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  1. I don't know how to give impressions on this without getting in the weeds. In terms of features it's an old fashioned 2D fighting game. You have an arcade mode (which is kinda interesting in that the better you do the harder the end boss gets) and there is a story that is literally an anime that you just watch, which is what the last game did too but it's still wild to me. There's also a pretty intense Mission Mode that does it's best to teach you the deeper mechanics of the game which if you're the studious type could work pretty well. I could do with spending more time in it myself but getting wrecked by someone using my character then trying to rip them off in the next match is more fun for me. It's the good netcode that saves it though. Well, the matchmaking is pretty rough at the mo but it plays really well in game. It just means there's always people to play with. This came online at midnight and I was ready to play it so I went to the east coast of USA since it was a more sensible time there and while it was a little choppy visually my inputs were barely delayed, if at all. I really hope they put this in a DBFZ2, in fact it would be shocking if they didn't. I've not saved many fights yet since I think I'm still pretty scrubby but my Gio is coming along a little. And this fight with Zato was fun when I wasn't put in the corner with all his nonsense:
  2. Played through the first two worlds and a bit into the third one over the weekend. I'd say if you've seen any trailer for this you kind of know what to expect, with a minor caveat maybe. Fundamentally this is a Donkey Kong game with a character palette swap. It's classic 2D platforming, with mounts, barrels and, well, not a rolling but a sliding attack. Unlike the DK games both playable characters have the same toolset, so it's just down to personal preference whoever you want to play as (and equal rights in multiplayer). The land-based mounts meanwhile can be summoned at will (if you have their token in your inventory) in certain segments of the stage, which I actually haven't done yet. The game doesn't really incentivise you to use this feature, so I've been relying on the sections where you break a box and they pop out, DK style. What the game isn't is a Crash Bandicoot copycat, despite the trailer maybe suggesting as much through the usage of 3D segments during the stages. Those amount to at best 5% of your playtime and are mostly there to add a bit of visual flourish to proceedings, so it's ultimately more of a gimmick than a true feature, so more reminiscent of how they were implemented in Trine 3. I don't think that's an issue at all, just putting it out there because I was expecting this to be closer to a 50:50 ratio. As for the game itself, you run around your typical tropical locations, do platforming, defeat enemies. Controls aren't quite at the same level as its inspiration (the Dino mount in particularl feels needlessly floaty), but it's still a very nicely tuned platformer. The stages themselves are rather diverse, though I will say there hasn't been anything particularly memorable so far yet. It's very much replaying the DK orchestra while missing a beat here and there, which still results in a very enjoyable platformer, but not a game that's going to alter the perception of the genre. Speaking of orchestras, while this certainly isn't Wise's best work, his tracks ooze the same charm you've come to like from recent DK games. In terms of difficulty I find the normal stages to be rather easygoing so far, but some of the special mini stages (of which there are two per level) can be rather devious. Completing those unlocks a key, which I presume will unlock something else at the end of the game, but I'm not that far in yet. The collectibles are hidden pretty well, too. It's rare that I finish a stage on the first try with everything bagged. As for the negatives, I think some checkpoint placements are a bit off and it also does that annoying thing where you sometimes need enemies to reach collectibles but they don't respawn if you mess up, so you have to kill yourself if you want to try again. I've also run into two bugs so far, one where I couldn't use the glide anymore until I killed an enemy and the other one was when the water mount (seahorse) didn't despawn so I could just float around the remaining part of the level. Which was hilarious, but also kind of adds to the feeling of it lacking a bit of polish here and there. Nothing game breaking though, just these two oddities so far. Loading times are also surprisingly long, relatively speaking. In general though I think this is really solid. The actual gameplay (controls, 'feel') is slightly below that Marsupilami game we all played, but it IMO makes up for it by being a bigger and more ambitious project overall, and visually this is a really nice-looking game easily on the same level as Crash 4. It's a difficult genre to get into as a small developer because it has basically been perfected years ago, but this is probably as good as a DK game can get without having the backing of a big publisher and the skillset of a Nintendo employee.
  3. Maryokutai

    Dustborn

    Guess I might as well, even if ultimately nobody else is going to play this. A bit of backstory, this is the third game from Red Thread Games, Ragnar Tørnquist's studio, which he founded to conclude his Dreamfall saga (with Chapters) roughly a decade ago. Their previous game, Draugen, is IMO an overlooked gem in the 'walking simulator' genre, easily on par with the likes of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and What remains of Edith Finch, so I might as well use these lines to recommed it. Dustborn started development shortly after Draugen's release five years ago, so for a double-A title that's quite a bit of a ride. I remember posting its first screenshots in a forum that got closed down in 2020, which feels like an eternity ago and predates all the Sweet Baby backlash internet assholes have been throwing at it. It takes place in a near future in the USA, or rather the SA, because united they are no more after the assassination attempt on Kennedy failed and took his wife's life instead, turning him into a cynical and bitter person who proclaimed half of the country a police state and left the other half to do as they please. The game is build around the idea of a road trip and you and your fellow travellers ride a bus from the west to the east coast, looking for some sort of safe haven where they plan on selling some valuable cargo. Fundamentally this is some kind of Life is Strange esque narrative adventure, in which you run around blocked-off areas to explore a bit and talk to people. It doesn't have 'person X will remember this', nor are your choices black and white. There's also no morality bar or something like that. Instead, your choices affect which one of three main personality traits of your companions will end up being the most pronounced. So if I keep using the brutish Sai to knock down walls and afterwards compliment her for doing so, she will slowly turn into a 'punch first, ask questions later' type. It's not a high-level examination of psychology, but an interesting take on this whole morality aspect I think. What it doesn't do well is the mise-en-scène of all these dialogues, because frankly there isn't any. It's people either standing or sitting around, looking at each other and talking, while you can spin the camera around a bit. This is most likely a budgetary constraint but it does drag it down - maybe it's a personal preference, but even very static over-shoulder dialogue sequence à la Dragon Age Origins would have been better than what they used here. Unfortunately the writing can be very hit and miss as well. There's one moment where you have to cleanse Echoes from people, which are remnants of misinformation-spreading propaganda thought bubbles influencing people in their line of thinking. At some point I noticed this must be some commentary on social media and then, not two minutes later, one of the characters just literally spelled it out. But there are some good moments as well and your crew, while not particularly likeable, is at least an interesting bunch. Oddly for a game in this style, Dustborn also has combat segments. It's super clunky and unpolished, but I can't deny that it can be some fun and is a nice diversion, especially as it amounts to, at best, 5 minutes every hour of playtime. There's basic attacks, dodges, parries, some special moves, team-up attacks. It's simple, but cute, though the lack of lock-on means you miss quite a few of your bat swings. Both in combat and during some dialogue scenes, you can also use the main character's Vox abilities, which is kind of this universe's X-gene and gives certain mutants Anomals special powers. In your case, that means controlling people with your voice, which can influence dialogue branches and, among other things, stop opponents in their tracks during combat. During the latter it's a pure gameplay system, but using it during dialogue sequences does have repercussions on your standing with teammates or how the story progresses. There's also a (surprisingly fun) rhythm minigame in there, as the cover under which the group travels is that of a band. And a sort-of ghost-hunting minigame (for the aforementioned Echoes) that unlocks new Vox powers. And maybe more, I don't know – I'm only about four hours in but the game just seems to throw random stuff at the wall in regular intervals. I've not fully formed an opinion on it yet. I think the first 90 minutes to two hours are almost excruciatingly boring as it just drops you into the narrative without much introduction (for that, you need to read a prologue comic from the main menu) in regards to what you've been doing prior to the title screen and why you should care. At a certain point it introduces a couple new characters from the protagonist's past, and then goes on a tangent with a bit of mystery stuff and I started enjoying it a lot more. Guess we'll see where it goes from here. On last note but I like the visual style. It's a clean, comic-style look somewhere between Borderlands and Sable, and chapters are introduced with fake comic book covers and such. Gives it a lot of personality the in-engine stuff not always manages to fully pull off in motion.
  4. I picked up the early access version of this, but made the fatal mistake of starting Balatro at the same time which has taken all my attention span and locked it away and thrown away the key. So I only played maybe 2 hours of this. I'm at the apartments It's familiar and different, I was struck by how the VA and framing of scenes feels like a pretty close take of the original without it feeling like an overt homage or anything. The original has very unvarnished vocal performances, I think the main VA was an amateur, so that sort of enhanced the uncanniness of some of it. This isn't quite the same but close enough It looks very good but also incredibly unpolished. It's a very sharp looking game on PC, they seem to have went very hyperreal with it. Not saying it looks realistic just that the high res visuals, the lighting and fog give it this sort of dreamy, heightened kind of look that I'm not really able to explain. Maybe screenshots do it better, I dunno. But it has lots of visual glitches, things like turning the camera causes the culling to not work correctly and objects and lighting activate in front of you. There's some weird occlusion glitch where there's this ghosting all the time, not the spooky kind. Everything between the camera, James and the area in front of James has this visually buggy look when moving the camera. That might be caused by some setting I can turn off, but I don't know what. I only mention the boring technical stuff cause it's a game primarily about immersion in a slow moving narrative, so disruptions like that do stick out a lot more. There's some black crush in these screenshots cause they were converted from jxr, which is a HDR format, and badly compressed to jpg I think it's really impressive what they've done here though. It seems to understand the original well enough and makes sensible changes to not make it too much of a rethread. Example being you walk past the point in the original where you expect to get the radio, but you don't, you get it later and in a different way. Everything takes maybe twice as long, unsure whether or not that will be something I enjoy more or less as it goes on. It has the same town layout, I think, but the distance has been increased and there's more in between areas. So if you haven't played the original in a long time, like me, then it exists in this strange foggy realm of forgotten memory yet also familiarity, like you've been here before. But I'm struggling to have a good time with it. The technical issues are really hard for me to overlook, which is why I mention them so much. I'm usually able to sort of push past stuff like this, but I've not played a lot of UE5 games so I don't think I quite realised how much this game will keep skipping and jumping forward a few frames like it's an old film with a bunch of damage on it. The VRR causes constant flicker in the apartment area on OLED, I guess cause the frame variance is so high. So you can turn that off, or play on a different screen. I also find the combat a bit too much, it's very aggressive and seems to be about spacing, attack patterns, recognising stun animations from attack leadups, knowing when to use your limited ammo or combo into the stick. It reminds me how Homecoming looked. It's not a bad system they've designed, but it goes harder than what I was personally looking for and I'm finding that just to be a bit of a hassle. I'm dying a lot and getting filtered by combat I'll admit, but I was expecting that side to be more basic. So objectively speaking it seems like a good game marred by really bad technical issues, subjectively I'm much more mixed tho. I'll take my time and maybe I'll come around, I'm not coming at it looking to hate it or anything. As mentioned I'm really impressed by the specific changes Bloober have made to some things
  5. So the full game is out, I've spent the morning playing it... bear in mind I didn't play any of the demo's so the opening is all new to me. I think everyone by now everyone should be able to gather what happens in the beginning, Chris being all dark and barrel chested, anyhow you soon wake up at night, in the snow... looking for Ethans baby. To me the game looks really pretty, the lighting is really good and so far (using RT) the performance seems to be holding up nicely. I never overly liked the shooting in 7 and this seems very close, I've recently picked up an add on to my pistol and that's definitely helped... I feel much happier in these third person Resi games with a shotgun in my hands though. The start of the game is almost a bit too much, there were times I wasn't sure if I should be trying to kill all these things or running away... that's also happened a couple of times in the castle where I'm up to now. Things have calmed a bit since getting in there though and it's a gorgeous place to explore. I do wish the movement speed was a bit quicker though. So far so good then, looking forward to finding out a bit more on these freaks who are making life a tad rough for old Ethan.
  6. Seems a lot (relatively speaking) people got this, so I think a topic here makes sense after all. I don't think this needs context, but just for the record: this is a collection that includes three classic Castlevania games initially released for the DS (Dawn of Sorrow, Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia) as well as both the original version of Haunted Castle, an arcade game from the 80s, as well as a complete remake with SNES-style visuals and some other changes of this last game. I started with Dawn of Sorrow, because it's my favourite of the bunch and also the first one that came out (despite being placed at the bottom of the list in the menu). Plus from what I recall it's the one that made most 'use' of the touchscreen, so a good litmus test for this specific release, too. On Switch you can use the touchscreen if you're playing in handheld mode, so there's nothing lost there either way, but the alternative is holding a shoulder button and moving a cursor around, which is a less than ideal alternative. Thankfully the magic circles you have to draw are now also QTEs, but stuff like destroying ice blocks is a bit finnicky so I decided to play that section in handheld mode. IIRC the further you get the less frequent these gimmicks become, so it's only really a small issue in the first hour or two. We've already discussed the multiple screen options in the News topic so I'm not going to repeat those, but I noticed there's also a setup where both screens are displayed vertically, like they were on the original system. I think it would have been really cool to have that setup in Tate mode, but that's really just a nitpick because it would only really be useable on Switch (and maybe PC depending on your monitor setup). As you can see in the picture there's a lot of extra stuff in there as well, like the complete OST that works as a music player (and those games have some of the best tracks in the entire series IMO), a gallery which even includes the game manuals, and you can also choose which version you want to play (EU, US, JP and in Ecclesia's case, even the Korean version, though I'm not sure what's different about that one except the language). In any case, I've been really enjoying the little time I played so far. I usually only associate consoles and games I played as a kid with nostalgia, but the moment I stepped into the first area with its wonderful music I got hit by quite the wave of good old times. Absolute recommendation, these are classics for a reason and M2 did a great job of porting them over, as usual. Not to mention that we get a completely new remake as a bonus, too. [Also, a bit off-topic: while I was going through the gallery I noticed a promo picture for Castlevania: Judgement, which was on the back of one of the manuals back then. I wonder if they plan on re-releasing the 3D games as well considering we're now kind of 'through' with the 2D games. I realise they're not as well-regarded, but I think the PS2 ones are somewhat decent and Judgement, despite being a super broken and unbalanced fighting game, is quite a fun little guilty pleasure with a ridiculously good OST.]
  7. Spent around four or five hours with this and it's safe to say it's pretty great... I'd go as far to say that this (in my opinion) is Sony's premier franchise now... you can just feel the production values running through pretty much everything. I've spent most of my time getting distracted by icons that pop up as you're traversing the map so in regards to main story missions I've not made much progress... I'm not going to pretend that it's a whole different game from the previous two but if you got any sort of enjoyment from those you'll love this and you'll know just what to expect. It's all about the story in these types of games for me and thankfully I've not been spoiled in that sense yet, looking forward to spending some hours with this...
  8. I played the first hour or so of this. The game has a very bombastic opening although I think it was largely shown when they first revealed the game. The opening “escape” sequence is snappy, much faster than the opening of DOS2. Dialogue scenes now play out Mass Effect style which gives the game a slightly more AAA feel. Character creation is pretty breezy, I didn’t spend too long on it. You can choose from five different penises. I just made my character a human fighter. My main takeaway is - no crashes or performances issues. Long may it continue. After a few more hours I should be able to comment more on the differences between this and Divinity, but so far so good.
  9. Nag

    Dragon's Dogma 2

    Started earlier this afternoon around 2ish and got around 4 hours with it... with around half of that mucking around with the character editor... Made my Arisen... Tried to make Fighter Jill Valentine, to be fair I don't think she turned out too bad...🙂 Next up my Pawn... Who turned out to be a hot Elven Archer called Laurana... Although I've made both of them too bloody tall and they both tower over the male NCP characters wondering around... so once i get the chance to modify them I'll shorten them down a bit. As for actual game play it's very familiar if you've played the first game and as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing... it feels really weird feeling lost on the map because of that though as I knew the previous games areas like the back of my hand. It also seems like the Pawns are really ferocious in this as half the time they've demolished the Goblins and Harpies before I've managed to draw a bead on them... It's nice to be back in this world and I can already tell I'm gonna have a ball with the game.
  10. radiofloyd

    Elden Ring

    Played an hour, on PC. The game defaulted to High graphical settings, so I left it at that. I chose the Vagabond class. So far, so Dark Souls. Looking forward to losing my life to this game. The opening cinematic is very cool. One of my Steam friends has already played this for 8 hours.:.
  11. Found out about this by chance when I went through the Golden Joystick nominees and after watching its trailer I immediately bought it. Looked like it'd hit all the right notes for me and thankfully that proved correct. It's from a small French studio called Plane Toast (the food-puns seem to be all over the place) and seemingly their first project. You play as a young adult girl who receives an SOS signal from the ship her sister disappeared in six years prior, proceed to leave the space station you're currently residing at and start following the trail of the signal to a mostly deserted colony planet where you grew up. It's not the most unique setup, but it gives you an immediate emotional hook for what is essentially a purely exploration-driven open world game. And it mixes in some slight Dune-ish mystery elements via the titular Sand Witches and some subtext about environmentalism and corporate greed in there as well. The gameplay foundations are very light, there's a bit of climbing and platforming, there's a lot of driving around, and the only thing you find when exploring are either materials to build new tools or certain items you need to collect quests. Because there are still some people living on the planet and they're struggling to survive, so they're more than happy to have a newcomer there who can help out. Story progression is linked to the tools you build, as unlocking one moves the plot and timetable a bit forward. There's no combat, so when I say tools I mean a gadget to allow you to use ziplines or a scanner for your car to more easily find interactable objects, among them signal blockers which jam your map and are basically UbiSoft towers (they only reveal a couple of question marks on the map though, not a hundred). I can't put my hand on what it is exactly, probably just all the gears perfectly fitting together, but it's an incredibly engaging experience IMO. It's not a deep game by any means, at least mechanically. Think of it as a less obtuse version of Sable, or the bigger cousin of A Short Hike, and you get the idea. The world is densely packed and gives the impression of being vast, but you can drive around from one edge to the other in I presume less than five minutes. But it does evoke an incredibly sense of place, mostly due to the strong artstyle, great soundtrack and grounded, believable writing. It's also unmistakably French, and I don't say that with any kind of fun-poking subtext, because the media landscape has become very unified in recent years, so it's nice to see something European with a unique cultural influence for a chance. I guess part of why I like it so much might also be because it just came out of nowhere, which nobody reading this and deciding to pick it up will have the luxury anymore, but I do believe it's a really good 'experience' if you like more challenge-free games. I'm not quite through yet, but I suspect it will conclude at around the 10 hour mark, which seems like a reasonable length for a game without much mechanical depth. One last thing: I play it on Switch because I don't have a PS5 or a decent PC and I wouldn't really recommend that version. It permanently runs sub-30fps and has horrible pop-in and dynamic resolution drops. It speaks to the quality of the game that I'm still enjoying it, but unless you have no other option like myself, I'd strongly recommend playing it anywhere else.
  12. regemond

    Balatro

    Balatro. What can I say about Balatro that will do it any justice...? For the uninitiated, this presents as roguelike poker. You're dealt a hand of cards and use your card counting skills, or your natural-borne luck, to build a game-winning combination. Everything from high card draws to the fabled royal flush will score points, and it's your job to work through eight rounds of three games. I've managed to get half way through a game up to now - ante 5/8 - before crashing out horribly. Like I said, though, it presents as poker. Realistically, it takes poker to a whole new place, and this is thanks to the store between rounds. You can buy a range of bonuses to increase your chances of reaching the end. Tarot cards apply specific bonuses to individual cards from your deck (this could be anything from giving you an extra $3 if it's not used by the end of a round to a multiplier if it's played and scores). Planet cards provide bonuses to specific hands - I'm a fan of bumping up my two-pair bonus, as it's one of the most common hands I play, and it can become especially prolific for points the more you increase its level. You can get packs that add more cards to your deck, and then there are Joker cards (that's Poker with a J... Coincidence?) that give you overall bonuses. The key to the game right now seems to be the Joker Cards. A two pair hand with two 10s and two 5s can score around 50 points as a base. But add in a Joker card that adds 4 to your multiplier if you play clubs, as well as the joker that adds 30 chips if you play a 10, AND a +4 multiplier for the same numbers, and that two pair hand quickly shoots up to almost 10,000 points. Skipping some rounds is an option, and will present you with a bonus if you do so, but this comes at the cost of making more money to go into the store with. Is that card pack, which is usually $6 worth accepting, rather than playing the round and getting to $10 so you can buy a new bonus card or a couple of new Jokers? In each round of three games, there's also a 'boss' match. This will add further complications to the gameplay. Some of the ones I've encountered include all face cards being dealt face down, specific suits being debuffed (so those awesome bonuses are completely negated) and even ALL dealt cards being handed out face down. These are super tough at times, and if you hit a bad run, you're essentially screwed. I'm under no illusions that I'm not great at this game, but it has a fantastic 'one more go' quality that makes you hop in for another round. I honestly can't express how much I'm enjoying it right now. I'm determined to figure out a way to get through all 8 rounds.
  13. The Demo is out now, possibly the first of two if past Resident Evil games are anything to go off. Based on the demo it's pretty faithful to how the original starts, playing up to the village fight before it ends. The opening moments are expanded and they've developed the combat a little. you can stealth a little now, the knife is a button press, there's opportunities to shoot then melee in a more deliberate way than it felt in the original. There's dodging and parrying, and when enemies are downed you can finish them off, which you need to do and I've had a couple change on me even this early in the game (this could be a demo thing) There are a few changes, as said there's a expanded start with some more story telling played out, and some subversion of what you expect, which runs throughout the demo My only issues so far, I don't like the aiming. I think by design it's easy to miss, but I'm not really a fan of how easy it is to miss even when you aren't being rushed. I'm also not a huge fan of how it looks. That might be a common thing with the engine, assuming this is the same as the RE2 remake, because I thought that could look a little rough at points. I've played the performance mode, and it has loads of ghosting when you turn the camera, whenever there's movement, and just at certain points on any fine detail, so I'm not sure what reconstruction they're using but it's not working great (playing on PS5). I might have another run on the graphics mode to see, then I might even download the PC version
  14. DANGERMAN

    Space Marine 2

    My battle brothers First up, so far, orcless. Zero orcs. This time you're fighting the Tyranids, a hive mind swarm of demon like creatures (who may not be demons in the lore, but they've blade like appendages rather than arms), and while you might first encounter a small cluster, generally this prompts waves to follow. A lot of the time you're fighting them in standard combat, swinging your chainsword, countering and dodging the larger monsters, and taking out the distant projectile throwing Tyranids with your bolt gun. There'll be points though where you have the high ground and have to try to delay the swarm by throwing grenades or exploding barrels as the Tyranids scamper over to swarm your position It's fun, it's a bit basic and samey, but it's fun. In some ways I wish you felt a bit more indestructible than you do, but I suppose that's less interesting as a game, and the Tyranids are a threat. There's also another enemy type that's more like the rats from A Plague Tale, nicely you generally get a flame thrower for these sections, that's fun If its anything like the original it's going to kick on in the 2nd half, and there'll be some more variety. I think I'm currently trying to get to a lost/stranded Magus, which feels quite early in still. Also I watched this this morning which was quite a good background to Titus up until this point, I'm not sure how much he's a character outside of the games, but there's a lot there
  15. Surprised no one has made a thread for this yet as I think quite a few of us have now played the demo/Prologue. But yeah, I played through it in two sessions over the weekend and wow, just wow, this is utterly fantastic. Way exceeded my already high expectations, I like pretty much everything about it I think. It's very Game of Thrones-y, that is my overwhelming first impression of it. Warring houses run by ruthless tyrants keen to expand their borders at whatever human cost it takes, it just feels a lot more grounded than a lot of past FF's and a lot of JRPGs in general, there's no super attractive Husbando leading the pack here and no really cute Waifu types either, all the folks encountered so far all feel more like real people and less caricatures if that makes sense. As this is the early game, everything moves at quite a slow pace with lots of exposition, setting up Clive's back story 13 years before the present day and seeing where he grew up, his Father and family in general (has very much a Stark's in GoT vibe). All the combat tutorials and your first real mission take place with teen Clive just getting to grips with his abilities, you're sent on a mission to clear out some Goblins from a derelict nearby town and when you gets there Goblin's aren't all you encounter. It's a cool mission that lets you get to grips with the early combat system for the first time, everything is relatively basic with only one Phoenix Eikon(?) ability to use, basic square and triangle attacks but how fast paced it is and how you can dodge just at the right time to engage a Witch-time equivalent and parry shots along with how phrenetic and bombastic it is just makes it an utter joy. Any game, especially a long RPG like this, that makes me actively want to engage with combat rather than sigh before engaging in another battle is a really great sign. It is relatively simplistic at this early stage but that is to be expected, you can see the roots of where it will grow and become more complex over the course of the game as well. I think what has really drawn me in overall is the story, without giving anything away I really want to see what happens next, the Prologue/Demo ends in such a way that I am incredibly eager to find out what happens next. The eikon fights are a true spectacle, huge set pieces with all the music ramped up to 11 that make the ol' heart tick away at a fair rate of knots, just so much cool and crazy shit going on on screen at once it's just such a visual spectacle and an utter joy to play through. So yeah, very early days but I'm so impressed with this so far and can't wait to carry on with it on Friday. Pics below.
  16. shinymcshine

    Othercide

    Been playing this for around 6 hrs on Series S - and it's quite enjoyable. Has some similarities, in terms of roguelike progression, as Into the Breach, although game presentation and pathways are significantly different. I've defeated the first boss, and so I'll see how well it keeps my interest (probably up to a point where it turns into a grind (or not)). Anyway it's certainly a bit different in looks at least to the mainstream.
  17. I was pretty close to just bumping the old thread because man, is this Persona 3. I'm sure there are plenty that want a remake as faithful as this but I was more on the side of using the opportunity to take a second run at it and tighten it up a bit and improve some of the story of the game. There are quite a few changes to the dungeon crawling element, a lot of additions in presentation and mechanics such as the ability to pass a turn to another party member after hitting a weak spot which makes the game easier. But I was a bit disappointed with the AI party members since there are less tactics than the original and they don't use the new mechanics. Just for nostalgia's sake I tried to play it the old way but it's so not optimal. It just seems to be thoughtlessly added and it's clear they're really expecting people to play it with direct control of the party. I just always thought it was cool to be the leader of an autonomous group and it's just faster too. But oh well! Bosses haven't really been touched very much either, mechanically, despite those getting quite a bit better in later games is a big missed opportunity too. Other difference is it obviously looks better... actually, I dunno, it doesn't have the creepiness of the original to me, something to do with some of the colour grading maybe. Looking too clean isn't hitting quite right. More of the game is voice acted, I think it might be a little rewritten but I'd have to look at side by sides to be sure but it's mostly the same stuff happening and even acted out the same way. I'm not new to this game but I think to someone that is or is coming from Persona 5 it's still gonna feel like an older iteration despite the new coat of paint. It's still one of my favourite games, and I've barely stopped playing it but it's my fault, I did at one point dream of a game that felt like a sequel to P5 but with P3's story and it isn't that. It's P3 with some modern concessions.
  18. mmmark

    Star Wars Outlaws

    Got Ubisoft+ to play this and 3 days early. I’ve put about 7 hours into this now and I’m quite enjoying it but some of the bad does come in dribs and drabs. Too much of the game so far has been stealth sections in which you cannot use weapons and if caught you surrender and are pushed to the beginning to have to do it all again. Someone at Ubisoft must have thought the stealth section of Ocarina of Time was the best bit 😆 When not doing this though and playing along at a leisurely pace in cities or travelling the large gorgeous world it’s quite a blast and I look forward to getting more into it.
  19. I'm shallow and wanted a pretty game for my PC, so I got this. Mainly off the back of Alex at digital foundry comparing it to Crysis a lot It's a fairly boilerplate Far Cry template, for the most part. Big map, fogged up until you go to different areas. Towers must be captured. It's got some things in it though which I think are neat. One thing is I think the criticism about Ubisoft checklist games is reaching some decision makers at the company, as it foregoes map icons and tries to hide the waypoint janitor busywork within a more organic framework. That framework still being a Far Cry template, you craft and gather and stealth archer your way around. But it feels more cleverly integrated and less of a checklist (tho undoubtedly this is something that'll be less the case after time with the game, when the novelty wears off) You play a Navi and your background is a bit fish out of water. I've not seen the 2nd film, and I just don't care enough, but it's straightforward enough and seems to take place alongside the 2nd one I think. The whole ethos of its gameplay seems to be like you're a hunter gatherer on Pandora. There's dynamic time of day and weather, though oddly it seems for the opening this is entirely scripted and not dynamic? I'm not sure why that is. But if effects gathering mechanics cause somethings you want to gather at night, or while it's raining, or vice versa. Then you get better ingredients for cooking. There's also a whole mechanic in the game around 'clean kills' and 'mercy kills' for enemies, which requires you to study their weak spots and basically kill them quick and with few shots. It's very difficult, moreso than it sounds, I haven't done it properly once The game is the most visually spectacular game I've seen in a year full of visual spectaculars. It's Crysis but for the present day. The foliage density is peerless, they even have a 'hidden' graphics setting called 'Unobtainium' which sets everything way higher. I don't find I need that though, one thing I find is after about an hour playing this my eyes are really sore and I might have a headache. Said this before about Horizon, but there's so much detail here it's hard to take it all in and I think I'm not blinking as often as I should. Combined with the HDR highlights it's like my corneas are getting mildly seared. So it's very visually fatiguing. On the one hand, that level of visual noise is annoying. It's difficult to see things when you're running through the forest. On the other, it's weirdly immersive in that the enemies with their camouflage actually camouflage, and you need to use your navi vision to spot them (the visual effect for this sucks though, it looks like a migraine). The fauna behave a lot like the wildlife in RDRII, and do a lot to make the game world feel alive and will scuttle under the foliage and come out to surprise you, and fuck you up. The flora is also interactive, you can shoot certain plants and they will let off a big fart or smoke and I assume that has gameplay implications if you want to fuck with the soldiers. It's not on a TOTK level at all, but it means a lot that the world isn't static. The weather and your own character will displace and move the leaves and things around. It's a world that's really well laid out also in terms of getting around, you have these huge branches which form almost a highway system which let you get back and forth quickly. The movement system feels like a pared down version of Mirror's Edge and all these different systems and mechanics blend together quite well I'm finding. It works well enough that it makes hunting and gathering not feel as tedious as it might be. Naturally those movement mechanics lend themselves well to combat also, my fave trick being to jump between branches and do a charge jump out of cover to headshot a soldier (this has a very nice and generous aim assist, worth using even on M&K) All those details are really cool. It's very standard tho in its gameplay structure. You go to outposts, fix their broken shit, beat up the humans turning the forests into ass, unlock more regions of the map. It's still one of those games, but they try and keep more of it within the world rather than within a map system. It even does a thing where they don't actually give you a waypoint for a quest, they give you a text description like 'go south of the river and look for the smoke, beat up the RDA'. Or 'find the home tree near yada yada'. It makes you learn the geography and orient your way there. All that said, I don't see this landing anywhere but number 10 on my goty list, but it shows how you can make this style of game feel less like a spreadsheet and more like a video game by surfacing it in a more 'old fashioned' way
  20. Not sure how popular this series is over here, haven't seen it mentioned much. I never got into the Dig games, but really enjoyed Quest and Heist, and as I was looking for a nice handheld title I picked up the latter's sequel right when it came out last week. For those unaware, Heist is a turn-based, squad-based tactical RPG that is rather unique, but describing it as Valkyria Chronicles in 2D probably comes rather close to how it plays. After positioning your units you can aim freely, either directly at your enemy or letting your bullets ricochet off walls and objects if the line of sight is obscured. Where VC makes up for the lack of agency while aiming by applying RNG to hit quotas, Heist makes things a bit more complicated by weapon sway during aiming or some classes and/or weapons not having aiming sights at all, so you kind of have to eyeball the direction and hope for the best. Speaking of classes, this is a big new feature for this sequel. You still control predetermined characters but you can now freely switch classes around by equipping different weapons. Some skills you learn this way can then be activated in a different class by using cogs, so you can, for example, give the 'Boomer' (grenadier) the sniper's line of sight skill so that they can fire their rockets with more accuracy. There's six classes so there's decent potential for experimentation but also not an overwhelming amount that will make you lose interest in it, and with certain weapons having different properties and additional equipment there's definitely enough depth here to finetune your crew. The second big new feature is that, this being a pirate themed adventure, you now travel the ocean by ship instead of just picking missions from an overworld. And this isn't just for show, as the ship can also be equipped with weapons and will be pulled into naval battles with other vessels. It's all very streamlined – you only have to get in range and in position and you will fire automatically whatever weapon is equipped to the front and sides – but it adds a nice little extra dimension to progression and gives you something else to do than just the tactical encounters. I'm about ten hours in and close to completing the second area and while I don't want to oversell it, I think this is excellent. There was one slightly annoying enemy type in the second area, but otherwise it almost feels flawless so far, the right balance between accessibility and depth, rewarding progression, overall high levels of polish (as usual for their games, but still worth pointing out). It can be challenging at times, but it has multiple difficulty setting and even one that lets you completely customise certain aspects like damage, health etc. Haven't messed around with that though. Good year for unique tactical games between this and Unicorn Overlord I'd say. (Not my screenshot, because Nintendo hates Musk.)
  21. 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.
  22. Let me start by saying I hate the Americanised spelling of the title. I'm just copying exactly what's there, though, so don't pull me up for it. Now let me follow up with what @Sly Reflex said for EDF 5... "If you've not enjoyed these games before, abandon thread now. There's no point in you wasting your time here. It's more of the same with tweaks, mostly good tweaks, but nothing that's going to convince you you want to spend time with the series." I've been playing this online co-op with Rosie (it was one of her free games the other week, so I'm like a pig in shit), and honestly, it's tons of fun. The story follows on directly from EDF5, and the invaders aren't happy about earth turning the tide in the last instalment, so they've amped it up to wipe out humanity altogether. I've currently only played as ranger - the default character - but there are a couple of tweaks that are fantastic for QoL. You now have a slot for a backpack weapon. This could be anything from a vehicle to a healing grenade, to regular grenades, to your very own turret. This is a great addition that means you're not completely fucked when the crowds become overwhelming and you're trying to reload. I've been using turrets a lot, just to try and thin the herds in harder levels. The turrets also have a decently large angle of fire, so they're not bad as anti-air solutions, either. D3 have added a visual indicator of damage. Great for the numbers people who like to try and figure out the hit points of any given enemy. I've not given it my full attention, but I do keep a side-eye on the numbers as they tick up and consider whether it's worth reloading or not. Lots of new enemies, as well as plenty of familiar stuff from 5. Off the top of my head, I think there are at least 8 new enemies. That brings it out to about 12-15 different enemy species, not including the kaiju or palette swaps of enemies. Some of the older enemies have been tweaked. There's a new variation on the jumping spiders, for example, that fires electric threads. So that's a new one to consider. I don't know if it's just because we're both playing ranger, or if it's because we suck, or if I've been carried more than I realise in 5, but this one FEELS harder, too. So much so, we've been playing on normal just to try and boost our armour and weapons before heading into hard/hardest/inferno. One of the big criticisms I've seen online is that some assets, maps and exact missions have been recycled into EDF6. Without delving too much into spoiler territory, this is true, but it's also done in a really smart way that feeds the narrative beautifully. Look, this is still B-Movie bullshit, but it's B-Movie bullshit that makes sense(ish). I've been all in on this series since 4.1, and I fully believe that if you didn't like it before, you won't like it now. It's still janky, it's still running on the same 20-year old engine the last few games have utilised, it still descends to single digit frame rates when shit kicks off, and enemies look like they're animated by the same guys that made Jason and the Argonauts when they're in the distance. However, if you've been on the fence, or unsure, or just haven't had much experience with it in the past, I think this is the one that's worth jumping in to. Don't expect much fun in single player. Get a mate or three and have an absolute blast in co-op. Honestly, I think the series has taken over my brain a little bit, because I'm currently playing this 4-5 nights a week with Rosie then dipping into 5 with Sly and a couple of people online each week on top. It's great fun, and if Helldivers 2 has ran its course for you, I think this is definitely worth taking a punt on. Maybe wait until it drops to £30, though. There's enough content to justify full price IMO, but it's far too samey level to level to drop £50-60 on.
  23. Had this lying around for a while and decided to give it a go at last. I'm completely unfamiliar with the original, I know it melted video cards back in the day and I do have the remaster/remake, but never got around to playing it. So I couldn't tell you whether this was a sequel or a reboot or something in between (though I think it's a sequel). In any case it drops you on an alien planet as a dude with no memory, gives you a jetpack and a gun and then asks you to talk to aliens that are surprisingly open-minded about a human running around and shoot a couple of spiders (or rather tons of them – I played for 2 hours and already killed 200 enemies). Fundamentally this is an open world game designed with late PS2, early PS3 design principles in mind, there's a couple of points of interests your map reveals by you running around close to them and completing them usually results in immediate rewards like a larger health bar etc. There are shades of RPG in that you have two separate skill trees for traversal and combat, each of them using different kinds of XP so thankfully it doesn't force you to choose between cool Jetpack stuff and cool shooting stuff, but rather how you prioritise developing either independently. The early game is super talkative to the point where I think it's maybe a bit overdone. Think ME1 Citadel but without the smart word-building. It does a somewhat good job of introducing its own lore and vocabulary (in a nice touch, you can make a glossary pop up mid-conversation) during these early moments, but you will feel relieved by the time the world opens up and you can wander/glide around on your own. I have invested zero points in combat so far but the shooting feels good (even if movement not always does), thanks to some aggressive auto-aim on console that works almost like a lock-on (you can turn it off if that's not your style). There's also an energy shield at your disposal that works as expected and can be used as a melee attack up close while the Jetpack can help you dash around on the battlefield. There's also some super attack that freezes enemies around you – so definitely more than enough tools to have some fun, though I admit none of them are really necessary when fighting spiders. Though I presume that will change as it goes along and enemy strength increases. Visually this is a splendid production that yet again proves we don't really need AAA budgets, with really beautiful flora and some great use of bloom and diffuse lighting to give it that distinct alien 'Outlast' shine. It doesn't, however, run super clean, at least on console. Quality mode feels a bit sluggish and Performance mode has frequent dips in busy areas and screen tearing. It doesn't bother me too much and it does talk about some VRR thingies in the options, but I can't try those out with my TV. The other downside of its presentation are rather dated character models and animations, though that's usually the case with these mid-budget games and I really don't mind it at this point – especially when the writing is very early 2000s anyway, it's not like it'd pull you in with masterful dialogue anyway. But so far this makes a really nice first impression if you go in with the right expectations. (Not a glitch on the gun, it just looks that way.)
  24. Spent a few hours with this over today and Friday (through Game Pass on Series X) and it's OK... I've seen it described as a Souls-lite which is a fairly good shout to be fair, this actually has three difficulty levels though which is nice for a game like this (although you can't earn achievements/trophies on story) and so far it's been pretty manageable even for someone as crap as me at this style of game. You play as Nor and her companion Enki (the magical god fox)... it plays much as you'd expect with melee combat mixed with a little gun action. The gun can be used to knock enemies out of unblockable attacks and such. It has a cool risk reward thing going on where different actions in combat will raise a percentage multiplier and you can keep that going for as long as possible before you choose to "bank" your reputation but take one hit and the percentage is zeroed and your reputation is banked minus the percentage. Reputation can be dropped at death and needs to be collected again before another death. The story so far has been a bit meh, something about the Undead and bad gods blah blah... tbh I've yet to play a game like this that actually had a good story and the voice mixing isn't helping much considering a couple of the characters seem to have voices that consist of pure bass and just seem to rumble more than anything else. I kindve feel a little hooked on it so far though... unless there's a massive difficulty spike along the way I can see myself slowly plugging away at this.
  25. So this has a demo out, presumably on every system, and it's relatively chunky at around 90 minutes to two hours. Turns out it's pretty neat and I actually bought it on a whim after the demo ended. One thing I noticed right away is that despite there being lots of discourse about it, most of it was so focused on its technical side that I never really knew what kind of game it actually is. So I was a bit surprised to find out that it's not a linear run & gun shooter, but more of a story-driven adventure with (very) slight Metroid elements, platforming sections, a couple of (easy) puzzles, a skill tree and some downtime sections where you talk to NPC. Not saying a straight up shooter would have been worse than this cocktail but the fact that there's more to do than just click on heads was a welcome surprise. I also really enjoyed its opening act – the story is a relatively trope-heavy YA mix of different things, but it's surprisingly engaging IMO. On the gameplay side, while it's not all shooting, the shooting part is still the meat of it, with every aspect of the skill tree boosting your combat prowess. As the Avatar Unforeseen, you can wield all four elements three magic types, which means you have the funky equivalents of a rifle, a shotgun and an SMG build into the gauntlet on your hand. Per magic type are three subtypes and there's a bunch of other stuff like Overdrive and more powerful spells filled by a mana gauge. It can feel a tad overwhelming at first but you'll soon learn to wield them properly, pick out snipers with blue magic (rifle), pull in supports to finish them off with the red magic (shotgun) and slow down brutes while pumping them full with green magic (SMG). I do want to point out though that it's a very static game in the sense that all the horsepower of the console is being used to make it look as pretty as possible. There are zero physic toys available here, the world is purely decorative. I'm not too bothered by this but it does feed into the discussion that hardware resources are being used for ultimately irrelevant things today. Speaking of, visually it's really stunning, as expected. I think there have been a few patches since release that increase the native resolution and make the upsampling a tad less aggressive. It does look sharp, but I'm only on 1080p, so hardly a high-end benchmark situation. But it also runs a but sluggishly at times and can only really hold the 60fps target in closed-off spaces. Which I think is the exact opposite at what it was at launch, when it was locked to 60 no matter the cost. Probably would have preferred that to be honest, but at the end of the day it's not a dealbreaker for me. But so far, so good. I wish the demo had come out a bit sooner, because I think it might have helped selling a few more copies and avoiding the unfortunate downsizing of the developer. Getting greeted by this when booting it up feels really bittersweet now:
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