall than any Uncharted game before it, you can also choose to explore enemy camps and take them out or leave them be, I think this is the first time an Uncharted game has felt truly open-world to me, it's still relatively small, granted but it's still a dense exotic environment that you can have some fun in. The collectible tokens are a really cool idea, instead of just picking them up you have to do a trial in order to get them (actually reminded me of BotW in a way). This can be doing a wheel puzzle on a wall, a physics puzzle like using your weight to see-saw open a hatch or having to ring 8 bells at the same time to get some metal bolts on a door to open, some are a bit more dull like just throwing a grenade at a wall, but some of them have some really nice ideas about them. The rustic feel to the map as Chloe crosses off another token is very satisfying too. It has taken me a while to warm to Chloe and Nadine, I'm used to hating Nadine from U4 so seeing her so buddy-buddy and one of the protagonists is a bit jarring at first. Chloe's great though, their relationship is a bit tense and business-like at the beginning but has already grown in the time I've been playing it and I love the banter between the two of them as I'm riding around in the Jeep, I particularly love Nadine's probing of Chloe's time with Drake. When under questioning Chloe says 'I know Nate well, but his brother literally appeared out of thin air' which I thought was a funny reference to Sam being suddenly introduced into the Uncharted-universe in U4. Took me a while to get used to the combat, but after a few shoot-outs I was zipping around the mini-arena's, stealthing people (the new silent pistol is a god-send) to death and firing some weighty machine-guns when I got found out. Haven't really noticed it to be a lot different than U4 really, if you liked the combat in that you'll like this, there does seem to be more options for stealth this time around though which is always nice. So yeah, I think if you liked Uncharted 4 you'll like this, maybe if you like open-world action games but not necessarily Uncharted you'll like it too, there's more chance anyway than past instalments, particularly if you felt irked or annoyed by the Drakes and their narrative baggage anyway. Photos below:

I haven't played a huge amount of this but someone should start a thread It's the easy comparison but Wargroove is basically Advance Wars meets Fire Emblem, but bigger. It's got the commander concept, stronger units that mean victory/failure if defeated, and who also have special abilities that can affect surrounding units (health recovery, defence boost, an extra turn), this is the titular Wargroove. Aside from that it's the familar Advance Wars tile based gameplay, with units being strong or weak against other types or units. This could be clearer, you click on them and have little icons that show the types they're strong to or weak to, but it might be better to have it spelt out a little more, maybe even showing that they're boosted as you line up an attack. There's also critical traits, things like having two pikemen next to each other means that the one that's attacking will have boosted attack. It's a key part of the gameplay but some are much easier to act out than others. For whatever reason, as much as Wargroove is Advance Wars and it is Fire Emblem, it doesn't quite feel like either of them, it's not as immediate or as compulsive. It might just be that it's be that it's not as good, the first Advance Wars rates as right up amongst the most I've enjoyed a game on first encountering it. I think part of it is the maps, they're larger than the early stages of the Nintendo games its aping, and they quite quickly start trying to trip you up in a way that those games don't in their early stages. The fog of war it introduces for example, Advance Wars would leave enemies very deliberately in place so you could breeze through learning the mechanic, Wargroove turns it in to a proper level. It also feels like some units are just not very good, it's less rock/paper/scissors and more that swordsmen are just worse than pikemen. The longer length of missions is probably not helping it either, but then, that's just in comparison to Advance Wars and the like, it's a good game, it just suffers because it wears its influences so obviously I will say though, I'm enjoying it, and the way the audio pans as you attack from one side of the screen to the other is a great touch

Blakey told me to put it here but I feel BBS is too old and small a game for its own thread so I figure I'd just make one for the collection itself BBS is the only one I intend to catch up on for now as well as that prologue thing (it's like three hours long apparently and is a direct sequel to BBS) Cross posting from KHIII thread I'm about 5 hours into Terra's "campaign" in BBS and I'm getting bored. This game feels starved of the charm of the PS2 game. Environments are really bare (even the ones that are returning) and the cutscenes arent always animat ed very well. Voice performances are worse than on PS2. I think I miss Donald and Goofy. So basically it's a PSP adapt ation of a console game with all the downgrades that you'd expect. But the combat is actually quite alright. I find Terra very slow and stiff to control but there's some neat stu ff in there. I think the BBS team is also the KHIII team as well so some of this will carry over maybe. EDIT Well I beat Terra's campaign. The final section was actually pretty cool. Lots of one on one boss fights. The story still doesn't make sense tho cause you have to play the other two characters to see wtf is going on with them. Nier Automata all over again . The game as a whole just feels so bare tho. Rubbish versions of Disney worlds and very few NPCs. If this is the high watermark of the KH spinoffs then Im not too sorry I missed them. Xenahort or however you spell it is a fun guy tho. EDIT2 I was just looking at the voice talent for this game. Leonard Nemoy is Xeonhort!? ? And Mark Hamill plays Master Eraqus, who is based off of Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy. Two cool dudes for the price of one.

I'm surprised there is no thread for any of these. I got this a little while ago and just started getting around to it. I've not really played any of these games before except looking at the Vita one for a few minutes when it was on PS+ so I'm more than a little late to this party. So its a relatively simple block puzzle game with ties to music. You make up squares and they disappear... then you get points and you have to last a long time. Sorry, I'm not very good at the game yet and I don't think I understand it that well. I've played a few of the missions were it sets up certain situations and you have one move to eliminate all the blocks but I've not been strategically setting anything up yet in the main game; I just whack stuff down vaguely together hoping it will all combo together further down the line. I do try to time my dropped blocks to get the most down before the music's BPM(?) bar does a scan so I can get the most down and get combos... I think, that's how it works. I'm having fun with it, anyway. I'm a bit hot or cold with the music so far to be honest but I'm enjoying the game. I have no idea how I'm gonna get anywhere near @spatular's score.

I spent the end of last year finally getting around to Just Cause 3. It had been languishing in my backlog for ages,so one day I thought “I really need to play this”. Leading to me happily playing through to the end,taking over the entire region of Medici,and doing the DLC,which increased the carnage with a missle+machine gun wingsuit,and mech. Having had so much fun with it,I bumped JC4 to the top of my Boomerang rental list. It just arrived today,so spent an hour or so playing it. I noticed a number of reviews say it looked graphically worse than JC3. Having that game fresh in my mind,I have to say I agree. It doesn’t look awful,but something is definitely off. I’m not entirely sure why,but at the moment I prefer the way JC3 looked. At the moment my weapon inventory is limited to two guns,as opposed to the previous system of two guns and a pistol. Maybe that changes as you progress in the game. I don’t like that the button to swap weapons is the same as reloading. You press Square (on PS4) to reload,hold it to swap weapons. It feels weird. As for taking over regions? Gone is the whole “go to an area,blow up everything and take it over” setup. Instead, you get rebels to take over places by assigning them to a region. You have to unlock more people for your army by causing Chaos. I haven’t played enough yet to judge how that properly works. But it feels like an unnecessary change. I liked liberating everything myself,so I’m not entirely sure how this will play out. I intend to play plenty more of it, as the series has always been fun. But I can see why this got a mixed reaction in reviews.

Well,this is a very welcome return for the Onimusha series. It’s been laying dormant for far too long (So has Dino Crisis,Capcom. Hint hint). So when it was announced that the first game was getting a Remaster,I was all for it. I absolutely loved these games back in the day,which was basically “Resident Evil but in Samurai times”. And the game has held up really well. The combat is simple enough to learn, one button for sword attacks,another for magic,one for blocking. Killing enemies earns souls,which are used to level up your gear. The graphics have been given a nice lick of paint, it looks good. Though as it’s a straight up port,there’s things to be aware of. Cutscenes are totally unskippable. Which wouldn’t be a problem,except for the infamous Water Puzzle section. Which puts you through 3 traps in a row,the final being a sliding tile puzzle,which are always a massive ball ache. Made worse here as you’re up against a time limit,and failing means doing the entire section again, after going through a lengthy cutscene preceding it. YouTube guides to the rescue for that bloody bit. It would have been nice to have some extra content thrown in,such as a history of the series,promotional material,stuff like that. Something like the effort Capcom put in to the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection last year. And it’s a shame it’s only the first game,rather than all 3 in one collection. But I’m just glad to have the series back. And hopefully we will see more of it in the future.

“Legend”? Well,that’s debatable. The original was god-awful,yet for some reason gained a cult following. Which led to this game,a side-scrolling beat-em-up,which remains one of my favourite genres in gaming. Will this reach the standards of Streets Of Rage et al? (Spoiler: Not bloody likely). The load times are atrocious. Which feels deliberate,just so you can “enjoy” Shaq’s rap. Because if Kazaam showed us anything,it’s that he is quite skilled on the mic. The “jokes” are so dated,it’s baffling. One boss riffs on Vanilla Ice. Another on Kim Kardashian’s arse. And one on Paris Hilton,with Shaq directly referencing her sex tape. Which immediately makes you think two things: Shaq knows what her sex tape is,and why make a reference to something so ancient? Then there’s the combat. Which is ok,except for one major problem: it’s piss easy. Weapons and throwable barrels respawn in an area in a matter of seconds,meaning hordes of enemies are absolutely no challenge. This gets worse when you find and active a special power up,either a mech suit,or cactus. At this point,the game doesn’t even try to be difficult. As in either get-up,you have infinite ammo,and the only way you’ll even take any damage is if you put the control pad on the floor and do nothing. And these sections last a good 3/4 minutes,throwing a ton of enemies at you that pose as much threat as a packet of Bourbon biscuits. But then you reach a boss,and hit a massive difficulty spike. Which throws you off guard, as you go from no challenge whatsoever,to dying in no time at all. And with only one life,this leads to a lot of repeats. And the finishing touch,is it’s buggy as fuck. I got to one boss,and halfway through each attempt, it completely crashed on me. 5 of that in a row and I went “Yeah,fuck it,I’m out”. So,yeah. It’s a bit bollocks.

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.

Odd that Blakey just posted a picture in the Latest Purchase thread as I just finished this myself today. Its only a couple of hours long. The immediate comparison in my mind was Katamari Damacy where as you move something around and as you add to the thing you're moving it gets bigger. In this case it's a hole. The more that goes in the bigger the hole gets and the bigger the things you can swallow. It's more set pieces in opposition to Katamari's sprawling playscape and Donut County is much more story driven. Its about a racoon called BK and his pal, a young lady called Mira. Using an app on his phone that controls the moving hole, BK has basically swallowed up the town including himself and Mira. Turns out the Earth is hollow and all the townsfolk have gathered together underground to try to figure a way out. The levels you play are flashbacks leading up to the current event. In the levels themselves you move the whole around, swallowing things up. Each level is split in to little areas and sometimes the hole size resets, depending on the goal. Also there are puzzle elements. Like in the second level you need to launch a hot air balloon by swalling a flaming kiln. The hole then emitts hot air so you can lift the balloon and end the level. It gets more complicated than that obviously but you get the picture. BK the racoon is quite funny, he's a selfish cunt to comedy effect. The games humour continues in the Trashapedia which is basically a log book of all the shit you pick up with amusing(ish) descriptions. So yea, its nice. Looks nice, nice music. You know, nice. It's just quite short. I liked it though, my kind of game. Nice.

After seeing a glowing review at Eurogamer I thought this would be a nice counter game to the gritty/bleak violence of God of War, and an excuse to pry the Switch away from the kids. You have to bare with me on the premise - you play as a dung beetle who's the new postmaster on the tropical island of Mokumana, who's guardians are being attacked by the 'God Slayer'. After meeting the previous postmaster, your given a postman badge and told to go meet some fellow further on in the island. Navigating the island is a joy, you push a ball (of what I hope isn't shit) about in front of you and there are numerous pinball flippers around that you activate with the L and R triggers, launching you all over the place. You meet various strange characters and creatures along the way, who give you challenges and rewards. One example is having to find six soot balls in a lighthouse, with the lighthouse essentially being it's own pinball table. Completing these tasks gets you new abilities granting access to other parts of the map, a la Metroid/Castlevania. The art style is great, the music is fantastic and it's a joy to play. All in all, well worth the £15 entry fee.

This was the first proper VR game I played standing up with the two Move controllers, I'd played the Job Simulator demo and had a blast, but this was an actual full length - well, full length for VR anyway - game. And boy does it make a difference. It bills itself as 'be the Batman' which sounds corny, but it does kind of get there. You go through a load of Batman scenarios. So first off you're in Wayne Manor and free to just teleport - a lot of VR games use teleport to avoid motion sickness from 'locomotion' - about exploring postcards from Selena Kyle and studying various bits and pieces in the foyer before heading to the Piano. You hit a key on the Piano and descend down a lift, whilst making your way down you put on the Batsuit bit by bit, armour first, then the utility belt, forensic scanner, batarangs, grapple gun and the mask. Of course the game also gives you a mirror so you can see yourself as the Batman - I did a little Batman dance obviously - which is pretty surreal, the feeling as you go down the lift is pretty bizarre too, it feels so real. Once you get to the bottom of the lift you end up in the Batcave. You're free to explore here, messing about with the various computers, seeing a load of character/vehicle models up close and personal, being able to analyse some blood vials, a batarang target challenge and browsing some case files on the computer but there is an underlying story of some associates going missing that you're tasked with investigating too. Once your done dossing about in the Batcave - the feeling of looking down and grabbing a Batarang or grapple gun out of your utility belt never gets old - you track one of your associates down to Gotham, stopping off to torture one of the famous Bats villains for further information. Once you get to the scene you find things have gone awry and you have to investigate what happened, so you get your forensic scanner out and start investigating, having to pause/fast forward and rewind to find various bits of evidence. I can't really tell you how great this feels to feel like this master investigator at the heart of this crime scene, it is really incredible and the best part of the whole game to me. There's another investigation scene in a morgue before you track down the alleged perp in the sewers. I don't want to spoil the rest of it but it gets quite inventive, you have to solve a few puzzles and then things take a turn for the bizarre which is rather effective in VR. Once you're finished you unlock Riddler challenges which give you an incentive to make your way through the game again. Like most VR experiences I've played this far, it is very short (1.5 hours) but it definitely left me with one of the best impressions, it sounded corny before but I actually did feel like the Batman at times. The Riddler challenges give you more reason to go back through the game too, which I would've done if I didn't have a gazillion other things to play. But yeah, if you get a PSVR headset, this is definitely one of the games you should pick up in my view. Highly recommended.

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

This is an odd one. It starts somewhat typical; you play as a young woman called Mina who is fed up of the small village she lives in and wants to go out and explore the world. What makes this a little different, for video games at least, is she wants to do that through cooking. But being a chef in this game's world is a little more exciting than it is in reality. The general gameplay goes like this: Next to the kitchen where you cook the food there is an area brimming with monsters (oh yeah, you're feasting on monsters in this world, too) and you go out chop them up into tasty little bits using a combat system which is maybe more versatile than needed. Rather timely it is very Smash-like: a direction with an attack gives you a move with its own properties (launchers etc) and you have special "magic" moves also tied to a button and direction. But these can be chained together too. It's not to serious about its combat but I do like to launch them, combo, teleport behind them and combo more to keep them in the air. It's fun but kinda needless as you do just need to be killing things quickly for their tasty bits as you are timed. When you have enough bits you put your spoils in the pantry and start cooking. This is done through a match three puzzle game. And this is where it gets surprisingly complicated. I'm not gonna go into it too deeply because I'll be here all night but each ingredient contain either two, three or four Bejeweled gems (lets just call it what it is) and chaining three together intensifies the taste, where it turns into a different gem which can be chained again to intensify the flavour further. But there are so, so many additional mechanics as the game moves on. Different pans can alter the properties to how things are chained. The story factors in too. It's very Monster Hunter in it's story as it adds a plague to monsters to add some stakes (or steaks! lol! *dies of comedy abuse*) to keep things from being too twee. Ben will hate this game. It'll make his teeth itch or whatever. But what the plague does is add further mechanics as you'll have to deal with eliminating poisons and dealing with taste gems that break down and disappear. It's generally well acted, especially by the lead, and kinda funny at times. It's a pretty game too with its hand drawn backgrounds and animations. It does repeat its areas bit but I think its just a function of the insular, low-key story its telling. I've been enjoying it more than I thought I would. I know back in the day there was that platformer puzzle game on the DS that was like this a few people here liked. I think this could be good for those, too.

Started this today, put in about 3 hours. It left a hell of a first impression I must say, absolutely loved what I've played so far. I played 2014's The Stick of Truth and whilst I thought it was very good overall, it lost its way towards the end for me and became incredibly repetitive, leaving a sour taste in my mouth as I limped over the finish line. Being a huge South Park fan and seeing an idea like that executed so well and with all the trademark humour and lore established in the show translated into the game flawlessly was fantastic. Being able to go around South Park and explore every nook and cranny of it, finding chinpokomon and all sorts of mad side quests, it was really cool. But towards the end it became real repetitive and a lot of the reason for that was the combat. It was enjoyable for the most part and quite a bit of fun but towards the end where you're put into challenging fight after challenging fight it felt like a real slog. It just felt too basic for me after x number of hours, it didn't feel as deep or tactical enough as I wanted it to be and just became a chore. Fast forward to 2018 when I finally get round to playing the second South Park game, The Fractured But Whole, and I was somewhat trepidatious as to what to expect. Even though it has been over 3 years since I played the last game the finale left such a sour taste in my mouth that I really didn't know if I was going to enjoy this or not, I thought it would just be more of the same and with Ubi SF taking over development duties I just didn't know whether it would have as much charm and humour as the original game. Thankfully - as mentioned at the introduction, the opening 3 hours of the game I've played today have put all my worries to bed. It has just been an absolute joy to play in every regard, exploring the town again, speaking to all the characters around the town that we know and love. It's just great to be back in South Park again. Probably the best aspect for me though has been the ability to open every door on every house or store and look in a hell of a lot of cupboards for loot, it is just incredibly addicting in a Fallout kind of way, I can't remember an awful lot from the first game apart from the ending, combat and the abortion clinic so I don't remember the first game having this level of loot to find. I remember going to people's housing and exploring the town - looking for chinpokomon especially - but yeah I don't remember there being this level of reward for looking in every draw in a house or store. Another aspect is the little puzzles you come across, some have that metroidvania element to them where you haven't got a certain ability yet so will have to come back later to get to the chest/item just out of reach in a particular locale. That level of exploration, exploring the town and encountering all these little side quests you can pick up like discovering who key'd Randy's car at night or speaking to Morgan Freeman in the Taco stand so he can teach you how to Craft bits and pieces. There's a ton of collectibles too, but the main ones I've found so far are these Japanese-style art pieces called Youi or something like that which are a bit anime looking and quite strange. One of the other new elements is the 'Coonstagram' stuff which encourages you to take a selfie with everyone you can see so you can get more followers - and unlock more missions down the line I presume. So there's another puzzle element of getting someone to have a selfie with you, sometimes it'll be something simple like buying stuff from a vendor but other times you'll have to help Jimmy finish a school project or something like that. There's also this artifact system where you can equip one into a 'hero slot' on your character and it'll give you and your team some kind of boost in combat. Most hilarious one I've found so far is a buttplug I found in Big Gay Al and Mr Slave's house that gave me +35 'might. You can find costumes all over South Park too - of course I got the AC costume with some uPlay units though The aspect that has impressed me the most though and is the biggest improvement from the original is most definitely the combat. I don't remember it especially well from the first game but here it feels SO much deeper and a hell of a lot more tactical with the new tactics grid. The grid enables you and a bunch of enemies to move about turn by turn, using different x, y, x or a abilities but all the abilities require a certain placement in order to attack multiple enemies or knock an enemy back into another for a bonus. A lot of abilities cannot be activated if the targeting square cannot reach the enemies square so placement on the grid itself is key. As well as this there's numerous ailments to consider and AOE damage when certain enemies die, you still have a timed element by pressing A at the right time when taking a hit or doing a move - which fills up your Ultimate meter quicker - but it doesn't seem as full on as the first game and the tactics grid makes everything feel much clearer and less simplistic if that makes sense. A bit more side-scroll XCOM-lite and less Child of Light if that makes sense to anyone So yeah, I really didn't expect to be as impressed as I am with it but it's safe to say it has got me hook line and sinker, cannot wait to dive back in tomorrow. Some pics:

Played the first 80 minutes or so. Incredibly impressed so far, it has actually managed to exceed my expectations. Got quite a jarring start to it, Kidman randomly shows up and puts you back into Stem, telling you about your daughter (who knew?) being stuck in there. It's just all incredibly convenient and I'm sure Mobius is upto some Shenanigans, they're definitely using Sebastian for something...don't trust them at all. Things go wrong pretty much as soon as you enter Stem, You then find yourself in Union proper, and are funnelled into an extended tutorial, meeting some of the zombie-like enemies similar to the first game. And that's pretty much where I left it. But yeah, I'm incredibly impressed so far, the atmosphere is just absolutely horrific and the whole small foggy town vibe really reminds me of Silent Hill, I just love the way they mess with you as well through the Stem-delusions, so great to just have no idea what the fuck is going on some of the time. Oh and the graphics are a HUGE step-up from the first game, I never subscribed to the idea that the first game looked bad necessarily, but looking back on it now it was incredibly dated, just looking at the character models and lighting in the new Steam engine (modified IDTech 5), it's such a huge step up. The frame-rate has been a pretty solid 60hz but I have had a few dips to 57 or so at times, seems solid enough though to not notice for me. Some pics too:

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.

Anyone else given this a go? It's been free on both Xbox and PS4 now so I'be finally given it a quick go, and yeah, it very much is a Souls game. One of the main differences so far is the lack of customising your character. You can obviously level up which way you want and choose equipment but rather than the silent hero from the Souls games, they're definitely telling a story and want him to match the CG. There'a only 3 classes to choose from and I just went for the hitting things option. A couple of other differences from the Souls games: When you die you have a limited time to get your xp back and the percentage of what you regain will be lower depending on how quick you are. Also you bank xp to either spell points or attribute points. Once banked, those points are locked, but xp you haven't locked in can be lost via death. Doesn't run great. It's not terrible but it definitely seems a bit framey on console and there's a slight delay with hitting buttons and seeing animations whir into place. It's alright, might play some more. Certainly won't be deleting it just yet.

So this is the third game in the Bit. Trip Runner series, the sequel Bit. Trip Presents... Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien. First impression is I'm disappointed with the title of this game. Runner3 does not do the legacy of the series any justice in terms of title. It sticks pretty well to the formula made in the earlier games so if you've played one you'll know what to expect. It's an auto runner game where the obstacles and collectables create a little tune along with the game's music, and as you progress through the levels the obstacles get trickier. Simple, really. But Runner3 adds a few things to make things trickier. One of them I'm not the biggest fan of and that's vehicle sections. They just turn a very tight and nuanced game into something that feels like it comes from a much worse game. There isn't very many of them but I can't help but have an inner little groan when one comes up. The second addition doesn't seem much but it is applied in some genius and evil ways: a double jump. When I first started playing I thought the double jump was just their to make things easier, like you can correct some badly timed jump. But as you go through the game you start to see that creative use of the double jump is the only way to traverse the obstacles and get all the collectables. And sometimes double jumping is dangerous so you can't do it at all so it's not something you just do all the time; far from it. And combining it with the slight glide (hold the jump button) and the hard drop (dress down to fall quickly which was introduced in Runner2) you get some evil level design to make use of it all. These moves also make it so the levels can have multiple ways of doing them and that is explored in Gold Runs and Gem Runs where the latter is a harder route to collect everything. Sometimes the paths just fork off into a different place but there are also situations where you're required to traverse the same bit of level but in a different and harder way. And it is very hard. I think I remember Runner2 being a little easier than the original but this is much harder, at least to get everything. Maybe just going through the game not doing the gem runs would be easy enough but there is evil, evil stuff in this game and I kind love it.

Space Dave! is a follow up to Woah Dave! that came out a few years ago. It is a retro style arcade game with clever little twists that make it an interesting little game. Woah Dave! is an underrated score attack game and it seems Space Dave! is gonna have the same fate, though I don't think it's as good as Woah Dave!. So I guess that's why I'm starting a thread for it. So what Space Dave is is like a combination of Space Invaders, Galaga and Missile Command. You get waves of alien ships in formation, scrolling along the screen in different ways and you have to shoot them down and protect six trees. You're attacked by simply being shot at but they also dive bomb the ground, destroying the tree and turning the section of screen into a pool of lava, which you then have to avoid while you're protecting the others. You can fix the ground and eventually grow back the tree by killing certain enemies that drop skulls but you have to throw them at the pool of lava yourself. It's taking known, classic arcade gameplay and mixing in these new mechanics that keep the gaming loop really interesting. Oh! and you only get points for picking up pennies so having to pick up items to score adds another element of risk/reward. I think the problem with the game is the visuals. I know they're going for an a look reminiscent of pre-NES games but I just don't think it's striking enough to pull it off. But they're functional so fine. I also think they could have added more types of enemy patterns because there isn't that many and they do loop a bit too often. The bosses are pretty good, though. The fucker I'm on now can fuck off, mind. It's currently under £2 on Switch at the moment and I do think its at least worth that as a score attack game to play for 15 minutes. Or get something that plays Woah Dave! instead.

http://www.abzugame.com/ Anyway ABZÛ is an underwater adventure from the art director of Journey. I don't normally create threads for games after I've finished them, but ABZÛ is only two hours so it's kind of unavoidable. I haven't played Journey so I have no idea how similar it is to that, but in terms of "how much of a walking/swimming simulator" is it, I would say the game is pretty similar to Firewatch (and similar in terms of value for money, as impressive as both games are I'm still glad I bought them on sale and not full price). Essentially in the game you swim through a series of rooms and corridors. There are collectibles to find and light gameplay elements to the game but really they are a negligible part of the experience. Occasionally the game has on rails sections where you are swept along with the current (or the game simply takes control away from you) and these are very impressive. In general, the entire game is impressive, and enjoyable to play. The music is beautiful, one of the best game soundtracks I've ever heard. Like I said in my Steam review, of the four indie games I've completed this year (ABZÛ, Firewatch, Hyper Light Drifter and Oxenfree), ABZÛ would be my favourite. One of the reasons I like it is that it reminded me of the underwater levels in Spyro (and the ambient music reminded me of Spyro). Another reason is that it is an uplifting game, which is pretty rare. I think this would be a good game for parents to play with their children. I give it 8/10.

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.

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