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I’m very bad at it but 2042 seems alright. There was a 10gb update so I missed out on all the bugs I think. The only jank I’ve noticed is slow texture loading at the beginning of a match (ps4 pro) and sometimes your body might go a bit mad when you die. The levels I’ve played on have been ok but I’ve not played enough to have memorised any of them. The one with the skyscrapers and has a huge tornado rip through the middle of the map was a stand out moment. I got killed because I was stood staring at it. It looked awesome was giving me anxiety. They seem to have stopped giving you anything if you have played any previous BF games which I don’t mind I guess but some recognition would have been nice. Just some gamer card art. I don’t understand the load outs just yet. You seem to be able to give anyone anything? Like give an assault guy a medic pack instead of ammo? I didn’t play around with it much so idk. It all sounds very nice and the pro version looks a lot better than the base ps4. God knows what the og xb1 version must look like. The menu and UI and a lot cleaner and user friendly than what I remember of 1 and 5. It’s Battlefield.

I'm starting to think all the best titles on Game Pass are the little indie darlings. I've smashed Boyfriend Dungeon. Enjoyed Raji's full game a hell of a lot more than the demo. I absolutely adored The Gunk, and Dodgeball Academia. And now I've played this clever little head-scratcher. Meanwhile, I'm constantly ignoring the blockbusters that hit the service, because fuck it. They can get played another time. Anyway, I've started talking about The Pedestrian on a tangent, and I kinda feel like that's how the game has to be played, too. Your goal is to navigate an incredibly linear world as the stick man (or woman) from public toilet signs. You do this by working your way from room to room, solving puzzles, and all that good stuff that makes a simple game loads of fun. It would all be a bit boring if the concept just involved you jumping about in a world with worse graphics than Super Mario Land, though, which is where this game's USP comes into play. Each area you navigate is set on a road sign-style panel, and might have different doors or ladders to get you into the next area. These panels aren't always connected though. Sometimes you'll need to hit Y (or triangle) to zoom out and see all the current panels you have to work with. You'll then be able to make connections from door to door, or ladder to ladder. You might even need to move the panels themselves to create a line of sight between each exit. Moving panels won't break a connection, but adjusting where connections happen will. Basically, if at any point you break said connections, the entire puzzle you're on at the moment resets, and your progress starts all over again. It's not just about creating a route from area to area, although that's a big part of it. You also have to make the environment work for you. Every now and again you'll encounter a hub level which requires different elements before you can escape. These are acquired by hopping into those tangents that I mentioned earlier. Say you need a key. You might need to head through the bottom left-hand door, which will take you to a series of puzzles, eventually letting you bring a key back to the main room. You might then need a wire, or a battery pack, or even something as simple as a box to hop up onto a ledge that's just out of reach. Once you've solved all the tangents for each hub, you can then move on. You know how in some games they use the same idea over and over again, and it can become exceptionally boring? Well The Pedestrian doesn't suffer that fate. Its physics, mechanics, and even the nature of the puzzles themselves have been sanded down and polished to this outstanding finish where nothing feels out of place. Can't solve a puzzle? That's on you. That ledge too high? You need something to help you get there. Go find it. The very fact that I sat down and finished this in three goes says it all for me. I loved everything it did. It's so, so much fun, and something that literally wouldn't work in any other type of medium. Achievements are very generous, too. I got 1000 points without trying.

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

The Good old days when (western) box art was largely unconnected to the game itself. But Japan was more on the money... Anyway, at time of writing I'm an hour at most away from the ending. So I should probably give some indication I've been playing anything at all for the past few weeks. Fun fact: I played this upon it's original release (1994) but never played the original game until the 2004 GBA remake. As you can imagine, I have a natural bias to the sequel. I still adore this game. Mostly I find the "jank" is associated to the control scheme. You have to pull up a menu to do just about everything. Every character can only hold four items (one of those is typically a weapon) and it just generally slows the whole process down. Funnily enough I've found the game wide secret largely on my own. Mithril. You find pieces of Mithril on the world map and in hidden treasure chests. There are fifteen in all. But there is an early point of no return in the game that means you can miss three of them. Those ones I always miss. Jump through a few hoops later and you reach the Mithril Blacksmith. Get ready to save scum if you want the best aka Ultimate weapons, though. The RNG is abysmal. The cast is quite expansive in this game. Which is quite standard for an SRPG. By the same token, a fair few aren't worth even using in your team at any point (points to Skreech, Birdman number two). You'll note from above some have alternate portraits. Due to the class promotion system in this game. There are also secret added items that grant some characters a new class promotion. For example, Kazim (sixth portrait on the top row). He can be promoted from Mage to Wizard at level 20. However, if you hold off on that for a town or two. You find a Secret Book which can make him a Sorcerer instead (this games Summoner). This applies to several classes of character. But you don't need to fret over it if you miss these items. The ultimate class promotion of the Centaurs is Pegasus. If you miss the item in the Centaur town. The Pegasus Jaro (the blond, seventh from the end on the bottom row) joins you by default later. Naturally, these characters won't be as strong as your initial characters would be in these classes. As an aside, much like the first game. I really don't get the fixation these games have with the Centaur class. There are five of them in this. Six or seven in the first game. There is very little between any of them. So yeah, on to my last two bosses of the game - Odd Eye and, King of the Devils, Zeon. I remember the latter being a chore. I've set the game to Hard mode. The 'Super' and 'Ouch' Modes beyond that seem really unnecessary to me. Since it isn't like you get anything extra for the added struggle.

I've played a few areas of this, and it's... alright. It's not funny or quirky enough for that to keep you playing, there's not a lot to the gameplay that that's the reason you're playing, and there's a few frustrations that pull some of the fun out of it. I do really like how the goose moves though The gameplay loop is that you're locked in to an area and have a list of dickish things to tick off. The first area is the one you'll have seen from the early footage, you're tormenting a gardener, so the list includes things like getting him wet, getting him to switch hats, making a picnic. Some are easy enough, walk up to an, sorry, waddle up to an item, press the button to pick it up, then waddle back off with it. Some you have to set up, do something to get your target to change position so they're vulnerable. It's here where it feels most like a stealth game, or a game akin to Gregory Horror Show or an adventure game, it's also where it's the most tedious Goose Game doesn't have the tells of a traditional adventure game, it doesn't spell things out for you, which might be for the best. It reminds me a bit of Doughnut County, that was a game that never really got complicated enough to get interesting, all style no substance, if Untitled Goose Game was any easier it would be a procession. That said when you can't work out how to do the next task it's a boring experience, I'm not sure if the game starts focusing characters on the actions that will put you on the right track, but it should. Beyond that the only other criticism I can level at it so far is that it can be a bit fiddly. If there's a couple of items that can be picked up, 99% of the time it will pick up the one you don't want

Hi guys. I wanted to draw your attention to a little indie game I discovered due to the good old Youtube rabbit hole. I was watching an old Caddicarus video, and he included this game in it. And it's a blast. You play a goose. That's it! Behind the very pretty hand drawn looking graphics is a stealth game, I suppose. You get a check list of things to do, but it's up to you how they get done. Here's an example of the start of the game. You come out of a bush beside a pond. The game shows you the controls. You honk. You flap. You peck. Then you swim across the pond and see a picnic on a park bench. What you do with it is entirely up to you. A little further along you find a farmer minding his own business, tending his crop of carrots. That's when you get your "things to do" list. Things like get the farmer wet, steal his keys, turn on his radio. As you progress through the game, you realise that the main point of being this goose is to annoy the hell out of the villagers as much as possible, while trying to complete you current things to do list. And if you're like me, usually you'll be giggling maniacally while playing. The art style is really nice, the horrible goose struck a chord in me, and the pranks are puzzles to figure out and moves to time and execute. Like stealing the farmers keys is more difficult than it sounds, especially if you've already pranked him, and he's aware of this bloody goose walking around his fields. Though the things to do are not exactly challenging, it certainly brings a sense of satisfaction to complete list after list. In all, it's a sedate laid back game with a horrid sense of humour. If you fancy leaving the things to do list alone for a bit, just have fun pissing off as many people as you can.

I started playing some of this. I'm definitely going to need digital foundry to hold my hand on what settings I should be turning on, the auto detect option on the game itself recommended I max the game out but that isn't happening. I figured I would settle for 30fps but the camera motion in this is really bad, it doesn't feel good. So I'll have to tweak that. Anyway it's very janky and hard to play so far. Everyone makes a big song and dance about DLSS but it dont play well with camera movement. I guess there is a hell of a lot of detail to be reconstructing all the time. Sometimes the game looks spectacular but sometimes I'm sort of finding it to look kind of terrible. Part of it is the game feels sort of weird. People phase into existence in front of you, cars render in front of you. Obviously there's weird shit with people t-posing but that's minor. At one time in a cutscene V was completely naked for no reason, that made me lol and makes me wonder if your model is always like that cause it's a FPS game and you can't see your tits or dick or whatever. Gameplay wise I find it hard to play and the HUD and text is such a bad clash of colours and design that I can't tell what's going on half the time or what the things I'm picking up are. This could just be the awkward teething phase but it feels kind of gross. The driving is also really swimmy. I mean I'm sure it gets good as you go in but yeah it's like kind of clunky in a really strange way. These guys did make The Witcher III I suppose. It feels like someone took Euro jank and gave it all the money but kept the jank. The game throws a million things at you at once and displays a bunch of info on your HUD that's hard to keep track of. It's not a very gentle easing into the world, it sort of just throws you in and you're constantly bewildered, well I am anyway. I'm confused. There's a lot going on here but it's not so much that it's deep just that there's a fucking lot of it and I can't be arsed to read it all. I played 3 hours of it, one of which was a big shootout. The shooting doesn't feel good, but it sounds good. Aiming is bad, there's a lot of control options to figure out so I will definitely be following whatever guide somebody puts up to fix the issues with it. Anyway it's cyberpunk, it does the Bladerunner thing. Pris is in it, sort of. That's what people wanted, a very Bladerunner-ey game. Except this is less chin stroking and more aggressive 90s Rob Zombie in your face all the time. Feels of an era This game is very hard to run, pretty much never see 60fps at the settings the game recommends for me. It's exactly the kind of game people were expecting, an absolute monster for both GPU and CPU. A new Crysis.

This is pretty great, it's a rhythm action game, it's a bit like an into-the-screen version of bit trip runner. you know, you have to press the buttons (it only uses the 4 directions and one button) in time with the music and on screen prompts, to get through the course/track thing. the music is i don't know really, i've heard it described as industrial, but it fits in really well with the game. it's hard to play when you're tired, i was on stage 8 for maybe 2 hours last night, got to the boss but was really struggling, had to replay some sections over and over, then more awake this morning i finished off the boss and did stage 9 with less problems. well not completely trouble free, it's a pretty tough game and level 9 is the last level. it's pretty long for a rhythm action game with only 9 levels, each level is quite long, and as above, can take hours first time through (the earlier ones don't take that long), also good job it saves at checkpoints and you can go back to it later. as you get better at it there's less retrying sections, so the levels will be much shorter i guess. i went back to the early levels to try and get better scores, there's quite a lot of depth to that as even though i've finished it i was missing out loads of stuff that you can safely ignore without being punished for. there's some high bars i still don't know how to hit, must be some sort of trick to it - these bars are above the track, so on one of the pad things you press up and x together to jump up to hit them, but you only stay in the air for so long, and some bars are past the point you fall back down... also it's pretty cool in virtual reality, i banged my head trying to look underneath the space beetle. oh yeah you play as some sort of space beetle.

Started this earlier. Put in about 2 hours and I think I'm 2/3 of the way through it It is definitely not the longest of games that's for sure. But you know what, it's actually quite fun. The story is hilariously po-faced. It's deadly serious, you have all Sonic friends in there (no Big the Cat though...) and they're all talking to one another like a bunch of cool animal pals, but also forming a deadly serious resistance against Eggman's forces who've taken over the World. It's nonsense and I can't take it seriously at all, at least they tried, I guess? But yeah, the levels themselves are pretty cool. You have the avatar levels, classic sonic levels, modern sonic levels, modern sonic + avatar duet levels and bonus stages. Avatar levels you can use a weapon - by pressing ZR - which allows you to plough through hordes of enemies, you also have a grappling hook which allows you to swing from hanging sphere to hanging sphere to get through a level. Classic Sonic levels is basically old school Sonic stuff like from Generations etc. no lock on, no boost and a bit more platforming. Modern Sonic has all that boosting, lock on, grind rails and more of an emphasis on speed. Lastly the Sonic + Avatar duet levels are like a mix of the Modern Sonic and Avatar elements mentioned above, you both work in tandem boosting through enemies, using the grappling hook and weapon, there's even this cool double boost thing which sends you into a batshit crazy-fast run but that's been pretty rare. The environs are classic sonic fayre, there's a chemical hill zone, a green hill zone, a casino zone and a zone that looks like that one from Sonic: Lost World - Mystic Jungle or some shit? They get repeated way too often, there's been some stages where I've had a double take - wait, I've been here before? - but you just kind of go with it and it'll always have some new spin to it or slightly different course. This may sound like sacrilege, but I always liked Sonic for the speed and not really for the platforming. This succeeds at that in spades, whenever you're boosting down a level, grinding on rails or generally going incredibly fast then it's an absolute ton of fun, it can't help but put a smile on my face. So yeah, very much in the Sonic Adventure mould, but less ambitious than that I'd say and at least you don't have to do fishing with Big the fucking Cat, so there's that. But yeah, it's not fantastic by any means, but if you can get it cheaply enough it'll give you an afternoon of fun at least.

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.

So, straight off the bat this game is weird... As in... It feels like I've been dumped in to the middle of a story and have no knowledge of what's gone (or going) on. It seems like it's a cross of every recent weird TV show or film from recent times, there's touches of Inception, Lost and God knows what else in here so far. Jesse (the main character) seems fine so far, she handles well enough... Shooting seems a little loose but I've turned off a couple of aim assists so that may explain that, I've only unlocked a couple of abilities (like launch) but that's opened up combat a little... I'm enjoying what I've played so far. Oddly, the game this most reminds me of somehow is a Dead Space game but I can't quite put my finger on why... I'm definitely interested to see where they take the story in this as so far it's weird as fuck and I have no idea where it's going.

With my interest in PokéMon Violet at an end. As I'm in the mood to keep playing it, I decided to turn my attention on the third game on my Switch (following Violet and Metroid Dread). Considering, I have completely forgotten when I bought this. It's a little regrettable it has been sitting unplayed on here for so long. I adored the first game on the PS3. If they had released them on a console, it's likely I would have felt similar to 2 & 3. Now the main reason this game has essentially been in storage is due to it being a download. As this is the Switch, the size of this game forced me to archive all of my other Switch games. I recall being very annoyed by that and I left the console off until Metroid Dread. Fast forward to the present, I'm a little rusty but getting there. The importance of strategy in this series can't be understated. So far I'm roughly two chapters in. Basically the bit that was covered in the 2018 demo (I know this since my save data was retained) With two unlocked skirmishes, both 'A' rank. Although the story missions haven't been as successful (two B ranks), since the first (which was an 'A'). I'm getting as much enjoyment from it at the moment, as I did with the original. Waiting to see which one the cast will be the titular Super-Soldier. Not as clear cut as the first game yet.

I got this as a rental yesterday,took about 8 hours to update the damn thing. And there’s more updates on the way already. I’ve only played a couple of hours,so can’t really judge it yet. But the lack of NPCs really is an absolutely stupid decision. Elder Scrolls Online managed it fine,so I don’t get why they went that way with this. I only saw one actual player, who tried to kill me,but as I didn’t shoot back he couldn’t do F all. I was busy getting past the tutorial that I didn’t interact with him,so he got bored and left me to it. Oh,and Bethesda’s reaction to people pissed off about the poor quality bag in the Power Armour Edition is gobsmacking. “We made it out of cheap material,as we couldn’t afford what we advertised. Here,have 500 atoms. That gets you pretty much sod all”. They’re really trying to piss all their goodwill up the wall.

I got this on steam, I don't know I'm thinking it could be trash. It doesn't make a bad first impression. Kamala is an alright protagonist although she keeps talking to herself. The bits of campaign I did were very on-rails cinematic setting stuff up so I got a bit bored of that and tried the 'war chest' thing or whatever it's called. These MP missions they send you on are just a clusterfuck of shit and rockets flying off screen at you while you constantly get interrupted. You just seem to sponge up a bunch of hits and fire off cooldowns and spam light/heavy. I don't know, maybe there's more here but it really seems like there isn't. It's not helped by the fact that this runs very poorly, I dropped to 1080 on my card but it constantly runs all over the place. Not sure why. But the campaign might be good? I can't say for sure cause it's still very hand holdey. But right now it does feel an awful lot like they wanted to make a single player game and were forced to make a rubbish multiplayer one on top. It's a very strange beast and is full of graphical glitches like rain freezing, kamala falling through the earth and a guard with a hat that floats around their legs to name but a few I witnessed. It's a shame cause I actually kind of like how it plays. The hit feedback is terrible and you really really have to turn screen shake off as soon as you can cause it will make you sick. But with Tony Stark I was flying around and switching into hover and pot-shotting fuckers and then using melee as a distance closer to build up meter for more Iron Man shit. It has that kind of thing that makes the synpases fire off when you link up actions like that even if it isn't particularly deep. But the actual encounter design just seems like you might not as well think about any of that shit and the hordes of bullshit they throw at you makes sure you wont But who knows maybe what needs to happen is I got to git gud. Or the game does. Buy Tony Hawk instead That is Kamala, she is Inhuman. Which means she has big hands and can stretch BTW the way the MP works is sort of like you are on the Avengers version of the Normandy. You can roam around talking to people, do combos in a practice room. The MP takes place postgame and spoils the story apparently, what it reminds me of a bit is chapter 2 in MGSV. A bunch of non-descript missions where you are sort of mopping up the after effects of whatever happens to happen in this main campaign. So I don't know what the long term thinking is there, do they develop story expansion beyond the postgame like a sort of MMO.

Is there really no thread for this?! I started it last week. Still milling around and exploring and I am a few in-game days in. Usually running out of energy by 9am and left with little to do for the day. So far I found a couple of ways to avoid this and so spend a lot of time fishing and wondering if I should really just turn it off and do something else with my life It seems like a cute enough game, not like what I remember of Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life, man I loved that game. I can't decide if I like it and am also looking back to playing more. Time will tell.

Tinykin is a 3D platformer collect-em-up, reminiscent of something from the N64/PS1 era (but a smoother, more modern experience, naturally). You travel around the levels amassing a bunch of different coloured pikmin-like critters which have different abilities, solve some very light puzzles to complete a bunch of tasks to earn an object and open the way to the next level. It's cute and plays well, it just keeps you going without putting obstacles in the way of your enjoyment. It's nothing earth-shattering, just a simple fun game. I played it on game pass, starting on Thursday night, and completing it the next evening. It felt like time well spent.

I guess I'll try and kick off a thread for this. I got this yesterday and played through most of the Berlin mission. I'm basically at the end of it but trying to hold off on progressing too fast and want to savour things a bit. These games are so good at designing levels which are rewarding to explore, I always enjoy the feeling of taking a really long time to work my way to a specific area and then finding a really inconspiocus short cut I could have taken, the multibranched progression through each stage and the way it twists and winds into itself makes it fun to literally just walk around looking at shit. Even while not necessarily making much progress on your targets. I play with almost all the HUD elements turn off except the one which lets me see targets are red guys. Not to make the game obtuse or difficult but to get more of the pleasure of just wandering around looking for ways in, or eavesdropping convos. You do sort of need the instinct vision tho as some targets are not very obvious to look at, especially in Berlin I'm not playing Hitman for the story so I was happy to jump right into the first mission that interested me, I tried a bit of Dubai but it looks more like an introductory mission with some story handholding. Not that that's bad, they do it in the other games too. Berlin is very classic Hitman tho. It even has a flavour of Hitman Absolution to it with the way it sets things up, but I think it's better than Absolution The premise of it is Older Hitman games have played with this concept a bit (Silent Assassin, Blood Money) but it takes center stage here It's quite a pretty game, it doesn't look hugely different to the last two but they made some lighting adjustments like screen space reflections. Not ray tracing, but I don't think it really needs it. The older levels get updated with it as well. I posted some screens in the screenshot thread but they came out a little too dark and don't get the visuals across very well. I imagine it looks great on Series X/PS5. There's also some great line reads in this. I'll probably just dip into levels from all three games now that they're all on the one package and 60GB. I still have to do Japan in 1 and every mission in 2. For now I'll stick with the new stuff.

This arrived early wooooo! Nice surprise because i thought zavvi would be slow at delivering, had to get up early and wait in for it at my parents, but it was totally worth it. Anyway yeah I'm really enjoying it so far, but even though I'm a fair few hours in I'm still doing tutorials, lots of story/setup, and some mini dungeon stuff, so early days still. There's been some funny stuff in there, mainly the responses you can pick, but not loads so far. The presentation/graphics/music is great as expected really. The guy in the velvet room sounds odd/different. Something this has from other SMT games that I'm not sure the persona ones I've played have properly had, which i always thought sounded cool, is talking to the bad guys. I like it. As expected it's pretty similar in gameplay and structure to persona 3 and 4, there's a map/school to run round talking to people and social links and stuff, and dungeon where bad guys are battled in turn based combat. So there you go. I'm sure some people will be picking this up so hope you guys enjoy it maybe i shouldn't have started this as I'll probably just skim read it till I've finished the game now, which will probably be a while.

There wasn't a thread for this, I think. Unless it got deleted. Anyway, I am 20 hours in. At the end of the first 'area'. It looks like a Souls like game on the surface, but the similarities are largely on the surface. This is mostly a hardcore action game in the same kinda vein as Ninja Gaiden, but with Soulslike concepts to how it designs its action rather than the more DMC-like ethos of NG. But I wouldn't really consider it like Souls, cause I think Souls is a lot of exploring and dealing with traps, and then some simple but punishing combat. This is purely about studying very complicated combat, and exploring very simplistic and repetitive levels. At least, that's the impression after clearing the first area 20 hours in or so. So it's really hard. If I'm quite honest, it's a game which can make me fairly miserable. I'm not having the best of times with it at this early stage, so I'm not sure if it's a future candidate for 'fucked off game' or whatever the thread is called. However I am really interested in what's going on with its combat, and it really demands that you study that combat to pass even the basic challenges the game throws your way. You have three stances, high mid and low. High is heavy attacks with lots of stamina drain, lots of health and 'ki' damage ('ki' is what they call stamina). Mid is in between that and 'low', which is fast and low committal. Each stance has different properties to its dodge as well, and I think block costs different amounts of ki in each stance The reason for the three stances is a mechanic called 'Ki Pulse', which is a timed 'burst' of white energy after every active skill and combo string. You press r1 at the right time and you recover your 'ki'/stamina more quickly and has other properties later on. So for the BnB combat in this you're looking at trying to figure out an approach which combines these different stances, taking note of attack properties and recovery times, as well as ki cost and trying to space the enemy out. It sounds like a lot, right? It is, it's a lot. It's a really hard game. The RPG comes in the form of lots of inventory management, which sucks. It also comes in the form of a FFX Sphere Grid style upgrade system for your different weapon skills, which is the part that's really interesting. You use a weapon a lot and it gives you a skill point which you can invest in certain skills. Like a quick kick for a chain-scythe type weapon, which is useful to proc 'ki pulse' cause it's quick and recovers quick. Or a parry move (which seems universal to every weapon), which can get further upgraded to have followups. You can equip/unequip the moves and replace with others God hand style (parry is not my style, it's hard enough to react to reactable shit in this so I use alternatives). More impactful are these buffs you unlock which grant different properties to the ki pulse for each stance. So if you get a perfect ki pulse on high stance, you get a damage buff. On mid stance, you get a 'free' block (which is a lot more important than you think for fishing for openings, at least at the beginner level I am at). then low stance gives you a free dodge. tbh, I've not been using that one as much, but mainly cause I don't know when to do so. But anyway, skills and buffs get chained together looks to be the gist of it. You don't just mash square to get through (I think). I'm speccing for fists and 'Kusarigama', which is like a scythe on a chain that pulls guys or your own guy in, and has moves to retreat and back off. Mainly I'm using the fists right now though. In general the combat is sort of based around dealing lots of posture damage, which when fully depleted puts regular enemies in a spot where you can grapple them and boss enemies in a spot where every attack deals hitstun and you can go to town. So fight design and your build combine to create very difficult combat puzzles. They repeat enemies and minibosses a lot to make you learn harder and harder variants of that combat puzzle also Here is me finally defeating Bojack, and putting an end to his terrible nonsense once and for all. Pretty basic gameplay but it's a very hard game to learn even basic stuff in. Also, you have a kind of Oni mode, called Yokai. You power up and mash the buttons, use it during the monochrome segments where they drain your ki. You can also cancel anything into a quick yokai move which you equip. The moves do things like toss spears or summon snakes. Apparently there's some defensive ones as well So yea, there's some pretty deep stuff going on for an action RPG. On the combat side anyway, everything else seems fairly prefab (levels and enemies). It takes forever to figure out basic stuff tho btw, I'm playing on PC. The port is great. It wasn't great when it came out but I guess they fixed whatever was wrong with it from back then.

Ok, so I was burned out on the Assassins Creed series. The yearly sequels got me feeling pretty tired of the series. By the time 3 came out, I was pretty much done. I tried a few other games in the series after that point, but never really committed to them. Odyssey got me back into it, and what an outstanding game that was. So I was naturally excited for this. I’m playing this on my day one PS4. Naturally it will perform better on next gen. But having said that, I’m not disappointed with the way this looks at all. The game is absolutely stunning, and apart from the initial long load time, it runs pretty smoothly. I’ve seen video reviews of some hilarious bugs/glitches, but haven’t encountered any myself yet. The combat is a bit basic at the moment. Reviews have pointed out that it takes a few hours to unlock different moves and abilities. So I’m looking forward to that. It’s nice that you can respec your character at any time, so if you fancy a different approach that’s always an option. Wandering around the main settlement, I’ve found three mini games. One which involves out-drinking your opponent, one where you use poetry in a battle of wits, and a dice game which I lost horribly on my first attempt. There’s a micro transaction store (because of course there is), but thankfully it’s totally ignorable. You have to search for it yourself (no obnoxious daily deal prompts bombard you). And the vast majority of the items are cosmetic only. There’s no “pay to unlock XP faster” as there was in Odyssey. So although it’s there, it isn’t an issue. Usually in Ubisoft games, I like going to the Ubistore to unlock various exclusive bits. There’s very little to unlock in Valhalla’s Ubistore page. But again, not much of a complaint really. Definitely looking forward to sinking many hours into this.

The controls are really weird, I keep pressing the Touchpad for map and calling my horse with the wrong D-Pad button (thanks AC Odyssey). The gunplay doesn’t feel like it’s evolved since the OG RDR. It’s so incredibly clunky having to click in and out of cover and move up to the next position, felt like the analog stick was stuck in treacle. I’ve only had a few gunfights but every one has been a chore so far because of it, you just feel like just staying in one cover position so you don’t have to keep moving. I really didn’t think I’d be saying this but the R* game it most reminds me of is LA Noire. Early on there’s a cabin you have to search and I was just going around hugging walls and inspecting/picking up objects like LA Noire, you can do this with almost every richly detailed interior too. The quality of the writing, cinematics and atmosphere created though is truly phenomenal. The opening feels like you’re in and the attention to detail of the world and environmental design is astounding. I’ve been overwhelmed already with everything there is to do, I sat down and played Dominos at the camp for 40 minutes last night. I haven’t even discovered a lot of the side activities either, it has all been so bewildering that I haven’t quite got a handle on it. I’ve been a little disappointed with the ‘talk to strangers’ thing too as a lot of people in the only town I’ve been in have only had the ‘Greet, Antagonise, pull weapon’ commands which don’t really seem nuanced. I have had a couple of cool stranger interactions outside of the town though. Overall though, it’s just intoxicating and I can’t wait to dive back in and properly get used to my surroundings and all the different systems at play. The gunplay is easily my biggest grievance and if I don’t get used to it or it improves I feel it’s going to massively drag the game down in terms of enjoyment for me.

Have spent around 7 hours with it or so, just mashing around in neutral. The game looks beautiful. I prefer its look to strive, even tho I like the 2d look of that I much prefer the clean look of this, where everything is more readable. Right now you're thrown into a very mixed pool of skill levels, tho there is a generally high enough level of cluelessness and the new mechanics are so powerful that you can sort of get by. I don't know what cancels into anything so I'm just really mashing out opportunities to knock somedown and hit them with fake-ass meaties. Did a 5 match set with some random luke and it was 3-2 to him. had a one and done with a juri just now, she won, but I'm happy I converted drive impact into super at around 15:00. That's my gamer goal achieved for now, who cares that I got bodied :x Then I played Mr Hadouken, the reason I got so bothered by the fireballs is i forgot which of Kimberly's kicks low profiles the fireballs, it's forward down medium kick I think. Also I kept trying to do it on frame disadvantage, anyway put a stop to that shit Drive impact seems.. well impactful. It's a very high committal move with lots of startup and recovery which armours through your opponent's offense (you take some damage but it takes multihits to knock you out of it, or a grab). I imagine at mid to higher levels it introduces a more dangerous kind of RPS into pressure and neutral interactions. It's one of those things where it's hard to know how people will feel about it until the meta settles after the game's release. Right now it's one of those mechanics which I'm just giving the benefit of the doubt to, that when the full game is understood it won't feel so caveman-like. Your ex gauge or whatever it is called is used to control your access to your ex moves (think they have a different name in this, it's when you press two buttons at once for more powerful attacks and conversions). But it also gets drained on block, so if you're very passive you get 'burnt out' or something which means other than you get dizzy and stuff and they can just wail on you. But there are also mechanics in the game to gain that meter back, only one I know of is the parry mechanic which is when you see someone sort of go all blue and smokey, don't really know how to leverage that yet though. I guess there's other things which return meter but I need to learn about it more There's also a mechanic called drive rush, it uses 3 out of your 6 bars to extend pressure and combos, similar to GG roman cancel. You can see the Juri use it, it's when she goes all green and shit (and you can see me labbing it in the training before the match). Seems like a hell of a high cost to do that though. Training mode has cool utilities to display when something is special cancellable and also where the 'links' are in move properties to link into the next normal, which is very useful as the concept and timings of links is something I'm not used to. They seem to have really good teaching tools for that kinda stuff. I'll probably spend a few more hours with it but I largely don't go too crazy with fg betas cause it's just not enough time for me to comfortably spend figuring stuff out. But getting a general sense of the system mechanics is all I really want atm anyway. I don't think I'll main Kimberly in the main game but mostly cause I want to try a more of a zoner character, and everyone in the beta is a rushdown from what I see. I think her gameplan is a combination of controlling neutral space with the canister bombs, and using same bombs to setup pressure concepts in the corner. She has a sprint move which can be cancelled to throw people off, haven't figured out how to really use it tho. She has command grab finishers to some of her stuff. Some of her stuff seems mad fake to me though, like the cross up heavy kick forward thing she has. I don't know how you make that ambiguous, tho ultimately again this is not the character I'm interested in playing just the one that appealed most in the beta. I'll probably stick with her going forward into additional betas tho, to keep up some learning momentum with how short these things are. Diaphone has some cool stuff with the character https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1614357197 Netcode is fine, rollback like Strive. Get basically the same number of frames in this as I do that. Anyone else get in?

Full disclosure I’ve only played 30 minutes of actual gameplay as my eyelids weighed about 500lb. I really like the style of it and opening. Once you’re set free to play you’re pleasantly set up for revenge. The next gen (playing on XSX) has proper elevated this game from past entries. It looks gorgeous but most impressive of all is the draw distance, amount of vegetation and that it is all crisp and clear to boot. Gameplay is how you’d expect from a far cry, or any half decent fps really. The machete is nice and lethal for stealth plays. I’ll be making good use of that. It was real fun to have my own personal alligator run alongside me. I look forward to diving back in.

Booted this up for the first time today just for a look see... played for a couple of hours and completed four levels. For those not in the know it's a Steam punk (I guess) take on Westerns mixed with Vampires which I thought was going to be much more shooter orientated than it is... it's actually much closer to the newer God of War games than Gears of War, shit, you even open and smash chests the same way as Kratos does. So there's a definite leaning towards melee combat over ranged but there's Guns involved obviously being a Western. These work on a cool down rather than relying on ammo drops and are mainly used for hitting exposed weak points with the rifle or chip damage for the pistol then there's the sawn off which is great for obliterating shields... all standard stuff for anyone who's played a third person adventure game anytime recently. So far in terms of levels it feels very old school with very linear levels designed to funnel you from one encounter to the next. As for looks it's been a very mixed bag so far, actual game play looks ok, I'm not sure if it's a design choice or what but there's a really weird glow with everything... fire sources are ridiculously bright and this isn't even an hdr enabled game and then you have the cutscenes which everything just looks muddy and crushed to fuck... I'm not sure whats going on there. Funnily though the pictures I'll post look a damn sight better then they do on a tv.🤷‍♂️ So a bit of a mixed bag... plays fine, looks a little ropey.

It still feels like early days but I'm enjoying this so far. I tried streaming some but my setup seemed to add a few issues to control and framerate, I did a lot better when I wasn't having to play through my capture screen. That said, it's still a Sonic game so I have been launched to my death rather than whatever the next part of the rollercoaster was supposed to be. For all the Breath of the Wild talk it actually reminds me of Mario Odyssey more than anything else. I've no idea if the area I'm in just expands or if eventually it moves you to a new world, but you're on a land mass that's gated, you're essentially playing until you unlock the next bit. There are traditional levels, they're really short, and they're accessed via totems in the main world. You need gears to open these, you get gears from defeating meaningful enemies, I feel like I've got quite a lot now so other than really early on when the game is teaching you, they aren't hard to find. Beating the levels gets you keys, keys unlock the chaos emeralds, doing that seems to progress the story and open more map. The reason it reminds me of Mario are all the little challenges in the game world. Work out the route to a floating platform, beat a horde of enemies, solve a minor puzzle, these all get you things, usually it's the items you need to level up attributes, sometimes it's experience to unlock more skills. There's probably a few too many currencies really, but it does mean that a trip across the map means a hundred diversions because it's very densely packed