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Got this from boomerang, only played the first mission so far. Will see how it goes from here. Escaping the police when I fucked up was a right bastard. Can't even be arsed with Uplay anymore. Didn't load once on ACIV for me.

I was never going to buy this. I always wanted to play Gal Fighters on the Neo Geo Pocket but never picked it up, now it's really not worth the price, especially as it's just the Fatal Fury game with a different roster. SNK Heroines Tag Battle isn't Gal Fighters, but it leans on it. It's more gratuitous than Gal Fighters, which was just a fighting game, and Mai aside, treats the female characters as it would the males. This takes Terry and makes him a pretty girl, puts everyone in revealing novelty costumes, it's like a Tecmo game. I didn't want to support that, but the novelty got the better of me so I picked it up cheap intending to never play it. Boredom and lack of things to play on the Switch got the better of me, and now here we are It's not that bad a game. It's a tag battle, but with layers of confusion that make it kind of impenetrable. There's an auto-combo system, so press either of the attack buttons and you'll chain together a string of attacks, and you can finish with a special move. Special moves are a button press too, so down + special does one thing, back + special something else, simplistic but it's fun enough. There's orbs dotted around the stage than can be smashed, and I think recover energy from your support character, I'm not sure, this is where the game starts to lose me a bit You pick two characters, one is the fighter, one is support, but you can switch between them. They share the same health bar, so there's no great benefit in switching, but they have different special meters. Whenever you use a special attack your special meter drains, but does refill slowly over times. I'm not a fan of this system at all, I just don't see the benefit. However, and this is something I conceptually like but in practice I find unreadable, you don't win the fight by depleting your opponents health bar, instead you have to do enough damage to get them in to the danger zone then launch a super move. you can only launch a super move if you have enough special bar left. How much is enough? Fuck knows, so it seems better to just switch characters once you've done the damage. You can also have your support character throw shit from the background, the computer does this all the time, the final boss especially, I've never worked out how to do it. Also there's a block button rather than just pushing back, this is shit, plus there's no way to break combos, which I'm not against on principal, but with some of the cheap shit the final boss pulls. And on that note. The game is very easy, it's no wonder I never learnt how to play it, but the final boss is proper cheap, difficult SNK. It will straight up cheap at times, seeming to skip animations so it can dodge or block your supers and countering perfectly to end the fight. I was seemingly getting stunned in one hit so I could be finished too. Infuriating, and enough of a reason to never play it again. It's not irredeemably bad, but there's enough wrong with it, the story, the confusing systems, the slowdown, the final boss, that I'm not looking to learn how to play it

So, this is basically rock band with features removed, no online play was the big one i'll miss. i think/hope they are adding stuff like that back in over time, as apparently there isn't going to be an RB5 for now at least and they're just going to add features to this one and sell dlc - not sure what features mind, and id guess if it and/or the dlc sells badly we won't see many new features. no keys - they won't be adding that back in. my wired guitar/drums won't work on xbox, but i had a guitar hero wireless guitar/drums so using those (not actually tried drums yet) with the adapter - would have liked a new guitar but the adapter pack was about £40 cheaper. the adapter seems to work well. ps4 version doesn't need an adapter if you had ps3 instruments. could download a lot of my existing dlc, ~270 songs - i was expecting it to be more limited selection at first but there's loads of stuff there - not everything though. and previous game exports aren't working at the moment. the positioning of the xbox notifications is ridiculous as it covers the bottom of the note highway, but not as bad on gameplay as it looks. i'd not heard of a lot of the on disk songs (not a problem with all the dlc anyway) but most of them (that i've played so far) seem good to average, a few crap ones, and some great songs like the elvis and cake ones. maybe a bit negative, but because it's rock band it's still awesome and i've been really enjoying it. i think coming back to the guitar has helped here - not played the guitar in this sort of game much in the recent versions, mainly played drums and keys. it's hard to recommend if you've got the old versions. anyone else bothering with this? or maybe getting guitar hero instead? (if i had to pick one i'd probably have gone for guitar hero)

I’ve been interested in Ghost of a Tale since it first appeared on Indiegogo in 2013. https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ghost-of-a-tale#/ The developer had a background in animated movies and I liked the fact that the game was inspired by books like Redwall. It was eventually released in 2018 on PC and 2019 on consoles, and is apparently coming to Switch too. The game has come a long way since that original Indiegogo pitch. When I first played it I was surprised that it was predominantly a stealth game, although I suppose it’s not that surprising considering you play as a little mouse. Fortunately the stealth is not that punishing, it’s pretty easy to escape from the rat guards if they do see you. I know later in the game there are enemies like spiders (yay) who I assume will be faster, so that might be more difficult. It’s a surprisingly meaty game, I’m guessing closer to 20 hours than 10. There are plenty of things to collect and secrets to find. Exploration is fun and a little bit reminiscent of Dark Souls. The world and graphics are definitely the strongest elements of the game. These screenshots are taken from the dark opening area, but there are bright areas in the game too, and it has a day night cycle. All in all, fairly impressive for a 3D adventure game developed on a modest budget.

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

so this is the new racing game that looks like virtua racing. edit- here’s a video: i like it. The handling is good, it’s like old school arcade drifting, a little bit like outrun 2 - although I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, it’s not as good as outrun 2. Not many things are. Also you get boost from drifting. so the time trials are really good fun, there’s staff ghosts to beat and leaderboards and stuff. I’ve spent most of my time trying to beat the staff ghosts and friends. the racing is where we start to see problems, the AI/rubber banding are both very agressive, it’s weird. They will ram you, and even if you save up boost and use it all at once they will still be right behind you. It’s still manageable, not had many problems winning the championships on hard mode, but guess expert mode could be annoying. I pretty much think all racing games have bad AI though so it’s just a bit more worse than usual here. I prefer time trials so it won’t affect me as much. there are a lot of cars, 8? Drivers who have 4 cars each. With different stats and stuff. Most/all based on real cars, I’m disappointed the GT-ONE doesn’t seem to be the fastest for time trials so I can’t use it. the tracks, hmmm, there are some cool tracks, they look nice, but overall I’m less convinced by the tracks, instead of having a few basic tracks, some intermediate tracks and some tricky ones, they all seem to be on a similar level, Some a bit harder but mostly quite easy to get round, quite wide. They aren’t bad mind, there’s one with dinosaurs and everything, I sort of like them but they could have been better I guess. There are a decent amount of tracks, 16 I think. And you can play them reversed, or was it mirrored? Can’t remember. its on gamepass, that’s the version I’m playing. Not 100% sure but don’t think it’s on pc gamepass. I think it’s out on everything, steam, PS4, Xbox, switch. so overall it’s thumbs up for me, think I’d have been happy to pay the preorder price which was about 12 quid, bearing in mind I really like time trials so am less bothered about the AI annoyances.

Played about an hour/90 minutes of this earlier. All the previews I read/watched had been rather negative and I wasn't too interested in the game at all going in, surprisingly I actually had some fun with it, it wasn't amazing by any stretch of the imagination but I think beneath the serious macho military stuff there's actually a lot of fun and silliness to be had in the game. It actually reminds me of a strange GTA, Far Cry, Just Cause, The Division hybrid thing really, you have this absolutely HUGE open world, it only gives you two areas in the Beta but I was travelling Kilometres by Helicopter for a good 5-10 minutes at times just within one region to get an objective. Side missions are forgettable, the story missions were a bit better but ultimately quite forgettable. Where the fun came from though was just goofing around, I was playing with randoms and just seeing dudes flying helicopters sloppily, almost hitting the ground, people parachuting out of helicopters, getting left behind when everyone else was in a car etc. was pretty funny. There was this one side mission where we had to nick a plane and it felt just like GTA piloting that, all of chat being like 'any sick bags in back?' etc. It was a real blast, I was actually flying it too and it was very satisfying knowing all these guys were watching me take-off and land this thing. The online mechanics seem really solid, I asked it to constantly matchmake me with other people the second I took control of my character and people just continuously streamed in when someone in the party left seamlessly throughout, really impressive. Didn't get any net issues like getting kicked or anything either, everything felt very solid on that front. Graphics were so-so really, I was playing on PC and bumped it up to Ultra initially but was only getting a 30-45fps with that which was rather distracting so knocked it down to Very High and got an almost constant 60fps. The vistas and draw distance in this game are mightily impressive, you can see for miles, one of the longest draw distances I've ever experienced, up close textures can be a little muddy at times but the vistas and lighting are really impressive. The gunplay seemed cool and meaty enough, as did the tactics/strategy stuff (not that you'll be able to sync your attacks with randoms anyway) that you can put into planning a mission, the cover mechanics were rather odd though, expected to just snap into cover like Gears but there's no snap-in mechanic and you just have to crouch for your character to grip to a corner, but even then it doesn't feel as tight as it should be. So yeah, I wasn't exactly blown away by it but I really do think it could be a ton of fun just goofing around in this world with some mates, nicking 'copters and shit, even with randoms it was cool though, but if you want to truly strategise you'll need friends for sure. Anyone that's into GTA, Far Cry or Just Cause I think may want to give the Beta a go and see what they think.

I enjoyed the original Destroy All Humans back in the day. So when this Remaster was announced, I was all for it. Unfortunately, this is one of those examples where a game isn’t quite what you remembered. For one thing, the difficulty is absolutely all over the place. Most of the missions aren’t too bad. But then you get one thrown at you, that will punish you severely. From awful stealth sections that a chore to play. To enemies that rip through your health in a matter of sections. If you haven’t upgraded specific abilities, then you’re pretty much screwed. Graphically it looks nice enough. And they’ve added some improvements over the original, such as the ability to skate quickly around the map. But other improvements just appear to have been forgotten about. It’s extremely annoying that when you’re in the flying saucer, your shields don’t regenerate, the only way to do so, is absorb enemy vehicles. Might not sound too bad. But when you’re getting blitzed on all sides in hectic battles, it’s a ballache. And ultimately, the final boss difficulty spike just did me in. A saucer only battle. Very few enemies to regenerate your shields. The boss bombards you with rockets if you move too far away from it. And best of all, 3 massive health bars to drain, with absolutely no checkpoints during the fight at all. And each health bar takes aaaaaaages to drain. 3 times the bastard killed me. On my 4th attempt I reached his final health bar. But at that point, I was getting battered with lasers and rockets, and despite my best efforts, I died again. And that’s me done with this game, because fuck going through all that again.

Couldn’t find a thread on it, nobody else played this? It’s a rhythm action game for those who like metal and killing zombies. Worth it alone for noticing how close the fake versions of bands like Iron Maiden and Faith No More are. At least watch the opening few minutes of the story, I’ve been having a great laugh with it. On GamePass currently, worth a look.

Put a few hours into this today and it’s fantastic. It’s the spiritual successor to Wonder Boy and was developed in collaboration with Wonder Boy series creator Ryuichi Nishizawa. You play as a kid called Jin who goes on a quest to collect 5 magic orbs in order to free his homeland from a curse that’s changed everyone into animals. He’s turned into a pig at first, and each orb he collects gives him the ability to turn into a different animal (so far I have snake and frog warrior). It’s a 2D Metroidvania style adventure with beautiful hand drawn graphics similar to the Wonder Boy III remake, with lots of back tracking and exploring to do whenever you get a new animal power. There are RPG elements too such as health containers to give you more hit points, and weapons, armour, and magic spells to find out in the world or buy from various shops. It’s just the right side of challenging, although so far the bosses I’ve come across have been an absolute breeze.

I'm guessing at the tags because I assume it's on everything. It's more 8bit Castlevania style action, and it's very good. It's a lot longer than the original, and they seemed to have listened and altered the characters a little. Zangatsu has returned but he's altered a little, in the first game it amazed me how useless he was considering he was the main character, here he's immediately more useful with that really getting doubled down on later on. Dominique is back too, she has a better jump and attack reach than Zangatsu. She has a bounce move that let's you access certain areas if you're good with it, I'm not. Her spells are probably better kept as support. She can heal people with the right item, and if you can find the rare pick up she can also resurrect your party members. The two new characters are Robert, a sniper with a terrible jump and a weak, but occasionally very useful long distance attack. He can co prone and bounce off walls, again useful for shortcuts. He also has a really powerful special attack but it's restricted in range. If his health was better he'd be really useful. The most useful character is probably Haichi, who I'll describe as a mech. He's got the most health, can hover, destroys spikes when he stands on them and isn't affected by ice. His basic attack is pretty hefty and his only special is that he can go invincible, so you can sit him in front of bosses and beat the fuck out of them for as long as your magic lasts Curse of the Moon 2 seems to me a lot easier than the first game, maybe I'm wrong and I'm just more practiced at this sort of game again but I don't think I lost a life until stage 3. It's a lot longer, which is no bad thing, more inventive. My understanding is that there's a false ending which sounds a bit of a twat, but having not seen it I can't really judge it Really enjoying it though, I was playing it at release but put it down, glad to be back playing it

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

Played my first 70 minutes of this earlier. I'm incredibly impressed to say the least, I tend to say that a lot nowadays but first impressions are excellent. It looks phenomenal, the lighting effects are spot on and the texture quality has got an slight stylised look to it that makes everywhere feel rich and vivid, if you've ever had a dream to go through a Jack The Ripper era London with all the typical accompaniments of the period then you're well catered for, it definitely looks the part and recreates an incredibly moody, rich, dingy and dank 19th century London. There are compromises though as it is a AA-Indie title like the facial animations and obviously the overall texture quality, lighting and things like that can't match a AAA title, but you know what it is still so damn good and the atmosphere they create with it is better than a host of AAA titles out there. Part of what makes it feel so special is the music as well, it is just sensational. I don't know how they've done it but it feels so in tune with the aesthetics, like they playtested for hours on end to get the right atmosphere at the right times when you're exploring the streets or speaking to someone, it has this eery, mysterious, noir-esque feel to it that just makes you want to explore every nook and cranny of the environment and pulls you deeper and deeper into this world. Combat is better than I expected in all honesty, I seem to unlock more stuff via an upgrade tree as I go along but at the moment it's simplistic but fun with a stun, bite, knife slash and ranged move in my arsenal. When you've got more than one enemy on you it feels satisfying going from one to another and slicing them about, but it doesn't look that fantastic on screen if that makes sense, it feels a bit rudimentary and the animations are lacking but it works well, feels great and I'm sure it'll only get better and more complex over the course of the game. I won't say anything about the story so far - I'm so early on there's not all that much to say in all honesty - but it starts incredibly well and has only built up more and more intruige and mystery as its gone on, I just cannot wait to see what happens next and nothing much is even happening, the early signs of an excellent story to me. Lots of photos:

This game is set in the early days of the internet (1999, to be exact, although in a slightly made up alternative reality) where you play as a kind of internet policeman, ensuring the rules of “Hypnospace” are being followed. It’s made by Jay Tholen who also made the point and click game Dropsy. I love it. It’s a sensory assault of colours, sounds and random fonts. The music alone is worth the price of entry, it’s fantastic. The writing is excellent too, and completely believable.

Seems alright from the 10-15 minutes of the beta I got to play as capt, hulk, Iron Man and thor before it kept repeating the redhead‘s (black widow?) cut scene over and over on the bridge. Would like to have known what the game was like properly after the tutorial but I’m not doing it over again to find out.

I heard Abby talking about this on the Beastcast a while back and it was finally in the sale so I picked it up. Minit then. So called cos the game is played in 60 second bursts in which you explore as much as you can before the time runs out. When the time runs out you die, respawn at your house but all significant progress is saved Before I say anymore I have to mention this is a Gameboy game. Monocrome look, 8 bit graphics, sound chip tunes but it's cool as fuck. It's kinda like Zelda: Links Awakening with it's one screen at a time exploration gameplay. You find a sword first so you're combat ready. Next thing I found? A fucking watering can. Then some coffee (this gives you more energy so you can push boxes). It's an odd game. However, it's one of good design. It can be tricky to figure out what to do next, sometimes frustrating when the map expands and you have a couple of different ways you could go but due to the time limit you know the answer is never too far away. It has a handy built in kill button so you can end your run at anytime, allowing you to respawn at your current house. There are about 4 places you can respawn at spread across your map, each one becoming your homebase the instant you enter it. It's very satisfying gameplay wise, it always feels rewarded when you figure out what to do next and I was chuffed as a bollock when i finished it. It's not thaty it's that hard, I was just stuck a few times and refused to resort to a guide. It's not a big game, couple of hours I guess but I recommend it. Once you beat the main game...

Ive played this beyond its terrible tutorials now and so I'm willing to give impressions ok? Its good fun. It isn't like ssx no, or any game of that kilt. It isn't trying to be and those games dump you at a start line and grab you back once you're done. Here we have a big emphasis on exploration, online competition and risk taking. It looks beautiful and you can snap around the map quickly with zero load times to areas you've scoped out using your binoculars during a walk about. Please enjoy my video Paragliding is boring as fuck. I don't understand it really. I hate the music selection. When you die it plays the piano melody from To Build A Home which was funny at first but you can't turn it off and if you're doing something in which you die a lot you'll hear it a lot as it doesn't stop playing on resetting the challenge/race. I'm not super far into it, it's probably massive, but it's quite relaxing and to be minding your own business for then a fellow player come over beside you and do tricks together is quite charming. It's akin to Journey in that aspect.

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:

Got this through the post today, played through all 3 games when I was a kid and have fond memories, I actually played Crash before Mario so Crash was my second gaming 'mascot' I got acquainted with after Sonic. I remember the first game being bastard hard and the sequel and 3rd game getting easier and further away from the Platforming of the first game with jet ski levels etc. So yeah, got it today and started the first game. All the nostalgia came back to me with the opening sequence and first level, I attempted a time trial after to get a relic and immediately realised my hopes of 100%ing it were short-lived. Made decent progress, got a few gems from getting all the boxes on a few levels but got stuck on Native Fortress for a while, made some more progress before getting stuck on 'road to nowhere'. Damn that level was frustrating, tried it SO many times to finish it and eventually managed it after about 90 minutes, full on fist pumping and celebrating like mad after. Got a video of me finishing 'Road to Nowhere' and a stream from the start of my playthrough to share too (video quality is unfortunately, awful on the stream):

Well, this is a weird one. I’ve always enjoyed the EDF series. With its army of enemies, terrible dialogue, and absolute carnage, it’s consistently been a fun series. Many people don’t touch it due to its janky looks, but it’s certainly a good time. This one was developed by a different team, Yukes. And it definitely tells. It looks slightly graphically better than say, EDF5. It’s still not ‘triple An quality, but you can definitely tell the difference. However, that does go against one of the series’s main high points. Quite often in an EDF game, you get bombarded with enemies. To the point where you can barely see what’s going on. Chaotic, sure. But fun to blast your way through. That unfortunately never happens here. Sure, there’s the occasional swarm attacking you. But never on the scale that EDF5 provides. The series trademark awful dialogue is also absent. There’s no furious chants of EDF, or ridiculous conversations between allies. Everything said in this one is instantly forgettable. Combat wise, you have 4 classes to choose from, ranging from your standard Soldier, to being able to jet pack around, to wiring around the level Spider-man style. All with the typical range of over-the-top weapons. I was mostly having fun with this. Until I reached the final boss of level 52. There, it stopped being fun, and became a frustrating chore. Throughout the fight, the boss has its energy recharged by support ships. If you haven’t brought in a good long-range weapon, this renders the fight impossible. Enemies constantly respawn, and choose to ignore your squad and go straight for you. So while you’re trying to aim a rocket at the bastard health recharging ship, an enemy will often run into your face, and into your rocket, damaging you. Then, as if that’s not bad enough (and it is), multiple more recharge ships show up. Just to make your life a misery. I was hammering away at the fucker for a good 20 minutes, at least. Eventually, a further form of the boss appeared. By this point, the health recharge ships were constant, and the respawning enemies constantly got in the way of my line of sight of the boss. Then without any warning, it activated a massive area of attack energy blast, that killed me instantly. Do all that again? Fuck no. I’d seen online various people say “the last boss is fucking awful”. So I thought I’d prepared for it as best as I could. But that motherfucker, can fuck right off. I’m done.

Started the campaign on this earlier today and have had an absolute blast with it so far. The feel of the guns and the sound design is just absolutely superb, you can hear and feel each individual shot as you make it and feel the impact much than before when you kill an enemy. The main new addition from previous games is being able to stick, take cover and peek by clicking the right stick in to peek and pick off enemies. It drops you right in the action right away and can feel a little too quick and confusing at first, it really rams the plot down your neck and you’re a bit like ‘hang on...who’s that?’ But you soon just go with the flow really, the Villain hasn’t really been hyped up as much as previous games and I’m still a bit like ‘I’m meant to hate that guy?’ But yeah it gives just enough motivation and slap bangs you right in the action. Still piecing things together now but and trying to understand some bits and pieces but the world building is decent enough without being awe inspiring. The levels themselves have all been really varied. There’s two set in a European city, a couple set in a fake middle-eastern city at different times of the day and one set in the fake Kazakh mountains. I guess nothing too crazy or out there in terms of CoD but they’ve absolutely nailed the atmosphere in all these missions, possibly better than they ever have before. I don’t wanna give too much away and spoil things for people but it definitely pulls no punches in terms of subject matter. It definitely seems to be much more aware of the horrors of war than some previous titles and the subject matter reflects this, featuring burning bodies, civilians being shot, war crimes being committed and other atrocities (and I’m only on the 5th or 6th mission!). Had a few technical issues with the cutscenes running at about 1fps every now and then - but I seemed to rectify this somewhat by switching to borderless full screen - a few weird AI issues and clipping issues with enemy soldiers but apart from this the game has ran more or less flawlessly on my new GPU, it looks absolutely phenomenal. Some pics:

I’m about three hours into this. It’s the second game by Sam Barlow who made Her Story, and it’s the same style as Her Story but with more characters/actors. I’m enjoying it. The story isn’t super fascinating but it’s engaging enough. The music is atmospheric and very well done (I don’t remember music at all in Her Story) and there are some other nice touches that add to the atmosphere of the game. And unlike The Red Strings Club, Telling Lies isn’t stingy with achievements. One achievement in particular made me smile. Achievement spoiler not a story spoiler:

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 this doesn't even try not to be Castlevania. It's got the same intro screen and everything. Even the C in "Curse" is the C from Castlevania. This is proper old school retroness - 8 bit music, 8 bit graphics and 8 bit gameplay. If you've played any old Castlevania game you'll know exactly what you're in for and if you haven't you're a cunt and you should fuck off. You only get to pick Normal difficulty from the off but you get to pick between two gameplay variants. Casual in which lives are unlimited and enemy hits don't knock you back and Veteran which plays like the old Castlevania games and offers more of a challenge. You set off on your side scrolling adventure from left to right in control of (i forget his name). He has a sword and that sword has limited range and can only be poked in front of you. You destroy lamps (instead of candles) which drops mostly ammo for sub weapons but also yields hearts for health regen and cash for good old fashioned points! Although they are worth bagging as got an extra life at 20,000. I've only played the first two levels so far but each level has predictably ended in a boss fight. Upon defeat of said boss you unlock a new ally of whom you can control. You can switch between allies with the shoulder buttons and each has their own health bar for tactical switching. The first ally I got was a chick with a whip, a higher jump and a ground slide. This new ground slide technique is handy to go under things that the main guy couldn't (cos for some reason he cant slide). I noticed plenty of opportunities to use this slide on the first level so I guess at some point you can go through it with her, maybe after completion, i dont fucking know. She also has a different set of sub weapons also. I've just beat the second level boss and unlocked a third character so i'm gonna go try him out. The game hasn't been too tough so far, i'm yet to lose a life but I'm expecting that to change. I've enjoyed the music so far as well. Do with that info what you will.

Well. This isn’t very good at all. I’m old enough to have played the original Doom back in the day, and loved Duke Nukem 3D. Both of which are still really fun today. This? Not so much. It’s a prequel to 3D Realms’ Bombshell, which as it was PC only, I never played that. It’s based on the Build engine, and I’ve seen one review that claimed this is “one of the best Build games ever” and “one of the best first person shooters in recent memory”. I would present a counter argument: “It’s neither of those, and is boring as fuck”. The plot? Pretty much non existent. Apparently someone spilled the main characters drink, which pissed her off to the extent that she seeks revenge. Is there a cutscene that explains that? No. I only found out later that there’s a single screen of expositional text, buried in the options screen. The weapons? Your typical bog-standard pistol/shotgun/SMG. Maybe you unlock more creative weapons later on. I wouldn’t know, as I couldn’t be arsed to play past Level 3. The enemies? Generic trench coat dudes, mixed with annoying spiders that rip through your health bar like it’s not even there. I’ve seen some claims that “it’s funny”. Three levels in, and I’ve seen no attempts at humour whatsoever. Sure, there’s plenty of secrets. But actual humour, such as the type seen in Duke 3D, and Shadow Warrior? Non existent. I reached level 3, repeatedly died to some cheap sections, and found myself thinking the immortal question, “Why am I bothering with this?”. So I fucked it off. Modern audiences will find it dated and boring. People with experience in the genre will find it boring in comparison to much better titles. It’s just not very good.