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I started this today and it's really good, although it does have a couple of problems. It's an action rpg, and it's got a few nice ideas in there. You have a standard melee attack and a magic attack, a dodge, which you'll need as you see an indicator of where, and how far an enemy will attack. If I had to throw in a comparison, it's not a million miles away from something like Ys, except smaller. The most notable good idea I like is that there's only limited types of weapons and armour in the game, so if you pick up a duplicate it levels up that weapon. It's random, or seemingly random, what you get, so you might have to switch from a build you like because something else has streaked ahead. What that means is, you might have a sword that does decent damage, but the wand that's just levelled up might do so much more magic damage it makes sense to switch My issue with the game then, and I am really liking Cat's Quest, is that it feels very small. The map gets restricted very early by very powerful enemies. I got a story mission I was warned not to go and do until I'd levelled up a bit, so I had to circle around the same small area for a couple of hours picking up side quests to gain some levels. The game never told me what level I needed to be at to take on that story mission, maybe it does in some menu somewhere, but it meant that when I'd started to run out of side quests, or hit a bit of a wall with them, and went to do the main mission, I pissed all over it The quests almost always involve you going to a point, possibly then to another, fighting some monsters, completing quest. It's fine, some of the set ups are pretty good but then some are kind of repeated. I picked it up fairly cheap, it's not a bad Switch game, not sure it's something you'll play solidly for a week

Time for impressions me thinks. I've decided its great. It's a futuristic racing game where the car's have big wheels and can drive upside-down. It's high speed so you can ride up walls, ceilings and generally flip around. It's very fun. The game starts off very easy - you can come last and still progress - but now I've spent some time with it I see that early parts of the game are just about learning the tracks and how your car reacts to the environments. So I will just say you may progress easily but it's important to pay attention. You'll need to because later where positions are more important you can't just fling yourself around; your flinging has got to be considered. Handling is a weird combination of twitchy and heavy. Like steering between other cars on the straights is twitchy but when the tracks start throwing sharp turns at you you need to be heavy on the breaks and the car's suddenly feel like barges. It's weird to get used to but it does make an odd sense after extended play. It has a good variety of modes. Races come in different guises: You have your basic races, there are races based on points (you get points nailing others with Mario Kart style weapons and sick jumps), an arena mode like a death match taking place in an open area and others. I think it's really cool. It's hard, and like a lot of weapons based racing games it can definitely be frustrating but then there are lots of highs, too, so it's a game you have that kind of dysfunctional relationship with, especially with all the flipping. Here, I have a clip of me racing that has a bit of GRIP drama in it (shout out to the self correction after being screwed *chefs kiss*. Boo to me being an idiot and driving into the edge of a pipe)

I’ve always enjoyed Telltale’s output. It was pretty gutting to see them go down in flames. There was a lot of doubt about this game getting finished. But, it was. Personally, I’ve felt that their WD series peaked with the outstanding first season. 2 was good, until the rushed last two chapters. New Frontier annoyed me. Season 2 had a possibility of 3 very different endings. New Frontier decided to make all of those choices meaningless, funnelling Clementine down the one ending they felt was “canon”. Still, despite me preferring their other series (Wolf Among Us, Batman and Guardians Of The Galaxy are vastly superior to anything TWD did after the first season), I was always going to get around to this eventually. If you’ve played any Telltale game, you know what to expect. Very little puzzle solving, mostly making decisions that a character ‘Will remember’, unless they die soon afterwards. The story here is mostly good, focussing on Clem’s continued efforts to raise AJ in a world dominated by Walkers. You meet a new group of survivors, and try to fit in with them. Choices you make influence how AJ reacts to scripted situations. And some of those choices were pretty meaningful in the long run. There’s plenty of action sequences, though I found a lot of them frustrating. If you get attacked while trying to kill a walker, you die. The key to survival is stunning them with a leg stab, then taking them on one at a time. But the controls for movement felt a bit janky at times. I’d stun a walker, then try to kill another one nearby, but it wouldn’t register, so I got killed. It didn’t happen that often, but it was bloody annoying when it did. Did it all pay off in the end? Well, obviously I’ll spoiler it, but I didn’t like the ending. I’ll say why, but obviously, it’s a SPOILER. So, here goes: Anyway, that’s it. It was mostly enjoyable. Definitely some exciting moments. Just a shame it’s the end of the road for Telltale.

Have you played Minecraft before? If it's a yes, you already know what it's about, probably best to click off the thread. If no, pull up a chair. Minecraft isn't for everyone. It's a very directionless game where outside the simple premise of building a house for yourself, you are free to do what you want. In the day time the game plays out as a building sim where you spend time harvesting blocks of various materials. You start off by punching them, but soon enough you are able to knock together a means which will allow you to make tools. Tools allow specific materials to be harvested faster, axes allow wood to be gathered faster, shovels allow dirt or gravels to be smashed u[p faster and so on. On top of that, each tool you make takes a durability hit each time you use it, although as you progress you can make better and better tools for harvesting materials that you couldn't previously. Of course, the more materials you have the more things you can make, and the more things you can make the more materials you can get. It's a vicious circle or harvesting and producing. At night you have one of three choices. You either hole up in the house or shack you managed to find or throw up before the sun went down and sleep the night off in a comfy bed, you curse yourself for over reaching yourself in building a house or you make equip yourself with the armours and weapons you made during the day time to try and endure the night. If you ended up doing the latter two options, you just entered the survival horror part of the game. They might be blocky sprites, but when you hear their howling or attack call it will make you panic. If you survive the night, it's back to the day time cycle. There are a lot of things to do, even outside of building massive houses and castles for you to live in. The beauty of this game is that you can play for one day cycle which is about 20 minutes from what I worked out, or you could play for hours upon hours. If I was to do some game algebra it would be Animal Crossing + Keftlings + Survival Horror + First Person Perspective + LEGO = Minecraft. It's something you should at least try the demo of and see whether you like it if you have not tried it already. You can have a good piss about before the demo ends and get an idea of what you are getting into. I personally didn't try the online part of the game, but I did grab about 40 minutes in splitscreen and it works really nice. The only think I do not like about it is that the menus have not really been optimised properly for a controller. The crafting part is fine, but just moving stuff about your inventory is a bit of a pain in the arse, I'm not sure how they could have handled it better, but I'm sure they could have done it somehow. It's made even more annoying by the fact that the hints and reminders are constantly pushing the inventory box to one side, it could have seriously done without that.

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.

So, the downsides are there. It’s locked to 30fps on base machines (though I can’t actually tell the difference), there’s one music track on the menu when you boot it up and then you need a premium Spotify account to play and control music through the menus. There’s no online or offline multiplayer at the moment. There isn’t even a tutorial of any kind, you’re just thrown straight in expecting you to be a Burnout fan. But it’s fast, fun and completely mind blowing that this was made by just 7 people. I’ve hooked up my Spotify and am currently hurtling round the tracks listening to a Prodigy playlist. I can tell you that bouncing round to No Good, Voodoo People and Break & Enter is fantastic. It’s a shame that there’s no specific music and if you’re using another premium music service you’re out of luck. Also the music doesn’t get filtered like it did on Burnout when you boost. But if no-one else will make it, Burnout fans should embrace this as the good outways the bad. Also, I’m gonna make a collaborative playlist if anyone wants in.

Soon going to be playing through the 3rd (and probably final) DLC for this. So seems a good time to throw down an opinion. This is definitely one of the most fun games i’ve played this year. I’ve a lot of respect for Rebellion,their Sniper Elite series is consistently brilliant (shooting Nazis in the nads? Who doesn’t love that.). So I was definitely interested in this. It doesn’t carry across the gory X-Ray cam feature of Sniper Elite. But that’s understandable,as it’s going for a different vibe. It plays out like an Olden days Adventure movie, with a Narrator providing a running commentary,often genuinely being hilarious (though for some reason has an absolute hatred of cats,and isn’t afraid to show it). The combat is simple to grasp,with a small selection of weapons (sniper rifles,SMGs,shotguns), with additional extra powerful weapons that you can buy from crates,using gold you get from treasure chests and killing enemies. You also get special moves that you can activate with enough charge,ranging from damage reduction,to smart bombs. One complaint though has to come with boss fights. Many of them require an accurate shot on a particular weak spot, often a quite small one. Doesn’t sound bad in theory. But when that boss is constantly moving,accuracy proves difficult. Add that to a swarm of enemies ganking you,and the difficulty in getting a decent shot gets even worse. Co-op definitely helps in that regard. Bosses that took me a good 20 minutes to kill on my own,became a breeze when I was with a mate. Its been a really enjoyable game,and the DLC missions have been quite decent. Charging £6 for each additional new character can go bollocks though. It hit the PSN sales at Halloween,and probably will do so again before long. I’d certainly recommend it.

I fancied some retro stuff today, and maybe even putting proper time in to something. I was toying with playing something on the Saturn or Dreamcast but instead I booted up the Mega Drive collection on Steam. The nice thing about the PC version, which has had a bit of an odd history, is that it has mod support. Sometimes that means things like playing as Knuckles in Sonic 1, sometimes it means whenever anyone dies in Streets of Rage 2 it makes the Tim Allen noise, and other times people have just added other games to the collection through the rom option. I played som Hyperstone Heist, some Maximum Carnage (a Spiderman game), Batman & Robin. What I learnt was that this is cool, people have added all sorts of stuff, but also I'm not as good at these games anymore, nor do I have the patience for them Instead I played some Landstalker. I really liked Landstalker when I was younger, I was probably a bit too young and inexperienced to make the most of it though. It's kind of Sega's Zelda (it's actually made by Climax Entertainment, who made the excellent Dark Saviour for the Saturn), but with some isometric platforming and a bizarre take on how to move in isometric games (there's a mod to change it to more traditional controls, as default it's all about diagonals) I'm not far enough in to say definitively if it still holds up, but certainly it's not terrible. The biggest problem is when you encounter enemies, if you're by a wall your attack wont come out as the sword will hit the wall. Lining up to enemies is a bit fiddly thanks to the odd controls, I almost wish it was slightly more grid like movement, so you moved a set distance with each step, it'd make lining up against enemies and things to interact with a lot easier. Aside from that it had the adventure game thing of never quite being A-B, you aren't just moving in a straight line, even in dungeons you'll have to work to find keys or to activate something. I'm hoping it doesn't get too obtuse, but I'm hoping I keep chipping away at it, I don't go back to properly old games and finish them as often as I'd like

I don't think there's a thread for this, either everyone who bought it posted in the SR3 thread or no one played it. Either way it's free on steam this weekend (added to your library) and so far it's pretty good. There's loads of systems in it now, I'm not entirely sure how they're all earned. You still level up to some extent but it doesn't really affect anything, you need to buy the stuff you unlock so you need money, by the time you've got enough for anything you've levelled up any way. You've also got super powers, powering these up uses some other currency that I always seem to have loads of, not sure how I'm getting it unless it's collecting the orbs dotted around the city, but while you might have 50 of them, a new move will cost 15 or 25. It always surprises me how linear the Saints Row games are at the start, it's a fair amount of time before you get to just wander the city doing what you want, and it's worth staying on that path a bit so you get the super powers, which makes everything else easier. The game feels a bit tighter too, the gunplay is better than I remember it being, the platforming works ok considering, it's a well made game so far

Oh my word, it's glorious! The smile on my face in the first world was pretty wide. Then the remix came into effect and it gets even better. Finally a Sonic game made by people who understand what a Sonic game should be. Also, I'd heard that the second zone's boss was something special for long time fans and it really didn't disappoint. I won't even put it in spoiler tags at this point but you'll know.

This is by SWERY so you know it's bonkers as shit. I had no idea what type of game this was and i was not expecting a horror puzzle platformer. You play as Jackie (J.J Macfield) in search of her girlfriend Emily after she vanishes during your camping weekend in the mountains. Immediately noticable is the slow pace at which you move, closely followed by doughnuts and use of your mobile phone. The game also explains nothing so you have to guess what to do in all instances. So it turns out you use J.J's body to your advantage. She can dismember herself on various types of scenery, from losing an arm (which can be picked up and thrown), then a leg, then you are just a torso, finally just a head (which moves quickly and has a boss jump). You can also set yourself on fire and you can use all this pain to progress through the levels in search of your beloved. I don't wasnt to give anything else away, i just recommend you play this knowing as little about it as possible, it's truly bat shit crazy but I'm really enjoying it (apart from the crawl speed of the character movement). I will say the story/message is getting good, text messages between J.J and her friends are drip fed to you as you progress.

Won't be giving any lengthy impressions here as I pretty much covered the game in my R6:Siege Beta thread a few months back (can be found here: http://www.mfgamers.com/index.php?showtopic=40972&hl=%2Brainbow+%2Bsiege) and doesn't differ too much from the beta, largely I'm just going to address the improvement Ubi have made since the beta and comment on the other maps and modes that weren't in that. So yeah, everything is largely the same as the beta, the graphics are much better, the maps are more detailed (for the most part), they've changed the operator logo's (for some reason) to slightly more colourful ones and added a couple of Russian ones I don't remember from the Beta. In addition to this there's of course a lot more game modes in Terrorist Hunt and Multiplayer sections to play, and the addition of 'Situations'. Situations is basically a slightly lengthy, non-mandatory single-player tutorial, it's 10 missions that put you in various different situations, can be played on Medium, Hard or Realistic, you get a star each for getting 4 headshots, completing the mission with more than 50% health and killing 2 enemies whilst aiming, for each star you get 200 renown (R6:Siege XP) which you can use to buy new operators to use or upgrade/customise weapons. Terrorist Hunt, which was in the Beta, but only had the 'classic' game-type where you go in and have to clear a map of enemies on whichever difficulty you choose, there's quite a few more game modes in this such as attacking or defending a bomb or area, rescuing a hostage from a group of Terrorists etc. Incredibly similar to what was in the Beta, but the different game modes add a bit more variation this time around, it's good fun, and a decent distraction every now and again, but not as good as the PvP, the difficulties seem a bit strange as well, Realistic is almost impossible and I've failed every time I've tried, but Hard is too easy and I've succeeded every-time I've tried, so there needs to be a better balance there in my opinion. Multiplayer, now categorised as 'Casual' and 'Ranked' play-types, with Casual being the only option open until you reach Level 20, it also seems to me that the only game mode you can play is variations on TDM (defending/attacking a bomb, defending/securing an area) as in the Beta, there's not been any hostage rescue or anything for me so far, and you have to reach Level 20 to unlock these additional game modes it seems, which is slightly annoying, but the game is so good you probably won't care. A huge amount of maps now in MP, 11 in total and I've probably encountered 8 or 9, 3 of which were in the Beta (House, Embassy and Hereford), all of the maps I've played are absolutely phenomenal, a lot tell a story without actually telling a story (if you get what I mean), some of which make me think there was meant to be a story-mode at one point or another but it got pulled, because of the stories the maps tell by themselves alone. Thankfully, Ubi have managed to address the server issues that dogged my time in the Beta a few months back, haven't had any disconnections, and haven't had to wait a long time for the matchmaking to get me into a game thankfully, have had a bit of lag and a few glitches though but only in a couple of games. Just as tense, just as tactical, thoughtful and filled with suspense as the Beta, and probably the best Multiplayer game of the last 5 years, the moments in it when you outsmart an opponent through quick-thinking and planning are incredible and fill you with a sense of fulfilment and satisfaction that barely any other MP game can give, it's a shame that no one will play it. Highly recommended, if you are even in the slightest bit interested in squad-based tactical shooters, then get it.

I'm never quite sure, when browsing the PS Sale that I clearly bypass the highly reviewed AAA games that I've never played, and turn to something niche, but it's often the way it turns out. Couldn't find a thread for Elex but I know a couple of the GamesTM people played it, so thought I'd give it a go. Seems a bit overwhelming in the early stages, 2-3 hrs in, wandering off gets me quickly killed, whilst walking around picking up quests in the barbarian village is a big hit & miss (no way to access inventory or map without using that item they don't want you to use....) But I'm reassured from reviews that after the first 5 hrs or so it gets a whole lot better.

I haven't played a huge amount of this but someone should start a thread It's the easy comparison but Wargroove is basically Advance Wars meets Fire Emblem, but bigger. It's got the commander concept, stronger units that mean victory/failure if defeated, and who also have special abilities that can affect surrounding units (health recovery, defence boost, an extra turn), this is the titular Wargroove. Aside from that it's the familar Advance Wars tile based gameplay, with units being strong or weak against other types or units. This could be clearer, you click on them and have little icons that show the types they're strong to or weak to, but it might be better to have it spelt out a little more, maybe even showing that they're boosted as you line up an attack. There's also critical traits, things like having two pikemen next to each other means that the one that's attacking will have boosted attack. It's a key part of the gameplay but some are much easier to act out than others. For whatever reason, as much as Wargroove is Advance Wars and it is Fire Emblem, it doesn't quite feel like either of them, it's not as immediate or as compulsive. It might just be that it's be that it's not as good, the first Advance Wars rates as right up amongst the most I've enjoyed a game on first encountering it. I think part of it is the maps, they're larger than the early stages of the Nintendo games its aping, and they quite quickly start trying to trip you up in a way that those games don't in their early stages. The fog of war it introduces for example, Advance Wars would leave enemies very deliberately in place so you could breeze through learning the mechanic, Wargroove turns it in to a proper level. It also feels like some units are just not very good, it's less rock/paper/scissors and more that swordsmen are just worse than pikemen. The longer length of missions is probably not helping it either, but then, that's just in comparison to Advance Wars and the like, it's a good game, it just suffers because it wears its influences so obviously I will say though, I'm enjoying it, and the way the audio pans as you attack from one side of the screen to the other is a great touch

Gearing up my pc to be able to play this, been watching streams of it for ages. My pc is about 6 years old now or more and its got 4gb ram and a gtx570 so I've found 8 gb ram and managed to get a gtx 970 for 100 quid which should put me in a good position.

Blakey told me to put it here but I feel BBS is too old and small a game for its own thread so I figure I'd just make one for the collection itself BBS is the only one I intend to catch up on for now as well as that prologue thing (it's like three hours long apparently and is a direct sequel to BBS) Cross posting from KHIII thread I'm about 5 hours into Terra's "campaign" in BBS and I'm getting bored. This game feels starved of the charm of the PS2 game. Environments are really bare (even the ones that are returning) and the cutscenes arent always animat ed very well. Voice performances are worse than on PS2. I think I miss Donald and Goofy. So basically it's a PSP adapt ation of a console game with all the downgrades that you'd expect. But the combat is actually quite alright. I find Terra very slow and stiff to control but there's some neat stu ff in there. I think the BBS team is also the KHIII team as well so some of this will carry over maybe. EDIT Well I beat Terra's campaign. The final section was actually pretty cool. Lots of one on one boss fights. The story still doesn't make sense tho cause you have to play the other two characters to see wtf is going on with them. Nier Automata all over again . The game as a whole just feels so bare tho. Rubbish versions of Disney worlds and very few NPCs. If this is the high watermark of the KH spinoffs then Im not too sorry I missed them. Xenahort or however you spell it is a fun guy tho. EDIT2 I was just looking at the voice talent for this game. Leonard Nemoy is Xeonhort!? ? And Mark Hamill plays Master Eraqus, who is based off of Hironobu Sakaguchi, creator of Final Fantasy. Two cool dudes for the price of one.

I'm surprised there is no thread for any of these. I got this a little while ago and just started getting around to it. I've not really played any of these games before except looking at the Vita one for a few minutes when it was on PS+ so I'm more than a little late to this party. So its a relatively simple block puzzle game with ties to music. You make up squares and they disappear... then you get points and you have to last a long time. Sorry, I'm not very good at the game yet and I don't think I understand it that well. I've played a few of the missions were it sets up certain situations and you have one move to eliminate all the blocks but I've not been strategically setting anything up yet in the main game; I just whack stuff down vaguely together hoping it will all combo together further down the line. I do try to time my dropped blocks to get the most down before the music's BPM(?) bar does a scan so I can get the most down and get combos... I think, that's how it works. I'm having fun with it, anyway. I'm a bit hot or cold with the music so far to be honest but I'm enjoying the game. I have no idea how I'm gonna get anywhere near @spatular's score.

I spent the end of last year finally getting around to Just Cause 3. It had been languishing in my backlog for ages,so one day I thought “I really need to play this”. Leading to me happily playing through to the end,taking over the entire region of Medici,and doing the DLC,which increased the carnage with a missle+machine gun wingsuit,and mech. Having had so much fun with it,I bumped JC4 to the top of my Boomerang rental list. It just arrived today,so spent an hour or so playing it. I noticed a number of reviews say it looked graphically worse than JC3. Having that game fresh in my mind,I have to say I agree. It doesn’t look awful,but something is definitely off. I’m not entirely sure why,but at the moment I prefer the way JC3 looked. At the moment my weapon inventory is limited to two guns,as opposed to the previous system of two guns and a pistol. Maybe that changes as you progress in the game. I don’t like that the button to swap weapons is the same as reloading. You press Square (on PS4) to reload,hold it to swap weapons. It feels weird. As for taking over regions? Gone is the whole “go to an area,blow up everything and take it over” setup. Instead, you get rebels to take over places by assigning them to a region. You have to unlock more people for your army by causing Chaos. I haven’t played enough yet to judge how that properly works. But it feels like an unnecessary change. I liked liberating everything myself,so I’m not entirely sure how this will play out. I intend to play plenty more of it, as the series has always been fun. But I can see why this got a mixed reaction in reviews.

Well,this is a very welcome return for the Onimusha series. It’s been laying dormant for far too long (So has Dino Crisis,Capcom. Hint hint). So when it was announced that the first game was getting a Remaster,I was all for it. I absolutely loved these games back in the day,which was basically “Resident Evil but in Samurai times”. And the game has held up really well. The combat is simple enough to learn, one button for sword attacks,another for magic,one for blocking. Killing enemies earns souls,which are used to level up your gear. The graphics have been given a nice lick of paint, it looks good. Though as it’s a straight up port,there’s things to be aware of. Cutscenes are totally unskippable. Which wouldn’t be a problem,except for the infamous Water Puzzle section. Which puts you through 3 traps in a row,the final being a sliding tile puzzle,which are always a massive ball ache. Made worse here as you’re up against a time limit,and failing means doing the entire section again, after going through a lengthy cutscene preceding it. YouTube guides to the rescue for that bloody bit. It would have been nice to have some extra content thrown in,such as a history of the series,promotional material,stuff like that. Something like the effort Capcom put in to the Street Fighter Anniversary Collection last year. And it’s a shame it’s only the first game,rather than all 3 in one collection. But I’m just glad to have the series back. And hopefully we will see more of it in the future.

I know you do son, I know you do. And you used the wrong write you big bell end. I bought it too, made the crazy mistake of only buying it on one console. I am struggling to enjoy it again at the moment, i thought I would love to play this game again as it's been a few years but I'm finding it incredibly dated. I shall play again on Thursday (when I finally get some time to play games again) with the knowledge of what it is and not what I thought it was and see if we get along then.

Odd that Blakey just posted a picture in the Latest Purchase thread as I just finished this myself today. Its only a couple of hours long. The immediate comparison in my mind was Katamari Damacy where as you move something around and as you add to the thing you're moving it gets bigger. In this case it's a hole. The more that goes in the bigger the hole gets and the bigger the things you can swallow. It's more set pieces in opposition to Katamari's sprawling playscape and Donut County is much more story driven. Its about a racoon called BK and his pal, a young lady called Mira. Using an app on his phone that controls the moving hole, BK has basically swallowed up the town including himself and Mira. Turns out the Earth is hollow and all the townsfolk have gathered together underground to try to figure a way out. The levels you play are flashbacks leading up to the current event. In the levels themselves you move the whole around, swallowing things up. Each level is split in to little areas and sometimes the hole size resets, depending on the goal. Also there are puzzle elements. Like in the second level you need to launch a hot air balloon by swalling a flaming kiln. The hole then emitts hot air so you can lift the balloon and end the level. It gets more complicated than that obviously but you get the picture. BK the racoon is quite funny, he's a selfish cunt to comedy effect. The games humour continues in the Trashapedia which is basically a log book of all the shit you pick up with amusing(ish) descriptions. So yea, its nice. Looks nice, nice music. You know, nice. It's just quite short. I liked it though, my kind of game. Nice.

After seeing a glowing review at Eurogamer I thought this would be a nice counter game to the gritty/bleak violence of God of War, and an excuse to pry the Switch away from the kids. You have to bare with me on the premise - you play as a dung beetle who's the new postmaster on the tropical island of Mokumana, who's guardians are being attacked by the 'God Slayer'. After meeting the previous postmaster, your given a postman badge and told to go meet some fellow further on in the island. Navigating the island is a joy, you push a ball (of what I hope isn't shit) about in front of you and there are numerous pinball flippers around that you activate with the L and R triggers, launching you all over the place. You meet various strange characters and creatures along the way, who give you challenges and rewards. One example is having to find six soot balls in a lighthouse, with the lighthouse essentially being it's own pinball table. Completing these tasks gets you new abilities granting access to other parts of the map, a la Metroid/Castlevania. The art style is great, the music is fantastic and it's a joy to play. All in all, well worth the £15 entry fee.

I think that's all the tags for this, basically it's out on just about everything. Child of Light is actually a surprisingly complex rpg, even if it is a bit on the easy side. During combat you and your enemies share a movement meter. Once you get towards the end of the meter you can cue up an action, that action takes a bit of time to activate. If you manage to land a hit on an enemy whilst they're activating their move you'll interrupt them, sending them back down the meter. You also have a firefly who can slow down enemies as they charge, heal you a bit, and pick up items. If you have multiple characters you can switch out characters, this doesn't spend your turn so you can still perform an action with your new character Out of battle the game starts off like a simple platformer, but then you learn to fly. There's still the odd puzzle element to the map, items to find, even alternate characters it's apparently possible to miss (Brad missed one on Giant Bomb). There's gem stones you can equip to add perks, things like fire damage or resistances. It sort of feels superfluous with how easy the game can be but it's nice that it's there. It looks amazing obviously, and the soundtrack is great, made by someone respected but I'd never heard of her anyway, I'm really enjoying it, it's not the greatest rpg ever, it's just missing something, but it's pretty good so far

Started this today, put in about 3 hours. It left a hell of a first impression I must say, absolutely loved what I've played so far. I played 2014's The Stick of Truth and whilst I thought it was very good overall, it lost its way towards the end for me and became incredibly repetitive, leaving a sour taste in my mouth as I limped over the finish line. Being a huge South Park fan and seeing an idea like that executed so well and with all the trademark humour and lore established in the show translated into the game flawlessly was fantastic. Being able to go around South Park and explore every nook and cranny of it, finding chinpokomon and all sorts of mad side quests, it was really cool. But towards the end it became real repetitive and a lot of the reason for that was the combat. It was enjoyable for the most part and quite a bit of fun but towards the end where you're put into challenging fight after challenging fight it felt like a real slog. It just felt too basic for me after x number of hours, it didn't feel as deep or tactical enough as I wanted it to be and just became a chore. Fast forward to 2018 when I finally get round to playing the second South Park game, The Fractured But Whole, and I was somewhat trepidatious as to what to expect. Even though it has been over 3 years since I played the last game the finale left such a sour taste in my mouth that I really didn't know if I was going to enjoy this or not, I thought it would just be more of the same and with Ubi SF taking over development duties I just didn't know whether it would have as much charm and humour as the original game. Thankfully - as mentioned at the introduction, the opening 3 hours of the game I've played today have put all my worries to bed. It has just been an absolute joy to play in every regard, exploring the town again, speaking to all the characters around the town that we know and love. It's just great to be back in South Park again. Probably the best aspect for me though has been the ability to open every door on every house or store and look in a hell of a lot of cupboards for loot, it is just incredibly addicting in a Fallout kind of way, I can't remember an awful lot from the first game apart from the ending, combat and the abortion clinic so I don't remember the first game having this level of loot to find. I remember going to people's housing and exploring the town - looking for chinpokomon especially - but yeah I don't remember there being this level of reward for looking in every draw in a house or store. Another aspect is the little puzzles you come across, some have that metroidvania element to them where you haven't got a certain ability yet so will have to come back later to get to the chest/item just out of reach in a particular locale. That level of exploration, exploring the town and encountering all these little side quests you can pick up like discovering who key'd Randy's car at night or speaking to Morgan Freeman in the Taco stand so he can teach you how to Craft bits and pieces. There's a ton of collectibles too, but the main ones I've found so far are these Japanese-style art pieces called Youi or something like that which are a bit anime looking and quite strange. One of the other new elements is the 'Coonstagram' stuff which encourages you to take a selfie with everyone you can see so you can get more followers - and unlock more missions down the line I presume. So there's another puzzle element of getting someone to have a selfie with you, sometimes it'll be something simple like buying stuff from a vendor but other times you'll have to help Jimmy finish a school project or something like that. There's also this artifact system where you can equip one into a 'hero slot' on your character and it'll give you and your team some kind of boost in combat. Most hilarious one I've found so far is a buttplug I found in Big Gay Al and Mr Slave's house that gave me +35 'might. You can find costumes all over South Park too - of course I got the AC costume with some uPlay units though The aspect that has impressed me the most though and is the biggest improvement from the original is most definitely the combat. I don't remember it especially well from the first game but here it feels SO much deeper and a hell of a lot more tactical with the new tactics grid. The grid enables you and a bunch of enemies to move about turn by turn, using different x, y, x or a abilities but all the abilities require a certain placement in order to attack multiple enemies or knock an enemy back into another for a bonus. A lot of abilities cannot be activated if the targeting square cannot reach the enemies square so placement on the grid itself is key. As well as this there's numerous ailments to consider and AOE damage when certain enemies die, you still have a timed element by pressing A at the right time when taking a hit or doing a move - which fills up your Ultimate meter quicker - but it doesn't seem as full on as the first game and the tactics grid makes everything feel much clearer and less simplistic if that makes sense. A bit more side-scroll XCOM-lite and less Child of Light if that makes sense to anyone So yeah, I really didn't expect to be as impressed as I am with it but it's safe to say it has got me hook line and sinker, cannot wait to dive back in tomorrow. Some pics:

Initial impressions are not positive. I like some of Capybara’s previous games and Jim Guthrie’s soundtrack for Sword & Sworcery was fantastic (and he’s here too) but in a post RDR2 time, I’m not sure I have the patience for this. It starts off with a cut scene that isn’t obvious it’s a cut scene as nothing really happens, unless you press the pause button and it gives you the option to skip it. So I let it run and yet still nothing really happens. Apparently this has gone through a lot of changes through the years but I’m not sure this is what I wanted. You don’t really get any sign posting of where you’re going or what you’re doing but I managed to get a torch and start going into caves but my interest just fell right off. It doesn’t help that the view is incredibly zoomed out and my old eyes are squinting at the TV to try and figure out what I’m looking at. Looking at the trailer from 4 years ago it hasn’t actually changed much: Still, I think it will take more glowing reviews and impressions to make me want to jump back in, because the whole time I was playing I was just wishing I was playing Smash instead.