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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:

This arrived yesterday and I've played 11 hours so far...it's really good, it's a bold statement but I think it's the happiest I've been with a game in terms of expectations and how it's been to play it. It's very skyrim in the exploration. It really isn't linear at all, I'm on chapter three now and it's unbelievably open world. This might be the one in the series that brings people in, it's hardly a final fantasy at all.

This game reminds me of Outer Wilds (which is also what I plan to play next, the expansion). It’s been compared to Breath of the Wild, and I guess there are some similarities, but it feels more like Outer Wilds to me. You start off in a relatively small area, preparing for a kind of coming of age ceremony which will allow you to leave your tribe and explore the world. Instead of Epona, your companion is a kind of hover bike. You start off driving a banger but then you build your own one which leaves a snazzy tail of red smoke as you drive around. One of the reasons I bought the game at launch was because I love Japanese Breakfast, the band who did the soundtrack for the game. There’s a great moment when you leave the opening area and enter the great wide open for the first time, and a song plays. Brings back memories of that Jose Gonzales song playing during Red Dead Redemption. There’s no combat in the game, that I’m aware of. The gameplay is all exploration and (so far, light) puzzle solving. I’m enjoying it. It looks lovely. There are some minor visual glitches (wall-clipping mostly), but nothing major so far.

Still spelt wrong Bit of an odd one so far. The intro isn't great, I won't spoil it but it's so rushed. Basically it's the bare minimum to justify another game and it's dealt with within about 4 minutes. There's a couple of people you're supposed to feel something towards, but you've literally just met them, you didn't catch their name, and really, ultimately, couldn't give a fuck I can't remember at what point the first game told you about the benefits/consequences of killing people or knocking them out, but I've played 40 minutes, kind of might have killed a few people, and I don't know if it matters. They deserved it, but am I spreading plague, will I face some big consequence later in the game, I've no idea That said, you get to the game part and it's good. I fucked up the combat a couple of times, because you're robbed of your powers there's been a couple of times I've had no idea there were other guards around and so I've tried stealthing someone to sleep and ended up alerting 3 other guards, There's a weird inertia to the movement too, I think it was in the first game too, it takes some getting used to, but I think it will ultimately give the game some character and identity. I might regret it but I'm playing as Corvo, He doesn't shut up, again, I can't remember the first game that well but I don't remember him talking that much. You can play as Emily, and I think the game would like you to play as her, maybe I'll restart it and play as her at some point. Looks good, I'm managing to run it on ultra on my 970 at above 40fps (non-pc players stop reading before this bit, yeah), so I'll probably drop it down to very high and see what happens, either way I can't say I'm seeing the performance problems others have complained about

I'm playing Thronebreaker: Witcher Tales. It's okay, wander around, isometric view, gathering resources, making the side quest choice, and having occasional Gwent battles. It's Gwent that is the central focus, albeit disappointingly it's slightly tweaked from the W3 version - you start off with a compressed deck, and don't really seem to gain new cards in the same way as you did (by winning them). Instead there's a camp option, and you spend resources on them. Added too are puzzles, where you have a single hand one turn to complete different objectives - these are real head scratchers, in terms of understanding card mechanics. For now its just not really as enjoyable, as Gwent was in W3. Perhaps it'll open up later, but the limited deck is frustrating (and THB, I don't even recognise the cards from those previous played with in W3).

Bought this on a whim after seeing DF's video about it. Originally came out in 2022, but has since been ported to every hardware on the planet that has a screen, the latest of which is Switch 2. The only Grid I ever played was the first one they released on PS360 back in the day, when their Ego Engine made their debut (which, to my surprise, they're still using to this day, which is neat). But this feels very much like that game, because it's still fundamentally a take on the MSR/PGR street-racing template, with city courses and other urban areas being the main stages. It also has a minor version of the kudos system in place where certain actions like staying on the racing line and doing neat driving earns you extra XP. This is also the game where people raised their eyebrows a bit upon announcement because it features full FMV cutscenes and some sort of rags to riches storyline. It's super campy and I sometimes skip the scenes, but at the same time it's kind of nice to give everything a bit more context than just picking a track and driving around. It does make me wonder if the production costs were worth it though, considering it stars, among others, Ncuti Gatwa, who can't have been a cheap booking after Sex Education and Dr. Who. But this is only part of the content, because next to the strictly curated story mode (of which there are four seasons) there's also a classic career mode where you start with slow cars, built up some reputation and money and hire your own team. There's even a mini skill tree that allows you to develop commands for your teammates to order them block dangerous opponents during a race for example – though I haven't really tried any of that yet. Handling is like that middle ground between a pure sim and nutty stuff like Ridge Racer, but there's a lot of adjustments you make in the settings that probably can shift it slightly further in either direction. I left it at normal and all the standard settings which feels relatively arcade-y, with oversteering being borderline impossible but you still need to take your corners with care. As for the Switch 2 port itself, it's quite excellent. It has two modes in TV and four modes in handheld mode (one of which is battery saving, which I've never seen before), which you can pick independently, so no switching around whenever you change the way you play. I quickly decided to stick to quality mode because it gives you native resolution in handheld and just overall a very nice picture quality with a stable 30fps (the screenshots below are from handheld mode), but DF's videos suggested they're all good and it's down to personal preference. The big talking point on Switch with these games is always the lack of analogue buttons, but due to the arcade-gameplay of it I don't find it that bothersome – though at higher difficulties without ABS and other assists it might become a more obvious downside. (You can turn a lot of stuff off you see in the screenshots, too – motion blur and basically every HUD element as well.)

I'm very early in this, but I picked up my save which was right at the start of the main part of the game, after the prologue. I'll say right away that the prologue is a very poor onboarding to the game. It goes on for about 3 hours I think, involves a lot of tedious, rail-roaded shite, and it's hard to really care about what's going on with Henry at this early point of things. So it's why I stopped. I picked it up again and have wandered around a bit, and I think I'm more into it. Straight off what it feels like is a more sim-heavy version of Oblivion. Oblivion is my point of comparison cause of how the game gives every NPC some sort of routine, they go to sleep and they kick you out of their houses, things like that. Not that Oblivion is the first game to do that but it's the most notable example from the HD generation There's a huge attention to detail in this, having been to a castle just outside Prague and seeing some of the countryside IRL I feel like I can appreciate that part of things more this time around. You go in all these churches and there's these frescoes and things, and they throw a mountain of historical context at you in the codex if you're into that. It's definitely a game for a particular type of history nerd, or, if you prefer, extremely boring people. So I'm into that. I've done very little still in the way of actual gameplay though, haven't even swung my sword since the prologue. I stole an apple and loaf of bread and wandered around at night without a light, which apparently gets you chucked into prison (nevermind that I was right behind another NPC without a light, and did they arrest that guy? Did they feck). I'm still at that point of blindly fumbling through the fog of systems, survival mechanics and quests, but I think these initial parts of a deep, open world RPG where you work your way through your bafflement are sort of the magic hours, before it all settles into predictable routine and czech-lists. So I'll savor it cause it's not often you get a lavish, HD open world game that is anyway hostile to its players and pushes back a bit. I think this game is actually more gentle to the player than its reputation, I haven't had a problem getting food or things like that, but my point is it doesn't feel like a gentle themepark ride the way modern Bethesda games can feel There's a hardcore mode as well, but I'll save that for the sequel, if I complete this one (I heard the sequel is easier)

Well, this is officially out now, I got my code from CD Keys around 7:30pm yesterday. Pre-loaded straight away after that on GOG Galaxy (28gb install), and after I'd watched this week's Game of Thrones I fired her up, played the first hour or so (headphones ran out of juice otherwise I would've played more) can't really give any thorough impressions just yet but the combat still seems a bit shithouse to me (never liked it in The Witcher 2) and the graphics look pretty incredible (despite the downgrade) in almost fully-Ultra settings on PC. Just within that opening hour I've found myself wandering away from the main quest, exploring little villages and cubby holes so it bodes well for the rest of the game, shall give it a proper run-through later today.

Started this last night, have probably put around 6-7 hours into it so far. I'm not going to go into too much detail as folks have already put up detailed impressions of their time with the demos. But, yeah, seeing as my expectations for this were pretty much 0 and I'd not played any of the pre-release demos, alphas etc. I have been pleasantly surprised. The graphics are what I noticed first really, it looks absolutely phenomenal. The voice acting and motion capture for all the characters just feels so incredibly lavish as well, all the performances are amazing and the motion capture just looks and sounds like one of the most realistic I've ever experienced. The hub world is reminiscent of Destiny's Tower but it feels much more Biowarey than I expected it too, it feels like much more of a real, living, breathing place than the lobby-esque workmanlike aesthetic of the Tower. Throughout the first few missions more and more areas of the Fort are introduced to you and you discover new people and places to see like a lovely plaza and bar. What has surprised me the most about the base is probably the NPC conversations though, you have multiple people to speak to after pretty much every mission you finish and talking to these different people to get to know them is a real joy, it doesn't feel like some throwaway exposition dump like in Destiny and other GaaS shooters, you do feel these folks have personalities. The 'action' part of the game I just felt like I was playing an Iron Man game really, there's not really any other way I can describe it. It felt fucking amazing to jump of of the cliff face outside the fort and just engage the thrusters for the first time. Combat itself feels way better than I expected too, although it has been very easy so far with me dying once and my shield being depleted on only 1 other occasion, all the other missions I've played have been a breeze. I have had quite a few bugs. Textures popping in some places - one time I was flying around and a whole environment was pretty much white and then spawned in around me making me crash -the helmet of your character not appearing on the cutscene that plays just before you go on a mission, a weird one where the subtitle box from previous dialogue stays on the screen and won't go away. I've also had quite a struggle getting it to run smoothly on my PC - which is surprising - I had to lookup a guide to get the settings right earlier and have actually managed to get a mostly stable 60fps with few dropped frames - before I was getting as low as 30fps in firefights. I actually haven't had the game kick me out at all though which is surprising, the servers and matchmaking side of things has seemed uber stable so far apart from the long loading times to get into a mission. So yeah. I like it and I want to play more. Apparently after 10 missions there's some kind of Wall that you have to grind to get up, but I'm not there yet so just enjoying the journey so far. It definitely feels way more Bioware than I was expecting and way more distinct thanks to the flight aspect. Lots of pics:

Played 2 hours of this so far and have got through the Prologue/tutorial section pretty much - the section which Journo's played through during the tutorial. So far I'm incredibly impressed with it I have to say, way more than I was with RotTR and probably around the same as TR 2013 - although admittedly my memory of that is a little hazy by now. The first thing I noticed was how goddamn gorgeous this game looks, this is the first game in the series that I've not played in 720p/900p at 30 on consoles and goddamn what a different experience playing on PC - granted it will still look pretty great in almost 4K 30 on Xbox X but at 1440p/60 with everything set to Ultra boy does it shine ?. I thought RotTR had a distinctly last-gen look to it and here whilst there's still a few rough looking textures here and there the whole engine and graphics as a whole looks much improved. I think the lighting is the most impressive though, going through caves, water and a small Mexican town, the way everything was lit was just astonishingly beautiful. It's a shame that so much of the early story has already been revealed by previews and trailers, but the beginning is pretty spectacular. You start out after the shit has hit the fan then go back before it hit the fan to find out what the hell went on (although I knew this already thanks to previews). And it's pretty damn fantastic, lots of slow exposition through a beautiful Mexican town where you can just take in the scenery, music and vibe of the place as you slowly make your way through and investigate followed by some light tutorial stuff and a tomb (yes an actual tomb this early!) which was great fun followed by a nice light puzzle room. After this things go bananas in a typically TR kind of way and lots of mad shit happens which involves you gunning down lots of dudes and running away from collapsing buildings/mountains. I just like the somewhat slow build up this time around, it feels a bit more organic in some ways than having you thrown in at the deep end for the 3rd time in 3 games and let's you appreciate the bombast when it does come all the more. The things they do with the characters already has me way more intrigued than I was for the entirety of RotTR which helps an awful lot too I just hope it continues to bring home the drama. I guess in terms of mechanics, controls and gunplay you know what to expect if you played the previous two games, although I will say I think the new rappel manoeuvre and the way you can now stalk enemies from shrubbery-covered walls is really cool and feels such a good fit for the Jungle environs. I have had some technical issues though. The photo mode is borked for me, everytime I access it the camera does a weird juddery motion and then as soon as I quit the mode everything is ok again, I have also had some huge framerate dips when hanging from ledges which is odd as its been a solid 60 everywhere else so I've had to turn off a few of the superfluous graphical effects and that seems to of remedied it. But yeah, so far I'm way more impressed than I expected to be with it and I can't wait to dig into it again tomorrow night. Some pics:

So, this has been out a while on PC and is soon coming to consoles and now i've finally got around to giving it a go. Like the first game, It's an insanely open CRPG where you can pretty much tackle most situations anyway you like and has an excellent elemental based combat system (cast a rain spell and electrocute it to shock everyone, poison clouds are combustible - that sort of thing). The customisation is nuts - you can spec out your starting character any way you like, even specifying the main instrument used for dramatic musical moments (I went for the cello). You can even choose which specialty you want any other characters who join to have. Once your past the first 'tutorial' area your left to your own devices exploring an area around a fort. There's very little hand holding here and every NPC is worth talking to - the writing is fantastic. The detail level in the areas is bonkers. I'm only a few hours in, and the fights have kicked my arse a few times (still working out a solid character load out) but it's awesome. Oh - and it has full co-op as well which i'm hoping to start up this weekend with three others.

I started playing some of this. I'm definitely going to need digital foundry to hold my hand on what settings I should be turning on, the auto detect option on the game itself recommended I max the game out but that isn't happening. I figured I would settle for 30fps but the camera motion in this is really bad, it doesn't feel good. So I'll have to tweak that. Anyway it's very janky and hard to play so far. Everyone makes a big song and dance about DLSS but it dont play well with camera movement. I guess there is a hell of a lot of detail to be reconstructing all the time. Sometimes the game looks spectacular but sometimes I'm sort of finding it to look kind of terrible. Part of it is the game feels sort of weird. People phase into existence in front of you, cars render in front of you. Obviously there's weird shit with people t-posing but that's minor. At one time in a cutscene V was completely naked for no reason, that made me lol and makes me wonder if your model is always like that cause it's a FPS game and you can't see your tits or dick or whatever. Gameplay wise I find it hard to play and the HUD and text is such a bad clash of colours and design that I can't tell what's going on half the time or what the things I'm picking up are. This could just be the awkward teething phase but it feels kind of gross. The driving is also really swimmy. I mean I'm sure it gets good as you go in but yeah it's like kind of clunky in a really strange way. These guys did make The Witcher III I suppose. It feels like someone took Euro jank and gave it all the money but kept the jank. The game throws a million things at you at once and displays a bunch of info on your HUD that's hard to keep track of. It's not a very gentle easing into the world, it sort of just throws you in and you're constantly bewildered, well I am anyway. I'm confused. There's a lot going on here but it's not so much that it's deep just that there's a fucking lot of it and I can't be arsed to read it all. I played 3 hours of it, one of which was a big shootout. The shooting doesn't feel good, but it sounds good. Aiming is bad, there's a lot of control options to figure out so I will definitely be following whatever guide somebody puts up to fix the issues with it. Anyway it's cyberpunk, it does the Bladerunner thing. Pris is in it, sort of. That's what people wanted, a very Bladerunner-ey game. Except this is less chin stroking and more aggressive 90s Rob Zombie in your face all the time. Feels of an era This game is very hard to run, pretty much never see 60fps at the settings the game recommends for me. It's exactly the kind of game people were expecting, an absolute monster for both GPU and CPU. A new Crysis.

I guess I'll try and kick off a thread for this. I got this yesterday and played through most of the Berlin mission. I'm basically at the end of it but trying to hold off on progressing too fast and want to savour things a bit. These games are so good at designing levels which are rewarding to explore, I always enjoy the feeling of taking a really long time to work my way to a specific area and then finding a really inconspiocus short cut I could have taken, the multibranched progression through each stage and the way it twists and winds into itself makes it fun to literally just walk around looking at shit. Even while not necessarily making much progress on your targets. I play with almost all the HUD elements turn off except the one which lets me see targets are red guys. Not to make the game obtuse or difficult but to get more of the pleasure of just wandering around looking for ways in, or eavesdropping convos. You do sort of need the instinct vision tho as some targets are not very obvious to look at, especially in Berlin I'm not playing Hitman for the story so I was happy to jump right into the first mission that interested me, I tried a bit of Dubai but it looks more like an introductory mission with some story handholding. Not that that's bad, they do it in the other games too. Berlin is very classic Hitman tho. It even has a flavour of Hitman Absolution to it with the way it sets things up, but I think it's better than Absolution The premise of it is Older Hitman games have played with this concept a bit (Silent Assassin, Blood Money) but it takes center stage here It's quite a pretty game, it doesn't look hugely different to the last two but they made some lighting adjustments like screen space reflections. Not ray tracing, but I don't think it really needs it. The older levels get updated with it as well. I posted some screens in the screenshot thread but they came out a little too dark and don't get the visuals across very well. I imagine it looks great on Series X/PS5. There's also some great line reads in this. I'll probably just dip into levels from all three games now that they're all on the one package and 60GB. I still have to do Japan in 1 and every mission in 2. For now I'll stick with the new stuff.

Began this right after 2, using Xemu, am on chapter 9 or thereabouts. Progress is a lot quicker than NG2, so playing these back to back shouldn't burn me out I think especially as it's very different in its approach to stuff. NGB is from that era of action games pre-DMC3 where they were more than rooms connected by corridors with things to kill in them. I consider it to be the most interesting era of 3D action games before they got way less flexible and less imaginative. They could be genre hybrids cause 'character action' wasn't a codified thing yet. So sort of like how DMC1 is Resident Evil with hack and slash juggling combos, NGB is like a single player fighting game with a sprinkle of Prince of Persia/Tomb Raider in it. Combat is heavy on commitment and choosing attacks based on their specific usefulness for a given interaction (aka, don't just spam buttons), and the PoP stuff comes in with lots of puzzles and platforming, not necessarily massively challenging but not trivial either. It's also got a very 'open' structure to its world, with lots of interconnected alleys and paths that are locked early on but can be accessed later, so it's a world you can get lost in, something which is impossible in NG2. It's not quite Metroid but it's something, and it doesn't feel like it's hyperfocused on one thing but tries to execute generally well at multiple things. This is also why I played Black instead of Sigma, as apparently Sigma reduces a lot of these elements (which I forgot, or didn't notice before as I played Sigma 1 first) It makes the world feel a bit more lived, that you aren't just going to each room to diligently kill everything in it and that there might be a platforming or puzzle bit instead. I don't know why exactly that is, but it just does I think. Not all of it is good, some of it is really annoying and the save point placement will do shitty things like put a PoP wall run platforming bit right before a cunt of a dinosaur boss fight, making sure to drive you insane with its repetition. I used a save state for this one area, I just had it and would have izuna dropped my TV if I had to do it again, doing a wall run across a platform with a treasure chest in the way for the fiftieth time was enough. But I think the game is otherwise a more interesting construction than modern types of these games. I was reading a thread somewhere about remaking this game, and someone in there made the point that things we call 'outdated' and 'clunky' are often also just well articulated design decisions, and even some of its flaws are what gives it its flavour and identity and remakes can often smooth out/streamline stuff like that in the name of quality of life. It helps with pacing as well to not just be a constant bloodbath like NG2 is. My weapon of choice is the flail, found it hard to manage in 2 but here you can easily rack up massive multi-hit combos with XXX->XXXXY. Charge up ults with essence to keep the blood flowing. The lunar is not as good in this as in 2 as you can't as easily scoop enemies up in an Izuna Drop I feel, and the way that enemies are far more defensive in this makes it less friendly to spamming as it is in 2 also. The boss fights still aren't up to much, but they're straightforward to beat. I remembered Alma being harder but I dunno, you just zap across the screen a few times, hit her a few more times, and dodge some obviously bad stuff that's well telegraphed.

So after, what? 9 or 10 years Dead Island 2 is finally here and you know what?... I'm having a pretty decent time with it. The first thing I'll say is it feels like an Xbox 360 game... and it's a matter of opinion if that's a good or a bad thing. For me after Dying Light 2 tried to do far too much (in my opinion) having a game that just wants me to hit things until they fall over in a bloody mess is more than OK. The other thing I wanted to say is the opening hour or so is pretty bad... shit weapons that break way too easy and spongy enemies that hit way too hard... or maybe that's my own fault for picking the poor, frail girl character... who knows... anyway things liven up when you get your first real mission and access to a workbench. Anyone who's played the original games (or the Dying Light games) will feel right at home with the modding of weapons and such, electric swords and and flaming golf clubs... all that good stuff. The flesh system is really cool, thwacking a zombie in the face and seeing its jaw dislocate and detach is pretty mind-blowing and adds a lot to the melee combat (not found any guns yet) The other cool thing us being able to use liquids... I was doing a side mission and reached a part where ther was about 10 zombies banging on glass doors trying to get in... noticed a fuel can and explosive canister, picked up the can and poured fuel the entire length of the doors, hit the canister which ignited the fuel and blew out a window which allowed the zombies to walk straight in to my pre-made Inferno... no more zombies.😂 I've also just picked a perk for a pipe bomb... which is hilarious. Anyway, I like this game, admittedly I've only put around 5 or 6 hours in so far so we'll have to see if it can hold my attention but it's off to a good start.

About time for some impressions, I think. So its a 2D fighting game made by ArcSystem Works, a studio famous for its 'Anime' fighting games. They usually have a lot of systems and movement options as well as combo systems that can be extended to let players do some crazy stuff as long as they have the execution to do them, which is usually quite hard to do. They have made it simpler here. The first thing is its very easy to 'get in' in DBF since you have a button that activates the 'Dragon Dash' which has you fly across the screen and home into your opponent, and it also goes through most projectiles so for beginners fighting each other having that is useful for swiftly getting in. But it is very punishable, so learning when to use it properly is an early lesson. It has a few mechanics to aid beginners because I'm sure they recognise that this is a Dragon Ball game and a number of people playing it won't necessarily be into fighting games, they'll just be fans of the show so letting them have a good time is a priority here. One of the other ways they do this is by having auto-combos (performed by repeatedly pressing the light attack (LA) or medium attack (MA) for a more powerful variant that ends in a metre costing super). They're not a thing I'm fond of as they won't teach you the game that well but they do make for some cool looking action. The auto-combos, in fact, are totally unique combos. In a lot of other games, they are the same visually as manual combos but do less damage. And since they are unique here its a shame to see them locked into the auto-combos and not be able to do them manually. For example, Frieza, a character I use has a really cool looking move in the first part of his auto-combo which launched them into the air. So what I sometimes do to mix things up is perform the first half of the A-C then go into a manual one when in the air. But I wish I had the option to do this move anytime. But while there is a very flashy and basic fighter there is a high skill ceiling here as well, which you will discover at the time of writing when you go online. It isn't as high as ArcSystem's other games but there is still quirky stuff. Since this is a 3v3 fighter you can call in a member of your team to do a one-off move and jump out again. Using these can give you the ability to get hits in and continue combos where you couldn't without. Or they can be used to cover approaches, help defend etc. There is also the little mechanic also found in ArcSytem's other games; the jump cancel. Its something I've always known about but I've not really put serious time into learning but if you want to get beyond hammering out basic stuff you gotta get used to it. Essentially any medium attack can be jump cancelled. A common thing to do would be crouching MA (which puts them in the air a little), standing MA (pops them up a little more) then hit up while the animation is still happening to quickly meet them in the air. Since you can only use your proper launchers and Dragon Dash once per combo link it frees you up to use them later in the combo and its the mastery of this that really frees up the fighting system as a whole. It's here where it really gets fun. I've not really played the story yet but I hope to get round to it soon (it's kinda bonkers it's about the Dragon Ball gang being controlled by an entity and they turn to the camera when referencing this entity) and it also has this weird turn-based map system between fights. There's other stuff. Sparking Blast and how the online seems to be kinda borked at the moment in that the games run fine until it kicks you out of the lobby for no reason, but this will do for now.

The controls are really weird, I keep pressing the Touchpad for map and calling my horse with the wrong D-Pad button (thanks AC Odyssey). The gunplay doesn’t feel like it’s evolved since the OG RDR. It’s so incredibly clunky having to click in and out of cover and move up to the next position, felt like the analog stick was stuck in treacle. I’ve only had a few gunfights but every one has been a chore so far because of it, you just feel like just staying in one cover position so you don’t have to keep moving. I really didn’t think I’d be saying this but the R* game it most reminds me of is LA Noire. Early on there’s a cabin you have to search and I was just going around hugging walls and inspecting/picking up objects like LA Noire, you can do this with almost every richly detailed interior too. The quality of the writing, cinematics and atmosphere created though is truly phenomenal. The opening feels like you’re in and the attention to detail of the world and environmental design is astounding. I’ve been overwhelmed already with everything there is to do, I sat down and played Dominos at the camp for 40 minutes last night. I haven’t even discovered a lot of the side activities either, it has all been so bewildering that I haven’t quite got a handle on it. I’ve been a little disappointed with the ‘talk to strangers’ thing too as a lot of people in the only town I’ve been in have only had the ‘Greet, Antagonise, pull weapon’ commands which don’t really seem nuanced. I have had a couple of cool stranger interactions outside of the town though. Overall though, it’s just intoxicating and I can’t wait to dive back in and properly get used to my surroundings and all the different systems at play. The gunplay is easily my biggest grievance and if I don’t get used to it or it improves I feel it’s going to massively drag the game down in terms of enjoyment for me.

Only played a few minutes before I go to sleep, but yep, pretty sweet so far. One thing I thought was really cool is that one of the menu options is you can change the appearance of the food in game. Could be as simple as you’re veggie or vegan and you would rather not everything be meat, but there’s also some silly options like “Castlevaniaesque” and “monster”. In related and weird news, IGN (or their freelancer) appear to have stolen an indie guy’s video review script. Apparently IGN hav taken down their review while they investigate.

yeah so, i like this, it's a bit different to previous mgs games, in that the map is massive and you do missions in smaller parts - and you get a horse to ride around on - bit like the witcher 3. controls are confusing like normal, but pretty well explained. there seems to be a lot of scope for sneaking and doing things differently which is cool, but i am a bit rubbish at it and often get spotted while trying to be sneaky and end up killing loads of people - which is what i usually do in mgs games. doesn't seem to be an easy mode but it's not been too difficult so far. there is a chicken hat you can equip that stops you getting spotted a few times after you fail once or something - that might be the easy mode - unclear. you can hide while riding your horse by sort of hanging off one side of the horse, i thought that sounded ace so... the into/prologue part is a sort of long interactive cutscene, which has some funny/cool bits, and some rubbish/boring bits imo. after the first bit there hasn't been that much dialogue/cutscenes which is odd. but i'm not too far in so there's still time. extracting stuff is awesome.

This is just for the demo so far... release isn't too far away now though. I'm presuming this isn't too far in to the game, you start out already having met Carlos and entering the Subway train, after a brief conversation you're free to head up to the streets. First impressions... and it's a big one, HDR is vastly improved over RE2... I wish they'd actually go back and fix that but after a year its highly unlikely, anyway it's a lot better in this game. It controls very similar to RE2 but with the added dodge, I actually had to go and change the controller setup as I didn't like where they'd put run (clicking left stick) with the change it felt much better. Obviously it looks lovely, already it's a much more colourful game than RE2, shooting feels pretty much identical... all though I think they may have toned down the zombie dismemberment a tad... presumably because there's more on screen. I've had a good wonder around, it's got some nice little shortcuts you can open up to move around easier and I'm surprised at how many shops you could actually enter. I didn't actually get to finish the demo though... Nemisis killed me...? Everything is looking good to me so far, fingers crossed that shitty real life virus doesn't delay the game.

Got my copy early so gave this a go this afternoon after I finished The Inpatient. Starts off similarly to a lot of Monster Hunters, getting you into your camp quite quickly after a few scripted sequences, tutorials and lots of cutscenes. Spent awhile honing my character - went for my traditional ginger lady, had to change her hair as soon as I was able to in camp though as it just looked shite. Went for a tour of the camp and tried to take in where everything is, there’s definitely a lot to take in but I remember quite a bit of the layout already. Chose my weapon - went for the Insect Glaive. Tried it out in the training room afterwards and had an absolute blast with it, felt like Dante or Bayonetta or some shit, I was doing aerial gymnastics like nobodies business. Went on a quest after this to kill some jagras which was incredibly simple, cool to finally get to do my first quest. As soon as I finished all the online stuff opened up, I didn’t even realise the servers were online yet. Messed about a bit with the squads and checking out the new gathering hall which is fantastic. I’ve created a squad for us by the way, it’s called MFGamers - unsurprisingly - if you search for it whenever y’all get the game it should pop up, if not send me a message and I’ll invite you. Hardly got into it really, but it looks and feels phenomenal so far, cannot wait to get truly stuck in to some tough monsters in my next session.

Ok. So I’m a huge Dragonball Z fan. I first watched the series back in my 20’s, via the heavily edited Toonami dub (people never died, they got sent to ‘Another Dimension’). Years later I rewatched the American dub. And a few years after that, the Japanese original. I still have a lot of love for the series. So I was certainly interested in this. Visually, it absolutely nails it. It looks exactly like an episode of the anime. And it’s certainly a nice touch that you can play either with English or Japanese audio. It doesn’t get off to a great start gameplay wise though, with a pretty poor ‘training’ mission. I’ve seen a few videos of “stuff the game doesn’t tell you”. And a glaring omission is how to fight. Sure, you get three pages of a control pad, showing you what the buttons are. But there’s no explanation given in how to actually fight an enemy. I know, as a fan, that you have to charge Ki to perform energy attacks. But it doesn’t tell you that, so newcomers may be a bit puzzled why their special moves aren’t working. There’s a couple of prompts at the bottom of the screen (hold these buttons to do this move). But as far as tutorials go, it’s not great. I then experienced a bug which meant I had to reload my game. “Walk with Gohan to the fishing spot” I was told. Great. Except Gohan vanished, and after 5 minutes of searching it was clear he’d fucked off into thin air. Part of the game is open world, where you can fly around collecting Z orbs of different colours, to level up your abilities. Again, the game doesn’t tell you what these are for. Then there’s the Community Board, which is frankly a mess. You get a board, and when you meet characters and perform certain actions, you gain their icon, and can place them on your board. Putting certain characters next to each other grants you bonuses in combat. Some characters have their own board (Goku’s wife, Chi Chi, and his trainer Master Roshi). How do you add icons onto their board? I don’t have a fucking clue. It speaks volumes that the first time you access this part of the game, you’re barraged with about 6 pages of information. And I’m still none the wiser on what the fuck to do with it. Anyway, only a couple of hours in. Maybe things will make more sense as I go along. Or it won’t, and I’ll just mash buttons and hope for the best.

I've been playing a bit of the campaign, and it is so much better than I was expecting it to be. It is called War Stories and is split into five separate parts following different characters and scenarios. I've only done the first one after the prologue so far, Through Mud and Blood where you and your squad are pushing forward in a British Mk V tank, and it was really good. It is quite poignant in places, and has great use of music. It looks bloody fantastic, too. Not tried the multiplayer yet, which says something of the single player as it's normally the thing I go for first in a FPS. If you leave it on the War Stories menu long enough, a lovely piece of music with a female vocalist starts playing and it is quite beautiful.

The very king of fighting games is back, and I'm head over heels with the little beauty. It looks and plays incredible. So much detail and so fluid in motion. I know I'll be posting in this thread in five years time, although tbf, probably as the avid spectator to online tournaments that I've been for 10 years by now. Truth is I've never been able to play the thing to any degree of competence, I just like watching other people do it. Having said that I've decided to do something I've never done when (trying) to play it. I'm going to go with grapplers. Maybe slowing things down a bit for myself might be more appropriate for my age - (advanced)!

Anyone else picked this up at some point? It came out first two years ago but it came out just after Nuclear Throne which is a very similar game so I passed on it back then, but it was on sale on Switch recently so I picked it up as I'm struggling in a gaming rut and for some reason, I felt like playing this. So the game itself. It's a twin-stick shooter and rogue-like, or rogue-lite if you like. You are tasked with getting to the bottom of the "Gungeon"; a dungeon that is very gun-themed. Bullseyes hang from the walls like sigils, revolver-like mechanisms teleport you around the area and other gun-themed devices litter the medieval style Gungeon. You make your way through shooting enemies (a strange bunch; walking bullets and shells with corresponding guns, knights, ghosts, a mini-gun wielding crow. These are the more normal agitators). To help you through these oddballs you have a diving roll with generous invincibility frames and one of the most varied arsenals of guns but in a video game (citation needed). You have four characters to chose from who start with different weapons, consumable skills and passive skills. Even more of both kinds of skills can also be found in the Gungeon along with the weapons. The Pilot, for example, gets a lockpick which means he has a chance of opening chests without needing a key, but if it fails the lock is broken and the chest is sealed shut. The Space Marine starts with a piece of armour giving him an extra hit point. I'm actually having quite a hard time with it. I can sometimes get to the fourth floor but I'm not sure if that is good or not. I did rescue a guy one run where he says he can let me skip floors but I don't know how far down I have to go before he lets me use the shortcut. I bet it's the fifth floor. And while I mostly do okay in the Gungeon itself the bosses can be a bit of a bullet hell nightmare and its here I usually mess up, even on the first boss on particularly bad runs. But it does have that "one more go" factor which is important in games like this. It's just fun to play, rolling through bullets, flipping a table for cover and shooting a switch that makes a chandelier fall on a bunch of idiots. And seeing what guns come up is kinda fun too, in an "I recognise that!" kind of way. Some guns are your usual, Uzis, AK47s, etc; and you also have wackier ones like t-shirt cannons, giant shells that fire shotguns, a barrel that fires fish, etc; and also references! A taste of what I've come across is Barret's from FFVII's arm cannon, Judge Dread's gun and the Proton Pack. And many more! Definitely one for the rogue-like likers out there.