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So this is the action rogue-like from makers of Bastion and Transistor. It's a very good one. It has a lot of potential stuff in terms of weapons, buffs and abilities for a run that come together in some surprisingly interesting ways. I don't really want to go into it all, because there is so much and it's a bit of a spoiler, in a way. I do think anyone who likes Dead Cells will have a hard time not getting into this too. It's got the same kind of fast, dash-y combat but I'd argue the upgrades are probably more interesting because they're tied to more than your attacks. I guess Dead Cells has some of that but it's robust with a bigger variety of abilities that can tie to your dash, for example. But Dead Cells is better in some other ways. They're both cool and good; get both! I'm also quite enjoying the story more than I expected. It's set in Greek mythologies' underworld and done in quite traditional way in that it's mostly a family squabble the consequences of which is big, dramatic and violent fights and supernatural displays of power. It's kinda fun that you're trying to escape the underworld in a rogue-like and no-one really cares that you're doing that because they know you'll die and be back. Some give quiet encouragement or Hades himself just rolls his eyes as you leave. It's played pretty straight and it's cool to hang out in that starting area before the intense combat. I'm not sure how many stages there are but the best I've done is get to the third boss, who are a pair of cheaters. I dunno how I'm meant to do it right now. I think since I don't have a brilliant way to do a well synchronised build yet, just out of inexperience, but I'll get it.

Tonight I'm going to try this now that the server kerfuffle has seemingly passed. Can we get enough to fill a 3v3 game? Nothing serious, rotate teams after every game unless it becomes one sided. It'd be nice to get a bunch of us on and talking to one another, it seems to be ages since that happened last. I'm looking at around 7 or 8 for kick off until whenever people get fed up and leave. Who's interested?

I've seen this described as a cross between mirrors edge and super meat boy. i think that's a good description, i also really like both of those games, it's a first person platformer with instant restarts, quite a lot of checkpoints, and one hit kill for you and the enemies. but it seems more random than 2D stuff like this as you can't see everthing that's shooting at you. it's sort of amazing. but also really hard and frustrating. in the first 5 levels or so i'd already thought i might have to give up on two different sections. the enemies are very good at shooting guns, maybe a bit too good, you can jump over them and they'll still shoot you instantly, you just have to keep moving and hope you don't get hit. i tried playing cloudbuilt twice (two different versions) and had to give up quite far in both times, i have a feeling this might be similar. really not sure i'll be able to finish it, so an easier mode would be a good addition, but no regrets buying it (although only paid a tenner), it's been mostly great so far. i've just done the first boss, which comes quite late, think i'm on about level 7 or 8 or something, when i saw it it my thoughts were that it's awesome but i might not be able to do it. it took me about 30 mins and 200 deaths, there's a video of someone making it look easy in the spoiler below, this also shows why the game is so good: dunno if anyone else is interested in this? oh and although there are loads of checkpoints these don't save, you have to get to the end of the level for it to save. oh oh and there's powerups and stuff, i can deflect bullets back, but the timing is strict (you can upgrade it) so i just keep swiping and sometimes it saves me a death.

Honestly, surprised there's no thread for this yet. I've put a few hours into this since Friday, and you know what? It's fucking fantastic. It's a metroidvania in every way, maybe a little bit more linear than normal, but it subverts the traditional hero storyline by making you the bad guy. And it's so fucking refreshing. You play as this weird... Form thingy. Movement feels really smooth, if a little cumbersome at first, but there's no jumping, there's no unreachable ledges, you just slide through each screen, and once you get the hang of it it feels so satisfying. You slowly accumulate more and more powers, your size grows as you play through the game, and it brings lots of little elements in that are plenty of fun. The art style is incredible too. The sci-fi side reminds me of Alien 3 on SNES, the animation and artwork of the enemies (so the good guys in this case) is very much like Another World, the world created is just so impressive. It's one of the few games I've played recently where my mind has just hit that point of 'i need to fucking play this'. It's an outstanding idea, and as someone who doesn't normally like Devolver games, it's an absolute credit to their portfolio.

Second up in my GamePass games that can be completed in a couple of hours; The Procession to Calvary. A point and click adventure based on Renaissance art that's heavily inspired by Terry Gillingham. Not for the easily offended/religious types - this is the follow up game to Joe Richardson's Four Last Things. It follows a woman who is back from a murder spree in a Holy war and wants to do one final murder as it's now frowned upon. Whilst the humour won't be to everyone's taste, I was laughing out loud from the offset. The game is bonkers. As with my last post, I won't go into it too much as I don't want to spoil it, but a couple of highlights were helping a street magician off a crucifix as he was turning water into wine that killed people, and giving snuff to a midget so he played music faster.

Genuinely surprised there isn't a thread for this already. It seems like a game that would be quite popular in here. I started playing this last night in a "I'm gonna play it for 20 minutes and if I don't like it's getting deleted" kind of mood. I'm now 7-8 hours in and it's great fun! Remember Golf Story? It's has a similar sort of Sports-PG charm to it. There's tons of humour running through, and the graphical style is a bit like the Gumball cartoon. You play as Otto, a transfer student to a Dodgeball school, and someone who wants to be world-renowned on the sport. There's a relatively small world to explore, but lots of fun little side quests and plenty of battles to take part in. Speaking of battles, they're a lot of fun too. You play Dodgeball, so if you know the rules you'll have a leg up. Might be worth watching the Ben Stiller film to refresh your Dodge, Duck, Dip, Dive, and Dodge memory. There are charge moves, counters, special moves, and all sorts of fun stuff happening on the court. Matches take place in anything from 1 on 1 to 1 Vs 6, or 3 on 3 contests, and the first to lose their HP loses the game. I've noticed TONS of homages to Pokémon. From the Dodgeball logo to the battle loading sound effect, a medical centre to refresh your team, and battles in long grass, it's just got loads of cool little nods to Nintendo's most lucrative franchise. From what I've read it's not super long, but it's really fucking awesome. I genuinely love this game.

Just by typing the title I realised they could just have dropped the "2" from it, nobody played the first one anyway unfortunately and it would look nicer visually. Anyway - I've finally started playing this over the weekend. Due to certain circumstances I didn't get as much time with it as I had hoped (see here), but I did manage to finish the prologue of sorts which takes about 5 hours. Lots of good things here with few negative stuff, but overall so far it's pretty much exactly what I would have wanted from a sequel. Fundamentally it's still Monster Hunter x Pokémon, meaning you gotta breed them all by collecting and hatching monsters from eggs. Those monsters will then accompany you on your travels and both help for traversal on the map due to their faster running speed or other special skills (jumping, cimbing, swimming etc.) and during combat. During combat you only have limited control over them, but each has its own tendencies, so switching between them depending on the enemy is the way to go. The basics of combat being rock-paper-scissors haven't changed, so you still use this feature to build up the Kinship Gauge, which is basically a mana pool that allows you to use skills and command your monster more directly by letting it use special moves as well. New to Wings of Ruin are weapon classes. In the first game your weapon only influenced the skills you could use as your character was more of a support for your monster, but this time you play a more virtal role and can target weaknesses with a weapon type that is particularly effective. An early example is smashing the rock a monster uses for a weapon with the hammer, or cutting its tail with a greatsword. Outside of combat it's a classic JRPG experience with semi-big HUB areas, quests, treasure chests and such. One thing I have mixed feelings about is the NPC partner that's with you most of the time during these initial 5 hours. I don't have anything against the character and she's certainly easy on the eyes, but it takes away from the feeling of it being a solitary adventure, with only you and your Monsters à la Pokémon. Now it could be that she goes her own way at some point but the fact that she levels up after combat and that some enemies have rather huge HP pools I get the feeling that it's designed to have a party of two (or four, technically) most of the time. There's been a lot of talk online about the technical side of the game. In context with the hardware it's running on, it's certainly less impressive that the original. Where MHS1 was basically a triple-A game on 3DS, this feels more of a budget mid-tier game that suffers from a low-ish framerate and some horrible pop-in. It's not without its charms though, as it has a very vibrant and nice style, the character models are great and during combat it really shines with impressive animations and effects. And the sound effect that plays when you land a critical hit on a downed monster might just be one of the most satisfying I've ever heard in the game.

i wasn't sure if i should start a thread for this as i know illdog is waiting on it (anyone else?) and i don't want to put a downer on it before he tries it so i'll start off by saying i got the arcade version of this over a year ago, and absolutely loved it, thought it was the best thing ever it's great how you collect gems from enemies and can use these to go into a slowdown/bullet time mode to get out of tight spots - just like the first espgaluda. this is playing by mostly ignoring scoring. then i tried to get a hang of the scoring and it just hurts my brain and makes me not like it, i understand the basics behind it, but regarding knowing what mode to use at what time there's so many options it's hard to know what to do - but i really want to give it another go now the port is out - i'm going to be downloading a lot of replays and just try and pick up some good ideas. here are the basics of the system for the arcade and 360 modes i tried to explain on another site: "in normal mode shooting enemies gives you green gems, you need these to go into the first slowdown mode (i don't know what they're called - the one where you tap the button), in the first slowdown mode killing enemies gives you gold from their bullets (like in espgaluda 1), to go into the second slowdown mode (hold the button) you need both gold and green gems, in the second slowdown mode when you kill an enemy, it's bullets dissapear briefly then double and head towards you and give you a big score multiplier (or something like that) - this is where you get all the points, or not in my case. in both slowdown modes i think you automatically use some of your bomb/barrier instead of dying, and there's the over mode where the bullets go faster, which happens when you run out of gold/green gems in the slowdown modes." if you're going for survival you can just ignore the second slowdown mode, although it's a good idea to use it on some bosses for points to get the extends - like the last pattern of the level 2 boss - it doesn't make the bullets follow you on the bosses either. The port also has a load of other modes - black label, arrange, omake, and some novice modes. i tried most of them: Arrange has different colour bullets (blue and red) you can cancel by using shot/laser (little bit like ikaruga), i didn't fully understand what was going on but i really liked what i played of this mode Omake needs to be unlocked by finishing one of the other modes (by credit feeding in my case), this also has some bullet canceling but it's based on proximity, the bullets close to you turn red and when you swap between the normal and slowdown mode these disapear, they also disapear when you're in some sort of powered up mode - i think when you get full jems and gold and you shoot something? unclear. anyway i liked this mode too although again didn't fully understand it. black label i didn't really like but maybe that's because i understood it even less, in the normal mode - enemy bullets turn into gold when you kill the enemy they came from, and the slowdown modes seemed to make it harder rather than easier, and there was some sort of forcefield around your ship so you can push bullets that are really close to hitting you out of the way but this seems to run out - i really hadn't a clue what was going on in this mode i hope i've not got any modes mixed up as i just gave them all a full run through last night.

Been playing this for roughly two weeks now and nearing the 50 hour mark. Probably won't be a forum favourite but there's frustratingly little talk about this gem online so here goes. This is based on an anime based on a game, which sounds like some Hollywood nonsense but it makes sense on closer inspection. The original is a f2p PC and mobile card game which got turned into an anime and the anime serves as a base for this game, which doubles as an introduction to its systems and an enjoyable little PRG-light experience on the side. The general gameplay is you're running around your school and other little hub areas and play cards against different NPCs you come across. Progress is being made by beating key players, ranking up in tournamenets or just simply talking to people. So your enjoyment of a game like that obviously boils down to how much you enjoy the central card game, and I've kind of fallen in love with it. It's similar to existing games -- a bit of Hearthstone here, some Magic there, a little Fable Fortune sprinkled on top -- but there's a couple of things that set it apart, first and foremost the feature to evolve your monsters. There's a limited amount of times you can do this and it has a couple of benefits like allowing it to attack in the same turn, increasing its stats and depending on the card it might also activate a secondary effect. The other unique aspect is that there's factions you can choose from but unlike, say, the colours from Magic you can't mix and match, so when you choose to play with a Forestcraft deck, you can't put any cards from Dragoncraft in it. There are, however, some neutral cards that fit everywhere, meaning the deckbuilding process doesn't feel too limited by that aspect. The factions themselves have some unique attributes, like Shadowcraft cards getting special effects the bigger your cemetery of cards is, which adds an extra layer to the overall strategy. I can't say anything about baalnce because that's mostly PvP territory but from the decks I've come across most of them feel viable but some are quite a bit harder to use than others. What I enjoy outside of the card battle is the overall vibe of it. It's a bit puerile with its saturday morning cartoon themes, but there's something very charming about how serious everyone takes the game (like the dramatic music that plays when someone mentions that his phone got stolen for example). It's not 24/7 Shadowverse dialogue though, thankfully. Unlike Pokémon these people do a bit more with their lives than just talk about the thing that is printed on the cover. During some Persona style social links you can learn a bit more about the important NPCs and I liked how one of them used the fairy cards in her deck as an inspiration to become an actress in a fantasy play. It's all very lighthearted, but as I said, very charming. It's also not a run-of-the-mill cheap licensed tie-in. While it's not particularly impressive on a technical level, they really put a lot of details and quality of life features in. For example, every NPC you beat gives you his/her deck code, which means that you can simply recreate their deck with the press of a button if you happen to own the necessary cards. That takes away the (IMO) cumbersome process of coming up with entirely original decks on your own (which is still possible as an alternative). You can still change them up later and maybe work around a weakness you noticed when playing against them. On the visual side there's a lot of nice little touches, like your room filling up with medals and trophies the more you win, tons of different posters hanging around, some cutscenes being animated (specifically for the game, too, as they feature your player character), characters having different writing style when they contact you with messages etc. Going back to what maf said in the hot topic thread, this is not a 10/10 and also not a perfect game. But this might be the most enjoyable game of the year so far for me and a strong contender for my personal GotY spot. In case this piques anyone's interest even a little bit, there's a very good demo available on the eShop and the save file can be transferred over the main game.

Spent a few hours with this on Sunday... what with deaths and stuff I didn't make it too far. The game starts with you (as Caroline Walker) receiving a postcard from missing twins pointing to an abandoned mansion/hospital, of course she decides to traipse over there and ends up being knocked out... she wakes naked in a bath, connected to respirator and missing an eye. The game straight up plays like the old style Resident Evils, fixed camaras with tank controls... although the new controls included in Remake are also present here. Early on you are given a Nail Gun and Crowbar, these are the primary attack choices through the game... I know you later get a Shotgun too. Enemies are a lot quicker than your standard zombies so I've taken to shooting until they fall then caving in their skulls with the melee weapon. It's gone really old style with limited saves (that work just like Resi) and no auto save at all, you die you lose the progress... and that sometimes hurts, I think I've been conditioned with modern gaming that not much is lost on death. I got to a certain point on Sunday where I basically had to tap out a rhythm on a door knocker to open a door and was convinced that my game was bugged, it must have taken me 15 minutes to get through that bastard door... I turned it off minutes after that but up until then I was enjoying it a lot... they've nailed the atmosphere. Looking forward to getting back to it tomorrow.

I was sure there was a thread for this, but apparently not. If anyone sees it post the link and I'll merge Neo The World Ends With You plays quite a bit differently than the original The World Ends With You. Rather than knock a puck between screens, because now there aren't 2 screens, you're instead using your teammates in a battle arena, do enough damage with one of them there'll be a moment where the enemy is vulnerable to a combo attack where you carry on the attack with a different character. Doing this fills a meter that lets you launch more powerful attacks, but I can't say I've been using the special all that much really. The thing that makes the combat notable, in theory, is that each character is assigned a button based on what pin they're assigned (TWEWY is all about badges 🦡 ). So you mash the X button, then when there's a prompt that the enemy is vulnerable or that character has ran out of attack power, you switch to the Y button, or R, L, ZR, ZL, whatever it is. It means you can be looking at meters a lot, seeing if people are available to attack, although as you stick with the pins you just learn the rhythm of them. It's worth stick with some too as they all have the ability to level up or evolve, so stick with them to max out their potential, then switch to the next one. Nothing new to use, then stick on a powerful one you like The tone of the game is similar to the original game, to a point. It's not as misanthropic as Neku could be, but the flip side to that is that the supporting cast can be very annoying. That Japanese game/anime thing of a character having a particular trait, like really liking maths, so every word out of their mouth is about maths. There's precious few characters I can say I like because of this, there's one from another team who seems alright, but then constantly throws in Spanish, Italian of French phrases because he's travelled, rpgs are too long for that king of shit Given that the premise of what TWEWY is about was already revealed in the first game, to mix things up in this one everyone has latent powers. Fret can plant words in people's heads to remind them or influence them, Nagi (a character you get a few days in, it's a while before you get a full team) can rid them of corruption, and Rin can travel back in time. It's all narrative based, and Rin's power does mean a little too much fucking around, but it's better than them holding back the reveal most of the people playing already know I'll say, so far because it took until the end of the first week for me to click with the first game, that it's not a patch on the original. Which is fine, I just want it to be good, and at the minute it's just a bit dull. Possibly my fault for getting in to too many fights, but it could do with being tighter and a little punchier. The day I'm on at the minute is basically a Conquest mode, I need to run around taking on other teams in their zones to earn points, it's something a little novel and different from what's gone on before, even if I suspect they'll change things and revert back to the fannying around of the first few days

This is very good. The original was a pretty unique take on classic Metroid but this is something else. It still has recognisable hallmarks, especially in relation to the first game but it takes the unique aspects of that and uses those to build off. If anything it proves it wasn't a fluke and the unique aspects can carry a game. I dunno how many people here want to play it as I don't really want to talk about it too much at this point as the abilities you get are unconventional half the time and help keep the exploration a puzzle. It's pretty difficult though since it's mostly melee combat, but it could have been just me adjusting to it from playing the original right before this. The exploration isn't always easy, too. It keeps it a little easier since bosses can just be ran past if you're not feeling like you're ready for them on top of the very light stealth elements for regular enemies. Exploration is the core of the game. I'm stumped at the moment. I'm blocked off from where I need to go but I'm in that situation where do I need an ability I'm missing or is there some hidden way and I gain the ability in the place. I'm leaning to the latter since I've combed most of the (pretty large) map.

You know the first thing about this that made me smile? It comes with a manual! I can't really recall the last game I had that came with a real one? Anyway, this game (at time of writing, I'm not upto the second boss yet) warrants being remade. The original game was made in 1986. Gaming has changed a bit in 35 years and a straight up port isn't really going to garner any positive attention. Which, looking at some reviews and scores, this really has. Which, so far, I can only agree it deserves. Oh and two things. 1) I never played this Alex Kidd game, so there's nothing rose tinted there. 2) I definitely won't be playing this with the infinite lives cheat on. With how extremely generous auto-saving is in this remake, it isn't really necessary.

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.

Continuing my Indie binge with Hollow Knight. Heard lots of good things about this game earlier this year and saw a Let's Play from Easy Allies of the first two-ish hours of it, has been on my Steam wishlist ever since. For those that don't know, it's an Indie Metroidvania game set in an eerie melancholic bug-world. I've enjoyed it quite a lot, being new to the Metroidvania genre I didn't really know what to expect, I've seen an awful lot of great indie Metroidvania games and kind of got turned off them in the past as there's just so many, I'm glad I gave this a go though because it's now a genre I'd like to explore more. For starters it doesn't hold your hand at all, you get a very brief control tutorial and are then left to explore the world. It doesn't explain anything at all, and if I hadn't of watched the EZA Let's Play I would've been a bit lost on where to go and what to do, luckily that gave me a brief idea. It was still a bit disconcerting exploring areas and not knowing where the fuck you are in the slightest, no map, no idea where the next Rest point is, no idea where the entrance to the next area is or anything though. Luckily you realise how the map system works pretty early on and then discover a vendor to add new areas to it, mark your location on the map etc. All incredibly useful. The gameplay loop is pretty similar to Souls I guess, if you die you loose all your 'Geo', you get Geo by killing enemies. The most innovative mechanic is that when you kill enemies you get souls that you then use to replenish your health, which adds to the whole risk/reward system of the game as it makes you want to attack more in combat in order to get more Souls to heal in the heat of a battle, it is a balance at times as your Soul supply can be used for other things too. You use a small sword for the combat (called a 'nail') which enabled you to hit enemies in any 360 degree direction, there's a lot of enemy variety on offer, when you go into a new area you have to learn their mannerisms all over again, there's a few areas with traps for you to fall into (similar to Souls) too, it always feels fresh and involving. It has that Souls feeling about it to about worrying where the next save point is, knowing you've got 1000+ Geo on you and whether to venture into the next area where a boss may be waiting or head back to a previous area and save. I won't give too much away but new mechanics are introduced as you go along that unlock new locales, one changes the platforming significantly and one changes the combat to a significant degree as well, the game never points you to these so presumably you could go the entire game without discovering them. There's also a system similar to the rings in Souls where you can get slightly more Souls when you defeat an enemy, a bit more health etc. but the slots are incredibly limited at this time meaning you have to choose very wisely which you want to equip. The game looks absolutely stunning, it has a really unique art-design about it, it's cartoonish but the backgrounds and levels managed to look realistic and give a very lived-in, ancient kind of vibe. By far and away the best thing about the game is the music though, it is just absolutely incredible and makes the each area feel special and meaningful, when you go to your first town and a certain song plays it's just so melancholic and haunting at the same time, it really is very special. The noises the characters you meet along the way make are fantastic too, they put so much personality in them just from gibberish and grunts. A few pics:

So, this has finally seen a multiformat release (it’s out on PS4 tomorrow but pre-orders get it a day early). The Ghosts series is something I’ve always enjoyed, but rarely managed to finish. I did complete Super Ghouls N Ghosts on the SNES back in the day, which certainly took some doing. In terms of difficulty, this is certainly the most player friendly yet. If you fancy a serious challenge, stick it on Legend. Squire, the lowest difficulty gives you several hits before you die, but apparently locks away some content, though I don’t know what yet. It’s still a tough game. I died several times against the first boss. And it still has the typical death traps that will almost certainly kill you the first time, due to how unpredictable they are. I do miss the double jump feature from Super GnG, as a lot of my deaths have come from falling into pits. Or getting overwhelmed by constantly respawning enemies. I’ve reached Level 3. The second boss was a bloody chore. We shall see how it goes…

So, I just started this up. I’m actually surprised Konami got off their arse to put this together. They’ve been absolute morons for years, and done literally nothing with their numerous IPs. All they did last year was Metal Gear Survive, which I don’t even need to comment on. So I genuinely wasn’t expecting them to bother with a collection like this. Contra is getting one later in the year, and I bloody love Contra, so will naturally check that out. Anyways. How does this hold up? Pretty good, really. The first game in the series i ever played was 4, due to never owning a NES back in the day. It remains one of my favourite games of all time, from the gameplay to the gorgeous soundtrack. I didn’t think we’d see this anywhere other than a Nintendo console. But I’m very glad to be replaying it. As it’s just as brilliant now, as it was then. I never played the Megadrive version, again due to not owning one at the time. So I’m looking forward to giving that a shot, as it’s generally held in high regard. As for the rest? You’ve got all 3 of the NES games, which I will get though after 4 and Bloodlines. Two gameboy games, which don’t look especially great, but I’ll play them for completions sake. And Kid Dracula, which I have no idea if it’s any good or not. As is par for the course in these kind of collections, you can quick save your game at any time. Though on the PS4 version, you access the save menu by pressing the Share button. Which of course either takes a screenshot, or video, depending on your setting. And there’s no way of changing that to say, the Options button, or touchpad. It’s weird. Maybe they’ll sort it out in a future update perhaps. There’s no way to change button configuration either. You also get access to various promotional material/ concept art of all the games, which is a nice touch.

i've played persona games before but no smt games, i guess so far it seems pretty similar but without the daily routine/social link stuff, and the demons/personas are in your party rather than being sort of summoned. you have to talk to the demons to try and recruit them, although this is often bollocks as they ask for loads of stuff and then just run away, i still like it though, they say weird things and it can be pretty funny. the demons mostly look familiar too as they're pretty much the same from the persona games. i'm playing the super easy mode (which is free dlc), and it's really easy, i could have coped with some more difficulty, maybe a mode inbetween the normal one and the super easy one. but it's supposed to be quite long so the super easy mode should help with that. it's probably a good job i'm on the easy mode too as my main heal spell changed into something useless, and i've probably given most of my good healing items to demons while trying to recruit them. so i don't have many ways of healing at the moment but it hasn't made much difference. minor spoiler for stuff near the start of the game this is a ps2 game i think, i'm not sure if any graphics have been upgraded, it doesn't really look like it, it just looks like a ps2 game in much higher resolution. so far it's alright, i'm quite enjoying it but it's not been amazing or anything. i'm going to keep playing anyway.

There's kind of been 3 types of Ys games over the years. The first couple you just bashed in to enemies, then they became hyper, isometric, all about attacking. Then we got to the 3D versions and it was still a game about going on the attack, but now what type of attack was important. You'd eventually gather 3 characters, a sword character (red), a blunt attack character (blue), and a piercing character (green), different enemy types are weak to different attack types, and you can switch on the fly to suit And that's how it's been for a few games now. Ys IX follows the same formula, but brings in a more traditional RPG structure. Previously side quests would task you with just getting certain drops, you'd get them from your home base, which was a tiny area, and that would be it. 99.9% of the time you were out killing things Ys IX is a little different, structured like a traditional JRPG, it starts slow, with the plot set up, then some short easy combat to ease you in, then a chunk more story. The world is no longer 1 small safe area then a world of combat, instead you're in a city, with combat, shopping, side quests, and exploration taking place throughout, I've not seen this in an Ys game before, even if it's fairly typical for the genre. You're eased in to the world with quests to visit shops and buy gear, it's a little slow going. There's still "dungeons", sections where there's nothing but combat and exploration, but now there's also little dimension pockets where you can enter combat and fight a handful of enemies, then just carry on with whatever you were supposed to be doing The tower defence style sections are still here, now you're whisked away at certain points to fight as a team, protecting a crystal, against waves of enemies. Not especially interesting, and the camera annoyed me a little with this, it maybe could do with being pulled back a bit so you see more of the field, but then they've not been too demanding so far, so maybe it doesn't matter also it's all anime goth now

Who'd have thought this would be any good? Also, it's pretty much the game that swayed me to finally get a Switch, bizarrely. I've gone through the tutorial stages and the first 3 levels in the first world, I think. Unlocked some new abilities and picked up everything I can find in the over world, so far. Haven't bought any weapons yet. It is pretty much My First XCom, complete with the option to do "easy mode" before you start each battle so you can have more health to play with. I've not bothered with that just yet. It looks gorgeous and the opening cinematic is very Pixar. I'm sure it won't happen, but I'd love a competitive multiplayer to be added in, that could work really well.

I was just two and a half hours playing the Balan Wonderworld demo. It’s not half as bad as I’d heard on podcasts that had also clearly only played the first two levels of world one before turning it off and deciding to tell everyone it’s the worst game ever. The opening levels are a bit crap but the later sheep and the cog worlds are much better. I’m not talking Mario levels of quality but certainly gets better than the opening world. Plus the later costumes you find you can use when you go back to previous worlds to get to further trophies which in turn opens up more worlds. The music is also better later on. Not completely awful but an alright time waster and with so few games of its kind on xbox and PlayStation beggars can’t be choosers.

Finished this over the weekend, really enjoyed it, you basically beat the crap out of loads of bad dudes. it's fun. send your team to different parts of the map and switch between them to get stuff done faster. the dodge/flurry and countering baddies with bombs/ice and that stuff is good fun. and the characters play a bit differently, which is good, mixes it up a bit. there's a really cool move impa does where she there's a big world map with main missions, loads of side missions, and fetch quest style missions - and while i don't like fetch quest stuff this is at least reasonably well done here with an icon on the map tells you what you need, you can mark it to show what missions you need to do to collect the stuff, then just click on the icon to complete it - no messing around talking to people. there are absolutely loads of side missions, i'm making up numbers here but say there are 40 on the map, i maybe did 10, there's probably more i've not unlocked. the weapon merging/leveling up is a bit annoying and boring. was playing it pretty slow, mission or 2 a day, the game timer said it took 30 hours or so, it seemed like less though, not sure. there's still loads of stuff to do, including what looks like more story stuff after the credits possibly. the story was cool how it fits in with botw, although i forgot some of the plot of that which confused me First time i've played a dynasty warriors/musou game, i'd probably play another but bad timing as the persona one is out in a few weeks, doubt i'll want to play one again so soon. oh yeah it looks really nice too, although performance sometimes takes a hit - i didn't find it too bad.

bit surprised there isn't already a thread for this I played both of the demos, the first one really didn't do a lot for me, but I think it might have been the character I picked. Apparently they're all viable, but when you're fighting with just 1 character I suspect some are more fun to use than others. The 2nd demo, the 3 hour one, did a lot more for me and convinced me to buy the full game The team that made this made Bravely Default, and it shows in the combat system. Each turn you gain a BP, you can use this to double up, or if you save it treble, and quadruple up moves. For a standard attack this will mean hitting 2,3,4 times, for a spell it means it will be much more powerful. You can't go in to 'debt' like in Bravely default, you can only use what you have. The reason the BP is important is because enemies have shield points, you can only reduce their shield by hitting their weaknesses. They still take damage regardless, but if you remove their shield they'll be more vulnerable and will skip a turn. If you knock the shield down at the start of your turn you can effectively have 2 full turns of them in a weakened state. Characters are dealt with in kind of a unique way. You can start anywhere with anyone, play through their story (chapter 1), then set off in to the world. Chapter 2 would require you to be about level 24, so while you're grinding you might as well pick up a bunch of new recruits, the other 8 characters. You can play each of their chapter 1s, which helps level them up, and you unless you're miles ahead at that point. this is where my main issue with the game has started to creep in. I'm about to collect my 5th party member, which means I've got to sit through some fairly dull writing (I liked the merchant's story tbf) for the 4th time, babysit a low level character while I burn magic with my stronger ones, who don't level up as often so don't get a free refill as often, although I should say replenish items are fairly common. When you're picking off weaknesses it can make fights a little drawn out. Basically, it's good, but my initial rush of enjoyment from the first 4 hours or so has started to wain. It's a wearing game just because you're repeating the same gameplay loop over and over

I didn't entirely know what to expect from this but gave it a go, well you take pictures of pokemon, but i thought it'd be more like an arcade game where you're scored per run on how good your pictures are or something. it's not really like that, you're more scored on individual pictures. for each pokemon there's 4 star levels of picture - which is dependent on what the pokemon is doing, and for each star level you're rated on how good the picture is. the game doesn't really know how good a picture is, i've taken some great pics and the game just tells me they're crap. it's based on more simple stuff like is the pokemon looking at you, does it fill the picture, stuff like that, which does make sense most of the time. and you can do stuff to try and change what the pokemon is doing - such as throwing an apple at it, or playing a tune. it's pretty fun, nice and relaxing, been playing for maybe 10 hours or so, it's good for 30 to 60 min go, not sure i'd want to play it for hours at a time. sometimes i miss something and keep having to replay a level to get it but the levels are pretty short so it's not really a problem, you're supposed to replay them. you can only submit one photo per pokemon at the end of a level which does seem like it's just to make the game longer, but i guess it does add an element of risk in which one you should choose/will it be worth more points than one you already have, or do you pick a crap one from a star level you don't currently have etc. I'm not always sure how you unlock more levels, but probably from leveling up the levels by scoring points on them (which makes more stuff happen on them and new pokemon show up) and sometimes they ask you to photo something specific. not really sure what to say about it overall, i'm quite enjoying it, but it's not super exciting or anything. if you want a game about taking pictures of pokemon - it's great! i'll probably end up having to look at a guide for how to get some of the different star level pictures.

edit - realised i didn't really explain the game - you're the bosses son or something and he gives you a job in this huge office building, you do jobs to work your way up, like deliver parcels, fix projectors, assemble robots. but you're incompetent and generally destroy everything. and then you get promoted. Got this in a recent sale. it's a bit all over the place and i didn't really like it at first but quite like it now. think i'm on level 6 of 9 or so. It's one of those type of games i think looks fun in theory but not sure i'd have fun playing it, like surgeon simulator or that octopus dad game - but i don't really know how close it is to these as i haven't played them. there is definitely some game in good job anyway but the controls can be really annoying sometimes - mainly when trying to maneuver/drag stuff around. and it can be pretty funny destroying an office just to put a box in the right place or install wifi or whatever. the points for destroying stuff i don't really understand as you should get points for it because it's fun but you don't, it seems to mark you down for it but at the same time doesn't seem to matter - seems like the main thing is to do stuff fast to get a better rank - but i'm not totally sure about all the scoring stuff. quite a few of the missions, especially near the start, can be boring/repetitive, but there are some great missions too. i think it generally gets better but it might be just me getting used to it. not sure, but after a bad start am quite enjoying it now anyway. did anyone else play this?