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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.

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

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:

Just some general impressions here of the unit itself really for those interested. For context, I've only ever used one VR headset before and that was original PSVR. Super simple to unbox, very much like the PS5 in the no-frills aspect of it with all the cardboard and a cardboard/paper based cable tie, seeing the unit for the first time, picking it up, picking the Sense controllers up I was surprised how light everything is. You look at the PSVR2 sitting there in its little moulded cardboard box and for some reason think this is gonna be heavy, but it's not, it's surprisingly light, crazy light really for everything that's going on inside it. The Sense controllers are light too but maybe a little too light at times, I would maybe like a little more weight to them, they are very slippery too so the straps are needed to avoid making a hole in my TV lol. In the box is also another mini-box which contains the instructions, some different buds for the included ear buds and in some plastic (!!!) was the stereo ear buds themselves. The very first time I tried the headset it was with my own HyperX headphones I've had for donkeys years now, but it didn't quite feel right on my head, I felt like something was off. So I took it off, clipped in the stereo earbuds (which attach nicely onto the back of the headset so you don't even know they're on, and even have little holders for each of the buds on the sides of the backstrap of the headset itself) and it was so much better. Yes, I generally don't like earbuds and yes they did fall out my ear a few times before I got them fit in my ears properly but once that was done the immersion was much better and more importantly the comfort was much better than using my HyperX over-ear headphones. If you've ever tried a PSVR1 on in GAME, at an event etc. then you'll immediately be familiar with the design of PSVR2, the two are incredibly similar in terms of their overall design, the way the strap does up, the general aesthetic of the whole unit and feel on your head and all the jazz. As mentioned previously though, it is much lighter than PSVR1, you don't feel the weight on your head at all and it has a huge amount of improvements from that headset whilst maintaining the same overall design philosophy. The biggest change is the quality of the screens, it's almost chalk and cheese compared to the OG PSVR, it's just immediately clearer and you don't get that 'screen door' effect on black screens. You also don't get that pixelated image as much, it is still there to a degree which I was surprised about as I assumed the OLED panels would eliminate this, but it is there slightly, just nowhere near as bad. You can also change the lens location in the headset to match up with your eyes and is much easier to find the 'sweet spot' when wearing glasses. It's just much more comfortable overall. The eye tracking is impressive but aside from menus in Horizon that use it, I haven't really properly tried it out in a game in earnest yet but I believe it does help with the tracking in general that the headset does. The other new button on the headset is the 'function' button which allows you to see the outer world whilst in game and enables you to set up your play area before you play so you don't collide into things or damage anything. You can edit this play area with the Sense controllers to make things bigger or larger depending on your needs. Unfortunately, the living room isn't quite big enough for roomscale so I have to go with the 'standing' option after I've set up the play area. The Sense controllers feel intuitive to use and a million times better than the godawful Move controllers you had to content with in PSVR1, every button seems to be placed exactly where it should be and there isn't any awkwardness, the finger tracking works really well, seeing your hand open and close in Horizon is a really cool moment. Games-wise, I've only tried out GT7 and Horizon: CotM so far. I don't like to have too many games on the go at one time so I didn't want to start about 7 different PSVR2 games and then feel like I'm beholden to all of them if that makes sense. More impressions in the dedicated threads but both of these are amazing in VR for different reasons, showpieces for the headset in general. Overall, it's just a much comfier, easier headset to use than PSVR1 ever was. The 'sweet spot' is much easier to achieve and the picture nowhere near as blurry, less affected by fogging lenses or anything like that. I'm still finding my 'VR legs' so to speak, as a few titles on PSVR1 made me feel sick so I wanted to err on the safe side, but with this, aside from a few early moments at high speed with GT7 I haven't had any issues with that whatsoever thankfully. Not sure if anyone else is too interested in VR in general, but if anyone has any questions they want answered I'll do my best. Here's of video of me looking like a tit in my living room for everyone to enjoy lol. https://imgur.com/a/e9d2Wgt

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

This is a massive WRPG based on the Harry Potter book/film series from the early to late 2000s. Potter, Malfoy, Hermione, Ron, Neville & Co. aren't in this though as it is set in the late 1800s, so it's set in the same world and there are certainly plenty of references to the books/films, certain character names etc. and some fan service in terms of locations you'll visit (particularly the intro which is super cool for a Potter-fan, which I won't spoil) but it doesn't try too hard or wink metaphorically at you too much if that makes sense. You play as a new character of your choice who joins Hogwarts as a 5th year, one of the few Witches/Wizards that have done this in history. The game is set in Hogwarts itself and its surroundings, no real surprise there. Hogwarts itself is absolutely gigantic, filled with labyrinthian corridors, dungeons, classrooms with all the key locales you'll recognise from the films like the moving staircase, broom lawn, clock tower etc. everything feels exactly as it should do, everything is in its correct place from the films and just feels right. Outside of Hogwarts is a humungous world to explore based on the Scottish Highlands, with plenty of greenery, forests and undulating hills, flora and fauna, Hogsmeade is largely the shopping district where you'll get all your bits needed for your classes and adventures throughout the region, it's every bit as charming as it is in the films and an absolute delight to just walkthrough and take in all the kookiness of the wizarding world you inhabit. The two core pillars to the game, as in many games I guess, are combat and exploration. The combat is easily what has surprised me about the game the most, I think when you look at it in videos it's quite easy to dismiss as being perhaps a bit overly simplistic but in your hands it's got a lot of depth to it. There's a weight to the spell casting that isn't easy to get across on video, I don't really know how to describe it but there's a wind-up to the animation, a motion, a movement to it, it's not just firing off little bolts of whatever spell, it feels like you've actually cast it if that makes any sense at all lol. Different enemies will have a shield that corresponds with a certain spell colour (red, purple, yellow are the main combat-based spells) which you'll have to use to break their shield and ultimately defeat them. You can have up to 12 named spells in the spell wheel at any one time (need to hold R2 and press one of the face buttons to cast), these act as special spells on a cooldown meter. On top of this you've also got your regular no-name spell which you can cast at anyone at anytime by pressing R2 (or by using L2, going into a 3rd-person over the shoulder aiming mode) which you can keep firing off at enemies whilst your special spells are on a cooldown. There's a lot of different enemy types I've encountered so far. These Guardian/Statue type things I guess a little bit similar to the Gargoyles in Souls games or something (maybe?), your more standard dark witches/wizards, Ashwinders which are kind of suped up dark witches/wizards, Spiders, Wolves, Trolls, Goblins, these little furball looking things that reside in rivers/lakes (can't remember the name), so there's a lot of variety there and each have their own strengths and weaknesses for you to exploit. Combat in this game is far from easy as well, it's not anywhere near something like Souls or something like that but you do have to think about your attacks, strategies etc. quite a bit, it's not mindless button mashing in the slightest, there is some strategy involved and some threat associated whenever you enter a combat scenario. Exploration is handled a little more how you'd expect really, I absolutely hate the 'Ubisoft game' analogy as I feel it's a lazy quasi-criticism, I've played many and they're all slightly differently to one another but the closest analogy I can give to how this game handles its exploration is AC Valhalla. The landscapes are very similar on the surface of it, one being set mainly in England and this being set in the Scottish Highlands, there are these 'Merlin Trials' which are very similar to a lot of the little puzzles and glitches you see dotted around in that game. Standard kind of stuff like getting a ball from the top of a hill down into a hole, lighting three pillars before the time runs out, exploding 4 rock columns, having to lead a group of fireflies into a column to light it up, just little bits and pieces like that. There's a lot of collectibles to get, the field pages are the most plentiful of the bunch, I think Hogwarts alone has over 100 of these that you get by pressing Revelio to reveal hidden objects in the surroundings, much like the pulse mechanic in a lot of games that reveals hidden items, there's also Chests, little statues, seals to find where you'll have to lead a dragonfly-type thing to a cabinet to squash it into the hole and open it up. Nothing too ground-breaking here or anything really no one has seen before, but they all work well in harmony with one another. Again, similar to AC Valhalla there's also dungeons and caves you can enter dotted around the landscape, the infamous bandit camps where you have to clear them out and find the chest to tick them off as completed, Balloons in the sky to pop whilst flying your broom, broom time trials, mini-games with your wand you can compete with other students at Hogwarts. The game has such a fantastic atmosphere to it and is such a joy to explore, whether that's just walking around on foot or flying around on your broom, it's always visually arresting to just meander even if you don't have a set goal in mind. The attention to detail here is just absolutely staggering, there's a sweetshop in Hogsmeade and every single individual kooky wizardy type sweet is included in such an special authentic way, every aspect of the game feels extremely polished, it runs well and everything feels like it has that same attention to detail that the sweetshop has, it really is a sight to behold. Graphically, this is a current-gen showpiece, the world feels so alive and helps bring everything to life and look as magnificent as it does, the music in this game is absolutely fantastic as well and helps place you into this world. There's a few ditties in here that will sound familiar if you've seen the films but nothing is a straight up rip from the movies, everything feels unique and makes you feel like you're on your own adventure in this world, not reliving Harry's. The sound design with all the spells like 'Lumos' sounding exactly how it should from the films, is really special. Again, it just helps drive home how much attention to detail was spent in this world and getting everything right, in terms of world design and world building, it's nothing but a masterpiece. The story itself has been interesting too, I'm not too far in as I've been mostly ignoring it and doing collectibles, side quests and all that good stuff, but yeah it has been intriguing so far and I can't wait to learn more, I've only just got my broom at 22-ish hours in which is meant to be something you get within the first 3 hours, so I think I'm quite behind on this front lol. Talking of side quests, they're in here but largely unremarkable really, they're standard kind of side quests where you'll have to clear out a bandit camp to get an item or something like that, nothing out of ordinary. Occasionally you do get assignments from the various different classes at Hogwarts which will give you a couple of tasks to complete, this are usually more interesting and reward you with a nice little classroom scene once you hand it to the Professor in question. So yeah, I think it is absolutely fantastic so far. I just wish I had more time to play more of it really, it's one of the best WPRGs I've played in recent years, feels like its had an awful lot of money spent on it and is just dripping in polish and attention to detail. A must-play if you're a fan of the films/books but I think a great game (so far) in its own right and well worth playing still if you're not. Pics:

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 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.

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.

So, this is the new game from the Civ and XCOM developers, Firaxis. Perhaps unsurprisingly then, it is a turn-based game. It's safe to say it's more closely aligned to XCOM than Civ though, but this has an ace (or many aces to be exact) up its sleeve that differentiates it from just being a Marvel XCOM game, and that's the largely divisive (from Previews) inclusion of Cards into the combat. As a result of the cards coming into play, the game isn't as rigid or locked into a grid like it is in XCOM, you're free to move somewhere within the little combat arena you're placed in once per turn, with certain placements being preferable, scoring knockbacks or environmental attacks. You can draw three cards per turn, but certain cards do get refunded as they're used up, giving you an additional card or two per turn, you can also redraw any card you're not happy with twice per turn. A lot of the cards so far are quite basic, in that they are 'standard' kind of slash/punch kind of moves, but they do come with additional benefits like knockbacks, chain attacks, inflicting bleed damage and the ilk, on top of these you've got ability cards which gives you and your team buffs as you fight and hero cards which are much more powerful and usually allow you to take out multiple enemies at a time, the kicker being that you need 'heroism' to use them, which is gained by taking out enemies. The enemies themselves have been fairly standard grunts for the most part, if you imagine the basic super soldiers from XCOM, then it's pretty much the same here, just they're now Hydra Soldiers. The bosses have been more interesting as they're now various Marvel villains instead of snake-creatures or something like they were in the XCOM titles. As established in the paragraphs above, the game shares a lot of DNA with XCOM, and that's no bad thing, the animations, certain effects you can pull of like the knockbacks mentioned earlier and the environmental attacks all look and feel very similar to XCOM but they've now got a more grandiose superhero sheen on them. You'll head out on missions from the 'war room' with yourself ('The Hunter') and two other heroes chosen at random to assist you. You'll about your task, fight a boss or retrieve an item at the end of it and then return back to your base. It's in this base segment of the game where you can see where Firaxis has been far more ambitious than their previous title. In XCOM, the base was an important part of the game where you'd build new sections, invest research points into them to help bolster certain specialisations, new weapons and all that good stuff. All of this DNA is contained within the 'Abbey' in this game, which is a huge Cathedral with sprawling grounds for you to explore to your hearts content, you explore this in 3D in your role as the Hunter, gone are the days of a 2D plain, seeing all your little soldiers move into their newly built wing. It's super impressive and such a great feeling 'base' right away that really makes you feel at home, all the segments you'd expect to be there are in their place but there's also tons of secrets to explore and a sprawling grounds containing blocked passageways which will likely reveal themselves to me later on. The Abbey has the feel of the School in Fire Emblem Three Houses or the Normandy in Mass Effect to it. This also takes inspiration from those titles in the new social links system, where you can sit down and hang out around the Abbey with your new team mates as you assimilate and get used to your new surroundings, doing so gets you friendship points which levels up your bond with your squad mates as the game goes on. I'm not too far into the game but I assume the more it goes on the more activities around the Abbey get unlocked and some of the more mysterious bits and pieces I've seen so far unveil themselves. The Abbey is the most ambitious element of the game and is almost a game unto itself, it makes me realise why it got delayed a few times. So yeah, I've loved my time with it so far (probably about 4-5 hours) and can't wait to play more, it's a real breath of fresh air compared to some of the other stuff I've played lately. To be continued and pics added.

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

Played for a couple of hours and I'm happy to say that, so far, I've loved every minute... everyone already knew it was going to be a spiritual successor to Dead Space and apart from the inclusion of melee combat that's just how it feels. You play as Josh.... sorry Jacob.... who for reasons finds himself locked up and awakens in his cell with things very much already fallen to shit... not long after you receive your first melee weapon and after a quick tutorial you're left to it... I was worried by the dodge mechanic in this for a while but it's actually not too bad... there's no timing window, something I'm immensely grateful for as I have none, instead as long as you're holding left or right when the enemy swings you'll dodge... just don't dodge in the same direction twice. As for the hitting things, it feels meaty as in The Last of Us 2 meaty... and messy which I suppose trying to batter a monster to death would. I've picked up a pistol but so far I've not had much cause to use it... ammo seems sparse. As expected it looks really nice, they nailed lighting and sound... something that would've been criminal coming from the guy who gave us Dead Space... he sure knows his outer space. I've already died a number of times on the middle difficulty with some pretty disturbing death scenes... I think I'll be seeing lots more of these during my run time.😂

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

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 put an umlaut in the thread title 🪓 Quick thread post to say like some others I imagine I stayed up a bit last night to check out the intro to this. Very familiar, almost expansion like in how familiar it is. But as someone who's several GOTYs are FFXIV expansions I don't really consider that a huge negative, but it is noticeable coming into this from 2018. It's like changing a disc, if this was an older PSX rpg. It's neat tho, it has that IMAX level presentation to its cinematic fights. Dialogue between characters is maximalist in every degree. Every mythical character is super expressive and drawn like a caricature out of a HBO mob drama, or a scenery-chewing performance from a Tarantino film, which I'm way into. I like the contemporary treatment of it all. I mainly want to ask the question here tho to the 120hz VRR users, what settings are you rolling with? I messed around with quality performance last night and I feel the fps wasn't quite as smooth as I'd liked (I don't know if it is the 40fps or not) and the resolution was very soft looking to me. The visuals aren't quite where I'd expect them to be. If that is the case I might just stick with quality and 30fps. For a game that's as deliberate and slow in its movement as this I think I can get by with that, it worked fine in 2018. But slightly foggy and soft visuals would spoil a lot more of what's going on here, imo.

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

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.

Roller Drome seemed to get talked about a lot right before release, then no one mentioned it again. It's a CEL shaded roller skate arena game with similar muted colours to Sable. Presumably deliberately it reminds me of old 70s genre films. The concept is kind of Running Man, you enter arenas and have to shoot the house players. To reload you have to do tricks, this refills your ammo, killing enemies gets you health back,and there's a bunch of different enemy types. I wasn't feeling this originally, it just felt flat and boring, frustrating even. Movement can be a bit odd, you don't control your momentum, press forward to start then leave it, concentrate on steering, jumping and tricks. Get close enough and there's an auto aim to shots, with some of the weapons having slight tricks to them. There's a dodge, time this with the slow down time mechanic, usually used for aiming, and you get an extended period of slowed time. There's challenges to the levels, things like performing certain tricks, kill enemies with certain weapons, and I think it's this stuff that was annoying me. It's probably best to just beat a level then revisit it and try to get one or two challenges each time, that's not how I was approaching it. You need to beat a certain number of challenges to unlock the next set of levels, so I was trying to beat everything all at once, you just don't have that sort of control early on, or I didn't, I did much better when I came back after a break and went back to the earlier levels. I'm still not sure I see the really high scores for it, but when it does all click with you it is fun, really fun at points

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.

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.

I want my mummy... Spent a few hours with this through Game Pass (Xbox obviously)... think I played Innocence toward the tale end of last year and so far this feels nicely familiar. I'm up to Act 3, the first act being more or less a tutorial and the second playing pretty much how you'd expect. Things start harmlessly enough but it doesn't take long for things to fall to shit and the whole world wants Amicia dead for reasons... this time she can fight back a little more, she has a stealth attack and can knife enemies, I haven't got her Crossbow yet but like I say I'm only up to Act 3. You can also break line of sight and hide again if discovered, I can't remember if this was a thing in the first, if it was it was bloody difficult. Some of the views look stunning and so far it's played nicely... there's no performance or graphics mode so I'm not sure if it's locked to 30fps or not... think I saw somewhere that it's 40fps if your display supports 120hz (mine does so who knows) I ended up really liking the first so I'm looking forward to playing more of this.

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?

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.

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:

I don’t really contribute much these days but I’d like to make an exception for this for one reason or another. Steelrising was developed by French studio Spiders, which you may or may not have heard of before. They’ve done a lot of B-Tier RPGs that showed some promise but it was always blatantly obvious that they were hamstrung by budgetary limitations and on tight schedules. Greedfall was their first foray into the big league. It wasn’t perfect, but in the void that appeared in a post BioWare era it was the next best thing. Steelrising, despite the quick turnaround (IIRC announced in 2020) seems to continue with the upwards trend and is a game that IMO can very comfortably sit next to the games that inspired it. Namely Souls. Personally, I can’t draw a lot of comparisons between the pioneer and the copycat as I only ever played Demon’s Souls (the original) so I’ll have to judge Steelrising as a game and not a Soulslike. The setup is that you’re playing as an automaton during the height of the French revolution in a “slightly” altered setting that sees Louis XVI use mechanical soldiers to suppress the revolutionaries. In good old Assassin’s Creed fashion, you, of course, come across every important player from that era and unlike Souls the story isn’t told cryptically throughout the environment but actively via dialogue and cutscenes. It does take some liberties though – Vaucanson for example, who in reality didn’t live to see the Revolution, is an important part of the backstory as engineer/inventor. While you’re guided through the rampaged city of Paris by these French noblemen you’re facing off against automatons that are left patrolling the areas. With high damage output on their side (not so much on yours), and an endurance meter (cleverly described as an overheating-limiter so that it makes sense) combat rewards patience above all, but how you approach it varies greatly depending on the weapon equipped. Because actions such as blocks or parries aren’t tied to your basic moveset but linked to your weapon. You can only block and not parry with a halberd and while the chainball doesn’t give you any defensive maneouvers at all, it makes up for it with its range and the ability to channel elemental energy through it and inflict debuffs (frost, fire or electric effects that are extremely powerful but are tied to a limited resource, think ammunition). There’s also a levelling system with different attributes and you can equip mods and strengthen weapons, the whole deal. Leveldesign is relatively classic by which I mean that you fight forwards and forwards and will occasional come across a door you can unlock for a shortcut. Checkpoints work like they do in Souls, as in they refill your health potions but also respawn defeated enemies. I don’t want to spoil anything but in a sort-of Metroid kind of way certain bosses unlock movement upgrades for Aegis (your character), which give her access to previously unreachable areas. It has a really good flow and even if you only get the chance to play for 40 minutes you can usually make solid progress. The reason for that it is that yes, it’s not that difficult. I’ve died here and there (one boss really kicked my ass) but if you find a weapon with good range and make clever use of the elemental attacks, this isn’t nowhere as punishing as I remember DS being. It’s no walk in the parc, but it’s balanced in a way that forces you to pay attention but also leaves frustration out of the equation, which for me is the best balance for this kind of game. It also introduces an alternate difficulty (those French heretics) that allows you to configure certain numbers, like damage dealt and received. Haven’t tried that because I think standard is fine for everyone with a bit of controller experience. In what is an increasingly rare scenario, it also runs on Spiders proprietary engine. Greedfall already demonstrated its versatility by looking excellent on last-gen while also allowing the developers to quickly put out a quality/performance mode patch for current-gen and even though Steelrising might not look mind-blowing in any way, it features some decent art-direction (I really liked the rolling priest automaton that attacks you with a holy bible attached to a grappling hook) and runs at an almost perfect 60fps in performance mode, which I think is the way to play. I’m roughly 10 hours into the game so far and my next stop is the Palais du Luxembourg (maybe I’ll feel at home) and I think it’s excellent. Again, I can’t put it next to fan-favourites like DS2 or Bloodborne because I haven’t played those, but as a standalone experience, I really enjoy the combat, the flow of the gameplay, the setting. Oddly, despite being developed in France and being set in the same country, there’s no French audio. I actually wanted to play it like that for authenticity reasons, but the short exclamations (Mon Dieu!) are usually pronounced correctly, so they at least picked some fitting voice talent. So, yeah, I’d recommend it. It’s flying under the radar quite a bit which is a shame, because like I said this is the game that should, and maybe still manages to, put Spiders on the map as one to watch.