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Put just over an hour into this. First things first, it’s way more traditional narrative focused than the last From action RPGs. Loads of cut scenes and it defaults to Japanese voices but I switched it to English because evidently I’m some kind of monster. If I can switch it back, I’ll give it a try. Combat feels superficially similar to Souls but really very different. It’s all about parrying and timing, whereas a lot of Souls you can cheese quite easily. I can’t imagine anyone’s ultra sensitive about spoilers from an hour in, but just to be sure: So far it feels great to play, very smooth and satisfying when you pull the combat off properly.

Liking this so far. You like the first one? This is for you.

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

Well,it’s finally out. I’m three missions in,and thus far,it’s off to a very good start indeed. It looks glorious,thanks to the RE engine. You start off as Nero,the only character that was in the demo. And he’s a riot to play as. I’ve never been a master of this series. I can throw down a few SS/SSS combos here and there,get the odd A rank from time to time. But I’ve long since accepted that I’ll never be a top tier DMC player. But that doesn’t matter to me. All that mattters is, “am I having fun?”. And thus far,DMC 5 is absolutely fun. There’s a ton of skills to play around with,the Devil Breakers add a new level of tactics to combat. I went for the Digital Deluxe edition,so have access to the Mega Buster from Mega Man. Which is definitely a favourite thus far. Now,on to the issue of micro transactions. A lot of people kicked off when it was announced this game has them. Jim Sterling has already said in his review that due to his standpoint,this excludes the game from “Game Of The Year” consideration,despite the huge amount of praise has for it. So,are they actually that bad in DMC? Honestly,no. They’re hidden away in the Menu screen,at no point are you obnoxiously told “Hey Kids,want to buy some stuff?”. And the prices of the items themselves,aren’t that much at all. £1.70 gets you either 3 Blue Orbs,or 100,000 Red Orbs. All of the reviews I’ve read have said you get more than enough without resorting to them. And I feel that seems about right. So yeah,it’s not the end of the world that they’re in this. There’s a catch up video that sums up important events in the previous games,which is pretty decent. It made me laugh that DMC2,the worst entry in the series,gets less than 10 seconds mention,whereas the rest get several minutes at least. So yeah. I’m excited to finally have this. Should be fun.

This is a Metroidvania set in the retro robot future by our friends at Double Fine. You play as a floating head in a space helmet that can vacuum the heads of of resident robots and land on their bodies and take control. Certain coloured doors must be opened by certain colour robots, so sometimes you gotta find the right colour then take it back to an area to be able to progress. Apart from the unique hook it's pretty much a Metroidvania by numbers. Lots of back tracking, unlocking of powers, sprawling maps with hidden rooms. It's a good one mind, it's set in the future with a 60's vibe which gives it a cool look. I've finished it 100%, took me about 11 hours. It can be a bit of a pain getting around the map sometimes which is a critisim I find in most of these type of games. Also, when there's a lot going on and you find yourself with out a body it can be fucking hard to see your tiny head amongst the lasers, explosions and colours. Overall though I h(e)ad a great time. Currently part of Xbox Game Pass which was a nice surprise as I've been waiting for it to go on sale since it came out. Here's the Giant Bomb quick look if you fancy it: You can pick your starter head, i was a woman so that guy aint my headlander! Definately worth a go.

No one else playing this? I got it on release and I’m fucking loving it. The track design is really inventive and a step above what they’ve done before. I’ve not played enough to say how they stand to multiple plays and bettering times but they’re very promising so far. Feels as good as ever and there seems to be loads of content, I’ve been playing a few hours and unlocked loads of tracks and only just got to the medium tier, this is where it really picks up for me personally. The medium and hard tracks are where the best ones are in the previous instalments IMO. The tracks have some good challenges to encourage repeat plays apart from times as well. Like fusion where they ask to not brake or no leaning, this has similar objectives that pop up but they seem more manageable and more logically set out. Couple of small complaints. The progress for unlocking bikes seems incredibly glacial after the first one. Convenient that’s theres now a way to buy them with real money now... loot boxes, while easily ignored, still annoy. The map layout can ruin the flow sometimes, just adding a bit too much time and too many button presses between plays compared to previous instalments. By far my biggest complaint though, Ubisoft Club! It forces you to link to it to be able to access the leaderboards and have the classic ghost times show (real people not the medal ones). I think that’s really really fucking shitty hiding one of the best features - which was always front and centre and a highly regarded part of the game - behind making you sign up to their shitty club thing. Arseholes. Overall though, the game is brill. If you like Trials get it immediately. Preferably on Xbox and give me some more times to race against!

So it’s a rally game, it’s very much like the first dirt rally, it’s pretty difficult, mainly because of the narrow roads. Was as thinking maybe it’s a bit easier than the first game, then did a stage in a rear wheel drive car, in the rain at night. It’s still really hard. the handling seems really good, bit better than the first one maybe, but I’ve only played with the slow cars and a rear wheel drive car, which I didn’t use much in the first game so hard to tell yet. Initial impressions of the pace notes are pretty good. the force feedback is alright, not great, the fun rumbling effects are missing it seems, but the important grip/handling info is there, if a bit weak. Hopefully this will be improved. Not played either game much with a pad but the first seemed really difficult, this seemed much better. Graphics are are pretty good, even on my old pc, nice foliage, nice weather effects. On one hand I’m not too keen on the 2.0 thing, but on the other hand it’s a nod to one of the best games ever so I’ll let it pass. theres also Rallycross, I sort of don’t care about this so will only try it when I’ve run out of rallying to do. so yeah it’s really good, if you like sort of realistic rally games with narrow tracks that are really difficult, this is the game for you! oh yeah it’s out Tuesday unless you buy the fancy version, I sort of don’t like it when they do that, and wasn’t really bothered about getting it early, but wanted the souped up dirt 1 dlc tracksthat come with it, and the price for the pc version was not so bad.

This hasn't reviewed amazingly, and while I loved Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon, I couldn't muster to energy to do the same stuff again in far Cry 4 and 5. In fact I booted up Far Cry 4 towards the end of last year because I wanted a nonsense fps to play, and I still couldn't. I ended up doing the pacifist ending, then booted it back up and ran about it bit, then realised I just couldn't be arsed For whatever reason the more I've seen of Far Cry New Dawn the more I've been interested in it. I think knowing that it's shorter is a big part of it, like I said I loved 3 but the amount of time I spent with it, doing the same routine over and over did start to drag by the final island, although at the time I put that down to me doing everything before moving the story on. New Dawn looks amazing, maybe a bit too amazing. I'm playing it on high settings (it can go to ultra) on a GTX 1080 at 1080p, and I still get framerate drops to 50 every now and then. It's less when there's lots of combat, more when I'm in dense woodland with lots of mist and fog. Which I mention because it is ridiculously dense, so dense I've been bitten by snakes I couldn't see, and have to rely on watching when and where my A.I. teammate starts screaming and where she's shooting at. I'm impressed with how it looks though, I had this pegged as a bit half-arsed, and granted it could be I didn't play 5, but the colour and the environments look great Gameplay wise it's kind of just Far Cry. It's not as reliant on taking back encampments as the old games, although there are still some, and there's no radio towers. You're still randomly getting attacked by animals, and there's still a skill tree, you're still playing good guys vs bad guys. Enemies take more damage before they go down than I remember, with some enemies having a 2nd health bar, possibly a 3rd but I've not seen that yet. You're kind of dumped out in to the open world pretty early, you have a story mission but it's far enough across the map that you can't help but do other things along the way. A lot of the side stuff involves you stopping trucks, be it for all important ethanol or less important humans, chasing them down isn't fun, being in the right place to stand in the road and shotgun the driver in the face is fun, that said I've not managed to get an ethanol truck yet. Beyond that, I've just been rescuing people by killing bad guys I'm really enjoying it though, played for hours tonight and I've still not got halfway to the first proper story mission. Before I go there I've got some treasure to find, an ally to recruit, then a bunch of buildings to kill everyone in, then I'll do the thing I've been asked to do

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:

Had a few matches on this, I think I just need to accept the fact I don’t like Battle Royale Games. Feels loads better to play than Fortnite and PUBG (only 2 others I’ve played). But the gameplay loop in these games just doesn’t nothing for me, run around the same environment searching around for loot for a while, shoot a few bullets, miss, die, wait a while to load a new match and repeat. I just find it tedious and boring constantly looking for loot at the beginning of every match. Especially when I’m bad so don’t last long when a gunfight starts, it usually just feels like a waste of time. Ill give it a few more matches just to see if it clicks, maybe as I start getting a bit better. Hope it’s does. I’d like to be involved with something like this for a change. It’s definitely got the best chance just because it actually feels good to play unlike the others I’ve tried. Otherwise I’ll just go back to TF2.

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

I started this one today. Beat the first world and onto the second. Early impressions is combat has a nice "swimming" movement to it albeit it is very floaty like the spinoff games. Worlds are massive and some of it almost feels like an anime/Disney take on (old) God of War games. Music is great, as usual. Hoping to hear some old tunes return (hopefully Hollow Bastion). I started it on Proud mode cause I figure if I've played three of these games back to back and can't handle its hard mode at this stage well then I'm really just hopeless. So far it's not very difficult but it is a reasonable challenge. It makes it so it isn't just a mash X fest. It is very heavy on cutscene interruptions in the early hours however and it gets sort of annoying, it's a bit Metal Gear at times. WRT spoilers I'm going to defer to riksp or someone else as to the best approach. I'm thinking anything that was in a trailer is fair game for an open screenshot because this is a very pretty game with lots of shiny stuff that's fun to show off. Or maybe all screenshots could be put in spoiler text it's all the same. No HDR in this game, interestingly.

Yay! Mine came. Dope delivered it to wrong address. Neighborhour just dropped it off. Let the survival begin ?

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'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.

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 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.

Been plugging away at this in fits and starts since Xmas but have finally managed to make some headway on it this week since finishing DQXI. I had been excited to play through these as I missed out on 1 and 2 when I was a kid but absolutely loved Year of the Dragon. I knew these games couldn’t match the levels of nostalgia I had for the Crash Remaster Trilogy but I nevertheless wanted to play through them and see if they stand up in 2019. I’ve been playing the first game in the series, about 8 hours in. My impression so far has been a mixed one really, it definitely hasn’t matched up to Crash in terms of difficulty or challenge which has been a disappointment and the whole ethos of the game overall is way more chilled than Crash. It’s more along the lines of a DK64/Banjo-Kazooie type collectathon platformer where you have to get x amount of items, gems etc. To 100% a level. These kinds of games are as rare as hens teeth these days and playing through it after lots of massively long games is a breath of fresh air. Every now and then it’s good to just play a game that is charming and fun and this has got both those elements in abundance. The graphics are excellent too with some really beautiful areas, I’ve obviously no idea how these compare to the original but I know there was initially some controversy over the sky-boxes or something but that all went over my head. But yeah, each zone is of a fantasy-type motif but featuring the usual snow, desert, earth type areas but the heavenly one in the clouds I’m in now and the last swampy area have been a real delight. I have found myself growing tired of it after awhile as the same collectathon-type levels (only broken up by the odd flying challenge level - which are excellent and provide the only real challenge in the game) get very repetitive after awhile. Sometimes I can’t really be arsed to play it but then I’ll dip back in, get in a level and just get utterly lost in it. It really sets the ol’ endorphins off in the brain every time you do something, you get gems and a cool little melody plays, you kill an enemy and the same happens, you free a Dragon, you make a tricky gliding jump and it’s satisfying, it just feels good. It just ends up being a real dopamine rush with positive reinforcement after positive reinforcement handed out to you, like constantly getting patted on the back. It’s a nice feeling. But yeah, it’s not amazing or anything but I recommend it for the £20-odd I paid for it. I have a feeling 3 will resonate with me the most since that’s the only one I’d actually played previously. Pics:

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.

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 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.

I’ve been keeping an eye on this as I’ve loved the look of it. Anything with an anthropomorphic duck is already a winner. It’s basically a free-flowing X-Com. You move about the land finding loot and you can either sneak past enemies or engage in them using the X-Com battle system. It’s based off a table top game but this is the first I’ve heard of it. The setting is post apocalypse but all the humans are long since dead and referred to as “the ancients” and you play as mutants. I’m only early in so there’s two in my squad but I know you get at least 3 of you roaming around the battlefield at some point. It’s good so far but meant to be very hard so I went for the easiest setting as I’ll probably never finish it regardless. The GB quick look sold it to me, but I got it via GamePass either way.

First things first. If you've not enjoyed these games before, abandon thread now. There's no point in you wasting your time here. It's more of the same with tweaks, mostly good tweaks, but nothing that's going to convince you you want to spend time with the series. For the people that do like the games, you're in for a treat. First of all, despite looking like a budget game, it looks glorious in motion.Debris and chitin breaks off everything while you're shooting it, blood flies across the tarmac and up[ the skyscrapers in the most ridiculous fashion turning the levels into a B movie version of Splatoon. Buildings drop after taking set amounts of damage rather than falling to the ground after being hit with explosives once. There's a significant improvement visually. The best thing? Zero frame drops in this chaos. However you will see a slight stutter as it loads in the next wave occasionally, it doesn't happen every time but there's a bit of a performance blip. It never truly stunts the action though, which is the most important thing. Enemies.The Hectors are gone (Or have not showed up yet) and have been replaced by giant bipedal frogs. The AI behaviour of these frogs, as well as the danger they present offers a nice tactical hinge where they differ from killing swarms. I found it best to use cover and then when you get close enough to them use shotguns to kill them in one magazines worth of buckshot. However, you can pelt them from a distance and amputate limbs which will cause them to react differently dependant on what gets blown apart. Don't leave it too long because limbs can grow back. Levels. I don't want to spoil this too much, but those settings from previous games where it's basically sunny all the time and in the day or underground? Not anymore. Weapons. You can level up weapons now. A lot of the weapons have returned, but there's also new ones to get. For instance I was using a rocket last night that worked like the one from Half Life 2 where you have a laser that can guide the rocket precisely where you want. The other weapons seem to have had a rebalance as well, the shotguns seem to have a place now. I've not seen anything super crazy yet, but most of what I have seen has been good. Classes. I've only played as Ranger so far, but the sprint feature they've added has helped no end. It's basically Gear's roadie run, although it ends with a weird slide I don't like. Useful for getting out of bad situations or collecting items. Speaking of which, while you are running you have a circle around you that automatically picks up items. I think this collection circle is around vehicles as well, although I've not witnessed that with my own eyes yet. The Ranger can also call in small vehicles for himself, but I've only had a bike and to be perfectly honest it's not as good as the built in perks you get from being on foot. Other alterations. After every mission amour collected and weapons are distributed between the 4 classes, with the class you are playing getting the lions share. There's a bad aspect to this screen though, since if you've collected a lot of weapons it goes through the whole process of levelling them up and explaining what they are. I don't think it's a bad thing completely, but for a game you could spend hundreds of hours in, having a skip button to cut through that crap would have been nice. Regardless, it's going to make it so that if you want to try out another class you're not starting with a blank slate, which is a good thing since EDF is one of those games where altering your teams composition is something that is encouraged. Also I think the drops are more generous than before. Other changes. Inferno is locked so no going to the end of the game to get super powered weapons. In fact the armour and weapon limit persists right into Inferno and the only way to shut it off is to hit 70% of missions complete to remove limits. They might have taken away with one hand, but they've given with the other. difficulties now stack, so no need to play on difficulties you're blazing through. I'll probably be back with another huge wall of text later when I've played some more.

Soon going to be playing through the 3rd (and probably final) DLC for this. So seems a good time to throw down an opinion. This is definitely one of the most fun games i’ve played this year. I’ve a lot of respect for Rebellion,their Sniper Elite series is consistently brilliant (shooting Nazis in the nads? Who doesn’t love that.). So I was definitely interested in this. It doesn’t carry across the gory X-Ray cam feature of Sniper Elite. But that’s understandable,as it’s going for a different vibe. It plays out like an Olden days Adventure movie, with a Narrator providing a running commentary,often genuinely being hilarious (though for some reason has an absolute hatred of cats,and isn’t afraid to show it). The combat is simple to grasp,with a small selection of weapons (sniper rifles,SMGs,shotguns), with additional extra powerful weapons that you can buy from crates,using gold you get from treasure chests and killing enemies. You also get special moves that you can activate with enough charge,ranging from damage reduction,to smart bombs. One complaint though has to come with boss fights. Many of them require an accurate shot on a particular weak spot, often a quite small one. Doesn’t sound bad in theory. But when that boss is constantly moving,accuracy proves difficult. Add that to a swarm of enemies ganking you,and the difficulty in getting a decent shot gets even worse. Co-op definitely helps in that regard. Bosses that took me a good 20 minutes to kill on my own,became a breeze when I was with a mate. Its been a really enjoyable game,and the DLC missions have been quite decent. Charging £6 for each additional new character can go bollocks though. It hit the PSN sales at Halloween,and probably will do so again before long. I’d certainly recommend it.