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Not just for @bellow, but in general. With the recent multi-platform re-release, it is as good a time as any for those looking to return or jump in for the first time to one of the least contentious fan favourites in the series. With a little something, to set the mood... (Yes, this was a real thing)

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.

I massively bounced off the first game, Grow Home. It was awkward, a little too twee and just not a game I had a good time with, at all. So obviously it's only natural I try this one anyway. And I'm really glad I did. I had so much fun with this game from start to finish. I just really enjoyed it. The artwork and animation were adorable, the gameplay was still incredibly awkward, with your character, B.U.D. seemingly having legs with a mind of their own. Once you built up a little bit of momentum it became really difficult to slow down or stop. But that also tied in with the other systems in play. It was all based around climbing. The story involved collecting the parts of your crash landed ship, M.O.M. to reach orbit and jet off home again. Her 9 different parts were scattered all over the planet, and your job was to navigate your way to each one. Climbing was done with the shoulder buttons, LB/LT made his left hand grip, RB/RT the right. So when you built up a little bit of speed and needed to stop, pulling back then hitting the shoulder buttons would get B.U.D. to grip on to the nearest surface. There were a few other goals - scanning all of the planet's flora, growing star plants, that kinda stuff - but as long as you were restoring your ship you were heading in the right direction. I played it start to finish over the last week or so, and had a lot of fun with it, but at one point my brain said 'this is like a cute assassin's creed'. I'm really starting to enjoy Ubisoft's more artsy stuff. It wasn't fantastic, but I did have a lot of fun with it.

Ok, so I wasn’t sure about this one. Sure, the Predator license is ideal for a quality gaming experience. But I was a bit weary, as the team’s previous game, Friday The 13th was a mixed bag. A fun concept, let down by a toxic community, general jankiness, and lack of consistent support (though that was due to the court battle relating to the franchise). So, I downloaded the demo for this last night. And it’s definitely made a good first impression. There’s no team-killing for a start, something that constantly ruined the experience for Friday. You have a choice of either Fireteam (4 humans), or Predator. The fireteam has to complete various objectives (hack computers, take over control points). Multiple enemy AI will try to stop you, so it’s most effective to team up, and defend objectives when you’re capturing them. It plays like pretty much any FPS, with your typical selection of weapons (Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Pistol). Firefights can feel pretty tense, especially if an alarm gets triggered and you start getting swarmed with enemies. Then....you hear THAT sound. The tell-tale clicking of the Predator. Or it’s cloaking device activating. Or worst of all, see the red beam of its laser cannon pointing directly at you. At that point, all hell breaks loose. The Predator takes quite a lot of damage to take down, spraying recognisable green blood all over the place. Taking it on, one on one, is an extremely bad idea. If you get downed, there’s a chance your team can get you back up. Unless the Predator rips your spine/head off. Though that’s a gamble, as in doing that, you’re locked in place for several seconds, giving the rest of the team time to pump the Predator full of lead. Once the Predator finally dies, two things can seem to happen. If you’re quick enough to shoot it in the head after pulling it’s mask off, you can capture its body. Though you’ll get attacked by a ton of mercenaries for a few minutes, who can shoot up the body and decrease its value. Or, the Predator activates it’s self-destruct mechanism. A large red circle appears on the map. Anyone left in it after it detonates, is going home in a matchbox. If a member of the fireteam is killed, it’s possible to respawn them by “calling for reinforcements”. Which involves legging it to the specific radio point on the map, and defending it for a short time before your team-mate respawns. Though again that’s a gamble, because if the Predator is attacking you, you’ll have your hands full as it is. I spent last night purely as Fireteam, and had a bloody great time with it. I played as Predator for the tutorial, obviously it’s more complicated to play in comparison to Fireteam. Practice will certainly help, no doubt. There’s also a decent ammount of customisation options for both sides. Some are locked behind level progression, others in lootboxes. Lootboxes are earned in game, or bought with in-game cash. The game seems quite generous with money, and duplicate items give a decent bit of cash. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with this. More than I thought I would to be honest. I’ll certainly sink some more time into it over the weekend. And I had that much fun playing it with Gary, that I’ve preordered the full game. Well, I’m hardly spending money on petrol travelling to work for the next few weeks.

I played 30 minutes of it. It asks you to create a bethesda account before even being able to play which is really annoying but you can get around by setting steam to offline. Anyway it seems good. Kind of more focused on just murder arenas from the look of things. But I'm totally ok with a game like that. You can turn HUD off but it's hard to play. The HUD is a bit much tbh, I need to spend some time figuring out what parts I can turn off. Playing on ultra violent

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

Mutazione is a narrative game following a 15 year old girl who sets off to a distant town to visit her estranged grandfather, having received news he's on death's door. The titular town was once a busy place until several decades ago it was destroyed by a meteor, and which slowly mutated the people animal and plant life left. The game itself mostly involves talking to the townspeople and getting to know this community and their lives, planting musical gardens, and solving the mystery of the giant tree in the middle of the town which sustains the island. It's gentle, slow-paced and relaxing stuff, lasting about 5-6 hours. I had a lovely time with it.

Just to let you know what you're in for, Sea of Solitude starts with this screen: It's a beautiful game in places, similar in visual style to Rime. The introduction sees you in a boat in the titular Sea of Solitude. Playing as a young girl who's quite literally overtaken by darkness (seriously, she just has facial features, the rest of her form is just black and a little undefined), you're given a guiding light in this sea of darkness, and that provides the only source of light around you. It's a platformer in nature, so from time to time you have to leave the safety of your boat and walk around the flooded city its set in. When you do climb out of the boat the world around you becomes dark and stormy, and there's a creature that stalks you in the depths of the water. Basically, everything feels like a very heavy-handed discussion on depression. As you work through your problems and face your difficulties, you eventually bring light to the world around you. This is where the visual beauty kicks in, because it becomes bold, vibrant and just stunning to look at in a very stylised way. One touch I adore - you have to remove corruption from the world (this is what makes the world brighter again), but your character's backpack gets more and more full as the game progresses. Again, a very obvious metaphor, but one that's done in a subtle way. It was only near the end of my session last night I actually noticed it. This isn't a game that's ever going to set the world on fire - the controls sometimes feel a little loose, the story has less than zero subtlety, and the graphic design is an acquired taste (but exactly the kind of thing I love). But given that it's a very stark look at the different aspects of depression, it also feels quite brave in a way. I also don't want to give spoilers away, which is why I haven't discussed any of the main story beats, just given a little overview. It feels relatively short, I reckon I'm about half way through it - but I'm really enjoying it at the moment. As much as you can 'enjoy' a story about a young girl's crippling depression.

I've not posted about this because I've not had a lot to say about it. It's a decent enough game, and this is going to sound like more of a slight than I mean it to be, but that's it. It's not bad, it's not boring, but nor is it anything special. It's a good palette cleanser, enjoyable without staying with you The gameplay loop is very set. You play as Ash, your town is seeped in darkness, and it's affecting people, the whole town is angry and depressed, with local kids bullying you and chasing you if they see you. You need to use your magic paintbrush to graffiti the walls, lighting up string lights, when you light all the lights in an area it clears some of the darkness, opening up the next area. The titular concrete genies are figures you'll be prompted to paint on to a wall, you'll need them to solve some simple puzzles. They'll in turn prompt you to use certain items from your paint box, stencils in a way, so they'll want a sun painting, or grass, a tree, these are things you select and place using the motion of the controller. This will get you super paint which can be used to clear areas that can't be cleansed with normal paint Clear enough of the area and you'll get to make a masterwork, it's the same mechanic as the previous paragraph, your genies will tell you what to paint, do that and it will clear the area. Beyond that there's pages from your drawing book to find, you'll need these to make the requested designs, and there's a few walls where you can make bonus murals. I'm not sure if these are needed beyond just being another thing to do and ostensibly a collectible. There's light platforming, Uncharted style where you're grabbing ledges, it becomes more important as the game goes on, but it's never especially taxing And that's the game, that's Concrete Genie... until the end. I've not seen this happen for a while, it feels like something game's have got past, they've become more confident in their own ideas and not felt the need to add combat. Concrete Genie all of a sudden throws in a combat mechanic, I'm glad it's not running through the whole game, and it's not unplayable, but it is a bit of a shame, I'd rather have just had to draw one last big picture. Anyway, I've got, presumably, 2 more parts of this combat section, then maybe a final boss, so nearly done. It's been decent, if I was going to write more I'd maybe focus on how all the bad kids have had awful shitty lives rather than just being dicks, sometimes people are just bellends

This is fantastic. Apparently it’s inspired by a comic book or something. It’s an rpg where overworld traversal takes place on like a beautiful board game map, which then transitions into proper exploration for dungeons and other “explorable areas” (not unlike the transition in the PS1 Final Fantasy games). The character art and background art is lovely. Combat is turn-based, jrpg style. But the game has a couple of original, interesting ideas. Aside from default attacks, characters have abilities that cost mana, but you also have a stat called overcharge. Default attacks give you overcharge, and if you use abilities that cost mana, the game uses your overcharge first before taking from your mana. So if you have 20 overcharge, and you use an ability that costs 25 mana, you lose 20 overcharge and only 5 mana. It’s an interesting system that differentiates the game from other turn based RPGs. Also, attacks and abilities have casting speeds (eg instant, very fast, fast) which is another thing you have to take into account. I bought it heavily discounted but it’s been easily worth that so far.

FAR: Lone Sails is a beautiful indie game that definitely has that special something that the best indie games have, at least in the opening 30 minutes that I played. It looks like this: You’re basically piloting this hunk of metal across a barren wasteland. Gameplay has been very simple so far. The ship will move slowly if you open the sails but you can also fuel it to make it move faster. And then occasionally you come to roadblocks like this which require some gentle puzzling (so far). It looks beautiful. And everything is communicated visually. There’s no dialogue or tutorial. Very impressed so far.

Demo is out, first chapter of the game. I made a video fighting the demo boss. I did really bad, maybe you can do better. It feels well designed but lacking in polish, I dunno. There's a lot to like here but I hope they get it up to a better standard for release edit ok I spent time practicing and took a better video of the boss fight. This game has really good combat. It's so mechanical, a nice amount to think about. Some AI problems tho. I wish you could call characters to a position but it seems you need to babysit them with switch mechanic

Well. I usually enjoy Rebellion’s output. Sniper Elite is always good for a laugh (who doesn’t enjoy shooting Nazis in the bollocks?). Strange Brigade was a lot of fun. And I mostly had a good time with Zombie Army Trilogy, until I got close to the end, and the massive difficulty spike really pissed me off and stopped me from playing it further. So, I was certainly interested in renting this. First impressions were good. It has the satisfying combat of the Sniper Elite series, and at first, it seems like it could be fun. However, there’s a significant problem: it’s fucking ridiculous, even on Easy. I’m playing Solo, but it’s quickly becoming clear that its going to be nigh on impossible. Most games are generous with health packs, or regenerating health. Not so here. You can hold one medkit maximum, and they’re pretty rare. Your health doesn’t regenerate at all. Well, there is a way to get some health back, by performing a melee kill, but the ability to regain health from that requires you to have killed 10 enemies in a row. There is an ability that lets you get back up after being downed, Borderlands style. But you can only use that once per level. Each level consists of 4 chapters. I just finished Level 2, and that really tested my patience. Especially when the “special” zombies start making an appearance. Those often require to hit a specific weak point. Good luck doing that when you’re constantly getting ganked. I fluked my way through the last two chapters of Level 2, the final one consisting of having to defend two generations, for a stupidly long time. All while horde of zombies keep damaging them, meaning you have to repair the bloody things. All while constantly running out of ammo, or health, or both. The words “for fucks sake” were uttered multiple times. With a team, it would be more bearable. But as per usual, Rebellion don’t seem to understand how to make a game fun in single player. With at least 4 more Levels to go, I don’t imagine finishing it. I play games to have fun, not have my patience tested to breaking point. A challenge is one thing. Taking the absolute piss, is another.

Well, this was surprising. Coming from the people that brought us the god-awful Rambo game, and having pretty much zero hype, I wasn’t expecting much. But this was actually alright. Certainly the best Terminator game in years, though that’s not saying much. Combat wise it’s pretty decent, though it’s a bit annoying that Terminators more or less insta-kill you, and your weapons do absolutely no damage to them. Thankfully the next level gives you a plasma rifle, so it’s payback time. There are Telltale style conversation choices, that affect the ending. Though not dramatically so. Still, the writing is decent, and the voice acting is good. It’s not massively long, I played most of it last night, and finished it this afternoon. But I had fun while doing so. It was certainly worth a rental.

Great! A game in a series I've enjoyed on and off since the third installment on PS1 has gone 'free' on Game Pass - let's try it out. Hmmm... It's taken me 5 minutes of scrolling and about 15 button presses just to get to the main menu. This isn't the greatest start. No matter, let's see what's about... Wait, what? It's automatically taken me to the options screen now? Ok, ok, I'll just back out of there, then I'll see what's going on. Mishima Saga? WTF is that? Fuck it, let's go. Oh yay. More menus to click through. JUST LET ME PUNCH SOMEONE DAMMIT! Ok - difficulty on Normal. Finally into it. Punching time. Wait. No. No it isn't - I'm dropping young Kazuya off a cliff. Nice throwback, but I just want to fight. Yay, fighting time! The above was a description of my first 10 minutes with Tekken 7. When I finally got into it, the story mode was AWFUL. I played on normal, because fuck it, it's Tekken, how hard can it be? Turns out it gets very difficult, and extremely cheap. To the point I had to play cheap myself to even it out. One fight pits you as Heihachi against Akuma from Street Fighter (because remember when SFxT was a thing? What happened to TxSF? I wanted that so much more). That was tough, but I got through it. Then a little later it switched the roles, and I almost threw my controller at the screen. Then, putting you back in control of Heihaci, it had you fighting against Kazumi. Who can fire lasers, fly, has a fucking tiger that can attack you, can disappear and has unblockable attacks. But the sidestep isn't responsive enough, so you just end up repeatedly getting wailed on. Oh and she has regenerating health. And the final boss is demon Kazuya. Who can do all of the above (except for the tiger bullshit) but stronger. On each of the 13 chapters you have to beat most characters twice - the only exception to this is where you have to defeat 5 army grunts or 5 of Jack-4/6 in a row. But you can't lose a round either. You have to win two rounds without taking a loss on every single chapter. There's also a final chapter that I didn't see last night where you have to defeat Devil Akuma. Really not looking forward to that bullshit. All I wanted was an old-school Arcade mode. Ten fights, best of 3, stupid character movie at the end. What I got was this fuckery. I'm gonna go back in the next few days and look for some traditional modes, but last night I had to take my Kindle up to bed with me to try and dispel some of the irritation. That shouldn't happen with a game.

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

Guess it's time to make a thread, maybe? I don't actually have a lot to say because I started it ages ago but put it to the side for some reason. I think I was having a hard time as it's a little more difficult than the first one from what I remember. But I'd played it a lot more than I thought. I had six hours clocked and I thought I was half that in, at the most. After a little flapping around like an idiot while I got used to it again I started having a really good time with it like the first one. Dunno why I put it down. But I got towards the end and it looks like it has that same thing as the first one where you have to get a bunch of collectables hidden behind some hardcore challenges so I guess I'm gonna have to go and see all talented and big dicked enough to get the proper ending.

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

edited the title cause no need for two threads for two weird Russian games hardly anyone will play I started this. I don't expect this to be a popular thread, but it's a game I've wanted to try for a long time. Premise is hard to explain cause it just throws you in and your character knows more about the world than you do. Basically there is a plague, and there is a mystery. After a long prologue you're in a town and you have to solve the mystery of what's going on, I think, while also not dying. You've got health and thirst and hunger and a lot of other survival mechanics to manage. You have a sort of notoriety mechanic which affects your influence with people in the town. It's basically some sort of hardcore immersive sim Shenmue thing except if you are not in the right place at a certain time you will permanently miss out on certain stuff. So far I've spent most of my time trying to find the one friendly person in the town who doesn't hate me while rummaging through bins for a few stale peanuts so I don't pass out. Parts of it remind me of what BloodBorne, story wise. It's very weird and unforgiving. Kind of a bit of a David Lynch fever dream at parts. Anyway this game is free on game pass so there's no harm in trying even if you hate it. Game seems really hard, like you're destined to just fail the first playthrough.

I've played a little of this so here's some impressions. It's another indie racing game inspired by the arcade titles of the 90s. Visually and audibly it's very Ridge Racer but the handling is something else. Maybe more like Motorstorm but a bit driftier? Not sure but it's not expected and it's maybe more unforgiving than is satisfying. But I guess that's what this is; a hardcore racer for real gamers, like back in the day. There is a difficulty spike really early on that is a narrow course through the woods and I felt like giving up. But I found that conventional wisdom doesn't work here. I was using a car that was statistically slow but with good handling which in games like this is usually the beginner car but when I was failing a lot I tried another and I found maintaining speed and drifting is so much easier to do so once I learned the track I managed second place. The slower car just snapped out of drifting so easily and I couldn't figure out how to be fast in it. The AI is pretty brutal. Its like when I used to play Gran Turismo 2 and sometimes use the other cars to get round corners since there was little to no punishment for it. Well, get used to being on the other end of it. You cannot corner a little too slowly if anyone is behind you. But it seems okay so far despite that. Once I got a little hang of it I was having fun. But the handling seems like it might click... but might not.

This is a Sad Indie (TM) adventure game, with a lovely art style and pretty good story, told entirely without dialogue. I got it a while ago as a freebie on the Epic store. The game starts with your character after a car accident which killed his wife and left him in a wheelchair. He finds he has the ability to go back to the day of the accident via portraits of people that his wife painted, and tries to change things to prevent the accident. This is the main gameplay element, each portrait gives you control of the person in the painting, and you attempt to change their actions to prevent their part in the accident. Changing that course of events inevitably has knock on events, ending in something else being responsible for your accident, you have to go between the three characters and manipulate things to effect the others. It's fairly straightforward, and takes about 4 hours or so. It's very well made, and I liked it a lot.

Played the opening couple of hours. It’s a beautiful looking game that is graphically far ahead of Shenmue 2. If Shenmue 3 had been released soon after Shenmue 2, it wouldn’t have looked as pretty as this. Ryo sounds the same, pretty impressive given that the voice actor is 20 years older. Shenhua obviously doesn’t, which is a shame. But there’s nothing wrong with the new voice actress either. The music is gorgeous, especially the Bailu Village theme. The gameplay has many returning features, and some things looked to have changed, but I won’t comment on that until I’ve played some more (and everyone else has had a chance to play it). Looking forward to playing more tomorrow. Trophies aren’t available yet, but I assume the game has them.

Here you go lazy bones @Maryokutai. Not hard is it.

Played the first 3 hours earlier. I like it so far but it barely feels like I’m out the tutorial really so very early days. A lot of mechanics are being introduced still and it feels like the reigns haven’t been let go of yet so I’m not free to fully explore the world yet. First things first. There’s a lot of cutscenes. Almost all of them during the Prologue are ones we’ve seen from past trailers so in some ways we’ve all seen the opening hour but without the context you’ll get in the game. After that you’ll start to see some new stuff but at this early stage most of it is just introducing you to characters and locales with not an awful lot going on in terms of plot or anything. I’m not sure I need to go into a deep dive over the way the game plays as we’ve seen the gameplay trailers in the past. If you’ve seen those clips with Sam delivering packages that’s pretty much all I’ve done so far, the tone has definitely been on the serious side - thus far at least - with the piss grenades and Kojima wackiness completely missing during the opening stages of what I’ve played at least. The way it feels to pilot Sam though is probably what has surprised me the most, I read someone else somewhere compare piloting him to driving a car in GTA or something which had me a little bit worried because I assumed he’d control like a tank but instead he controls like a Sports Car if anything. He is incredibly nimble and controls very intuitively which I was shocked about, the walking speed is a light jog as well which means you get places really quickly. Holding L2 and R2 in will enable you to keep your balance much better and it’s a godsend when you’re carrying something heavy or traversing mountains as it will stop you flailing from left to right wildly. The way you load and unload packages feels very intuitive as well and it’s somewhat novel in letting you pick it up and then rearrange it on your person, it feels very tactile. I’ve made 3 deliveries in total in my time with the game so far. It seems fun enough to me to simply get lost in the world and walk about eventually getting to your delivery point but as mentioned previously I haven’t been fully let off the reigns so far so have only been able to explore very linear corridors which have been funnelling me to the next exposition point. I have met the ‘BT’s’ once so far and the whole experience completely weirded me out. I fucked it up first time around and was flailing wildly not knowing what to do before being chased by some kind of monster thing so I reloaded and gave it another go. The atmosphere in those moments is so damn tense creeping around them whilst crouching and holding your breath, the BT’s themselves give me the creeps, they’ve got such fantastic sound design. It probably goes without saying but the visuals are absolutely phenomenal as well. They world design has a really unique art design to it, I don’t really know what I can compare it to really other than possibly Nier Automata maybe? It just has this washed out melancholic but vivid quality to it that I’ve not really seen much elsewhere. If you like somber indie tunes you’ve come to the right place as well, in particular moments the music will swell and the camera zoom out to give you a sense of place whilst adventuring along. Kojima has a great music taste. As far as negatives go, so far the writing has been a little ropey in places and I couldn’t help but laugh when Kojima’s name comes up under every casting title during the credits as well. So yeah, so far so good really but it’s still very early days. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with it this far but am eager for the leash to be loosened so I can fully explore the world.

This is a little known indie RPG from a couple of years ago that has a 16bit JRPG style. On the surface it pulls a lot of inspiration from Chrono Trigger with regards to its battle system, but instead it has a sci-fi setting where you play as a team of future spies. It has been good so far. Well, the story I'm a bit unsure about. Maybe it just needs some time to pick up but currently it has a dodgy mix of some regular sci-fi and a Saturday Morning Cartoon, but in a way that isn't quite working for me. I just want them to pick one so far. But I've been very impressed with the battle system and that's the star of the show here. You have basic moves, moves that can be used once until you've gone in a turn consuming defensive stance, the moves have a lot of different kinds of properties even early on. Every fight with basic enemies feels meaningful. JRPGs are often more of a marathon than a sprint, where you have to get from one place to the next, doing lots of simple fights and making sure you're prepared enough for it. Here, all of your health and abilities are restored after a fight so they're very self contained, puzzle-y things and don't shy away from making regular encounters feel like boss fights in another game like this. It's cool. It's very cheap on Switch as of now and if you want something to challenge your decision making in a JRPG style I think it's truly worth looking at.