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I’ve played this for 4 hours now. And the harsh reviews can honestly fuck right off. They’re way off the mark, in my opinion. Usually, Skill Up does decent reviews, but I don’t agree with his video review of this. He moans that unlocking “Knigthood” for all 4 characters is a massive grind. Is it bollocks. There are two ways to level up. All characters share regular XP, so you can freely switch between them. But each character has a 4th skill tree, Knighthood. This needs to be unlocked for each character, and you do so by killing 3 mini bosses, and solving 10 crimes. In my 4 hours, I’ve got Knighthood unlocked for 2 characters, and almost done it for a 3rd. The way he moans, it’s like it’s a huge chore. He also creams his jeans over Arkham Knight. Personally, I thought that game was boring as fuck. I’ve had more fun with this, than I ever did with that. I’ve also seen some people complain that one fight sequence has the rock remix of Livin’ La Vida Loca. To those people I say “Have you even played Saints Fucking God-awful Row?”. What a stupid complaint. Anyways. Combat-wise, this ain’t Arkham. There’s stealth takedowns, but I’ve not had opportunity to use them much. So far, there’s not the vast array of gadgets that Batman had in Arkham. But, each character has their own play style, and abilities. Robin has been quite fun so far. A lot of people got pissed off when it was revealed this is 30fps on consoles. I’m no graphics expert, and to be quite honest, I’m happy with how this looks on PS5. It looks pretty damn good to me. The story has been interesting so far, and it’s worth swapping characters, as they periodically have their own side missions, which further develop how they’re coping with the loss of Batman. So yeah. I’m having a great time with this so far.

After falling off Final Fantasy XVI last weekend I've been putting a fair amount of time in to this over the last week or so... for the most part I'm enjoying it a lot. I'm not entirely sure what you'd class this as, real time strategy?... the only game I've played that's remotely close to it is Gears Tactics which was turn based this occurs in real time and only slows (or pauses if like me you prefer it that way and change it in the options) when you use skills. Other than that the marines will engage when spotted entirely on their own. I'm playing on normal and the game certainly isn't a push over... so much so that engaging the aliens should pretty much be avoided if possible and trying to be as stealthy as possible is the preferred method of advancing through levels. There's a lot of spinning plates to juggle in regards to the marines themselves ammo count, tools (for welding doors shut and unlocking encrypted doors), first aid kits and stress levels which can give you negative traits if they get too high. Marines can be wounded and require medical treatment which results in lost days, same with the negative traits these can be removed in the medical center but also cost days. This wasn't a problem in the early game but come mission 6 there's a kill clock introduced and a 25 day countdown to nuclear containment protocol... so that sucks. It looks fairly nice and the sound is great with all of the noise you'd expect... pulse rifles and smart guns sound spot on. Some of the marine sound bites play a little too often for their own good though. Unfortunately the games a little buggy at the moment too, to the point where the X button sometimes stops working altogether in-between missions (thankfully hasn't happened mid-mission yet) and sometimes the elevator prompts straight up don't work... quitting out and reloading generally fixes these though. Not my usual gaming fare but I'm glad I've given it a try... just hope I don't get sterilised via nuclear explosion...😂

Bought this a while ago and finally found myself in the right mood to play it this last week. The synopsis for this is rather short: you play as Meredith, who travels to a fictional area in Oakland to simultaneously get away from her job for two weeks and step in for her father who's the local postman. In gameplay terms this means that you drive around and deliver letters and parcels, occasionally getting dragged into a discussion by the townsfolk who you can open up to and build relationships, of either the pragmatic, platonic or romantic nature. The way you handle these interactions does have consequences, but we're not talking Mass Effect here. There are no twists and turns and everything you do either results in people being friendly to you or not. It's a snapshot into a common, unremarkable life, not a blockbuster life-saving adventure. It's hard to talk about this without making it sound boring, but there is something in its monotonous parcel delivery gameplay that helped me unwind and refocus. I'm not going into too much detail about this in a topic about a game, but it did nudge me a little in a certain direction I've been thinking about recently in terms of where I am and what I'm doing with my life. It very subtly deals with issues like midlife crisis and burnout without ever mentioning either of these words. And some themes can hit close to home, depending on your circumstances – Meredith's boss calling her almost every other evening despite her being on vacation really rubbed me the wrong way, but for all the right (read: authenticity, believability) reasons. There are multiple themes like this spread across all those little interactions, from leaving old friends behind in search of personal fulfilment or even making new ones by discovering the next chapter in your life. I might be overselling the game a bit here, but playing it is less about the things happening on screen but more about those that it might kickstart outside of it. That's not to say it's a chore to play. The mail delivery part is roughly a third of what you do per day, with dialogue et al taking more space. It's here the game is at its best, even though it's hardly Shakespearean or anything. In fact, a lot of characters are somewhat stereotypical, but they are grounded enough to be believable and imperfect enough to be likeable. As mentioned earlier, your choices influence relationships and there are multiple endings to the game as well. It also doesn't overstay its welcome with its roughly 9 hour playtime – I played two "ingame days" per day for a week which felt like a good mixture. I don't think this is a game you should (or would) run through in one setting. Being an indie title, there's of course some compromises to be made here. Animations are very limited (the screen fades to black when entering/leaving a vehicle). Facial animations are barely non-existent. The visuals can look sublime in one instance, for instance when you see the sun shine through the leaves, but absolutely horrendous in other moments. But none of this really detracts from the experience. The voice acting, for example, is surprisingly strong, and easily bypasses the slight problems in terms of facial animations. There was one bigger point of critique that started taking shape in my head as I went on and that is the almost romantic portrayal of mail delivery services, which I know, both from discussions in my life and from reports of our local postman @OCH, is far from the truth. Thankfully, the developers do acknowledge this with a note in the credits, which I find really heartwarming and sensible. It's a difficult game to recommend. For me it was one of the most impactful titles I've played this year, someone else might just find it slow and boring. The surprising amount of positive reviews on the Xbox Store seems to indicate that it resonated with a lot of people though. I think it's still on offer at the moment, at least on Xbox. If not, it's on Gamepass IIRC (not anymore) and if just one line of this text block didn't strike you as boring I'd say give it a shot.

Put about 30 hours into this so far. For the most part, it’s pretty good. I’m no expert in this series, I finished (and really enjoyed) Diablo 3 on PS4. I tried the Remaster of 2, but it played like arse so I soon gave up. I’ve gone with Barbarian, as I always enjoy being the “tank”, dealing out massive damage while taking a fair bit myself. The skill tree for each class is quite large, but also forgiving. If you don’t like a particular ability, it costs a minimal amount of cash to refund an ability, so you can try something else. One thing i will say, is the game isn’t great at explaining what things are, or what they do. Some skills/abilities use/give ‘Thorns’. I had to turn to google/YouTube to figure out what the fuck they are. Some treasure chests require a specific kind of key. Google/YouTube to the rescue again. There’s a fair bit the game just simply doesn’t tell you, and there’s no tutorial list/lore book that makes that kind of thing easier to find. Performance wise, it’s relatively stable. During the beta, the queue times to get into a game could be astronomical. I’ve not had an issue getting into a game, it usually takes less than a minute. What has been an issue, is constant crashing. Every now and then, I can be about to check the map, spend an ability point, trade in some gear. And the game just freezes completely. Resulting in having to shut the game down entirely, and reload it. On PS5, that takes less than a couple of minutes. And it frequently auto saves, so it’s not like I’ve lost tons of progress. But still, it can be annoying. Some sessions it doesn’t happen at all. Other times, it can crash 3/4 times in a couple of hours. Not sure if it’s just a PS5 issue specifically. But hopefully it gets fixed. Now, onto micro transactions, everyone’s favourite. The mobile version was plagued with absolutely shitloads of them. Thankfully, that’s not the case here. There’s the option of paying real money to unlock character specific gear. But you get plenty of stuff chucked at you without having to resort to that. The seasonal Battlepass hasn’t started yet, that’s apparently in July. For which you have to make a new character if you want to unlock all the stuff in it. Doubt I’ll bother doing that constantly, but I’ll probably run a Necromancer/Sorcerer for my next character. Haven’t finished the campaign yet, but think I’m not far off, I’m on Act 4. Oh, and you don’t unlock a horse until the start of Act 4, which takes quite a while.

I'm surprised there's no thread for this. Ghostwire: Tokyo is an open world first person action adventure game. Obviously set in Tokyo, I think all in the Shibuya region. It means that it's not so oversized and it's a relatively interesting place to explore and pretty detailed. It's nice. Some kind of supernatural event has happened which has "killed" everyone but one of the things you do is harvest souls of the population to keep them safe while this event gets sorted out. But anyone who is roaming the streets are ghostly figures who need to be busted. You do this with elemental spells that have a number of different properties and are fun to use. "Ammo" for the spells is pretty limited and you can only carry so much but you can get a little amount back from enemies. It does mean extended fights require you to switch it up and try to use optimally. There are some stealth mechanics as well that help thin out a group if you can manage being a bit sneaky. This part of the game is pretty well done. You're able to do this stuff because you are possessed by the ghost of a guy who's history is kept secret so far. He does have knowledge of the supernatural and how to fight it so you share your body with him to help bust some ghosts. He's pretty entertaining in a gruff way as well so he's good company. Tokyo is really well realised, it looks great and the various ghosts, yokai and ghouls are really well designed so it has a unique look. Exploring is well rewarded but its weakest part is probably when you go high to the rooftops and the jumping around isn't great. You have a glide ability but what you can grab onto and mount is hard to judge and jankily implemented. It is the time the game looks and feels a bit rough. I've been enjoying it quite a lot so far. Unless it all goes wrong I'm happy to certify it a Cool Game.

Heretics Defeated! So far, very good. Only got in an hour today (for now) but I'm enjoying everything about this. From the "Happy Tree Friends" aesthetic. To the distinctly Isaac/Gungeon feel to the combat. The cult building aspect so far is the newest gameplay to me and the most intriguing. It reminds me of both Freedom Fighters and the base building of Suikoden. I have fought one boss and indoctrinated three followers into my Cult. While grinning from ear to ear at the presentation.

I’m a bit late to the party on this one, just got my rental copy. But I notice it’s only recently come out on Xbox, so better late than never I guess. I’ve done the first two missions so far, and it’s quite fun. You play as either a male or female kung-fu student, seeking revenge on an enemy gang. The twist is that every time you die, you get immediately resurrected, but age one year. You start off at age 20. Supposedly as you get older, you get stronger, but age too much and you get weaker. The combat seems straightforward enough so far. I’ve enjoyed smashing bottles on people’s heads, slamming them into walls. It also turns out you can attack people in mid conversation. So while enemies have been giving me exposition, I’ve dashed in and punched them in the face. Good times.

This is arguably the showpiece, flagship title for PSVR2 and it hasn't failed to disappoint. Having only played two games on the system so far (this and GT7), with both being incredibly impressive in VR, I have to give this the edge as it fully utilises PSVR2's capabilities to its fullest extent, all the features like the haptics, finger tracking, impulse triggers etc. all come into play to create one super immersive environment to explore, with a Wheel and Pedals I'd imagine GT7 would be equally as impressive but seeing as I've just got the DualSense to use for that, this gets the edge ever so slightly. Coming from PSVR1 where 'standing' games were severely crippled by poor tracking, I watched on in envy as I saw numerous headsets launch with full roomscale tracking like the Vive, Index, Rift Pro etc. and whilst I can't quite achieve that myself as my living room isn't big enough, there's more than enough freedom to move about and the tracking is fantastic with this in comparison. It feels like the realisation of what I wanted PSVR1 to be all those years ago, a fully fleshed out AAA game made from the ground up for VR that fully immerses you in the experience with controls and tech that don't detract from the experience. At its heart, this is a climbing game though. I'd say 70-80% of the time you will be clambering up Mountains, man made structures, along peeks, valley's and everything in-between really. At first the climbing is quite one-note, you just climb with your hands up various surfaces but as the game goes on you unlock pickaxes which make you feel like Lara Croft in the recent Tomb Raider titles and a grappling hook-like device which enables you to swing across chasms. Imagine what the climbing sections of an Uncharted or Tomb Raider would feel like in 1st person and you've got a rough estimation of what this is like really, enemies and combat sections are in the game but they're treated as boss battles at the end of a chapter and are fleeting experiences that whilst incredibly thrilling are gone before you know it really. It's a linear experience without too many branching paths, open areas or anything like that, there are a few times where you can choose to go down the right or left path at particular sections but that's about it really, it's very much a cinematic linear type experience. There's a few collectibles to get along the way in the way of targets you can shoot with your bow that are sometimes placed in sneaky locations, puzzles with stones you can stack upon one another to eventually make a cairn and legendary mountains to climb, the latter of which seems to be mainly tied to the story. There are also lore collectibles you can get and pieces of armour to collect that when you've accumulated 4 or 5 upgrade your armour capabilities, nothing to ground-breaking there but it helps break the game up. There's also a theme park like ride where you travel along in a kayak through the rainforest whilst various monsters either clamber, fight or jump over you, it's definitely a mode you will try once and show to friends and family members to wow them as they come round but that's pretty much all it is. Another inclusion is the challenges you can do, there's an archery challenge where you can attempt to outscore Aloy's 1500 points (which I managed a few nights ago) and an assault course challenge where you have to climb, jump and shimmy your way through a course beating a certain time, I think I need to get further into the game before this fully unlocks for me, but what I have tried is good fun. So yeah, very impressive overall, I'm about 5 hours in and have to wean myself off it every night once my 90 minute session has finished. Had no issues with motion sickness or anything so far either which is great, have been using the 'comfort' setting for now as I don't want to overdo my capabilities too soon. I can see why some may be disappointed there's not more combat in it, at its heart it is a climbing game first and foremost, but for me it's still spectacular. My stream from last night: A few pics:

Fired this up last night to give it a spin before the demo times out. Safe to say I'm really impressed with it so far, didn't really want to put it down when I came to the end of my session but got dragged off the TV as the Wife said Dinner was ready. It's very much a Souls-like and there's Nioh's DNA running through it, even things like the menus, inventory, sounds when you pick things up and all that jazz are ripped straight from Nioh. It also takes a lot of inspiration from Sekiro, if you time a parry just at the right time it does a Mikhiri Counter type thing where you stab the enemy for massive damage, movement also feels similar to Sekiro in that you can jump about and dodge like a manman without really running out of stamina. There's a much faster more actiony Bloodborney type pace to the combat then the likes of Nioh and Dark Souls. It says it's a work in progress but on PS5 it looks and runs like an absolute dream already, didn't encounter any bugs or performance issues, runs absolutely buttery smooth and looks magnificent. If you've got both consoles the XBX version seems borked so download it on PSN and you'll be away. I don't really think it's doing too much to innovate but the combat feels great, the environments are typically Nioh/Souls along with the Ninja/Samurai-esque looking enemies. One area where they're trying something different is the levelling, every enemy has a level above their heads, killing a lot of enemies levels you up which you then need to lock in at a bonfire (flag) or you can lose all those levels if you're defeated. Throughout the entire demo I got up to Level 10 then got my arse handed to me by some Tiger-thing and went down to Level 6 which I then need to build up again to face it again whenever I get round to it. Very impressive though technically, and a whole ton of fun, doesn't do too much to innovate in the already crowded Souls-like genre but this is one of the best I've played (as was Nioh).

There's a famous saying 'never meet your heroes', which I was incredibly aware of and worried about going in to this. For how much I absolutely love the OG TLOU I have never once replayed it (I don't usually replay games as you all may know) so whilst I was excited to go back to one of my favourite games of all time I was also a bit apprehensive at what I'd find once I got back into that world. Thankfully, what I've encountered going back in and playing through it again has made me appreciate it all the more. It's kind of a strange juxtaposition though, a game that looks so current-gen and astounds you pretty much at every turn coupled with a game that is structurally made in the last throngs of the PS3 generation of systems. Back when I played it in 2013 I absolutely adored the combat, I tended to agree back then that Uncharted's gunplay was one of its downfalls but throughout TLOU I never had that issue and always loved the tense stealth gameplay during the clicker/runner sections and the somewhat Uncharted-esque segments where human foes are involved. All tied together in this gritty semi-realistic way, making you craft things out of bandages, scissors, alcohol, cloth and other rudimentary materials you find dotted about the many derelict abandoned buildings you come across. So needless to say, the way it plays doesn't 100% hold up in 2022 which is a shame, TLOUPII just blows it out the water in that regard and ruins this somewhat as a result. That level of experimentation, problem solving and mobility to the combat segments in particular are just missing in this and after awhile you go into a pattern - particularly in the stealth segments - of carefully sneaking up to each enemy, strangling them all to clear out the room then moving onto the next room and sometimes doing the same thing again. I will say it does vary up the stealth segments with the human segments and the set pieces very well so you never get too much of one at the same time, but even so at the point I'm into the game now (just entered Fall) at 12 hours in the way it plays is a little more stale than I remember it ever being in the original. As for improvements, the animations are much improved along with the enemy AI who now flank like hawks (?) even on the 'moderate' difficulty I'm playing on, gunplay also feels tighter but because of my memory I can't notice too many differences from the original in terms of the combat and stealth segments. I'm still absolutely besotted with it though, the story is as incredible as I remember it being, there's little nods in there to things that I don't ever remember being in there like a moment quite early into the game where Tess tells Joel to move on when Ellie enquires about Joel's past, likewise there's a poster in Pittsburgh of a Twilight-like romcom, Joel comments that it's the last film he saw before the Pandemic and Ellie says something like 'why would you go to that, it's for people my age' and Joel deflects the question and they both move on, with you, the player fully knowing why. It's still incredibly moving and I've cried twice so far with more heart-breaking moments to come. I never noticed it before but you can see Joel get more and more attached to Ellie as the game goes on, he has his guard up at the beginning and doesn't want to open up but the more time they spend together the more fond of her he gets which you can tell by some of his replies to certain things she says. Should go without saying really but graphically it’s a real showpiece for the system. I think the lighting and reflections are perhaps the most impressive aspects but the level of facial detail in the characters along with the crazy detailed new textures in buildings, materials and everything else on your adventures. I can't tell you how happy (maybe that's the wrong word? lol) it makes me feel to play this game again, like slipping into your favourite pair of old worn slippers first thing on a Winters day, it's just cosy. Going back to something you've got such vivid, fond memories of and it being every bit of the game you can remember and then some (well, mostly) is just such a nice feeling to have. I'm quite lucky too that my memory is so bad that I've forgotten vast swathes of the game, whole areas of Boston and Pittsburgh I'd completely forgotten, the whole opening chapter with Tess I hardly remembered at all either. So yeah, sometimes it's great to meet your heroes and hang out with them again. Pics:

Spent a couple of hours with this over this afternoon... after the reviews I've been counting the hours. First up I'll say spend some time setting the game up, turn off film grain and blur and knock performance off you'll notice a marked improvement in picture clarity. Also the game came set for stereo sound which is odd. The game does look great though, plays really nice too, having played the three Dead Space games repeatedly this feels really quick compared to the clunky original games... took a little while to get used to but feels nice now, especially after changing to the DS2 control option. Noticed quite a few new doors in the environments I've seen so far, also walked to the beginning of chapter 2 instead of using the tram which was really weird... been a couple of instances where you choose what to power up... one where you're forced to kill the lights and this game does proper dark, no bullshit greys in this game... it's dark! The game has already made me jump more in the first two hours what with noises or necromorphs creeping up behind me than The Callisto Protocol managed in its entire run time... it's good to be back.

Originally a PS3 game with a PS4 version, Ishin has now been remade as a PS4 and PS5 (and Xbox) game, and you do get the sense it's probably the final game we'll get that feels like 'old' Yakuza. It's hard to place what exactly makes it feel like an older take on the game, possibly the movement, it's a bit haphazard, I can't see a lock-on, it's not as refined and flowing as it could be. It's the difference between playing Kiwami 1 and Yakuza 6. It also feels less mental with its missions, but I don't know how many of them are just lifted from the original game. In terms of the story, it's not quite a retelling of the first Yakuza game, but it's pretty close. Not-Kiryu (the cast is made up of renamed characters from past games) comes back to town after time away, ends up having to avenge a paternal figure, after being blamed for a crime he didn't commit. From there it does become its own tale, with enough to it that it doesn't feel like a 2nd-rate spin off Again, I don't know if this was in the original, but it has its own take on 0's switchable different fighting styles. There's the standard Yakuza brawling, plus the swordplay you'd expect playing as a samurai. Less expected is that you are also carrying a gun and can just blast away at people (I suppose this will have followed Dead Souls originally), and a style that combines sword combat with your firearm, which leaves you defensively vulnerable, but it's the most fun to control and the most flowing style (Sword has been my do to). I've been using fewer Heat actions, they seem to have been downplayed this time, and access to them is more part of the skill tree As you use a style you'll level up, unlocking specific and general orbs that unlock the next skill in the various combat styles. There's gear with stat boosts, and some with perks attached. I've got a sword that recovers a very small amount of help every time it causes damage, which is great, but the headband I've got with the most defence points blocks me from earning heat, which means it can go in the bin as far as I'm concerned I'm enjoying it more than I expected, I thought I was a bit Yakuza's out, I never finished Kiwami 2, I never finished Judgement, and haven't touched the games that came after. But this feeling a bit archaic has helped it I think

Played through some of the opening hours of this last night. My understanding watching previews was that this is an open world immersive sim, but you wouldn't really know that from the opening. It's an incredibly rail-roaded section of gameplay which really feels like a throwback to 360 gaming, which I don't entirely mean as a compliment cause it's an era of gaming I don't quite enjoy (overly long set pieces showing off HD tech being one of those things I don't love). There's some interesting stuff here mechanically however, or at least it appears like it will become interesting. It's tribute act includes Bioshock (and maybe Prey). Instead of neuromods or plasmids it's this polymer stuff that is the newest thingy you stick in your hands and eyeballs to do magic. Starting off I got a zap power, and a power which covers stuff in a sort of grey paste looking gel which also conducts electricity by the looks of things (the one power interaction I've discovered so far). There's a big focus on melee combat, sort of like Condemned, with a kind of spacing element to its gameplay which is hard to figure out cause it's hard to know how much distance is safe or not or how much reach you have. It's a very clunky onboarding, with some atrocious voice acting in the English dub that actually had me muting sections until I found out you could change it to russian (the subs are a bit small, unfortunately). To be honest, based on these initial hours I think the whole thing feels a bit shonky and unoriginal, but these games don't come together mechanically until you've unlocked some powers and they take the reins off and let you feel more independent and brainy, which I hope will still happen in this once it finally opens up. This screenshot made me lol, big ass mission text that never disappears saying 'where the fuck am i, find door handle', waypoints everywhere and huge weapon taking up the screen. Yup, a 360 era game lol. You can't holster weapons or customise the huds. These seem like nitpicks but the UI could do with being more customisable cause it gets in the way of immersion in this immersive sim, imo. There's also no FOV adjustment, which can be a bit motion sickness inducing in a FPS with a melee focus, tho I fixed that with flawless widescreen. Highly recommend doing the same if you can, or having a hardy stomach The game is visually decent, however there's no ray tracing at all which is strange as this was I think the first game Nvidia ever demonstrated with RT on their RTX 2000 cards. The poster boy for the tech. Well, at least it runs extremely well, no stuttering and it has a precompile shader cache, something which seems to be catching on now between this and Dead Space (this is just 30 minutes into the game, but I'll spoiler it) it not only rips of Bioshock, it also rips off Harry Potter!

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.

I played a good chunk of this the last two days, and now the clock on it says 9 hours. Enough to give early impressions. It's a mixed bag, and I'm not going to get into the technical problems cause there's a lot out there on that already. Just to say that 8GB VRAM cards are going to have problems, and so will PS5. Pick your poison (or don't), but it's genuinely a shocking product that Luminous have put out, especially given the generally high quality of FFXV (technically speaking, the game itself wasn't something I was into). Something went wrong in the production process here, maybe this is one of those games which just could not adapt to development during the pandemic. That said, there are some neat things which aren't being spoken about much in the 'discourse' around this title. I probably already got into it on the demo thread I made, but it's a free-flowing parkour battle mage combat system. I think it's really cool, and is the reason I bought the game in spite of all the issues and high price. You have a sort of stamina system, little pips above the health bar. They let you parkour and are also used to defend you from massive damage. When you parkour, you can do other contextual actions like attack and such. You chain parkour, support abilities and attack spells together. I think it's neat anyway It's just you have to grind through some really mundane stuff to even get to see what good the game has to offer. The opening few hours limits you to these rock powers for maybe 6 hours or so, and that was me sort of beelining my way to the first boss to get the melee abilities unlocked. Meanwhile the presentation is very cheap. Badly animated cutscenes, stilted animations and awkward fade-to-black transitions. It reminds me of the main story questline in FFXIV, in terms of all of the above (also funnily enough built on a fork of luminous engine I think). It feels sort of like an Assassin's Creed 1 type of game, where there are parts here which could be built into a great game but are thrown together in either a lazy or rushed way, and the overall feel is a bit meh. That said from what I've seen and heard the game only improves as more abilities unlock, and if you just want to fly around the place killing things with fancy magic the game seems to serve that battle mage fantasy very well.

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.

Forspoken demo, put a few hours into it and beat the boss on normal mode. It has some neat ideas, and I think it is sorta like an air dashy Dragon's Dogma. However the luminous engine (FFXV engine) is still such a dog when it comes to combat. Or maybe not the engine, whatever framework it is the FFXV people build their combat off. My big problem with it and also XV is the way melee attacks are contextual based off proximity and your character sort of magnetises to enemies. The automatic feel is still just absolutely terrible. On the other hand, Forspoken has a really cool magic system which has some interesting layers to it. Here's the boss I beat up. Here I slogged for an eternity killing these dumb gators. The visuals of this game are not well suited for a game like this. The particle effects make it very noisy to look at. The resolution is not high enough and the framerate is not high enough. This kind of game needs 4k 60 native, it has this weird reconstruction stuff going on that doesn't work well with the particles maybe. It just doesn't run well enough in this build for the combat to feel good. Hopefully at release it is better. That said, I'm still interested in this game. Even if it ends up a 6/10 on release it's rare you get open world games with varied combat. Especially magic combat, which is usually just about keeping away. When you chain the spells together and mix in the range attacks and distance closers it can be pretty cool looking edit I played some more later, I actually had a really good time this time. I'm more confident in the game now, maybe it can be a 6.5 lol I think the general idea in combat is your r2 spam melee moves are your main damage moves, and your cooldowns set up safe opportunities to spam them. Other than that you need to hang back a bit and spam the 'gun' attack. The radial wheel is not very clean to use, I wish they had a better shortcut mapping system. But I think it works well enough, especially if you set it to pause on opening the wheel and play it like FFVII Remake's wait mode a bit

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.

So, the first game was a very enjoyable car-crash. They’ve skipped straight to 3, because why not. And this is legitimately one of the funniest games I’ve played this year. It starts by ripping off the intro to Skyrim (and openly admits as such). Then you’re set loose into the world, to cause total carnage. If you played the original, you’ll know what you’re in for. If not….Jesus, where do I start? You’re a goat. You can lick things and drag them around. You can headbutt stuff. That’s pretty much it. The rag doll physics are proper funny. Head butting an explosive barrel, causing people to go flying is a riot. You can catch on fire/electricity, and spread that through a crowd. There’s various tasks to do, which gift you in game currency. Which you then use to unlock add-ons to customise your goat. Currently I’m rocking a molten lava skin, with 4 paint cans stuck on my feet, and tennis balls on my horns. Most of the add-ons are cosmetic only , but some have powers you can trigger at will. My personal favourite is a firework launcher. Which when fired at cars/ people, causes them to go rocketing into the air at 90mph, ragdolling furiously. That’s had me cry-laughing repeatedly. As you run around the open world, you’ll encounter random missions you can do. Which reward you with more cash, and usually a cosmetic. There’s already been several Easter eggs relating to other games/franchises. So again, many laughs to be had. Oh, and it’s 4 player online co-op as well. Not tried that yet, but I imagine it’ll be utter carnage. So, yeah. This has been bloody hilarious thus far.

I’ve played about 3 hours or more of the campaign which I believe is about half way. It’s alright but it’s like a ‘best of’ of the series. Think of it as a Now That’s What I Call CoD! Track listing includes: A swimming bit. A sniper bit. A gunner in the skies bit. All the hits dating back many years. The story and overall attitude of the game is awful I’ll say that. Dude bros with guns. No one is likeable or too much different for anyone else. The game is very linear as to how you can tackle each short segment. Be a few metres away from where it wants to be and you’re killed. I look forward to multi once the campaign is done with.

Well this pretty much came out of nowhere. Like, I didn’t even realise it was out. I remember it being announced, but not much after that. The original Tales game was one of the best things Telltale came out with (Walking Dead peaked after their first season, and by the end was crap). I’m not an expert of the franchise, I’ve only finished 1 and 2, and some of the DLC. But that didn’t stop me from having a great time with Tales. So, now we have the sequel. Though it’s “episodic”, it plays out as one big game, giving you a break between episodes. I’ve just finished Episode 1. And so far, it’s off to a good start. The dialogue has been amusing enough. The story, which switches between 3 playable characters, seems solid enough. There’s zero puzzles, so you’re mostly down to making dialogue choices, and occasionally wandering around the area to trigger the next set piece. There’s a fair few Quick Time Events, but they’re easy enough. One review said that the hacking mini game is laughably easy. It is indeed, and makes you wonder what the point of them even is. It warns you “failure has repercussions”. But honestly, you’d have to put your controller on the floor, to fail them. The IGN review said the final episode is a train wreck, and almost ruins the game completely. We will see how that plays out. But so far, yeah, this seems decent enough.

Looked for a “played” page for this, but didn’t see one. So here goes. I just completed the main story for this, and really enjoyed it. The Yakuza series has always been my favourite, with its excellent combat, and tone that goes all over the place (serious one minute, utterly insane the next). Judgment was pretty good for the most part, only really spoiled by the clunky stealth sections, and exceptionally tedious “tailing” missions, where you have to follow a person round for ages without being spotted. I’ll always remember one part of that game, where you have to tail someone for what feels like 5 minutes at least. Only for it to then immediately follow that up with another, equally long one. Fucking tedious pretty much summed that part up. Thankfully, that’s been stripped back quite a bit for Lost Judgment. There’s not much tailing, and even less stealth, which remains awful. Though they’ve put in a few platforming/climbing sections, which are a bit shite. In as much if you fall, you have to repeat an entire section. Combat wise, I much prefer it to the RPG style of Like A Dragon. I am going to give that another shot on PS5 at some point, but the unfair difficulty spikes really ruined that game for me. It’s more of a serious game than Yakuza, by that I mean there’s not really any zany side missions. Yakuza chucks things from adult baby clubs, to god knows what else. In comparison, things are a bit more serious in LJ. Though with a story involving bullying, suicide and murder, it’s probably to be expected. There’s an entirely seperate section where Yagumi investigates various different clubs in the local school. I’ve done some of them, but a lot are locked out to me, and I’m not entirely sure why. It says i need to raise my Appeal. How do I do that? Not a bloody clue. Google to the rescue, then. I’ve got the “Kaito Files” DLC to play next, then I’ll have a crack at some of the other side missions. I’ve already sank 20+ hours into it, and though it’s not on the same level as Yakuza, it’s still a lot of fun. I gather that because of some issue with the Japanese voice actor for Yagumi, there won’t be any more Judgement games. Which is a shame if so, as it’s always a joy to piss about in Kamurocho.

I’m about an hour into this on Switch. It has the same kind of relaxing vibe as A Short Hike, although I would not say it’s as good as that game, so far. The art style reminds me of Hidden Folks. The game is literally just you running around taking pictures for people. It’s very pleasant, although for Eurogamer to call this “essential” is stretching the meaning of essential…