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I'm glad this is (reportedly) a short RPG. Not that I'm not enjoying it, but it's incredibly simplistic. Everything is telegraphed to keep u on the right path; every time u get to a new town there's one, just one, upgraded weapon waiting for u in the shop, same with armour. The enemies are perfectly scaled for, and u never take a wrong turn and find some beast far out of your compass (who u can get your revenge on later). And I'm going to have to read up on the upgrade wheel, where u spend experience points. It seems simple enough. You have many things to upgrade in the usual strength, intelligence etc paths, but then you seem to have to assign these various upgrades to your character, and u only get a couple of slots, rendering most of your upgrades meaningless. I'm pretty sure I'm not quite understanding it tho. It can't be as I've described. There must be something I'm missing.

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

Horace is a narrative platform adventure about a robot butler that's absolutely full of charm and wit. It's very British in character with tonnes of jokes and references to old computer games and 80's and 90's pop culture. The story is told through cutscenes in a pixel art style narrated in the robotic voice of Horace, and really goes places. Just when you think it's going to be a tale of robotic domestic bliss, everything changes. The game itself has some pretty fiendish platforming with metroidvania style uprgades and is really fun to play. The levels and and what you need to do in them show a lot of imagination and variation. Death comes regularly, but infinite lives and and instant respawns help alleviate frustrations. My only criticism is that it's maybe a little long, but I had a blast with it.

What a ship load of improvements and a great way to start with far better motivations than just selling fruit to get by. This is wonderful.

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

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

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

I suspect this is on everything but I saw it on Switch in the recently released section at a reduced price. It stands out for how it looks, which is that better than 16-bit pixel art, really vibrant and colourful, the trailer makes it look great. It's... ok. There's not enough, early on at least, going on to make it particularly interesting. It's fine, it's an action platformer, but a basic one, it feels like a good Master System game, or an early Mega Drive game, Kid Chameleon or something like that. You've got limited hearts, you take damage if you get hit or touch enemies, you jump over spokes, jump gaps, and hit enemies with your sword. An awful lot of the enemies don't do a lot, they'll stand still, walk towards you, or just float up and down, some are more challenging and it isn't hard to lose hearts as the game goes on. The trailer shows you with a huge sword, that looks fun, I don't have that yet. You can buy weapons when you finish the first world, but what I've bought still has a range problem. It makes the game feel very deliberate and basic, and like there's a better game waiting a few hours in. It's not terrible, and for a couple of quid it's actually a reasonably good game, it just feels a bit dated in a way I'm not sure is intended

Wow, no thread for this? I'm surprised. Been dipping and diving into lots of different PC games and struggling to find something that really grabs me. This is it, I think. I'm only about 90 minutes in, so far it's an adventure set in a dilapidated world that feels marked by communism, or on the verge of some sort of ugly class upheaval. You're a very hungover detective who doesn't really know what's happening but there's a case you got to investigate. But maybe the real thing you got to investigate is who you are and what has happened to you. Sound familiar? I really like it so far. It's basically just a game about reading lots of text so far and passing/failing speech checks. I don't really get all the systems yet, but it's like PS:T through the lens of Jack Kerouac or William S Burroughs. Absolutely fucked up and manky but very beautifully written heaps of text everywhere. The screen where they show you all your perks/specialities is so aggressively wordy. I don't know if there is actually any combat in the game because every perk seems to be based around some personality trait

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

Started this tonight. It seems good, cleared the first world. The presentation is excellent, seems to have a good range of exercises and makes very clever use of the various ways the joy cons read data (like the ir sensor to measure pulse for example). The story is fluff, but clever in how it moves you through a full body workout. Basically, starts with a running section moving on to a monster fight where you do sets of exercises to lower the enemy's hp. I did fuck up a level which meant repeating a monster fight so ended up doing 4 sets of squats and by set four I didn't think I was going to finish. It gives you a warm up and cool down and enough stats to see what you've done without being overwhelmed. I don't know if it's cause I'm wearing pyjama trousers, but I kept needing to adjust the leg strap, apart from that everything else seemed smooth.

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

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

I finally started this today and oooooohhhh I love this game you guys. I’ve played maybe 2-3 hours or so and have just reached route 4. I went in to the Wild Area which is their open space for catching and battling Pokemon. I, hmm, I don’t hate it. But it’s also kind of dull. It’s literally just a big open area with nothing to do in it except watch Pokemon spawn out of the grass. You can catch some of them, although some are level 30 and 50 so your options are faint or run. It’s a bit annoying because to escape battles you need to use a Poketoy item which are consumable, but you don’t always know you’re about to encounter a Pokemon too strong for you so I burnt all of my items really quickly and then got knocked out a couple times. It doesn’t cost anything but some money when you get knocked out, but feels a bit unfair. Also just for the first area there were no new Pokemon, only old ones. But they did have some cool ones like Tyrogue and Xatu. But I only use new Pokemon on my first play throughs of new games. Speaking of which, of the ones I’ve seen I quite like so far. I’ve barely caught any because I only want 3 for now so I can’t tell how good they are, but design wise I like, if not love, the small handful that I’ve seen. Some screens below. My guy. I named him Armer, because, y’know, Shield version My current team Where I’m at right now. I still feel like this game is behind in terms of graphics and whatnot but if you zoom out it looks quite nice, and very different to other Pokemon games

It’s as glorious as ever. The mechanics of vacuuming everything in sight is as much as a favourite of mine as cutting grass in Zelda games. It’s more beautiful than you could ask for and the details are astonishing.

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

Picked this up last week after reading lots of glowing impressions and very positive reviews. It definitely hasn’t disappointed that’s for sure, I’ve had an absolute blast with it for sure and it’s definitely one of the best platformers I’ve played in recent years. The game takes on two dimensions. The 2D side-scrolling platforming takes up the majority of your time with it and I think the easiest way to describe how it looks, feels and plays is heavily inspired by Retro’s DKC series and Rare’s original DKC series, seeing the game at a glance in motion you’d be mistaken for thinking it’s one of Retro’s games. From the roll Yooka-Laylee do to the hidden coins dotted around the map, the similar way Laylee takes a hit through a level, the hidden doors into puzzle rooms, even the iconic barrels that rocket you around certain platforms. There is an awful lot of crossover here. Some may worry it’s a poor imitation or an uninspired clone but I assure you, to play, it’s every bit as good as it’s DKC counterparts. Worth noting there’s no rocket or mine-cart levels yet though. The second dimension to it and the biggest difference is the world map. With this the World Map is incredibly interactive and inviting, almost a game unto itself. It features a rather large Zelda-esque map filled with charmingly different locales, Pagie challenges, little puzzles to find tonics and new areas, little caves and mysterious little nooks and crannies. By changing the landscape in some way by doing the Pagie challenges you often reshape the landscape to unlock new areas to explore and alter the makeup of a previously unlocked level. A level variation is then created whereby a level can become frozen, overgrown, invaded by new enemies etc. Essentially creating an almost entirely new level to explore based on the outside environment of the world map and where the level marker is placed. The way it feels to play is incredibly reminiscent of the DKC games during the 2D levels, it just feels so incredibly tight to play and definitely has that same difficulty curve. But I think the Interactive World Map is almost just as compelling, you can completely lose yourself in the map just wandering around trying to figure where things fit together and where certain paths will take you. These two dimensions create an incredibly cohesive whole. If you’re getting bored of doing the levels then you can just wander off and explore to your hearts content, if you’re bored of exploring you can enter a level of platforming bliss in seconds. My only real criticism with it would be the level design really. The actual platforming is sublime but some of the level designs themselves are a little generic and nowhere near as joyful, varied, distinct and charming as the likes of DKC. I highly recommend it though, to anyone that’s into tough 2D platformer’s this is nirvana.

Ok. So, this game is awful. Sorry, but it is. I’ve loved the Contra series for a long time, ever since I started with the awesome Super Probotector (aka Contra 3) on the SNES. This is absolutely one of the worst entries to the series. Graphically it’s nothing special. I’ve seen worse, sure. But considering we’re at the end of this generation, it’s nothing to write home about. The effect where an enemy gets thrown into the screen, Turtles in Time style, is pretty laughable. The overheat mechanic is terrible. Your main weapon overheats in a matter of seconds, unless you hold off from keeping the fire button held down. Your secondary weapon is usually more powerful, but that overheats even faster. There’s quite often a ton of enemies on screen. So your natural reaction is to try to shoot them all. Except you can’t, because your bloody weapon overheats. Leaving you frantically rolling around, waiting a good 8 seconds before you can fight back. Within a few levels, content gets recycled. Hope you like seeing the same bosses and mini-bosses, over and over again. There is a store where you can buy upgrades, but it’s absolutely baffling. Huge amounts of stuff to buy, with not much indication of what it actually does. All of which cost an obscene level of cash to buy anyway. Oh, and if you die in a mission, none of the cash you earned gets kept. So that’s fun. You can’t pause a mission. At all. Even on your own. So you’d better not need a piss, or anything better to do for a good 30-40 minutes. To top it all off, it’s just bloody boring. The whole appeal of Contra is running and gunning your way through waves of enemies. Here, the overheat mechanic completely and utterly ruins the flow of the game. Reviews are tearing this game a new arsehole because of it. And they are absolutely right to do so. It adds nothing to the gameplay, instead it restricts you. Oh, and the spread gun? One of the most iconic weapons in the series. Here, it’s a temporary power up that you get to use for about 5 seconds. If you even find it at all in a level. Utter shite.

I thought there was a thread, there should be, Ape Out got a lot of coverage for a few days at release. It's a simple premise and a simple game. You're a captive ape and have to escape. Your captors are gun toting guards or various types, and you bound through the level smashing guards, grabbing them to use as shields, or flinging them into other people or walls. You can take 3 hits, every few sections you start a new level and get your health back. Killing the guards doesn't really do anything for you other than clear the way, there's nothing to stop you from just gunning it, which is what I tend to do and it probably does rob the game of something The thing that makes Ape Out stand out is the jazz soundtrack which is tied to what's going on in the game, and the old European cartoon look. It's a cool game. The problem is that there's not a huge amount to it. I like it but you're getting as much from it on disc 1 as you are on disc 3. You get new enemies and the challenge they throw at you changes, but it still amounts to you grabbing and splatting. For example, the game introduces enemies who smash through windows wearing body armour, they're more dangerous and more useful as weapons, but they still die from being twatted about by a gorilla

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

so yeah, it's an old zelda (gb/gbc) game given new graphics, and some other changes i guess, not sure what they've changed, there's a make your own dungeon thing, and i guess any changes in the colour version (which i haven't really played) will be in there. this is one of my early gaming memories and one of my favorite zelda games, but haven't played it in a long time so not sure what i'll think of this new version. there's some stuff/puzzles that were pretty annoying in the original version which seem to have some more hints on what to do in there now (keep the sound on - the music is ace anyway) but it still seems like it could be pretty easy to get stuck, and it's hard for me to say as i do remember some stuff from playing it before. i've done the first 2 dungeons and they're pretty short and easy other than a few bits, and think i'm on one of the best bits of the game where you get iirc the difficulty picks up. the graphics are completely different, i think the new look is pretty cool, there's some framerate problems, as in it's not completely smooth but it's not really affected me. and yeah i'm enjoying it. anyone else get it, hows it going?

Only put about 1.5 hours into it but happy so far. Think Metroidvania X Dark Souls with some extra gruesome and stunning imagery and you’re about there. Feels a bit slower and more deliberate than what I was expecting - was thinking it was going to be more Dead Cells than Dark Souls in this respect - but most importantly it feels and controls really well which is essential because it’s bastard hard!!! Don’t know if I picked a particularly difficult route to take first (top left of the map) but I’m getting battered. Its got a upgrade system too and feel like I could do with a couple of the extra abilities. Got a fair amount of upgrade points but I’m miles away from the area where you buy skills. Hoping another opens up soon. Good game so far, recommend it if the Metroid x a 2D Dark Souls sounds appealing.

So I started this, played like a 2 hours or so. It's very anime. It's also way more action RPG than you might expect. Combat is fast but grounded and overall your options seem pretty limited early on anyway. Kind of like Nier Automata. Attack, dodge, attack, dodge etc. So far. I've not fully worked it out yet. It's hard to learn so far cause theres a lot going on the screen at once and the frame rate is pretty bad. It's got a cool style though. It makes me roll my eyes when people say "X is like Bladerunner" , but this is like that. But anime and not as dark. Your "legion" does it's own thing usually, but you can leash it around and have it counters attacks while your cop guy or girl does his own thing too. Like if you see a red beam on the ground then it's a tell for a charge attack. You send your legion over and you can catch them before it hits. Stuff like that seems like it could be cool. But honestly so far it's pretty mashy and hard to follow. The frame rate is a killer. I am getting D ranks tho so my rubbishness is definitely a factor Mission 2 boss is cool though.

This is £2.50 at the minute so I picked it up. What I wasn't really expecting was that it's kind of hard? Maybe I'm missing something but there's a couple of things I've tried on it that I just can't do, not helped that the controls seem backwards to me. The general set up is that it's Tony Hawk (on a scooter) meets Splatoon. So you need to Scoot around pulling off tricks, which earns you points, but quite often the way you win is to fling more paint around than everyone else. The level I'm struggling with, which I think you can just not do, is that, only one of the racers infects other people with his colour (you too if you aren't careful), meaning he's potentially got 4 other people colouring in the map, I've managed 2nd on it once Another event is picking up crayons, you get an indicator to show where to look which helps, the controls are more of an enemy there. Which brings me to that. Jump is on the analogue stick, down then up (or just tap up), boost is on B. The tricks are also on the analogue stick rather than face buttons, I think my old man brain still remembers jump in this kind of game being a button press, I'd rather that. Progress is 2-fold as far as I can tell. You earn medals for winning events, but levelling up gets you challenged, beat the racer who has challenged you and you climb the leader board, plus you open up new worlds to race events in The other issues are the loading and generally how long it takes to get in to an event. I'd rathe menus than a hub world really. It's not bad though, more work than I expected or wanted so I probably won't stick with it. I might try it on the tv at some point and see if that's a better experience than handheld

There's a new Picross RPG game that was both announced and launched today. @Hendo https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/PictoQuest-1617140.html Currently 15% off.