Search the Community

Noticed this on the recent PSN digital discount sale. I do quite enjoy a rogue like, so thought I’d give it a go. Hades is definitely going to be one of my favourite games of the year. Is this as good as that? Well, it’s enjoyable enough. But I’d say no. The combat is simple enough, with a melee weapon and ranged weapon. You find various different ones during your run, with different buffs. As with any rogue like, death means you lose all your load out. But as you play, you can collect various currencies that can be used to permanently improve your character. There’s also a light/ dark mechanic. You carry a torch, which can be used to light braziers in each area. If you don’t, you take increased damage if you’re hit while in a dark area. As for the Curse in the title, you have a curse bar, that increases with each door of the arena you open. There are healing areas, but cause significant curse if you use them. You can buy new gear during your run with gold, or get cursed instead. Fill your curse bar up to the max, and you get inflicted with a nasty permanent affliction, I’ve had ones that either increase damage taken, or make it so I can’t see what any curses actually do. You can have a maximum of 5 curses, with the game warning that if you hit curse 5, your run is going to be extremely fucked over. There’s a dodge mechanic, which takes up stamina to use. You have 5 stamina, each dodge drains 1 point. If you’re empty, you can’t dodge, and have to wait for it to replenish, Dark Souls style. You can also parry attacks, but I’ve never been any good at that kind of thing. Story wise, there’s pretty much fuck all. In comparison to the cast of Hades, here there’s literally nothing. Unlike Hades, you don’t go through the entire dungeon at once. You start with 3 to choose from, with a boss at the end. I’ve reached boss 1 three times, killed him on my 3rd attempt, and that was the end of my run. It looks like you have to gradually unlock the option to run through to the final boss. It’s decent enough, and I’ll certainly play a fair bit of it. But it’s definitely not in the same league as Hades.

I managed to play a couple of cracking little games on GamePass over the weekend. First up is Superliminal - a cracking little puzzler that I managed to play through in a couple of hours and what a treat this was. It borrows heavily from games such as Portal but by the time you see the achievement for beating the game, it's earned it's place up there with the best of them. The concept is you're someone that's involved in a lucid dreaming experiment and you have 'wake up' in a location that presents you with a series of puzzles based on perspective and your surroundings. It twists these challenges in a way that each never out stays its welcome and the final two levels were sublime. I can't say much more than that to avoid spoiling it (i'd even suggest not watching the trailer) but if you liked Portal/The Witness - that kind of thing, i'd strongly suggest giving it a go. One of the best endings to a game i've seen in a while as well!

Played 2 hours of it earlier, after it finished unpacking on Steam just after 11. Initial impressions are very positive I have to say, despite my protestations earlier in the year about this coming only a year after Bloodborne and 2 years after DS2 - and thinking I was a little tired of the format and style - it turns out that I was wrong, and I'm definitely not tired of the format or style of these games and had an absolute whale of a time with it I have to say. Surprisingly I actually felt happy to be back in this world, it felt like returning home after a brief sojourn out the Country to find somebodies slightly moved all your furniture around and re-decorated the house. The introduction to the game is definitely the easiest and most genteel of all the SoulsBorne games, there is an actual dedicated Tutorial area right at the beginning, with enemies set up in exact positions for you to practice your moves on (just don't ignore the 'turn back' note on the floor ) with no real danger of being obliterated from behind by some ridiculously overpowered enemy. This carries on into the next area and the first boss, which feels like a 'Souls tutorial boss' rather than something daunting or difficult, it teaches you how to defeat a boss, how to block/roll out the way of a bosses moves, strategise Estus Flasks, when to use an opening etc. It's a far cry from the soul-crushing first-boss in the original Dark Souls that's for sure, and easier than the Cleric Beast in BB, it's by far and away the easiest Souls game to get into. The hardest thing for me to get used to though, was the XB1 controller, I'm just so used to playing the SoulsBorne series with a DS3/DS4 Controller that I was completely bewildered by the stick placements, button placements and how annoying the Bumpers are considering you use them A LOT, I may have to switch over to my DS4 tomorrow, but I'm not sure if the game will have the correct PS buttons on display or not. I was also incredibly rusty as well, having not played Bloodborne since this time last year which didn't help, I must've died about 5 times on the first boss by doing incredible stupid shit like parrying my shield instead of blocking, using an Estus Flask instead of rolling, shit like that slightly embarassing really, but as time goes on I'll eventually re-learn everything and it'll be second nature like it was on BB and DS2 before. It really is fantastic to play it at 60FPS as well, I know people don't like talking frame-rates etc. but it makes such a huge difference, if I went back to play BB on PS4 right now it would feel like walking through sludge, it's crazy how much snappier it makes everything, and the combat is just incredible in 60 frames. The game looks pretty good, it hasn't floored me as such, but it has its moments (God Rays, Dragons etc.) where it's a pretty amazing sight to behold, that melancholy and haunting beauty the SoulsBorne series is known for really comes through in the art design, bits of scenery don't look as polished as perhaps they should be however. The enemy designs are all pretty familiar though really, I've just been facing the usual Zombie-like creatures you face at the start of most SoulsBorne games really, but the 'Venom' transforming creatures definitely give you something to think about and keep you on your toes. A mention must go to the music as well, even when I just turned the game on and heard it bellowing out through my headphones I got slightly overcome by it, it is just an absolutely fantastic orchestral choir score that really helps the games ambience and made the one Boss Fight I've had so far feel incredible unique and powerful. So yeah, it's a SoulsBorne game pretty much, but it's more accessible than ever, the combat feels great and the Boss Fights get your blood-pumping like only a SoulsBorne boss-fight can. And a few pics:

Ok, so it’s pretty clear this is by the team that brought us Until Dawn. As it’s pretty much more of the same. From the stereotypical characters (Jock, nerd, wanker), to the narrator between scenes who questions your story choices. It’s certainly shorter than Until Dawn was. And I didn’t find it particularly difficult to make it to the end with nobody getting killed. Still, it was an enjoyable experience. Graphically it looks great, though at times some of the characters had a bit of a fit when walking for some reason. And the story ended with several parts not really making any sense. Apparently if you play it in multiplayer you get some more explanation. But I haven’t, and won’t be doing. So there we go. It still has the “taking ages to look at an item” mechanic that UD did. Which can be annoying when you take ages to pick something up, only for it to serve no purpose whatsoever. Walking around takes ages unless you constantly hold down the run button. And there were quite a few instances where I wasn’t really sure where I was meant to be going. That being said, it was alright. Worth a rental at least.

Put 16 hours into this over the weekend. I will preface these impressions with the fact that I'm nowhere near a Battlefield expert and won't be able to go into the nitty gritty detail about what has been improved, balanced, implemented differently etc. over BF1 and other past titles (I've only properly played a tiny bit of BF3, BF4 and quite a decent amount of time into BF1). So let's dive in shall we? To play, it very much feels like a sequel to BF1 rather than anything else, with some Battlefront 2 elements sprinkled in there. The maps are all pretty good but personally I haven't been as impressed with them as the BF1 launch maps, I guess part of it is when you get a WWII game you expect to have all the infamous locales like Berlin under siege from the Red Army, the D-Day landings and so on but none of that is in here. They've focused on the 'untold' battlefields of WWII like Norway, Northern Africa along with including some Western European locales like Rotterdam, Appas and Twisted Steel in France but everything just kind of feels incredibly familiar if you've played BF1, I actually think the variety isn't as good too, there's one that I jokingly refer to as 'Hoth' as it feels so much like a Battlefront map as well. The only real things I've noticed that's different from BF1 is the customisation options and the ability to repair fortifications at command points around the map and build/destroy bridges. The customisation is roughly what you'd expect of most multiplayer shooters nowadays really but there seems to be less variety of weaponry (for the Medic class anyway - the only one I've played as) than BF1. In the previous game I had the choice of rifles or SMGs etc. but here if you're a Medic you've only got one choice which is the SMG, if you want other weapons you need to be another one of the classes, so as you progress with your particular class you unlock more weapons, outfits for your character and skins for your guns. There are also specialisations (which work a bit like perks) for your gun but I haven't really figured out how to get this to work without resetting the points already assigned to it so I've left it for now. Being able to repair fortifications at the command posts is a bit more of a bigger deal though. As the scenery gets more and more deformed as a match goes on having a decent set of sand bags and other fortifications around a command post when you're defending it can be make or break for some matches, you seem to be able to peform these repairs as any class as well which is cool. Similarly with the destruction of bridges or building makeshift bridges, they can make a huge difference in not allowing vehicles to easily access a certain area of a map and be a huge help to a defence or thorn in your side to an attack of a certain area or command point. I've only played the Grand Operations and Conquest game modes, both are fun enough but incredibly familiar to BF1 players. Not got round to any of the single player 'War Stories' aside from the astoundingly good - but brief - introduction. I want to briefly touch on the technical side of things. I believe this is a pre-launch build of the game that doesn't have the Day 1 patch but I have had a number of bugs, all of them are of the silly variety that break the immersion a little at times but nothing else. There's currently a bug when you're reviving someone that you lean through scenery when reviving them, I've had a few issues where a hand is seen at all times when operating a turret of an APV/Tank, I also struggle on occasion to activate the supply/vehicle drops using LB + RB and the left analog stick and also once it wouldn't let me deploy into the game from the map screen and I had to quit the match. Networking issues and graphical/framerate issues seem to be nonexistant as far as I can tell, I've had a very solid 60fps at all times and the networking has been fast and smooth, there's no micro-transactions in here at all either as far as I can tell. So yeah I quite like it, it is addicting and compelling as ever and I've not really been able to stop playing it all weekend. It does feel like a direct sequel to BF1 with more of that games personality than any from WWII or the previous BF games but yeah it does everything it sets out to do really and at this point if you're a BF fan you know what to expect and this will deliver in spades. Some pics:

So I bought this (Guessing by RF’s posts 2 years ago?) and have just started playing it and this is awesome. It’s a bit rough on the technical side, but it makes up for it in real playability. I just had to really put an effort in to pulling my self away from it to get ready for Nintendo. Clearly heavily inspired by A Link to the Past then dunked in that indie game, calming soundscape driven atmosphere it’s very easy to pick up and even more difficult to put back down. The big difference between this and a regular Zelda game is the map seems to be more Dark Souls inspired then Zelda. Meaning that instead of having an overworld to zig zag across to make progress it’s more linear with each area feeling unto itself and sort of like a big puzzle box/dungeon, and then once completed it spits you out at the Firelink Shrine equivalent and then you go to a different area. At at least that seems to be the case so far. Game play is very reliant on push this, pull that and less gimmick focused than a typical Zelda game, but it feels surprisingly good and is a game that really moves which I like a lot. I think this this is a prime example of a little gem. It’s not blowing my mind in terms of newness but it has taken me by surprise because of how fun it is.

I’ve managed to pick this up for £25 (£30 minus £5 slave discount) which is good timing now that the season is over and the better man won. I’ve only played very little so far of the story mode and when you’re racing it’s as good as ever but I’m not convinced by the story yet or your influence over it. In the second race my team mate forced me off the track in a pre recorded story scene. I then made it back past them and everyone in the top ten to win my first race. The win wasn’t referenced tho and all the focus was on that one moment of been pushed off. It’s a small complaint really. The game itself is likely to be better than ever. It certainly looks and handles better than 2019 (I skipped 2020).

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

My stream from earlier: Started this earlier, put in 2.5ish hours or so and reached World 2. Wow. This has really surprised me, I mean I expected it to be good don't get wrong but it genuinely fucking brilliant. The 30s animation and the music are just absolutely spectacular, this'll sound like a cliche but it really is a feast for the eyes and ears. It feels like you're playing through a slightly more sinister Tom and Jerry cartoon or something, nothing feels out of place at all and everything fits with the animation and music. The way the enemies move and the boss fights flow in time with the music, every boss fight almost feels like a story really that you gradually get further and further into before reaching the end. The run-n-gun levels feel surprisingly good too, seeing them before launch I thought they looked a bit simplistic and thrown in there just to pad out the length of the game and give players a break from all the bosses. The latter is true but they feel so different to the boss fights and provide just as much fun and attention to detail, they're a little easier and a little more fun and relaxing but still provide a decent challenge I'd say and give a welcome break to the more intense boss fights. I guess it plays quite similarly to a lot of run-n-gun side-scrollers really. There's no double jump but a dash, you can fire a variety of projectiles (providing you purchase them at the shop) in 8 different directions at all times using either the left or right analog stick whilst pressing X, you can parry pink enemies/enemy projectiles by tapping the jump button (A) again whilst in the air, there's also a crouched shot to avoid enemy/boss punches too, you put all these together to defeat bosses. Some require more dashing (blue blob for example) whereas others require more precise jumping and crouching to defeat. The boss fights are the star of the show though really, they're just absolutely spectacular. Each one is pretty challenging in their own right with a variety of different phases to learn if you want to defeat it, the way the phases play out feels so organic as well, as mentioned previously it almost feels like a story at times. You fight a blue blob and it'll start out as this relatively innocent annoying-but-not-threatening cheerful creature and then morph into this bigger angrier looking blob and once you've defeated that phase he turns into a tombstone and attempts to flatten you. They're just a joy to fight, you just have to make sure you stay patient as some of them are quite a challenge. I didn't expect the level of depth on offer in terms of weapons, load-out and skills. I thought you'd just have your bog-standard Cuphead with the clicky finger projectiles and away you go but there's a TON of upgrades you can buy at the shop, supers you can get from completing ghost parrying mini-games dotted around the world. I imagine the further you get into the game the more strategy will come into play, I've done well so far with my standard super, +1HP and greater spread projectiles but I know there'll be some bosses later on which'll almost require you to have a certain load-out in order to finish. I guess I'm a little surprised with myself I haven't had a harder time of things though. I wouldn't say I'm good at platformers, I certainly like them on the verge of frustration (DKCR3D is one of my favourites for example) but this hasn't caused me to tear my hair out at all. Every boss seems very fair and easy to learn as long as you're patient and I really like that about it, I'm just a little surprised how quickly I managed to adapt and defeat some of them, the dual frog bosses for example I managed to defeat on what felt like only my 2nd or 3rd attempt whereas others like the Sunflower and Blue Blob gave me more problems. But still, I managed to put them down relatively quickly and before frustration set in, which I think is a good thing, I was worried before I played this that I'd get fucked off with it like Sonic Mania and not go back to it, but it seems much better than that so far, much fairer and less cheap so I reckon I should be able to finish it as long as the difficulty curve doesn't go vertical in this next World.

First things first, I'm really enjoying this. It's very Japanese, the story has just gone full anime, and it reminds me a lot of Astral Chain, only more engaging. The combat is probably the star of the show without it being as complicated as it appears. You have some very basic attacks with your weapon, this will charge a meter that lets you use your psychokinetic abilities, so you can fling items at enemies. Do that too often and the meter drains so you can't any more, but get in close to an enemy and land some weapon attacks and you'll be fine. Once enemies have taken enough damage, assuming you haven't already killed them, you'll be able to perform a kind of finisher/super move, against weaker enemies this is a one hit kill, against bosses it can be a difference maker. Both while you're exploring the world (although this hasn't been an option yet in the way it was in the demo), and in combat, if you have teammates you can borrow their powers, ranging from your attacks doing fire damage, you becoming invulnerable, or even invisible for stealth attacks, amongst others. These work on a cool down, and are more or less required at points, but they aren't unavailable for long. There's also a meter that fills where you'll become super powered for a bit, I get the feeling once you've levelled up a bit this will be a huge deal, at the minute it's more annoying that you can't trigger it yourself and save it for when you need it There's an rpg element. You level up, although it's not presented what that really means (presumably stats and HP), you can equip items, buy better weapons, healing is done on a slight cooldown which can be a bit of a pain. There's also a skill tree, it takes BP points to buy new perks, but these come pretty quickly, to the point that I feel like I might well max it out before the end of the game unless there's hidden branches to it. You can also increase your bonds with your teammates, this is done in your down time with gifts and bonding missions, and it gets you new layers to their abilities. It seems to be pretty similar to how Persona handles it tbh The only real criticism I have is that it's all presented in a bit of a confusing way. Lots of different, but pretty similar people bouncing around, odd terms, lots of menus. It can feel like it's slow doling things out too, not that it's paced badly or feels like a slog, and maybe this is a consequence of having played the demo, but knowing that at some point I'll have 4 teammates at once, be able to explore certain areas, the way it gates this feels like it's holding you back, even 10+ hours in to the game

Finally getting round to playing this. Far as I’m concerned, Ryu ga Gotoku can do no wrong. From the outstanding Yakuza series, to the insane but glorious Fist Of The North Star. So I had high hopes for this. Reached Chapter 2, and I’m really enjoying it. Kamurocho is as familiar as ever, and looks just as amazing as it did in Yakuza 6. They’ve added some new mini games, though to be honest they’re pretty weak. Following people in forced stealth trailing missions is never my idea of fun. Here, you can quite often have several one after the other. Which is a ball-ache. They’ve ditched Kareoke, which is a real shame. As blasting out “BREAKING THE WORLD” was always fun. The English dub is actually really well done, they’ve clearly put effort into it. I usually prefer the original Japanese audio, but they’ve done a decent job with the dub. The combat doesn’t feel quite as satisfying as Zero’s, a lot of moves are locked in the skill tree. Still, it’s off to a good start.

Hey, maybe don't buy this Vice City squad, I come to you with gameplay clips littered with copyright claims. Not that there's a shortage of videos out there about this but it helps to see how little the gameplay has changed as well. I'm a couple hours into the opening sections. Actually, I could be a bit beyond the opening sections. Was this game short? I'm already at the bit where you are doing missions for Diaz. Visually I think it looks ok, I think they could have done a lot more work here tho and it's a bit perplexing that this is more demanding for my machine than The Witcher 3 maxed out. No ray tracing or anything like that is in it. It could be a rough one to play on PC for this reason but maybe the settings are more scalable on lower settings. I think the volumetric lighting is what is killing it. Also the game comes close to dying every time I pause, I found out I'm not the only one with this issue so it's a problem with the PC version. Vice City now is a game that is hard carried by its soundtrack I think. I don't think I could stick with this type of thing without these tunes. It's also weird to think Vice City is now more retro than the year 1986 was when Vice City itself came out. It's like a russian doll of nostalgia or something. I will say for VC first thing you should do is turn HDR off and set contrast to 0. The default contrast level is hideously oversaturated and destroys the tone of the game. At zero it is not a million miles away from the original's visual style Going back now also it really feels like Ray Liotta phoned in his performance as Tommy Vercetti, but the people around him do a good enough job to make up for that fact. Especially the lawyer guy. It's weird to think how they got all these really big movie stars in a game like this (Burt Reynolds is in this game, if you forgot). Nowadays you can see that these movie people don't exactly translate their talents to the digital screen, some of them are pretty bad at adapting to it. Or are just used to sell the game. But back then this was a really big deal for Vice City. There's one visual thing which has really annoyed me early on, the rain effect. It is a constant streak of white lines that make it impossible to see anything and actually made me feel a kind of motion sickness I've never felt with a game. I haven't heard anyone else talk about it, it could be a subjective thing. But man, it is rough to look at. On the other hand they add a cool effect where you get puddles and the grass gets wet. You slide in the rain also, I think that's new. Might not be but it seems new. Gameplay clips, spoilered for post length not spoilers cause this game is 20 years old now

My god this game is adorable It's a bit sickly to begin with. I really liked the english voices in DQ8, while it was hardly the Witcher it had the slightest of rough edges to the characters, so far everyone has been far too nice. It's the wrong side of cliched too, you the born-again saviour, abandoned in a small village and have just discovered your origins and this is so far the worst thing about the game. Dragon Quest 5 has one of the great JRPG stories imo, 4 is unique, 7 is fairly decent, but the last couple have a really plain protagonist and a nothing story It's too easy to begin with too. I'm still very early, and I've been running around the area outside the first town, getting in to fights against things I'd actually quite like plushies of, and for the most part I'm one-hitting, or only taking 2hp damage. It will get more interesting later on though, especially once there's a few more party members It's very familiar, which is nice, I like the Dragon Quest games, and it's simple. They've brought back a couple of developments from past games. There's the 'pep' system I'm sure I used in something, I can't remember what though, but essentially, if you get hit a few times you become 'pepped up' (not enraged because, like I said, this game has no edge), and become more powerful. There's also skill points when you level up (once you're a bit in to the game). You'll still unlock spells naturally, as you gain levels, but there's other attributes and skills you can spend points to buy, opening up a hexagonal skilltree with each skill you pick. This might mean picking a special sword attack, a boost to your attack, or extra spells I'm not sure you'd otherwise learn The pc version is very much a console port. I was playing it in 4k before and it looks ridiculously nice, but the graphics options are all on a scale of 1-3 (or 1-5), with stuff like shadows and AA being as far as you can drill down. There's also a console quirk where by, you can shut the game down from the menu in the game, but if you go to a church to save (there's sporadic autosaving, it really could do with something better on pc given you can't suspend), save, then when asked if you want to continue select no, you'll go back to the title screen, but there's no option to shut the game down from there. Not the end of the world, you can just alt F4, and the port itself runs perfectly well so far, just an odd thing I noticed anyway, the main thing is it's adorable

The long awaited sequel is here! And it's generally a decent follow-up. It takes place right after the original and it's like it's never been gone. It just confidently does being Psychonauts. It feels a bit tighter than the original but it's basic fighting and platforming for the most part but it's appeal has always been the imagination of the world and how it takes mental well being and makes these charming worlds out them and from what I've played so far it continues to do a good job of that. And with these new fangled graphics it makes it look really nice too. They really lean all of it into the art style they made in the original and I think it comes out well, it's a nice game to look at in a weird way. All Double Fine have done is make a Psychonauts game for 2021 and that's all I wanted, and that's all we got. Neat!

Tonight I'm going to try this now that the server kerfuffle has seemingly passed. Can we get enough to fill a 3v3 game? Nothing serious, rotate teams after every game unless it becomes one sided. It'd be nice to get a bunch of us on and talking to one another, it seems to be ages since that happened last. I'm looking at around 7 or 8 for kick off until whenever people get fed up and leave. Who's interested?

I've seen this described as a cross between mirrors edge and super meat boy. i think that's a good description, i also really like both of those games, it's a first person platformer with instant restarts, quite a lot of checkpoints, and one hit kill for you and the enemies. but it seems more random than 2D stuff like this as you can't see everthing that's shooting at you. it's sort of amazing. but also really hard and frustrating. in the first 5 levels or so i'd already thought i might have to give up on two different sections. the enemies are very good at shooting guns, maybe a bit too good, you can jump over them and they'll still shoot you instantly, you just have to keep moving and hope you don't get hit. i tried playing cloudbuilt twice (two different versions) and had to give up quite far in both times, i have a feeling this might be similar. really not sure i'll be able to finish it, so an easier mode would be a good addition, but no regrets buying it (although only paid a tenner), it's been mostly great so far. i've just done the first boss, which comes quite late, think i'm on about level 7 or 8 or something, when i saw it it my thoughts were that it's awesome but i might not be able to do it. it took me about 30 mins and 200 deaths, there's a video of someone making it look easy in the spoiler below, this also shows why the game is so good: dunno if anyone else is interested in this? oh and although there are loads of checkpoints these don't save, you have to get to the end of the level for it to save. oh oh and there's powerups and stuff, i can deflect bullets back, but the timing is strict (you can upgrade it) so i just keep swiping and sometimes it saves me a death.

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.

Played a few hours and it's been very, very good. It's very much another game that's taken more than a few pages from Uncharted's playbook, except it switches a wise-cracking protagonist for someone much more vulnerable and insecure. Well, at least to start with anyway. I've always loved the Tomb Raider series, the original TR was the first ever game I bought for the PS1 and I played it to death, but the series was massively in need of a complete reboot. They've done a fantastic job with this game and the character. Lara is almost unrecognisable from her hotpants wearing, confident predecessor. I say almost as they decided to stick with her two most distinguishing features for some reason. Cans . The sections where you squeeze through a gap or are only able to progress forwards are probably the most elegant way of disguising a load screen I can think of. It's totally seamless and in some case even adds to the experience by allowing Lara time to express how she's feeling.The same goes for the logs she records at some of the base camps, only a few lines of dialogue, but it adds so much. Each area seems to have a discreet sub-objective like smash 10 lanterns or burn 5 banners, and they only activate once you hit the first thing, you're not notified about it otherwise. I can see myself spending a chunk of time completing these as well as picking up all the collectables dotted around. I tried turning on the new TressFX hair technology but it looks a bit weird tbh. It also hits the framerate pretty hard in certain situations. It's a cool idea as game hair usually looks pretty rubbish, but it definitely needs tweaking a bit before making it standard.

Second up in my GamePass games that can be completed in a couple of hours; The Procession to Calvary. A point and click adventure based on Renaissance art that's heavily inspired by Terry Gillingham. Not for the easily offended/religious types - this is the follow up game to Joe Richardson's Four Last Things. It follows a woman who is back from a murder spree in a Holy war and wants to do one final murder as it's now frowned upon. Whilst the humour won't be to everyone's taste, I was laughing out loud from the offset. The game is bonkers. As with my last post, I won't go into it too much as I don't want to spoil it, but a couple of highlights were helping a street magician off a crucifix as he was turning water into wine that killed people, and giving snuff to a midget so he played music faster.

Genuinely surprised there isn't a thread for this already. It seems like a game that would be quite popular in here. I started playing this last night in a "I'm gonna play it for 20 minutes and if I don't like it's getting deleted" kind of mood. I'm now 7-8 hours in and it's great fun! Remember Golf Story? It's has a similar sort of Sports-PG charm to it. There's tons of humour running through, and the graphical style is a bit like the Gumball cartoon. You play as Otto, a transfer student to a Dodgeball school, and someone who wants to be world-renowned on the sport. There's a relatively small world to explore, but lots of fun little side quests and plenty of battles to take part in. Speaking of battles, they're a lot of fun too. You play Dodgeball, so if you know the rules you'll have a leg up. Might be worth watching the Ben Stiller film to refresh your Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and Dodge memory. There are charge moves, counters, special moves, and all sorts of fun stuff happening on the court. Matches take place in anything from 1 on 1 to 1 Vs 6, or 3 on 3 contests, and the first to lose their HP loses the game. I've noticed TONS of homages to Pokémon. From the Dodgeball logo to the battle loading sound effect, a medical centre to refresh your team, and battles in long grass, it's just got loads of cool little nods to Nintendo's most lucrative franchise. From what I've read it's not super long, but it's really fucking awesome. I genuinely love this game.

The demo lied to us, the full game is rubbish! Only kidding, it’s fucking amazing. I installed the dynamic theme that came with it and it loops the hook of the song from the first level (and trailer) in the dashboard and moving around the dash does sound effects from the game, so that’s pretty sweet. I put my headphones on and started the journey mode. The first level after the ones in the demo has the most amazing music. The level is called Jellyfish Chorus and it starts really minimal and at some point it just kicks in and I was wishing I still did drugs.

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

I didn't know about this until a few days ago (not that i remember anyway), just released yesterday, and it's pulled me away from persona, for a bit anyway. normal price is ~£12 but seems to be on offer for ~£10 currently. Initially interested because of comparisons to REZ, i like shooters like that, even the dragon one on the xbox one that didn't seem very popular. but it turns out it's not as similar to rez as I was expecting, the shooting (on the right stick) is simplified a bit and shares game time with rhythm action line following (on the left stick). On the normal difficulty you aren't asked to really do both of these at the same time, but i think that changes on harder difficulties. The shooting is quite similar to rez, but you can only aim within a circle and quite a lot of stuff is conveniently at the edges of the circle so easy to aim at, because you will be expected to do two things at once. The rhythm action bit is following a line with your ship in time with the music, a bit like that old psn game i can't remember the name of (and didn't think was that great) but it works really well here, and is good fun, imo. the music is not what i'd normally listen to, don't really know how to describe the genre either, dubstep maybe? but it fits in really well with the game and i was enjoying it. there are some problems mind, the auto lock-on can target stuff you don't want when a missile is just about to hit you, and coming back from a hit can instantly cause another hit, but these might just be me needing time to get used to it more. i've done all the 15 levels on normal, then re-did a few to get more stars to unlock the next difficulty setting but not had much time on that yet. so yeah i've been really enjoying this. wasn't sure if i should pick it up but glad i did.

Started this today as it's included with Origin Access Premier, put in around 3 hours. I really didn't know what to expect going in really. I absolutely adored the original Darksiders but couldn't play more than an hour of Darksiders 2 without throwing in the towel (I will possibly return to it at some point), it just felt too much of a departure from the OG Darksiders formula that I adored. So here we are at Darksiders 3. Another slight rejigging of the original Darksiders formula, this time doing away with the grandiosity of 2 and some of the more Zelda-esque elements of 1 for a Darksiders-Souls-like if you will. The combat feels a bit more free-flowing compared to the other games with Fury's whip dishing out some incredibly satisfying combos but the level designs are much more claustrophobic, metroidvania and Soulsy with enemies placements and how they can ambush you and punish you, little shortcuts you can unlock and boss/mini-boss battles you can take on if you choose. The difficulty so far far exceeds anything found in the previous games, I've died a hell of a lot and most enemies you've got to be wary of and plan accordingly or you're going to go down real quick, dealing with crowds can be very difficult too and they can wipe you out in seconds if you're not careful. The boss battles are a real treat here too. I've only had two so far - against Envy and Wrath - but they were real spectacles and an absolute joy to play through with the latter being way more difficult than I expected. Getting the dodge timing right to dodge a boss' attack at the last second to enable a Bayonetta-like bullet-time effect just feels amazing when you pull it off. I've warmed to Fury already as well. Death was a little too moody and monotone for me (again, admittedly I didn't spend that much time with him) in D2 but Fury has been a real delight. She's sassy and an absolute badass that doesn't take any shit from anyone, I love the little banter between her and the Watcher too as they're traversing through levels. The story though I've already kind of tuned out of, I do remember a few familiar faces from D1 and the brief amount of D2 I played and it was cool seeing War again but I kind of don't care already. Admittedly it's not a huge budget AAA title, but I have been incredibly impressed with the performance of it on my PC as well. I've got everything bumped up to Ultra in the settings and it has run buttery smooth with no technical issues whatsoever at 1440p/60fps, it is quite the looker at times too with the lighting being a particular highlight. So yeah, so far so good. The combat feels fantastic, the level design is engaging and Fury is a joy to spend time with, I couldn't put it down.

this is so far pretty much what i expected, i don't like open world and this sort of game structure usually, but gravity rush and sunset overdrive i really like due to the fun traversal and i think/hope this will be the same. the city is amazing, been having fun swinging about collecting stuff. it can be easy to die, even on easy, guess it'll get easier as i power up.