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Hey, maybe don't buy this Vice City squad, I come to you with gameplay clips littered with copyright claims. Not that there's a shortage of videos out there about this but it helps to see how little the gameplay has changed as well. I'm a couple hours into the opening sections. Actually, I could be a bit beyond the opening sections. Was this game short? I'm already at the bit where you are doing missions for Diaz. Visually I think it looks ok, I think they could have done a lot more work here tho and it's a bit perplexing that this is more demanding for my machine than The Witcher 3 maxed out. No ray tracing or anything like that is in it. It could be a rough one to play on PC for this reason but maybe the settings are more scalable on lower settings. I think the volumetric lighting is what is killing it. Also the game comes close to dying every time I pause, I found out I'm not the only one with this issue so it's a problem with the PC version. Vice City now is a game that is hard carried by its soundtrack I think. I don't think I could stick with this type of thing without these tunes. It's also weird to think Vice City is now more retro than the year 1986 was when Vice City itself came out. It's like a russian doll of nostalgia or something. I will say for VC first thing you should do is turn HDR off and set contrast to 0. The default contrast level is hideously oversaturated and destroys the tone of the game. At zero it is not a million miles away from the original's visual style Going back now also it really feels like Ray Liotta phoned in his performance as Tommy Vercetti, but the people around him do a good enough job to make up for that fact. Especially the lawyer guy. It's weird to think how they got all these really big movie stars in a game like this (Burt Reynolds is in this game, if you forgot). Nowadays you can see that these movie people don't exactly translate their talents to the digital screen, some of them are pretty bad at adapting to it. Or are just used to sell the game. But back then this was a really big deal for Vice City. There's one visual thing which has really annoyed me early on, the rain effect. It is a constant streak of white lines that make it impossible to see anything and actually made me feel a kind of motion sickness I've never felt with a game. I haven't heard anyone else talk about it, it could be a subjective thing. But man, it is rough to look at. On the other hand they add a cool effect where you get puddles and the grass gets wet. You slide in the rain also, I think that's new. Might not be but it seems new. Gameplay clips, spoilered for post length not spoilers cause this game is 20 years old now

Spent a few hours with the game during this afternoon, suffice to say it's bloody amazing to look at... The whole driving to the festival segment right at the start of the game just put a massive smile on my face, it's so stupidly over the top that you can't help but grin. So far there's not been anything massively different from the 4th game but to be honest that was already the best open world racer by a huge margin so this just has to build on that. So far I've I think the game has been hand holding me through the early parts but not enough that I can't decide to put whatever the game is suggesting on hold and do something else, which is nice. I also think that the map is definitely going to encourage going off road far more than Britain did in the previous game. Anyway, so far so gorgeous!

I played through the opening of this, so far better than Avengers I think. The tutorial, which is extremely pink and blue, is a fairly lengthy thing which introduces you to characters which of course you already know about because of all the movies and stuff init. It's mostly a slightly adjusted take on those movie characters, I say that as if I know what the other versions of the characters from the comic are like. Anyway it reminds me of the movie is what I mean, except the guy who plays Mario isn't in it which is a bummer. But I think it's good, not incredible cause it's hard to get a read of whether the fighting turns into something more than what you see at first. I'll say being able to run a game that looks good at 4k dlss and runs at 60 presents a much better impression than watching a stream that runs at 640p and runs at 15fps. I dunno about the console experience, but I do know my experience right here is pretty good *discreetly flexes* As filler tutorials go I thought it was pretty well paced and I was pretty engaged by it, which is saying something cause it really does feel like a 360 game. But it gets away with feeling like a 360 games cause they don't make 360 games anymore, and 360 games didn't run at 4k with ray tracing *dabs*. One screenshot I wanted to get is the little bear guy standing on tree man's back cause I thought damn I like that, but it was in a really dark room and I didn't get the chance. Anyway the rabbit stands on the tree man's back, that is good. I tried to take screenshots but unfortunately they are all super dark cause of weird HDR nonsense. So imagine these screenshots not looking shit, this is what the game looks like (good, not shit) I can't say that this is like game X with a bit of game Y or anything like that cause it's too early to say. One thing I'll say is that it has a stagger meter for certain boss type enemies. Drax (who destroys) has an ability that induces heavy stagger damage. Gamora (the deadliest) has an ability which deals heavy raw damage. Groot (therefore he is) does stuff with branches, uh traps enemies I think, I dunno. Racoon (not a racoon) does ranged attacks. But to translate it in terms I do understand, Drax is Focus Strike from FFVII Remake, Gamora and Racoon are the big attacks that you do when stagger is put on them. Peter Quill (middle name Joseph), he flies around and shoots stuff. The melee part of his combat feels like shit, but this is the level 1 experience. Very early on he unlocks an ability to do a timed powerful charge shot while his guns recover from their Mass Effect cooldown. Kind of a reload that's active, or something like that. I think another game did a thing like this before, I forget. I can't easily follow the flow of fights but I would say having this run at a high framerate is a must for that reason. It's so messy, the way you queue up the skills is a bit clunky. But that's the level 1 experience. It's a very air dashy type game, like a B tier Platinum games joint or something like that maybe. Anyway I'm engaged by the sum of the parts rather than the constituent ones so I will stick with it. Better than Avengers anyway, well the opening is. Also trust me the game looks a lot better than these screenshots, thank Windows HDR for fucking these captures up. Or maybe the brightness adjustment in the game itself, I might try and look into seeing if I can fix that.

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

I managed to play a couple of cracking little games on GamePass over the weekend. First up is Superliminal - a cracking little puzzler that I managed to play through in a couple of hours and what a treat this was. It borrows heavily from games such as Portal but by the time you see the achievement for beating the game, it's earned it's place up there with the best of them. The concept is you're someone that's involved in a lucid dreaming experiment and you have 'wake up' in a location that presents you with a series of puzzles based on perspective and your surroundings. It twists these challenges in a way that each never out stays its welcome and the final two levels were sublime. I can't say much more than that to avoid spoiling it (i'd even suggest not watching the trailer) but if you liked Portal/The Witness - that kind of thing, i'd strongly suggest giving it a go. One of the best endings to a game i've seen in a while as well!

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

Noticed this on the recent PSN digital discount sale. I do quite enjoy a rogue like, so thought I’d give it a go. Hades is definitely going to be one of my favourite games of the year. Is this as good as that? Well, it’s enjoyable enough. But I’d say no. The combat is simple enough, with a melee weapon and ranged weapon. You find various different ones during your run, with different buffs. As with any rogue like, death means you lose all your load out. But as you play, you can collect various currencies that can be used to permanently improve your character. There’s also a light/ dark mechanic. You carry a torch, which can be used to light braziers in each area. If you don’t, you take increased damage if you’re hit while in a dark area. As for the Curse in the title, you have a curse bar, that increases with each door of the arena you open. There are healing areas, but cause significant curse if you use them. You can buy new gear during your run with gold, or get cursed instead. Fill your curse bar up to the max, and you get inflicted with a nasty permanent affliction, I’ve had ones that either increase damage taken, or make it so I can’t see what any curses actually do. You can have a maximum of 5 curses, with the game warning that if you hit curse 5, your run is going to be extremely fucked over. There’s a dodge mechanic, which takes up stamina to use. You have 5 stamina, each dodge drains 1 point. If you’re empty, you can’t dodge, and have to wait for it to replenish, Dark Souls style. You can also parry attacks, but I’ve never been any good at that kind of thing. Story wise, there’s pretty much fuck all. In comparison to the cast of Hades, here there’s literally nothing. Unlike Hades, you don’t go through the entire dungeon at once. You start with 3 to choose from, with a boss at the end. I’ve reached boss 1 three times, killed him on my 3rd attempt, and that was the end of my run. It looks like you have to gradually unlock the option to run through to the final boss. It’s decent enough, and I’ll certainly play a fair bit of it. But it’s definitely not in the same league as Hades.

Had my eye on this one for a while, as the concept (two teams of 4 try to steal treasure, in a take on the Robin Hood mythology) seems interesting. Currently £15 in the PSN sale, and there’s a free demo. So I tried it with me and my mates. After one session, we ended up buying it. Basically, it’s a stealth game. Your team of 4 has to find the Sheriff (invincible boss that kills you in one hit), steal his key, open the Vault, grab a chest, and then escape with it. Each character plays slightly differently, with their own special ability. Robin has a longbow that kills instantly with headshots, and can fire a powered up explosive shot to kill multiple enemies.Marion has a crossbow and can temporarily turn invisible to assassinate people. Tuck can throw poison bombs, heal the team, and highlight enemy positions. John can decimate enemies with his hammer, carry the chest the fastest, and open closed portcullis gates to potentially speed up escapes. Stealth and teamwork is definitely important, because if you get spotted, things can go tits up pretty quickly. Killed allies drop a ‘talisman’, if that’s collected and taken to a captured spawn point, they revive. John and Tuck can’t use bows, but are stronger in a fight. Had quite a few tense sessions on this so far. You can play as 4 against just the AI, or two teams of 4 against AI, attempting to steal the treasure before the other team does. Its certainly worth a look, I’d say.

Been mucking around with this over the last couple of nights, probably put in 4 or 5 hours (maybe more)... I'm not going to pretend we have GotY on our hands but it's doing exactly what I expected of it, namely leaving your brain behind a blasting the ever living fuck out of anything that moves. It's nailed the look and sounds of the movies, at the start you have a fairly basic create a character menu with male and female options, there's four classes each with their own perks and abilities... so far so normal. I went with the Demolition class as I wanted to be like Drake in the film and repeatedly shout "right on Vas" while I'm mowing down Xenos with the Smartgun. The fodder "runner" enemies don't really offer too much in the way of tactics, they'll head straight at you but some of the other types do use hit and run tactics using vents and stuff to get behind you and cause a little mayhem... I've also just got to a level where it's almost turned in to a Gears game (there's a cover system... which is no use at all with the Aliens) as I'm fighting the Working Joe's from Alien Isolation. I'm only around half way through the game (there's 4 acts with 3 missions in each) and there's been a decent amount of backdrops so far. I can imagine the game is going to get pretty difficult too especially if I play above normal difficulties as when more than a couple of Warrior type enemies appear things generally fall to shit... and that leads to the games biggest failing so far, matchmaking is fucked, so far I've found one game and the game taking the place of real players really doesn't cut it. I hope that they can sort out whatever is going on with that because it is putting a slight downer on the whole experience.

The long awaited sequel is here! And it's generally a decent follow-up. It takes place right after the original and it's like it's never been gone. It just confidently does being Psychonauts. It feels a bit tighter than the original but it's basic fighting and platforming for the most part but it's appeal has always been the imagination of the world and how it takes mental well being and makes these charming worlds out them and from what I've played so far it continues to do a good job of that. And with these new fangled graphics it makes it look really nice too. They really lean all of it into the art style they made in the original and I think it comes out well, it's a nice game to look at in a weird way. All Double Fine have done is make a Psychonauts game for 2021 and that's all I wanted, and that's all we got. Neat!

I played and finished this a few weeks ago now and have finally got round to creating the thread for it. For those that don't know this is a Dontnod title very much in the same vein as Life is Strange, it is Episodic and a teen drama exploring some of the same themes as LiS, where it differs slightly is that it is only 3 Episodes rather than the 5 associated with LiS. In terms of plot, it centres on a twin Brother and Sister in a small Alaskan town in the middle of nowhere. The Brother (Tyler)has just got out of a Juvenile detention facility and come back to his home town for the first time in 8 years, seeing his Sister (Alyson) for the first time since a tumultuous incident (involving their Mother) wrestled them apart years ago. As well as this the Brother successfully transitioned from his gender of birth (female) to become a Trans Man in 'Juvie', so he has many additional challenges, thoughts, feelings, emotions etc. About being reunited with his Sister for the first time since his transition and being back in his backward home town. In terms of how the game plays, it is extremely similar to LiS in terms of being a character driven adventure game determined by key choices and dialogue choices you can make along the way, it even retains a supernatural element similar to LiS as well in that the Twins can hear each others thoughts and both can see each others memories from the past, some of which may differ from the others' perspective in certain situations and events. As a huge fan of Life is Strange I really enjoyed this, with the shortened 3-Episode count it means the whole story arc wraps up more succinctly and I never felt there were any filler or pointless episodes in there, it's all good stuff. I much preferred it to Life is Strange 2 as well, highly recommended. Pics:

Started and finished this over the weekend, took me about 4 hours. It's a weird one for sure, as soon as the intro had finished and I was put into the game itself I had a cursor and had to move the main character with the less analog stick, tapping A to move him to a certain spot or highlight an object or person in the environment, I wasn't expecting this to almost be a point and click adventure game. The art style and top-down camera perspective to the game is really unique too, some Hotline Miami vibes for sure as soon as I booted it up. Once you get into the game things play out as you may or may not of seen in the trailers (I will spoil this just in case), As soon as this is over you go back to the moment where you first enter your Apartment and things play out exactly the same as they did before, your wife greets you, asks you about similar topics, reads her book etc. Until the same cop turns up and repeats the same actions as before. You're stuck in a time loop, Groundhog Day style. Your goal is to escape the timeloop by not dying, to do this you have to repeat the same loop over and over, changing up certain things, asking your Wife questions (that then open up new dialogue options down the line) until you can eventually not die and escape the timeloop. It's a cool premise but after a few hours you start to realise this is just like the bit in PT where everything is Red and you're going round and round in circles trying to do something different to get the SH trailer pop up at the end. It gets tedious real quick unfortunately, after awhile of going around banging my head up against the wall, exhausting all dialogue options with the Wife, trying to get think of new things to try I gave up and looked up a Guide to show me a few tips of what to do next. With the guide it wasn't too frustrating, for loop-after-loop I'd try to do things myself but if after awhile I was banging my head up against the wall I'd consult the guide to get to the next 'checkpoint' and closer to my goal. There are some pretty mad revelations, twists and turns along the way which I won't spoil. But yeah, it's a weird game, I do recommend it and I did enjoy my time with it but if I hadn't of looked up a guide when I got stuck I most likely would've just given up on it as it was just frustrating the hell out of me. Pics: Proper Spoiler Image:

First things first, I'm really enjoying this. It's very Japanese, the story has just gone full anime, and it reminds me a lot of Astral Chain, only more engaging. The combat is probably the star of the show without it being as complicated as it appears. You have some very basic attacks with your weapon, this will charge a meter that lets you use your psychokinetic abilities, so you can fling items at enemies. Do that too often and the meter drains so you can't any more, but get in close to an enemy and land some weapon attacks and you'll be fine. Once enemies have taken enough damage, assuming you haven't already killed them, you'll be able to perform a kind of finisher/super move, against weaker enemies this is a one hit kill, against bosses it can be a difference maker. Both while you're exploring the world (although this hasn't been an option yet in the way it was in the demo), and in combat, if you have teammates you can borrow their powers, ranging from your attacks doing fire damage, you becoming invulnerable, or even invisible for stealth attacks, amongst others. These work on a cool down, and are more or less required at points, but they aren't unavailable for long. There's also a meter that fills where you'll become super powered for a bit, I get the feeling once you've levelled up a bit this will be a huge deal, at the minute it's more annoying that you can't trigger it yourself and save it for when you need it There's an rpg element. You level up, although it's not presented what that really means (presumably stats and HP), you can equip items, buy better weapons, healing is done on a slight cooldown which can be a bit of a pain. There's also a skill tree, it takes BP points to buy new perks, but these come pretty quickly, to the point that I feel like I might well max it out before the end of the game unless there's hidden branches to it. You can also increase your bonds with your teammates, this is done in your down time with gifts and bonding missions, and it gets you new layers to their abilities. It seems to be pretty similar to how Persona handles it tbh The only real criticism I have is that it's all presented in a bit of a confusing way. Lots of different, but pretty similar people bouncing around, odd terms, lots of menus. It can feel like it's slow doling things out too, not that it's paced badly or feels like a slog, and maybe this is a consequence of having played the demo, but knowing that at some point I'll have 4 teammates at once, be able to explore certain areas, the way it gates this feels like it's holding you back, even 10+ hours in to the game

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

Started this last week, putting about 12 hours into it and it’s safe to say it’s been a bit of a mixed bag so far. At the very beginning of the game you’re free to create your character as you so choose, there’s about 7 different classes (one of which is locked away behind a pre-order bonus for some reason) - like a Psychic specialist, ranged weapon specialist, all rounder and melee specialist - about 8 different animal-like races you can pick which have various strengths and weaknesses. Along with a way of picking various elements - like Heat, Cold, Radioactivity and Biohazard - you’re strong or weak to and the degree in which you’re resistant or vulnerable to said elements. The classes you pick, resistances you choose and breed of animal you pick seem more like starting points than a set class as you can put as many points into any stats you want to, deviating from your starting point drastically, sticking rigidly to it or ending up somewhere in between if you so wish. You’re then introduced to your mysterious protagonist, who has seemingly come back to town for the first time in awhile but doesn’t remember too much about who he/she is and what happened to the place he/she grew up in. Along with your Protagonist you’re also introduced to the Narrator, his dulcet tones permeate through an awful lot of the game, particularly in the early going. He is reminiscent of Stephen Fry’s performance in Little Big Planet, explaining a lot of the games various systems to you along with acting like a translator to the many weird and wonderful anthropomorphic characters you’ll meet along your journey. It starts off super slow in lots of boring industrial, factory type areas that attempt to introduce you to some of the basic elements in its eclectic crazy mix of various systems. It ends up holding your hand too much though to an annoying degree where you’re stopping to watch a cutscene or some kind of dialogue after every fight or action, not letting you off the lead so to speak until you’re about 2-3 hours in and even then the game still wants to explain a lot of stuff to you. Once you’re out of the early factory area and let loose into the open world things get much better. The moment you step out of the dull factory and gaze upon this luscious, striking world filled with greenery and bathed in sunlight it is a real wow moment that immediately put a smile on my face, it is reminiscent of coming out of the Vault in Fallout 3. I don’t know how they’ve done it with a team of 20 people but the world is an absolute sight to behold, it quite frankly looks ridiculously good and with the added photo mode you can't help but stop and take a snapshot every few minutes. There is a clear Eastern influence running throughout the game with the music, ‘Wung Fu’ combat and design of the characters and world, from the Buddhist shrine-like Tribe outposts to certain enemies wearing Samurai-like armour. The good/bad scale (represented by two light and dark sprites) is a clear nod to the Asian concept of Yin and Yang as well. Even once you’re outside the factory the game still loosely holds onto the reigns for awhile pushing you towards making your first big choice in the game, aligning yourself with a Tribe. On the face of it the choice is a clear cut good vs evil but there’s shades of grey in there with good parts of the seemingly ‘evil’ choice and bad parts to the seemingly ‘good’ choice. I really like this as the whole Renegade/Paramore good/bad swinging scale stuff has been done so many times before and rarely gives you pause for thought, some of the events so far feel a bit like New Vegas where you’re damned to some degree no matter what you choose. The world itself is absolutely massive, as said above I’ve put 12 hours in and have barely made it out of the opening Southern zones you first get to as you get out of the factory. At the centre of the world is the Tree of Life with the different biomes located around it much like a Clock, I haven’t explored much of the world yet but it’s clear there is a lot of variety in its design from the mountainous greenery of the first area to the flooded plains of the next, with the latter being explorable by a makeshift jet ski. There are some biomes that are locked off due to being too hot, cold or radioactive which requires you to get a special suit to be able to venture there safely. The game throws so much stuff at you that it is hard not to be bewildered by it all. There’s about 4 different types of upgrade points you can put into things (character stat upgrades, Psi-points, Bio Points and combat move upgrade points), a loot system where you can find and equip better equipment depending on its rarity, a crafting system where you can make pretty much anything providing you have the right materials, numerous strange animals you can recruit as mounts, numerous machines you can pilot to make your job easier and a multitude of other bits and pieces. The combat is perhaps the most interesting part of the game as it is extremely customisable and it’s possible to play the game however you want once you master or unlock the right elements. On the surface of it, it’s a bit DMC mixed with Max Payne, you have a ranged weapon and a melee weapon (or two) you can use in combination with each other. It’s super fun to just mess about with an experiment, but can feel a little loose and imprecise at times, with hits not quite registering with the required oomph to make them truly satisfying and a somewhat delayed response to your button presses. The world design is possibly the least interesting part of the game. It is very much like a Ubisoft game of 4-5 years ago or perhaps a better comparison would be the Mad Max game of 2015 or Just Cause (as this is made by ex-Avalanche devs), filled with lots of meaningless shite you can do, pickup, explore and engage with. Me being me, I can’t leave these symbols sitting on the map untouched so go around looking for 6 billboards out in the world when my time would be better spent doing a story mission or some of the more interesting side quests. It is a truly fascinating, beguiling and bewildering game that has plenty of promise to it in these somewhat early stages but I’m not sure if all that promise will add up to something in the end or not. I will say again though how astounding it is a game this large was built by 20 developers, it is crazy how big this world is and how much detail, dialogue and character development it has going on in it. The story is genuinely intriguing too which I didn’t expect and I can’t wait to see where things go next.

So the full game is out, I've spent the morning playing it... bear in mind I didn't play any of the demo's so the opening is all new to me. I think everyone by now everyone should be able to gather what happens in the beginning, Chris being all dark and barrel chested, anyhow you soon wake up at night, in the snow... looking for Ethans baby. To me the game looks really pretty, the lighting is really good and so far (using RT) the performance seems to be holding up nicely. I never overly liked the shooting in 7 and this seems very close, I've recently picked up an add on to my pistol and that's definitely helped... I feel much happier in these third person Resi games with a shotgun in my hands though. The start of the game is almost a bit too much, there were times I wasn't sure if I should be trying to kill all these things or running away... that's also happened a couple of times in the castle where I'm up to now. Things have calmed a bit since getting in there though and it's a gorgeous place to explore. I do wish the movement speed was a bit quicker though. So far so good then, looking forward to finding out a bit more on these freaks who are making life a tad rough for old Ethan.

Started this off earlier and put just under 4 hours into it. This has set the record of making me cry the fastest in a video game, just felt overcome with the music in the tutorial ? also the fountain in the middle of the village at the beginning of the game is just amazing, I must’ve walked around that fountain about 30 times just listening to the lovely music (cried again here), amazing. As soon as I got free reign to explore the village I explored every corner of it, there’s not much to it but it creates such a strong sense of place and unique vibe, it’s already memorable and familiar even in my short time there. Combat feels like a more simplistic version of Automata’s. It looks flashy and feels good but is bit more shallow than Automata’s. If I had to compare it, it feels a bit like FFXV’s (without all the warp-strikes) or one of the earlier KIngdom Hearts games. You start off without any ranged abilities with just your sword to rely on, but pretty quickly you pick up a ranged weapon which has added to the variety on offer and cool abilities you can pull off. Story-wise not much has happened so far, I’ve just been given a few meaningless tasks to do by Popola, been to my first dungeon and met a certain literary figure. I’ve done a few of the side quests too just to see how bad they are for myself, and yeah, they’re not great but I don’t mind them so far, they’re inoffensive, a damn boar kept fucking me up in one of them.

Started this over the weekend with the fiancée. I think we're about 4 hours in and just hit Chapter 3. It's a colourful co-op platformer, you play as either Cody or May, a divorcing couple who aren't happy with their lot in life. They have a kid called Rose, who is unsurprisingly sad about their nuptial break, from her sadness her parents' personas get morphed into tiny clay and wooden mini-caricatures (which you play as). You then meet a strange love book called Dr. Hakim who throughout the course of the game tries to mend your broken relationship. All the environments are very homey, you start off in a shed, then explore the exterior and interior of a tree before making it into the house and experiencing some kind of strange pillow fort (which is where we are at the moment). These environments are punctuated by strange and eccentric characters like the aforementioned Dr. Hakim along with militarised Squirrels, Wasps, Beetles and Bumblebees which aren't too dissimilar to Conker's Bad Fur Day. The homey environments are reminiscent to Toy Story too (there's even a reference at one point). I like it so far but it hasn't blown my socks off it's fair to say, I wouldn't say it has started off as strongly as A Way Out did either. It is good though, and can be a lot of fun, I was just expecting to be more impressed at this point than I am. During the first chapter, it was a fairly rudimentary platformer with some cliched co-op elements (pull a level to open a door then your partner crawls through etc.), after that things have gotten a little better luckily with different weapons and tools introduced. Each chapter seems to give you some kind of unique tools or weapons which work in combination with your partners, during the first chapter I (Cody) was given a Nail Gun and the missus (May) was given a Hammer. You use the nail gun to shoot into yellow coloured bits of board so May can then swing off them to get to otherwise unreachable areas. The second chapter gave me a nectar gun, you shoot the nectar onto surfaces and your partner can then shoot it with her rifle to make it explode, reaching previously unreachable areas. These mechanics are all used in puzzles and during the second chapter there is quite a lot of combat as well, with me shooting the enemy Wasps with nectar and Char then exploding them into little Wasp pieces with her rifle. The second chapter is far better than the first and features quite a few set pieces, one where I had to control a plane and Char was in charge of the gun, having to shoot approaching enemies from the front and rear, along with clearing obstacles in our path. There was another set piece where I had to control a rudimentary boat and Char had to clear the way again with her rifle as I navigated down the river. The coolest one by far though is when I was flying the plane and Char had to fight an enemy on the top of it fighting game style, replete with fighting game style health bars and attacks, a really great moment. I wasn't too hot on it in the beginning and a little bored but the second chapter has turned me around on the game already and if it keeps on going like this it will only get better, can't wait to see what's in store for us next time. Pics:

Credit to Genesis Noir for having an unusual story. Before time and existence a good give physical form to his experiences to make sense of the world, falls for a beautiful jazz singer (also a god), her ex gets jealous (also a god), and kills her. The explosion from his gun is the big bang that starts the universe as we understand it, and you travel through time to find a way to make the bullet miss her, something you can do because you don't experience time as we do. All of this is jazz themed, but you'll bounce through various times, from cavemen to feudal japan and so on As a game, its not really anything special. I've played it on pc and did everything with the mouse, it's almost always a case of clicking on something or spinning something, it's rare the puzzle itself is especially difficult. What can be difficult is knowing what's expected of you. I got stuck really early on because I didn't realise I could click on something, and that was all I had to do to move on. I've had it be temperamental too with what you're clicking on which has again led me to being stuck on very simple puzzles. The only but I had was on a clock puzzle later in the game. I needed to set a particular time, but I couldn't back out from the clock view to see the time again. I think something similar may have happened earlier in the game too looking at the clue board. It's not great but there's some cool things to look at, it's original and I could see some people really clicking with it, it didn't really do it for me though

This is a bit of an odd one, it really should have been called something else - it gets a lot of hate from project cars 1/2 fans (understandable really) as it's a departure - it's not a sim any more, and drops stuff like pitstops. this isn't really a problem for me, while there was some good stuff in 1/2 i was never a big fan, and i think there's a gap in the market for what 3 is trying to be. the handling is more inbetween sim and arcade now - like pgr/driveclub. so it's a similar game to grid and shift now i guess - but while both of those were decent imo there was something not quite right about the handling, this seems better in that regard, although probably not as good as pgr/driveclub. it's much better on a pad too than pcars1/2, i didn't play those with a pad but apparently there were problems - this one i've only played with a pad so far, and it's been good. one thing it still has from previous games is a great selection of tracks - saying great maybe understating how good the selection of tracks is, it's pretty amazing really i think there's ~40 real tracks (lots of these have multiple layouts too), and 10 made up ones. it has some from old toca games that aren't in games often like knockhill and oulton park, etc. so it's sort of close to a pgr style handling game with lots of real life tracks - which to me sounds like it could be the best thing ever - it's not the best thing ever. although i am enjoying it. then we have the problems - there are many problems with the games structure imo - the timetrials - just let me keep going - don't like having to restart every lap. - the 3 lap average time events need to be more lenient on voiding laps imo. - generally it's really harsh on voiding lap times - which i think is fine for online leaderboards but should be relaxed for the career mode stuff. - getting money to buy new cars is really slow going - which compounds into other problems - can't buy cars needed to do events to get more stars to unlock more events. games like forza and GT throw loads of cars at you - this should be the same. - lots of xp points wasted (you need these to get money) restarting instead of finishing events - although i now think i've solved this one - always finish an event and see your xp go up then restart at the last opportunity to avoid more loading but still get the xp. - oddly long loading times from an ssd - although ~30 to 40 seconds is still faster than some games from hdd. - the difficulty is all over the place, and unlocking stuff is tied into the difficulty - for me there should be difficult events with gold/silver/bronze medals etc, but getting bronze should be easy and fine for unlocking everything - here you need the 3 stars/gold etc as much as possible to help unlock stuff. i might have been making things harder for myself by buying the deal of the day cars sometimes from the store thinking they will come in handy, but they are for much later in the game. i've played ~12 hours and think i have 5 cars. also oddly you can pay money (in game money) to unlock events instead of properly unlocking them with stars - this is odd but a very good feature because of how hard it is to unlock stuff normally - but seems like they realised the unlocking system was crap and this was a quick fix for it or something. the graphics are not supposed to be any good, but i think it looks alright, and it runs really smooth, at 4k, with like 32 cars on track sometimes, this is on pc anyway. oh except when it rains, that's less smooth - i should mess with the settings to sort that out. despite the problems though i keep coming back to it, i am enjoying it. the handling is good, the selection of cars seems good if i could buy them, and the selection of tracks is really impressive. i hope they get chance to make a new one of these, with a different name, and with the career/structure stuff improved, i think it could be brilliant, and i'd like to say i think it could be a big hit but i'm not sure this kind of thing sells very well these days so who knows.

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

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.

Picked this up as something bright and colourful to counteract how dark and oppressive Outer Wilds is. You play as Stella, accompanied by her pet dog Daffodil, who has taken over from Charon as the “spiritfarer” - in other words, it’s a death management sim, but it’s not gloomy at all. The game looks and sounds absolutely stunning. I’ve literally only played 30 minutes but I loved it. Seems like the game will be a mix of exploration with gentle management elements.

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 played through ADR1FT over the weekend. I've been meaning to play it for ages, it always looked really interesting, certainly very pretty. You're an astronaut in a destroyed space station trying to survive in your damaged space suit, it's surprisingly not a horror game despite it being a nice looking game set in space. Let me say first, it's a VR game too and I suspect its 10 times the experience in VR. Or it will make you really sick as you spin around in 0g. I think it'd be a cool experience to try though, the first person view with stuff floating past you would be pretty immersive. As it is I had a few problems with it. The way the story is presented, through audio logs and emails, comments through your helmet speakers, none of it went in when I was playing. Almost certainly I think VR would have gone some way to solve this, if only because of the earphones. I picked up on the state of the station being someone else's fault, guy was a real jerk, but beyond that nothing else landed. The gameplay is you floating around trying to keep your oxygen topped up (not difficult), while following the breadcrumb trail to the next objective. There's very little else to it, no puzzles. Still though, I managed to lose where my next objective was a couple of times, found it easier to just turn the game off and start back from a checkpoint the next day It's not all I hoped it would be, maybe on another day, or even with headphones, I'd have clicked with it, and I do think it'd be a better game in VR