Search the Community

Steamworld Heist is a game that’s out on everything. It was initially released on 3DS in 2015, and I’ve played it for a couple of hours on Switch. It’s a fun turn-based space faring rpg with an eye-catching visual style. Battles take place inside ships and the ship layouts are randomised. Missions are selected from a node-based map. I’ve been playing on the default “Experienced” difficulty and it seems like a reasonable challenge. I’ve had a couple of characters die during missions. When a character dies they don’t receive experience for that mission but they are resurrected when the mission is over. The game has all the features that you would expect from the genre - special abilities, equipment, loot, new characters to recruit - but it’s the visual style and the ricocheting of bullets (as you can see in the picture) that makes it unique and fun.

I just realised we don't have a thread for this. It came out in Japan in 2014 but only came out over here last year. As you can see by the tags, it's out on pretty much everything bar PC. For anyone that doesn't know, Puyo Puyo is Mean Bean Machine and it mixes that with Tetris. The game modes are insane. You can play against people playing one style while you play the other one (or the same if you like), you can play a weird hybrid mode where the two styles are combined and you will get Puyos and Tetris pieces in the same zone, you can play an alternating mode where you play one style for say 30 seconds and then it switches to the other style, or you can play a puzzle mode where you have to fill in certain puzzle shapes. I played quite a bit in multiplayer over the Christmas break and it gets really fierce and fun. I wouldn't recommend playing online against randoms because fucking hell. You can view replays of other people playing and they are like machines.

I never did get round to playing the first one on the Wii but that can be said for a lot of my Wii collection. A rainy (and jobless) Thursday last week however prompted me to unwrap the second one (part of my 360 backlog). So its Mickey and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey with a paintbrush that can use paint to fill things out or thinner to erase stuff. Oswald has a remote control that shoots electricity so as to open gates via control panels and he can also shock enemies with it. You traverse between hub worlds, each laden with NPC's that give you seemingly no end of stuff to do via sidequests. The hubworlds are connected by projectors that are basically 2.5D A to B platformers full of tickets (the in game currency) and little secret routes hiding more goodies. It's littered with little problems, depth perception being one, inconsistent jumping being another and camera angles to drop on top. I often felt that each jump was too high for Mickey, he can double jump but even then it felt like I was clipping through the top of platforms as opposed to landing on them. Oswald is also a complete cunt, one of the dopiest NPC's i've ever had the misfortune of having no control over. He has knocked me of platforms to my death, gotten stuck about 8 miles away leading me to back track so he can navingate the simplist of obstacles and he sometimes outright refuses to stand where I need him to 50% of the time. Mickey can throw Oswald in the air and jump up and catch his legs so they can glide to far away platforms, problem here is Oswald always goes far too high up in the air to start with therefore you have to wait five or so seconds for him to slowly float down so you can grab him. And that's fucking annoying! Yet... despite these irritants, it's a good game which is not at all what I expected. I really enjoyed it. The platforming was fun and the bosses were fairly inventive. I found loads of secrets and it turns out I didn't find even half of them. I felt like I ploughed through it a bit too quick but I do find myself wanting to go back and explore a bit more. Your actions have consequences as well, depending on how nice you are (by using paint to befriend enemies instead of thinner to destroy enemies) so it does warrent another playthrough if you feel so inclined. There are costumes and badges to collect, photo's to take, gremlins and spirits to find. I just didn't expect the game to be such a package. Reckon i might check out the first one.

Played the first 90 minutes or so of this earlier. Been wanting to play this for absolute donkeys years but missed the boat on its first 360/PS3 release, got it on PS+ but by then my PS3 was unplugged and in the cupboard, so just been biding my time for it to get to a price I'm comfortable paying on Steam. I never played the NES original so have no reference for how faithful a remaster/remake etc. it is, I vaguely remember them saying they got the original voice actors back but I'm not sure of that. Anyhoo, the game is pretty good, I roughly knew what to expect by watching footage years back, I knew about the pogo stick beforehand and am familiar with the characters from watching the TV show as a kid, got a kick out of hearing the theme tune when I first booted the game up. The gameplay really surprised me by how tight it controlled, it controls really nicely and I got into the Platforming very early on. Not really sure what the point is of it other than get a shit-load of cash and the level selection seems rather limited, but yeah I'm having a great time with it I have to say, reminds me of DKCR a bit with the hidden paths that there are to find, it has actually exceeded my expectations in a lot of ways. Had to restart after getting stuck on the first 'proper' level though, bloody hard it is! Feels like it has retained its NES-era difficulty for sure, can't imagine how difficult it would be on Hard! So yeah, restarted after getting stuck on the first level and went through the tutorial and eventually completely the first Amazon level on Easy. Will pick it up again tomorrow.

The reviews aren't lying. This is without a doubt fast becoming my favourite Zelda game of all time. The very first mission you complete for the old man is in itself a sprawling adventure despite never leaving the starting area. I don't want to say much because spoilers but I'll lay down some control impressions. At first I could see why people felt they would need a pro controller. The joy cons feel small and it's jarring after having a dualshock in your hands. However the controls were never problematic and after an hour of learning the buttons I was able to do everything I needed without a second thought. You do not need a pro to play botw any better than you can with the joy cons. The system itself works as has been shown for almost 2 months now. Everything is clean and crisp. It's lacking Nintendo charm to the ui that both charmed and put people off the system but there's still no doubting this is a Nintendo product with the little touches it has. Screen shot works great. Much much faster than ps4 as is going from the home menu to back to your suspended game. It's immediate. Images below are from my gameplay. Finally I was worried Zelda might look a bit jaggie on my large screen much like the WiiU did but I'm happy to report it's actually more gorgeous than any stream I'd seen. Now if you'll excuse me I have a plateau to leave.

So this is the Shantae game that was Kickstarted quite a while ago. It finally came out at the end of last year and after glancing over at it whenever I was reminded it existed with some encouragement it hasn't lived up to it. Wayforward are usually solid when it comes to their own projects but I'm wondering if this is struggling what with it being post Shovel Knight. It started off fine, familiar, dorky and cute; a vibe the games always do. They're never difficult games but throw enough low key platforming that is solid enough to carry this easy going adventure. But this time, after less than a couple of hours when you've accumulated some Zelda style heart containers, it gets far too easy. Life pick-ups are everywhere, as are consumable items, and an ability to turn magic into health and on top of that nothing does more than a fraction of damage... and there is a defense buff. The Metroid aspect of the game finding hidden abilities is solid enough but having it pointlessly easy to get around is more of a chore than it should be. You can just walk through everything and enemies don't do more damage as the game progresses. There are a few challenging areas that have pits and spikes that throw you back to checkpoints that are quite far apart, and the bosses have something of a challenge to them but that's about it. I'm playing the Wii U version and I'm kinda disappointed with that, too. Just a minor thing but it kept bothering me. I'm sure the last game had Gamepad features, and I'd bet that this was meant to as well. The only thing you can do on the gamepad is run the game: what is happening on the TV is happening on the Gamepad. No map or anything. And what is weird is the item screen has these big, chunky icons that look like they should be pushed, but I have to pause the game and cycle through them. Why isn't this shit just on the Gamepad? I swear it must have been on the cards with how the UI is designed but it doesn't work like that at all. I'm no game maker or anything but I just can't see that being a hard addition, especially since Pirate's Curse did (I think, I could check but I'm too lazy). I dunno. It doesn't all play bad, the main loop somewhat remains in other places. It looks really nice. It has hand draw animation for the first time and the levels look really nice, most of the music is great and it's got a lot of the components that made the other Shantae games the fun time they are. But maybe they were games that were always treading water but had enough going on as a whole to still be satisfying. And with this one some things have give.

I have to stop playing Ziggurat a second to tell you about Ziggurat. It's not a game for everyone but I'm really addicted to it. It's a dungeon crawler in FPS style, always limited to 5 floors. It's randomly generated so the same sort of rooms will appear on each floor, you just never know what type of room you will be wondering in to, it's often in the later stages a minion room full of enemies but there are trap rooms, puzzle rooms, secret chest rooms to name a few. The aim of the game is to get to and destroy the boss on the 5th floor of the Ziggurat. The Ziggrat which is a test maze used by a cult of wizards to weed out the average and find the exceptional. To pass each floor the basic requirement is to find the portal key (which is always in a room on it's own but could be anywhere on your current floor) and use this to summon the boss in the dedicated boss room. You can find the boss room before you find the portal key room but the boss cant be summoned without the portal key. Upon destroying the boss, a portal appears and leads you to the next floor. Each floor gets progressively bigger and and the enemies become stronger, later stages introduce some other room types like Obelisk, where you must destroy stone Obelisks that appear whilst the room continus to spawn enemies. All exits are locked untill you have destoyed all obelisks and enemies. You start off wit just your trusty wand but as you progress you can pick up another 3 weapon types. Your wand is unlimited but weak. The other three weapons run off mana, dropped by killed beasties, and must be constantly replenished. Your character can level up by collecting knowledge gems which are dropped mostly by slain enemies. Upon each level up you can pick one from a couple of different perks to aid your survival and it's the wealth of perks available and their varying effects that add a depth to this game. You can choose how to buff your character, for example you can pick to gain more health from potions, you can get a battler cry at the beginning of a fight that gives you extra health, you can choose to increase the mana pools of your varying weapons. You can also choose to do more damage when you drop to a certain health percentage, you can trade in your current weapon stock for a new set of random weapons that have extra firepower, the downside of this is that the fire rate could be a lot slower making some small minion rooms a lot harder. To add to this, each perk can be levelled up itself by picking the same perk again (obviously if it's made available to you) when you level up next time. Each perk can be upgraded 5 times. So do you pick a particular type of perk and make it strong or go for a wealth of abilities that arent strong individually but collectively make you a badass? So you have a choice of how to play the game, peg it through, hoping your lucky and find the portal key and boss room pretty close together so as not to take too much damamge from the rest of the maze or take you time, level up and become more powerfull but potentially fall victim so some fucking tough ass rooms. The real challenge (and addiction for me) has come with the different types of characters available. I think there is possbily only one from the start but you can unlock a total of 16, each with differing abilities which can make each game fiarly unique. For example I just beat the game with a Vampire called Corvus. His energy constantly drains but he gains health by collecting knowlege gems which are normally only for levelling up. Each time I levelled him up it was important to pick perks that aided health restoration (like battle cry or one where damaging in game objects add to your health). I got lucky and had a perk where collecting knowledge gems not only added health but also added mana for my weapons. It started really fucking hard but got easier as I progresseed, I was like a God when I got to the final boss on the fith floor. Other characters have a stong wand attack but shitty mana pools for the other more powerfull weapons, there's a thief character that is really fast, a wizard that has really strong weapons but shitty health or a dude who relies on his battle cry at the beginning of a fight to inject mana and health but knowledge gems and mana collected dont add much to their respective pools. Fuck me it's a deep old game once you get it. I could understand the point of view that it becomes repetative after a few rounds but I'm addicted. It takes between 45 minutes to an hour for a successful run. I've beaten it with seven different chartacters (they unlock as you progress by killing a certain amount of enemies or dealing a certain amount of total damamge) but I want to do it with all of them. I've got one more dude to unlock. Anyways, im off to play again.

Not sure i'm the best person to talk about a jrpg, but anyway, i fancied playing something a bit different and this has something to do with persona (well i think it was supposed to at some point anyway), and i like persona. and i thought i'd have some time to put into this because there isn't anything else out, but i forgot zero dilemma is out soon too, so see how it goes. the combat is a bit similar to persona (thankfully so i had a vague idea what i was doing), as was the tutorial dungeon, you wander round in real time, smack a monster to get the first turn in battle (you can also run away after laying smackdown - that's new), your attacks are say lightning, and a monster might be weak to lightning or whatever - another new thing is you have main and support attacks, if you land a blow that an enemy is weak to and other characters have the same type of attack as a support attack, they'll attack too. and there's healing points in the dungeons. also it gave a recommended level before a boss fight so that was handy. sort of prologue story/setup spoilers - the gamepad acts as a map, stats in battles, and as a phone - you get text messages from other characters - this sounds a bit silly but seems to work pretty well in practice. early days but i've enjoyed the first few hours, not really sure where the story is going, but there's been some reasonably funny dialogue and the main characters seem likeable enough so far. the art style of the menus and general locations and stuff is great, but i wasn't keen on the look of the main characters. Edit - oh yeah I think the "persona"/swords are from fire emblem maybe?

This is early days as I've only one the first level, but the controls, god the controls!! it might be my age but I can't focus on the small wii u controller screen and the big tele. When I thought I had mastered it I looked up at the tele and I was flying into a mountain but my targeting was still showing the first boss. I lost slippy on the first run, but that's the norm anyway. The actual flight controls are great and remind me of the N64 use the right stick to loop the loop and slow down speed up. Graphically, now I could of been spoilt with the ps4 xb1 etc...but Mario kart looked great on the wii u and quite a few other in house games, but this doesn't seem polished enough, the great fox when you first see it in space looks no different to the N64 game. I'm hoping once I get past the controller issues, this will be a great game. I should add my wii u controller was soaked in my sweaty hands after the first level I've never had that with a game before! Betting first comment below will be I disagree its awesome.......

This is a Super Meat Boy type platformer but oh so much more psychedelic. It fucks with your brain in many ways, it gives you powers, then takes them away when they have already become second nature. It gives you a simple platforming task but bombards your senses with light shows and noise, It's fucking awesome for all these reason but it's also fucking hard. The music is slammin and when your die a chick says "Ooooh yeaaaaaa" in an orgasmic tone that makes you want to bust off. Sometimes a dude says it too, same result. Gameplay trailer: Me winning: http://www.trueachievements.com/gameclip.aspx?clipid=38304519

Its rare i start a topic in this thread, but hey i got a new game. Its a download from the wii u shop, cost me £10 not too bad. If you want to play wipeout? if you want to play f-zero? well this is the game for you, It lacks character to be honest and its a bit sterile but the game is fun once you get into it. You have to change the shields to get every boost as you go through the levels. I've only played the first one with the original 3 ships, the AI is a bit rubber bandy you get past them and they fight to get back in, I'm not sure if there's any weapons but with the boost you can keep back up. Visually on the wii u it looks great, plays well, quite like this little game. Uses up 1024mb on the storage and can be played off the mini screen on the pad, will post more when I put some more time into this. Not me but a promotional video:

I have been on this loads, but assume because of the weather around here we had a millisecond drop in electricity and I don't want to think about the progress I've just lost. There is no auto-save, and very infrequent reminders. Save often, people. So while I'm here I'll drop some impressions. It rules. Despite these environments being shown a lot in the run up to this game coming out they do still mange to impress in a different way when you actually interact with them. They aren't just a thing you look at, these places are something you have to deal with. They are laid out in brilliant ways. They're not just big meadows you can traverse as the bird flies, but then they aren't exactly linear paths either; you have to do some orienteering. Like, you can look at a lovely cliff with a pretty waterfall down the way but sometimes getting there isn't that simple. The environment won't make it easy, and neither will the wildlife. Sometimes the only route you can find will be through where dangerous monsters live that are twenty levels higher than you and knowing where to run to escape if you're seen, where it's safe® is something worth considering when going somewhere like that. The first Xenoblade had some of that, but here it's more natural since it's not just high level enemies guarding secret areas for later (there is still some of that) but it mostly feels quite lived in. I suppose that fits with the story. I've played a lot but story beats are few and far between, same as before, but humanity had to flee Earth as two other alien races decided to use Earth's surrounding area as a fight club and it got blown up during the fight. So one ship (we know of) got away and crash landed on this new planet full of horrible beasties. But they're trying to make it home. It has themes of war and refugees, splatterings of racist tension and a bit that reminded me of seal clubbing so yeah, welcome to 2015 I suppose (or any other time). Fighting is like the first one, but different. I don't think I fully understand it yet and I might never since I don't think I ever fully understood the combat from the last one but I still finished it so I might know enough. It's just about getting the right position and/or using the right move on the right bit of animal but not being to liberal with everything since holding back some moves for when your allies calls them out makes them more powerful. There is more to consider as well but I've said enough. There is enough that keeps your brain ticking during a fight, even though when you watch a fight play out without controlling it it does look like utter nonsense but there is quite a fun logic to when you are making the decisions. It's pretty good.

This is the latest game from Prope, a small studio headed by Yuji Naka, most famous for his work on Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg and Ivy the Kiwi?. I joke, he's the Sonic and NiGHTS guy. I'd say there is an influence of those two games in here, more so NiGHTS I'd say. It's odd. Okay, I'm mostly going to be talking about the Wii version of the game that comes bundled with the Wii U version. Well, I mean, just look at the difference: The ports weren't handled by Prope and whoever did decided to take out the colour and change up the gameplay into something much simpler and not that fun at all. So the Wii version: The whole game is actually controlled with just the Wii remote. You point at any bit of environment within a certain distance and press B to shoot your robot guy, Rodea, in that direction. You can also do little flicks with the Wiimote to cause an arc if you want to avoid something that would be in your flight path taking a straight route. It's also good for setting up combos and positioning yourself better in combat. It's quite a fun little system to play with. But the camera is the problem. You move it with the pointer and it just isn't responsive enough to keep up with the action. I think nunchucka support would have made it a lot more bearable but instead when you overshoot something it can be awkward getting back on track. So it feels pretty good when everything goes to plan but its a ballache when it goes wrong, like a lot of Yuji Naka's games. Its obviously designed to be a speedrunner's game and I think that's where the most enjoyment will come from but I'm not that sort. But I've enjoyed the chapters I've done and the boss was fun so I think I come away mostly positive. It's weird and fine. I'm okay with that right now.

For those that dont know... Guitar Hero is back... and its Live! Most pressing, the fucking buttons have changed, they've changed the fucking buttons. Gone are the five colours in a row. Now they're all the same colour, theres six of them - 3 at the top and three directly underneath. In theory this is easier but my brain doesnt work that way yet. They symbols are obviously different as there are no colours to match them with so you have plectrum shaped icons that are either black or white. Black are the top three, white are the bottom. You can also power chord by hitting top and bottom together. Ive gone from half decent to being a bit shit again but I spent an hour and a half practicing last night and i was getting better, i was able to do two quick notes on the top and a note on the bottom then switch back up to the top (then power chord) relitively pain free. Still, when it gets fast I was fucking up here and there. So it's a long road ahead to re-learn shit to a point where your brain just does it for you but I am enjoying the experience thus far. The two main modes of gameplay are Live and TV. Live is career mode, you play as part of a 'real' band to a 'live' crowd and jolly on through becoming more awesome and visiting bigger venues getting all famous and shit, same old story. TV is a bit different. TV is a constantly broadcasting network of channels that you can hop on to at any time and play track. It's like an interactive MTV channel, but here there are about 10 channels showcasing different types of music that you can flick between. There are always people to play against wether they are online or offline, I guess it just selects people around your skill level and you have to try and beat their score. The higher you finish the more exp and coins you get, the exp is for leveling up and unlocking skills you can upgrade (i've no idea what these are yet, im level 6 and you unlock your first skill at level 9) and coins are for buying 'plays'. The game did explain what this entails but i didnt read it or listen to be honest and it hasen't really affected me so far so fuck it, I'll find out what it is later. Look, amongst all this shit is Guitar Hero. I just wanted to play Guitar Hero again. And I am. And it's good fun.

Make your own Mario levels! That's all there is to say, really. But I guess I can say more. If there is something wrong here and not quite as expected is the network and sharing stuff isn't as good as it should be. It's Nintendo struggling with that stuff again. Every course you make gets assigned a sixteen digit code and its with entering that you get to play a friends level. You can then 'follow' that person in-game after that and see what else they have done and add later, but I don't know why that first hoop is there, Why does this not work with Miiverse? It does post to it automatically when you make a level but you can't go to the course from there. It's just bloody silliness again, and I'm certain this game will come out on NX with much better network features. And I'll probably buy it again. Because it is really good. It's so easy to use and the act of building is pretty fun itself. That's where I feel a lot of level editors go wrong but they've thought about that stuff at least. You don't get a lot of tools to start with but you find yourself getting to know what you can use and still making some fun levels. The tools are drip fed to you daily, and manipulating the Wii U's clock can get you all your stuff, but I'd say building a level around features as you get them is better than having everything from the start and then being overwhelmed. It's kinda interesting how they've made playing the levels. You can seek them out in a way you'd expect just from a list, but you can also play eight levels picked at random in one go. You're giving 100 lives to do it and you can discard a course if you think it's a bullshit one. Courses have been as expected so far: good, bad and ugly. The imagination in a lot of them has been fun to see, though. I like it a lot. I was worried I'd end up not doing much like with LittleBIGplanet but the creation tools are just a good to use, and instantly recognisable if you've played a handful of Mario games. Here's the code to my magnus opus: BBC5-0000-0014-DD2D (Get the Tasty!) Follow me and play some cool Mario courses. I am very proud of that course, actually. It was my third attempt.

I've been playing this a bit the last two days and I wondered how I was going to talk about this game without sounding like a blathering idiot. You see, I knew this game would rule. back when it was a THQ published PS3/360 game I knew it would rule. I play it for a bit, sat the Gamepad down, went to the window and shouted at the world. You cunts were talking shite. I fucking knew it would rule, I have a gift, I can tell. But... That's not say it doesn't have problems. There are performance issues, though I don't think anything startlingly bad, except when you can tell it's loading between sections of levels and it stutters like fuck. And the shooting, more specifically, the aiming is tied up so tight it feels uncomfortable to use. To no-ones surprise it does have that. Well, and it has some weird clipping sometimes. But whatever, here's the hotness: So it's a game that tries to blend FPS action with guy with sharp objects action. There are times it does it admirably, there are times less so; there are occasional times it knocks it out the fucking park. You see, as well as a simple-ish melee system when you pull the left trigger to aim you have some melee options, too: you can press the light attack to leap towards an unsuspecting enemy for an instant kill (but leaves you open as it's slow moving) or throw you melee weapon with the heavy attack (but the you loose it until you pick it back up) which is also a high damage attack. Combo that with you're FPS action and your dodge, roll and slashing and you have a game that is fairly hard to have a bad time with. especially when the levels accommodate all your tools (you have quite a lot of mobility due to a vertical wall run where you can get to more places than than you'd expect in a linear action game like this). There are times where the levels force your hand a bit and make you play it like a cover-based shooter which is where the low points are. They're not always that intrusive, but they can be. But on the good levels it gets good. It even seems pretty hard as getting out of some situations requires you to be mindful of everything you can do. You have the power to stomp through the game, but its about finding the right opportunities. I'd actually be interested to see a speed run of this as I think it would throw up some fascinating strategies. I think the thing that has surprised me is the story. It's schlock, but much better schlock than I was expecting. I didn't think I'd be into that aspect of DT since the trailers made that stuff look a bit 'yeah-yeah' but its cool in the game itself. IVAN, the lead, is a bit of a non-entity, but the supporting cast (the baddies, mostly) have enough personality to carry it to somewhere that has quite a bit of charm. And that's weird since Ninja Gaiden and DoA was never good at that, so its a surprise. I think it pulls it off by having some decent voice acting. It's not too hammy, its all quite earnest and played straight. I love that. I'm not a fan of this idea that things have to be 'self-aware'. It's a game about a tough Russian guy, who is good with guns and melee weapons, and also awesome at playing the drums (and also as 'proficient at guitar' as I found out from some loading screen flavour text) and he has to save America and there is zero irony. It's beautiful. It has the ingredients to be a true cult classic. I think after playing this it does make the game's reception all the more heart breaking. Man, this game is so fucking honest. There is a part where they try to do a Call of Duty style bust through a window and shoot the unaware baddies in slow motion, but it's all a bit off and naff looking, but I was giggling throughout. Not in a malicious way, I just love that they tried to work it in on top of everything. I dunno, there is zero pomposity, some fun stuff that occasionally really comes alive, more charm that games that this is trying to muscle in with just don't have, yet it has this reputation as being the worst game of the year. It doesn't seem right, guys. I don't think I'd recommend Devil's Third to anyone (I think it's something to be discovered), but at the same time, I don't think I'd take anyone seriously if they thought t was the worst game of 2015. I wouldn't trust that person. Ramble over. I'll maybe post about the MP at some point. Seems decent, but those aiming issues might just kill it as you need to be more accurate than you need to be on the SP. If only it had some Splatoon style gyro controls.

So, I know this probably won't be a popular thread, but I started playing this on Saturday and thought I'd create this to jot my thoughts down. As a general rule with the LEGO games I try not to play too many too quickly, as I feel the repetitious copy n' paste nature of the games and the way they're designed would condemn me to tedium if I played some back to back, its been quite a while since I last played one actually, the last I played was the excellent LEGO Marvel Superheroes on my PS4 back in the Winter of 2013 when it had just come out, really enjoyed that, and the only previous LEGO game I'd played before that was the equally excellent LEGO City Undercover on the Wii U. I dabbled in LEGO Indiana Jones and LEGO Star Wars back in the day but never really enjoyed them until I played City Undercover on the Wii U, the humour, the city and the gameplay really clicked with me in that game and I ended up enjoying it FAR more than I ever imagined I would. Anyway, I've gone off on a tangent here, needless to say, LEGO Jurassic World is the first LEGO game I've played in quite a while, as a massive fan of the Jurassic Park franchise it always seemed like a no brainer to pick it up, I think the LEGO games resonate the most with you if you're a fan of the subject matter in the game so I thought it would probably be a reasonable assumption that I'd like this if I bought it, and....4 hours in, that assumption seems to be correct. In LJW you get the chance to play through all 4 films in the series, however, only JP and JW are unlocked from the start. Being the JP fan that I am, I wanted to start back with the original JW, after I was done with this I moved onto the slightly maligned 'The Lost World:Jurassic Park' which struggles to live upto the heights of its predecessor, but is still a pretty good film in its own right. I think for anyone that's a fan of the films, you'll love this game. From John Williams' spellbinding score to some of the original actors' voices being included in the game, everything feels like an authentic JP experience, just in LEGO. Whilst I've a relatively short history with the LEGO games I've noticed in the 4 hours I've spent with this that there doesn't seem to be too many puzzles anymore, in Indiana Jones, SW, LCU and LMS I would find myself getting stuck on the odd occasion, not knowing which gadget/ability I needed to use a specific point in a level, and where to use it, but everything seems really straightforward in this, they seem to have taken out any difficulty the puzzle-elements of the game had, the other new addition is playable Dinosaurs, and yes they're as cool as they sound! The playable characters definitely aren't as memorable as the ones in LMS though, that's for sure, I was struggling to remember who some of the peripheral characters you can play as in the game were, obviously the main characters through all 4 films are recognisable, but beyond this I had no recollection who some of them were, a far cry from the spades of recognisable characters in LMS. So, yeah, just wanted to give a few thoughts on my opening 4 hours with the game, don't expect anyone else picked this up, but its been pretty cool so far, a nice relaxed easy going game that should keep me occupied for a few days, but nothing more.

Impressions for 2015's most adorbs* game. Although Woolly World comes from the same developer as Kirby's Epic Yarn this is very much a Yoshi game. It has five daisies to collect per level, there is an equivalent to the hidden red coins, in some levels you have to do some mild puzzle platforming to get a key that follows you round and you have that Yoshi jump where he wills himself a little higher. All the Yoshi abilities are here that you will recognise instantly if you've played one of the Yoshi's Story games before. But there is no Baby Mario this time. It plays a little cosier than the other games, fittingly enough. It's not so much about being an obstacle course and being challenging to make your way through. It's more about exploring and uncovering secret little areas, even more so than the previous games. You have more to look for, for one. There are loads of jewels to collect, but they are used as a currency to equip badges that make the game easier; they give you abilities that make you ammune to falling down pits and stuff. I don't use them, of course; I'm a hardcore Yoshi player. You also have five bundles of yard to collect that unlock new patterns for Yoshi. There is one for each level so there are a lot of patterns on top of the Amiibo ones. So it's a game that you mostly relax too, poking around and playing with some fairly robust and known mechanics. Trinkets are really well hidden so you can't just drag yourself through it, it does require your attention if you want to get everything. If you get all the daisies per world it unlocks a secret level in that world and I still haven't managed to do that on the first world. I'm over half way through the second I'm not on track to get it for this world either. Stuff is pretty well hidden. So what we have is a game that is a little formulaic but still engages with some charm and good old smart design. It's a B tier Nintendo game, basically. Nothing more, nothing less. *I'm not apologising for that.

The coolest game of 2015 is out now so let me tell you how fresh it is. We know the score, right? We've played the demo? Its still pretty much that. Here's what I said about the multiplayer after the test fire: I still stand by that. But I'd say now I'm more in-tune with the controls, though there is still a lot of room for me to improve, and the stability of the online post-release has been mostly good. So there is a single player aspect to the game which is pretty okay. You have a hub where you find the entrances to the levels, and the levels themselves are very obstetrical course-y that focus on specific mechanics (very modern 3D Mario in design). As fun as they are, they never really wow. The bosses sometimes do, but its mostly a gentle and subtly enjoyable ride. They're certainly leaps and bounds beyond tacked on, but a little something is missing I can't quite pin down. I think I may have just been expecting more. There is also a light RPG element to the multiplayer; it's a bit mini-Destiny with Ts and backwards caps that have perks tied to them that have all kinds of different buffs so you've got that to think about if you want but I've yet to see that much difference. But you gotta make your Inkling look fresh. Overall though I like the game quite a bit. I think it is fair to say that content, as of now, is quite light, but I'm fine with that, personally. With Destiny and Witcher 3 being very time demanding I'm really happy to have a game where matches are short and progress is satisfying. It's not a game to get obsessed with, you'll see everything too quick, but as something to have to the side and play occasionally it fits perfectly. I've heard people say Splatoon is to shooters what Mario Kart is to racers, but I don't think it's quite that. It could be, eventually, but it doesn't quite have as high skill level as MK that allows that to capture as many people as it does. It'll only ever be some silly, cool, messy, unique fun... only I say, like that isn't all good stuff... I'm just saying this isn't the tier of game it could be. It's great, but fantastic was just in reach, and it's just a little short. But I'd say it's better than Smash Bros. And! on top of that, its allowing #teens to explore squid based fetishes: How sweet.

So, this is lovely. it's a bit like the old DS game, although i haven't played that for years so not sure how similar. but you draw lines for kirby to move along, tap him to dash - so it controls similar. draw lines to deflect lasers/water. spin dash into bosses like sonic. it's fun. was thinking it's a shame there isn't more stuff like catch! touch! yoshi!...but there is some stuff like that in here, and the kirby transforms into a tank, which is pretty awesome. just done the first 2 worlds. there's loads of stuff to collect/find in the levels, and you get a score at the end with gold/silver/etc. awards so there's reason to replay the levels. music is nice. graphics are nice and colourful, i'm not too keen on the plasticine look mind. and it's a bit pointless having the tv on, you're always going to be looking at the gamepad. there's a challenge mode where you have 15 seconds to get a chest in a number of mini levels - bit like wario ware meets kirby. initial impressions - thumbs up. anyone else got/played it?

Developer: Slightly Mad Studios Publisher: Bandai Namco Games Platform: PC, PS4, XB1, Wii U Release Date: 7th May 2015 (Digital PC), 8th May 2015 (Physical all versions). So, Project CARS is a community funded semi-SIM racing game, developed by the guys that made NFS: Shift and NFS: Shift 2 Unleashed, its just been released this past Thursday/Friday, and here are some of my impressions. Initial Impressions: Started at the very beginning of the Career mode in the Karts, ridiculously hard to get used to the handling and everything, restarted the very first race about 10 times as I kept sliding off here, there and everywhere finished the UK Karting Championship and then went onto the main Karting Championship or whatever its called, won these and reached towards the end of my first season and left it there. There is a lot to like about it, but it just felt pretty dull to me, pretty vanilla, just a bog-standard Forza/GT clone. There was no real incentive to keep going other than wanting to win, in Forza you level up, get tons of cash, cars etc. when you finish a championship, there's none of that here, you just get a trophy and then simply move onto the next season and/or championship, not sure how much more time I'm going to put into the career mode to be honest. After this I decided to try my hand at the online side of things, definitely had more fun with this but it was still a bit hit-and-miss really, some of the lobbies I was going into had numerous settings I had no clue about, like manual shifting, I literally had no idea, pushed the accelerator off the start-line, didn't go anywhere and ended up dead last, the cars are also ridiculously difficult to control, you have to seriously feather the throttle everywhere otherwise the torque of the car will just throw you off into a wall, ridiculously hard to get used to, and not fuck things up but if you nail it is is damn satisfying, more fun with real opposition for sure, always the way really in racing games really, just wish there was some standardised control scheme/difficulty level for the online side of things and not a 50/50 chance you're going to get some mad settings when you enter a game. Further Impressions: OK, my thoughts have changed quite a bit on this now. After initially finding it a bit clinical and dull (in the career mode anyway), I decided to put on the Project CARS Drum 'n' Bass playlist from Spotify in the background, made the entire game 100% better, I'm not even joking, I can't play this serious car games without some decent music on, and this made the whole experience of piloting a cart/touring car etc. exhilarating rather than a bit dull like I found it before. I'm about mid-way through Season 2 in the Career mode and I'm loving it so far, it still lacks that XP-progression system from Forza but I still find it addictive, I'm driving A LOT of varied cars now, from Karts, Super-Karts, Touring Cars, Caterhams etc. every car feels incredibly different from one another, and you have to relearn your braking lines, racing lines etc. everytime you pilot a new car in a new event Another special shoutout has to go to the track variation, I'm constantly bemoaning the track selection in the last few Forza's, going around the same tracks I've gone round a million times before in previous games, just with longer, reversed etc. versions just isn't that fun to me, almost every track in this is different, I haven't played that much of the campaign, but already I've experienced racing at Brands Hatch, Snetterton, Oulton Park, Spa, Sonoma Raceway, Dubai Autodrome, Silverstone, Zolder, Barcelona, Donington Park, Monza and numerous Karting tracks, it's quite frankly, a ridiculous number of tracks, and it means that it constantly feels fresh, you will go from Spa one race to Zolder the next, you're never left repeating the same tracks ad nauseam just in different forms like you are in Forza. Also must mention the weather systems, it really is fantastic. You can go from racing in perfect sunshine, to clouds coming in, to it pouring with rain, and then the track drying out afterwards, with different corners remaining wet, and different corners becoming dry, it is incredibly dynamic and is probably the most realistic weather system I've experienced in a racing game, it is incredibly impressive and puts the weather systems in racers like FH2, Driveclub etc. to shame, it is utterly fantastic and just adds to the realism. Played quite a bit online as well, and it is really, REALLY good as well, lots of customisation in there, if you're a lobby host you can pretty much set up a game exactly how you want it, tweak which aids you want on or off, number of laps, rolling or standing start, weather types etc. Unfortunately, it suffers a bit from 'online racer syndrome' in that you get a lot of people who are shite at racing games in there, that'll just barge you off the road left right and centre, which is no fun at all, but, if you've got patience and are prepared to put up with this a bit, let your skill shine through and eventually take you upto a good position in the race then you'll find it enjoyable, it's incredibly satisfying struggling in a Formula A car that can make you spin at any point in time if you're not careful and treat it with care, getting to the front, dodging the numerous terrible drivers, incredibly satisfying and addictive. I've only played 8 hours, but it's already better than Forza 4 and 5.

I played through book 1 the other night and enjoyed it. I'm not sure it clicked for me the way it has for others but it is a lovely looking game, hard to dislike

So this was one of the earlier successes on Kickstarter before (or around) everyone started doing. It's a 2D platformer in the style of classic NES games and it's made by Yacht Club Games who are a few ex-Wayforward people. They left over a year a go and Wayforward games aren't quite what they were; coincidence? I say probably (definitely). Since NES games are the inspiration for Shovel Knight it does play things basic. You play with two buttons and a D-pad; one jumps and one shovels. But you also press down and shovel while jumping to do a downward attack and you use that to bounce off enemies. That's what you mostly do and this game, and it stays damn fun while doing it. They've clearly explored a lot of possibilities with your basic abilities. Enemies are either really defensive knights who can be hard to hit or simpler enemies just placed in awkward places that make things difficult (or fun) for you. It's design we've seen before but maybe in not quite this way. You can also make life a bit easier for you by using items you get through the game. You use them by pressing up and shovel, like Castlevania, and the properties of these items are like the ones you find in that game. That's what Shovel Knight is. It's NES games you know put into one well made game. Specifically it's Konami and Capcom NES games that are the big inspiration: pre-SotN Castlevania and Megaman are clear inspirations, as is smatterings of Ducktails and Zelda 2. But it plays a nicer game than those NES games. It controls well, and does actually look a lot better than those games. It's more TurboGrafx than NES. It also has some more forgiving design choices, like the checkpoints, which can be destroyed for more money to buy upgrades but then you lose them for good (like, they're still not there when you pass them after you've died). That's a cool risk/reward mechanic but I think you can still get a lot of gold without having to destroy them, from what I can tell now I'm at the end, so I suppose it's a case of how fast you want to upgrade your stuff. And when you die you lose a percentage of your gold but it can be picked up again if you don't die on route to where you last died, 'cos Demon's Souls. But overall it's a really fun game in a genre that the indies have explored a lot at this point, but I'd say it's one of the better examples. It's made by people ball achingly passionate about that era of gaming and they've crafted the ultimate love letter with Shovel Knight. That's really cool, but it does mean the game struggles to find it's own identity. I wish they laid off the references as it didn't need them since the game's mechanics were all reference enough. Bottom line though is two thumbs up. It's got some awesome bosses and nice, thick, treacle-y chiptune music. I should go finish it now... Oh, it's pretty fuckin' hard if that needed to be mentioned.

This is a better game than I first though. Once I got used to the control sensitivity and learnt to see where I was on screen (although you'll still lose yourself a lot) I started to really enjoy it. There's just so much to do, overwhelmingly so but I would never knock a game for having too much content. You just have to try something, then try something else and so forth. I got predictably addicted to the Home Run game, wanking that Sandbag as far as you can is crack. And then you'll unlock a new stage. And then unlock a new character. And then you realise it's been three unfocused hours of fucking about and your wife is cross with you because you didn't hear anything she said or watch any of the film you said you wanted to watch. Its not without its annoyances, you can still get triple teamed and juggled about and go from 0% to 75% damage in about 8 seconds and the scenery can suddenly move and that's it, your fucked, losing a life that ends up costing you victory. And it's really hard to move a single step in front of yourself, you end up doing a lurch forward which is fucking irritating when you cant quite reach the item in front of you and then you find yourself past it, turn around and then do the same thing again. It makes the Home Run game needlesly frustrating. I could also see the games lack of a focused objective a turn off for some. For the moment though I'm hooked.

Only put 3 hours in so far, clearly there's far more to do, probably a ton of grinding. I've never played a Dynasty Warriors game before but from the videos I've seen it looks pretty much the same. What I didn't expect was having to manage the map constantly as different sections fall to the enemy and you have to decide whether to go to that section and help bring it back to friendly control or sack it off and do your main missions. It is what I expected though from the mashing thing. You pretty much just mash the Y button with the occasional A to do your special move once it's charged up. Not sure how dull that will get over time but you are constantly upgrading your stats and getting stuff to upgrade weapons and items for in-between missions. I've gone all in though and pre-purchased the DLC packs which release every month or so from next month. So far a cautious thumbs up.