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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

First off it's slightly different from the demo, for one the intro is much longer, which lets you see more of Arkham and see more of the Joker. The game itself starts off with the same tutorial battle against the goons, and is the same up until you beat Zsasz. In the demo you then do some more stealth stuff, here though it takes you through some basic climbing stuff and a bit more fighting, before you move onto the 'boss' fight against against one of Jokers mutated henchmen. The fight is a massive anti-climax, it's really just to teach you to dodge, which might be for the best as the camera is a bit like Gears' (right behind you) and so it's a little hard to manoeuvre around. I thought I'd worked out the tactic to beat him, but well I'll leave it to you lot to find out. It's pretty good so far. At points it looks brilliant, at points the ps3's lack of AA shows through. Characters faces are still bizarre, the the environments are really well fleshed out, it doesn't just feel like a crate has been dumped in a room to fill it up a bit. I've just got to a bit where I have to backtrack. On the way through I noticed rooms, items and areas that I couldn't access yet, so my guess is that Arkham might not be all that massive. Although there's every chance it is, and the game is just longer than I'm expecting

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.

Played the first 80 minutes or so. Incredibly impressed so far, it has actually managed to exceed my expectations. Got quite a jarring start to it, Kidman randomly shows up and puts you back into Stem, telling you about your daughter (who knew?) being stuck in there. It's just all incredibly convenient and I'm sure Mobius is upto some Shenanigans, they're definitely using Sebastian for something...don't trust them at all. Things go wrong pretty much as soon as you enter Stem, You then find yourself in Union proper, and are funnelled into an extended tutorial, meeting some of the zombie-like enemies similar to the first game. And that's pretty much where I left it. But yeah, I'm incredibly impressed so far, the atmosphere is just absolutely horrific and the whole small foggy town vibe really reminds me of Silent Hill, I just love the way they mess with you as well through the Stem-delusions, so great to just have no idea what the fuck is going on some of the time. Oh and the graphics are a HUGE step-up from the first game, I never subscribed to the idea that the first game looked bad necessarily, but looking back on it now it was incredibly dated, just looking at the character models and lighting in the new Steam engine (modified IDTech 5), it's such a huge step up. The frame-rate has been a pretty solid 60hz but I have had a few dips to 57 or so at times, seems solid enough though to not notice for me. Some pics too:

Managed to put a little bit of time into this this morning. I am absolutely staggered at how good it is for now. Bearing in mind I've not played a mainline FIFA since '14 or '15 this just feels exactly like a mainline FIFA game, doesn't seem to be any compromises at all, feels like the real full-fat FIFA experience to me. I was playing in Docked mode in 1080p and it just felt exactly like I remember FIFA feeling like when I played the last on XBOne/PS4 in the past. I only thing I really noticed as 'missing' is the PL-partnered presentation over the matches, instead they use that older more blocky style that was in place before 2016 or so, I only knew this having watched some FIFA 16/17/18 preview videos but as I haven't played one for a while, again, it felt just the same as I remembered and lets be honest, it matters very little. Only had time to mess around in the menu's, do a bit of team management and controller setup and do one online game. Looked through all the menus and everything looked like it was in there to me apart from the single-player story thing that they came up with last year, didn't touch FUT yet so don't know how many packs you get to start with or anything but yeah that's definitely a huge inclusion right there, will have to have a word with myself to make sure I don't buy too many packs The game itself felt just like FIFA really, more fluid than I remembered maybe? Some of the technical little touches you could do, being able to lean in and shoulder-charge players off the ball and things like that felt new and the ball/player physics felt way easier to zip the ball around in, less glued to the feet than when I last played for sure. It will definitely take me a while to get used to the controls again, I'm so used to playing FIFA on xbox/PS controllers that learning to play on Cradled JoyCons will take a bit of time to get used to, it feels great to play though, just got to retrain my brain to the new face buttons. I'm quite pleased I didn't lose my first game online though despite a hell of a lot of wrong button presses! I'm sure it'll come back to me.

Anyone else given this a go? It's been free on both Xbox and PS4 now so I'be finally given it a quick go, and yeah, it very much is a Souls game. One of the main differences so far is the lack of customising your character. You can obviously level up which way you want and choose equipment but rather than the silent hero from the Souls games, they're definitely telling a story and want him to match the CG. There'a only 3 classes to choose from and I just went for the hitting things option. A couple of other differences from the Souls games: When you die you have a limited time to get your xp back and the percentage of what you regain will be lower depending on how quick you are. Also you bank xp to either spell points or attribute points. Once banked, those points are locked, but xp you haven't locked in can be lost via death. Doesn't run great. It's not terrible but it definitely seems a bit framey on console and there's a slight delay with hitting buttons and seeing animations whir into place. It's alright, might play some more. Certainly won't be deleting it just yet.

http://www.abzugame.com/ Anyway ABZÛ is an underwater adventure from the art director of Journey. I don't normally create threads for games after I've finished them, but ABZÛ is only two hours so it's kind of unavoidable. I haven't played Journey so I have no idea how similar it is to that, but in terms of "how much of a walking/swimming simulator" is it, I would say the game is pretty similar to Firewatch (and similar in terms of value for money, as impressive as both games are I'm still glad I bought them on sale and not full price). Essentially in the game you swim through a series of rooms and corridors. There are collectibles to find and light gameplay elements to the game but really they are a negligible part of the experience. Occasionally the game has on rails sections where you are swept along with the current (or the game simply takes control away from you) and these are very impressive. In general, the entire game is impressive, and enjoyable to play. The music is beautiful, one of the best game soundtracks I've ever heard. Like I said in my Steam review, of the four indie games I've completed this year (ABZÛ, Firewatch, Hyper Light Drifter and Oxenfree), ABZÛ would be my favourite. One of the reasons I like it is that it reminded me of the underwater levels in Spyro (and the ambient music reminded me of Spyro). Another reason is that it is an uplifting game, which is pretty rare. I think this would be a good game for parents to play with their children. I give it 8/10.

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.

Or not-Overwatch. I can't talk about this game without mentioning Overwatch as it is a massive game that a lot of people have played and Paladins is very similar, to the point of being accused of being a clone. But while I don't believe that since games like this take years to plan and the were announced and released very close to one-another I think it's fair to say it isn't strictly a clone, especially since the devs history shows they've made a number of games that look like they could easily and naturally lead to this. But there is also no doubt that they have certainly leaned into being a lot like Overwatch around and post release. So its a hero shooter where you pick a character with specific skills that are tied to a certain class like Defence or Support, but this time you can't change mid-match which is an alteration I'm not against since it potentially requires some creative use out of a character if things aren't going well. If you have played Overwatch then the characters will be very familiar. Some are like character X from OW, and other are like a mix of Y and Z. And there are the odd few that draw inspiration from elsewhere. I kinda like this even as someone who played a lot of OW because Paladins feels like some weird remix where you have a character who is a mix of Tracer and Mei and trying to deal with that combo is kinda fun. On a pure gameplay level it is some OW style fun but it doesn't have the character of OW. A bunch of them are quite fun looking and charming but OW has some straight up modern iconography which is hard to stand next to. And Paladins doesn't have the character or polished presentation of OW. Character voices don't stand out as much and it makes following the gameplay a little harder since you don't have distinct verbal calls and attack effects. You know, the character and the polish in OW helps communicate the gameplay a lot and that's not quite here in Paladins, or at least its not as clear. I'm sounding more down on it than I actually am. Like I said, I'm enjoying what feels like a remix of characters to me coming from OW. And, tbh, since its been a while since I played OW playing a game that has a much lower current skill level is making it kinda chill (though not all the time). Actually, skill level is wrong... I sometimes get frustrated at some players' I've come across and their decision making. Currently I'm into it. Dunno how long for but I'm on Switch if anyone wants to play some not-Overwatch with non psychos.

Do you dislike giant insects? Are you tired of giant insects running rampant all over your city? Would you like to take your dislike for giant insects out on them with lots of guns? Then sign up to the Earth Defence Force and make giant insects rue the day they descended upon your domicile! Ok, so I've been playing this on and off with @Sly Reflex, and I've finally got enough of an impression to see how I feel about it. First off, I'm going to explain the story. Now it's tough, layered and difficult to fully grasp, but I'm going to do my best to get the nuance across... Kill the giant insects. Pick the right gun (s) for the mission and kill the giant insects. Out in the city - kill the giant insects. Out in the country - kill the giant insects. In an underground cave - kill the giant insects. Not sure if I missed this bit, but while you're doing all this you need to kill any giant insects you come across. In all seriousness, there is a story. The bugs have been gone for 7 years, and in that time they've managed to evolve, become stronger, all the rest of it. Nothing is told through cut-scenes though. It's all told through in-ear communications as you play. The dialogue is horrible though. Laugh-inducingly bad. Which in fairness, I fucking love. Music isn't bad either - low budget, suits the game, but much to say about it tbh. The budget definitely hasn't been spent on graphics either. It's all janky to say the least. But again, I like this. If you see ants on the horizon they use less frames, but it gives them this Jason and the Argonauts quality that makes it more charming - at least for me it does. The levels themselves look pretty basic too, but this means that entire fucking cities can be levelled. And I'm not exaggerating. Trying to farm some armour last night I couldn't get one of the enemies in my sights, so I whipped out the rocket launcher and just started obliterating buildings until I killed the cunt. Very satisfying. Now, gameplay... Choose from one of four classes, choose a couple of guns and, you guessed it, go kill the giant insects. I've only really spent time the Ranger - the generic class that can use plenty of different weapons. It's a nice way to learn the mechanics and, at least on normal, nothing is particularly difficult. It's just a shame that it's so reliant on grinding armour and weapons. It'd feel like it's built better if you could just progress without worrying you're strong enough to do the next level. It's unnecessary padding. I'm having a hell of a lot of fun though. This game is ridiculously low budget, but it has an undeniable charm that makes it loads of fun.

So this is a top down racing game. That's the nutshell at least. I saw that trailer for it a while back and just from looking at it I got a strong impression that it had some nice handling in it. And it does. It's like I have a sixth sense or something. But to be honest, apart from the handling and general act of racing the game has some frustrating things about it. So how the career mode works in MBR is you have a path to work through with it splitting off from time to time so you can get extra money, xp and "gears". Gears are obtained by doing special little missions in a race like "drift for so many metres in total" and "beat a lap in xx:xx time". There's actually quite a lot of them and do add a little pressure to the races. You then use the gears to unlock further races. The progress actually reminds me a lot of 2D Mario games; especially the "New" series if you think of the gears as the big coins. The way its done isn't too bad but since there are a limited amount of tracks, at least a lot less than there are events, you play the same tracks a lot. They are very good tracks, but they certainly could be placed in the progression in a way that makes the number of tracks seem less limited. What also is limited is the amount of vehicles. There are three in each speed class: one light, one medium and one heavy and you have to buy these with the money you've earned, and you need all three as some races require a specific weight class so I don't know why they just don't have them selectable instead of going through this buying process that doesn't add anything. It's not like you have multiple cars in each weight class to commit to. Well, there are others but they are in their own speed class and have their own races. Also, the upgrade system is as clear as mud. You get upgrades to engine, tyre, gearbox, etc and they are like consumables and they seem to be finite and when you remove one it is gone forever. It also isn't clear if it upgrades your vehicle. Like you can use it and find it has no effect. I dunno, I could be being an idiot but it kinda sucks. I also don't think the upgrades that do work even affect the performance much. But apart from the puzzling stuff in the menus the racing itself is really damn good. It has some really nice drift mechanics. When I think of Wipeout I think of how cornering is like smoothly carving the apex and this has that too; it's just as satisfying. And I think the perspective benefits it too since you can see more of the track (more specifically what is coming next to the side because of how they are laid out) the game can run faster. It's like a Scalextric track in that there are a lot of u-turns you can speed around nearly at top speed. It feels really good, especially in the lightweight buggies. The tracks as a whole are so good. They group a lot of u-turns together pretty often and there are a lot of angular turns that make me think of F-Zero on the SNES or any Mode 7 racing game except much more elaborate in that they often loop back and cross over themselves. The only thing that catches me out sometimes is because of the top down view seeing ramps and other gradients that affect handling can be hard to see until you're familiar with the tracks. I've been hankering for a good drift-y racer for a while and this is actually doing a pretty good job of satiating that. Thumbs up.

So, Soul Calibur is out and it's the first game i've played in the series since SC on the Dreamcast, so I have absolutely no idea what's changed since, though I understand it's a bit of a series reboot - with the story continuing on from the first SC. The weird thing is, after one match everything game flooding back. I remembered a few moves with some familiar characters and it soon set in how to get enemies in the air and juggle. I managed to play around ten games online with a mate and the experience was pretty smooth, with only a little stutter happening in a couple of the matches. One of the new features is the reversal edge - where everything slows down and you're both locked into a rock-paper-scissors situation with the winner pulling off some visually spectacular move. One thing that hasn't changed over the years is it's wardrobe, with a lot of flesh in display. Ivy looks like she's just stepped out of an Amsterdam window display, and clothes can be knocked off during a match. So yeah, really enjoyed my brief time with it last night. I'm surprised how natural it all felt after not playing an SC for 19 years. It has two story modes and a character creator to get stuck into so looking forward to getting stuck into the meat and potatoes of it over the weekend.

Finished this the other day, took me 8 hours according to the Xbox App to 100% it (although weirdly I'm still missing 17 clovers but I'm assuming they're DLC?) Quite enjoyed it. It's nothing extraordinary don't get me wrong but it's just a relatively run-of-the-mill easy going platformer really. Not at all difficult aside from a couple of frustrating moments in levels right near the end and I just enjoyed how chilled out it was and that I could basically not really have to engage my brain too much to be able to get through every level. There's only 4 World's and another 2 as DLC, I think there's only 20 levels or so in total which isn't much but I felt like it was the perfect length and didn't outstay its welcome at all, I was even compelled to go back and get the odd clover I'd missed in a level and stuff which is rare for me in a platformer. The levels are mostly 3D but there are a few 2D levels every now and again which tend to be a tiny bit more challenging. Considering this is a part of Game Pass and I paid next to nothing for it it was definitely worth every penny. If you don't have game pass I'd definitely recommend it at sub-£10 or so, especially for achievement hunters as it is ridiculously easy to get to 1000 and I'd imagine getting the 2000 (including the dlc) won’t be too difficult either. So yeah, not the best platformer but if you're in the mood for one and don't want one that is too stressful or taxing, give this a go.

I'm a little surprised there isn't a thread for this already, maybe that highlights the problems Telltale had, but it was on PS+ which is why I have it. I've just finished the 2nd episode, so I guess still fairly early impressions, but the story is pretty good so far. I was wondering if they just packed some good stuff in to episode 1 to get people invested, but episode 2 carries it on pretty well. I'm not sure how much of it is cannon, because I'm not sure there'd be any coming back from it, nor do I think it could have been kept quiet for 20 years, but without going in to spoilers it's not worth getting in to. If this is it's own thing it means they can at least write the story they want Gameplay is fairly standard telltale stuff, picking conversation options and things being remembered. So far there hasn't been anything where I've picked it and it's illicited a response I wasn't expecting, I'm not sure how much it really matters beyond people just criticising your behaviour or praising it. What is new, to me at least, is the quick time events. I'm not sure it matters if you fuck them up, I'm pretty sure I've missed a few and still connected. Some feel like they don't give you enough time to respond, others give you an age. There's also sections where you explore an area, looking at evidence then linking it together, which is also how some fight prep works. It's all fine, certainly nothing that detracts from the story I was kind of impressed with how it looks, in episode 1 at least, then I had a conversation where Bruce Wayne's neck was round the wrong way. Episode 2 has more problems, it's framey and clips a lot, I'm guessing because they had less time

Gorogoa is a hand drown indie puzzle game that has been in development for years and years and was finally released today. It's gotten some very good reviews. Basically the game involves you interacting with pictures and moving them around in order to cause something to happen or open a way forward etc. It starts off easily enough but soon gets devilish. I've played it for an hour but am well stumped on Chapter 3 so I've taken a break, but I won't give up... Lovely game so far.

I've seen no mention of this game yet. Like a lot of games like this, it was pushed a bit on the Switch store but it's out on pretty much everything. I thought it looked really damn cool so I bought it. So its a platform kind of game but you don't move in the traditional way. You use the analogue stick to point yourself in the way you want to go and you zip there with a direct trajectory. It's a game you have to really learn from scratch as it's not quite like anything else. When combat is introduced it does vaguely (very vaguely) remind me of PN.03 and I'll take anything that gives me the feeling that game did. Your shot can be aimed the same way as the jump but it has a very short range, though it does have a bit of a spread. It means you really have to get in there to defeat enemies and it makes you really learn this kind of movement the hard way. Yeah, the game is pretty hard, babies. It's kinda preposterous with the plot. As it says in the trailer: "explore a directionless world", and a lot of the messaging in the game is this on the nose. So far I've inspired an artist and a musician to help me and their assistance actually moves parts of the world. But its so earnest I love it. And the one boss I've fought is basically M. Bison's (Dictator for our Japanese readers) disembodied head. There so many games like this at the moment so I think its got lost but I would say it's worth trying. It's a cool game.