Search the Community

This game, is mental. Could probably stop there and that's enough, tbh. Take a cup of Lollipop Chainsaw, add some essence of No More Heroes and mix well before folding in a little big of Cooking Mama. Drizzle with 2D Pokemon and serve warm. I'm still working my way into the main story, but essentially, you play as Romeo. A character who, at the start of the game, has his face ripped off, so your time-travelling grandfather puts a mask on you that will keep you alive. You're fated with skipping through time and space, finding Juliets to kill. Your first major battle is against a Juliet who cuts her own head before growing like one of Rita Repulsa's monsters. This also causes her to shed her clothes, so you're fighting a giant, naked and sagging Juliet. Who's headless. Honestly, as with any Suda51 game I've played, it feels a little bit awkward. Every now and again it feels like you're not in complete control of the combat, but I'm slowly getting my head around it. It looks good, and the scripting is a lot of fun. But it's the minigames that seem to add tons of depth. I'm still finding my feet on these, but there's one that looks a bit like Pacman. I think as you build up strength you get more fuel you can use here, picking up various power-ups as you go. There's one that looks a bit like a cross between a fruit machine and a cut-out of a pinball table. Still haven't figured out how to do that one. Oh, and there's a katsu curry cooking minigame, too. You add ingredients and make different recipes to give varying benefits. And then there are the bastard seeds. That's where the pokemon bit comes in. On board your time-and-space-travelling ship, you have a little garden. You plant seeds, and they allow you to grow bastards, which are essentially zombies with different powers. You can evolve them, combine them to create different powers, and it seems like there's going to be tons of depth in that aspect. You'll find the various seeds, and the katsu ingredients, as you explore levels and pick them up. Speaking of the levels, I don't know if this will carry through the entire game, but the first one at least is fucking weird. You start off exploring a small section of a shopping mall, and have to switch on 4 generators. But some parts of the mall are blocked, so you have to interact with one of the floating TVs, enter sub-space, explore there, and exit another TV to get to the next bit in real space. I'm writing that with a straight face, but you cannot convince me there's anything 'normal' about that. It's got all the hallmarks of Suda51's normal mental approach, and it combines 'realism' with the blocky flourishes that make his games super recognisable. Yeah, I quite like this. Not sure how much legs it'll have for me though.

The reviews, even the bad ones, made me too curious to wait for a sale. I'm about an hour into this now. It's both impressive so far, and a little underwhelming though the parts that are underwhelming are very subjective. This is basically as 1:1 a remake as I've played in a while, to the point that I'm able to rely on my memory from a few years ago to know exactly where to go and what types of curveballs a quest will throw at me, as well as how to deal with those dinosaurs that sound like chickens. Every NPC is exactly where I expect to see them, and the scale of the world seems about as small as the original, at a glance, but this could change as I progress. It is impressive because of this as well though as Gothic's progression is such an important part of its appeal, and so they've tried to preserve as much as possible of it (except potentially, its combat, as I'll mention). Even though it has a very stock UE5 look, default UE5 can still look extremely good in high res. The lighting is a bit overcranked, lots of black crush, but setting the gamma up a bit I think it's a relatively handsome game given how AA it is. Just don't play it while the sun is coming in the window if you're on OLED, cause you can't see shit unless you're on one of those ridiculously newer brighter ones I suspect from the off that this is one of those remakes where there'll almost be no point in trying the original out except for historical curiosity. The one big change I've seen is the combat, which felt like driving a tank in the original. In this, it's much more generic, possibly 'better' but I actually think the awkwardness of the original game's combat is kind of part of the genius of it, cause when you got better at understanding the timing, so did your character get faster at swinging. It's one of the coolest combat progression systems I've seen in an RPG, even if it also sort of sucks. So I'm wondering if the remake will have the same style to it, your guy certainly is shit at swinging a sword early on so they seem to have the right idea. As I'm not german I've no idea what the community has been saying about this leading up to its release, but based on Marys' comments in the news thread I'm guessing they wanted this as 1:1 as possible and that's why it turned out like this

Started earlier this afternoon around 2ish and got around 4 hours with it... with around half of that mucking around with the character editor... Made my Arisen... Tried to make Fighter Jill Valentine, to be fair I don't think she turned out too bad...🙂 Next up my Pawn... Who turned out to be a hot Elven Archer called Laurana... Although I've made both of them too bloody tall and they both tower over the male NCP characters wondering around... so once i get the chance to modify them I'll shorten them down a bit. As for actual game play it's very familiar if you've played the first game and as far as I'm concerned that's a good thing... it feels really weird feeling lost on the map because of that though as I knew the previous games areas like the back of my hand. It also seems like the Pawns are really ferocious in this as half the time they've demolished the Goblins and Harpies before I've managed to draw a bead on them... It's nice to be back in this world and I can already tell I'm gonna have a ball with the game.

Ok, so it's been out a while, think it had a period on Gamepass too (a while back) but I felt an urge to play it before I really tackled Call of the Elder Gods (which is now on Gamepass). And its distinctly...... okay. It's really just one of those 1990s click screen puzzle adventures presented in a first person world - each scene having no more than a handful of puzzles to progress together with story items to read. But it's not too complex, no convoluted combine x with y to do z, so predominantly reading the things that present the clues in your notebook to apply a solution - rotate this, press these in this order etc but some logical steps are needed at times. What is mostly missing is the compelling narrative - it's all a bit too vague and fragmented and if it wasn't my familiarity with HPL and CoC / Shadow Over Innsmouth, then I'm not too sure it really holds together that well, but is more a fan service for those who already know (inc. the odd document signed by Tillinghast, Dexter-Ward, Pickman etc) A pleasant enough stroll around, and the occasional swim, 8 hrs and probably about 3/4 of the way though it

Imagine being a bus driver, but without the stench of piss surrounding you, people spitting at you, and a general foreboding that you're going to be stabbed at some point. Then put it in America, because obviously we have to drive on the right in this game. That's the reductive premise of Bus Bound, a kinda sim published by Mud/Snowrunner guys, Saber Interactive. This was one of Rosie's free games on Friday, and I've spent time on and off over the last few days just tootling around the city. Honestly, it's puddle-deep, but it's a great way to relax and switch your brain off. You upgrade individual stops by dropping off customers, you can set up your own routes, edit existing ones, and your buses slowly upgrade as you go. The city slowly evolves, between different sectors (which also open up as you upgrade individual stops). Your goal is to make drives enjoyable for passengers. Driving below the limit, obeying traffic laws, nice smooth driving over speed bumps (basically nothing the bus drivers do here). But there's no real punishment beyond reducing the bonuses you can earn per stop. It is nice seeing all the thumbs up and smiley faces appearing whenever you drive well, though. It's not a massively tough game, although you can play in the driver's seat viewpoint to increase difficulty, and all the buses have different feels as you drive. Definitely not a world-beater, but if you want something in a similar vein to EuroTruck Sim, it's worth a mooch. Just don't expect a HUGE city. You can only do 5-6 stop routes at the start, and I'm currently up to 12, so drives take no longer than 20-ish minutes. Pop it on, get a podcast in the background and you're off to the races.

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

I got my first match nerves out of the way so I'll start the thread up, but also as a way to encourage others to download it 👀. I ran online with Luna Snow, I think her name is. Did 2 matches and won both 2-0 (best of 3). Chucks healing ice at people and wears booty shorts. I think I did reasonably well with 0 experience in the genre and no idea of how to strategise. I just chucked ice at things if they looked like they were dying, if I even noticed them, and other healers did the same for me. In the second match I did here it looked like there was one Wolverine who clearly got the memo "kill the fucking healers first". Brains and brawn that guy Seems fun but chaotic and hard to get a handle of the UI you're supposed to be looking at. Luna has a move on the shift key which increases her DPS and HPS, I think. She has a move on right click which delivers a freeze on a target and heals her, so that's her self sustain. Her ultimate gives HPS and DPS depending on pressing Q to toggle. E is a sort of tethered heal between you and another character, to give them a passive defensive buff. Very straightforward with Luna, easy to get to grips with in a game that's sort of overwhelming. Healers have always been my preference. That said I don't think she'll be a long term pick, once I get comfortable. I'm interested in the more complicated ones eventually, and I'd like to try a tank as well so I have an alt if the strat role is taken, leaning towards Steven Strange because he's voiced by Grimoire Weiss and thinks with portals, so his match chatter actually sounds good I've also played Cloak and Dagger, who's harder to heal with but the stance swap thing seems interesting. Can't quite figure out the shadow powers, apparently they blind and hide people but I feel like I have to be on the receiving end of this in a match first before I even know what this means and how it impacts strategy. You can shoot a rectangle line AOE heal at people and a little healing bubble which if FFXIV has taught me anything, fucking nobody will be standing in that thing Anyway two people on the first match had 0 percent accuracy on some rounds, it was hard and I was sad. But I got MVP in my 2nd match with her tho, maybe she's cool I'm liking what I'm seeing with Iron Fist, for DPS. He has a defensive stance which procs a stinger attack and can triple jump, all his attacks reduce the cooldown of his defense stance. He also has self sustain with E. He's really agile, just seems like the goto for that role and I don't think I'll be changing my mind

Finally bought a new game for my PC. Sure, it was 37 quid and looks like Skyrim, but that's neither here nor there. I think everyone knows it's a bit of a TES clone, down to most of the controls (at least on Xbox pad) being in the same configuration - Y for jump etc. I'm expecting, over the course of the next 50 hours, to be questing, lock picking, alchemy-ing and, most importantly, collecting flora and fauna for the cooking of. My build will be one handed with shield for parrying, and a side line in conjuration. So, pretty much my favourite TES build. Played an hour. Couldn't be happier. For now, at least.

So I've finally managed to put a few hours in to this and it's good... very good. I've seen this described as a 360 throwback and in a way I could get behind that, it's not gonna reinvent the wheel with what it's doing... mainly shooting and exploration... but what it does do feels really good in practice. You play as Hugh who turns up on the moon along with his team to do... something?? And then for reasons ends up separated and alone before teaming up with D-I-0336-7 who he nicknames Diana... the titular PRAGMATA. It's a good thing too as the moons AI has decided to go cuckoo and make all the robots in the place in to murderous nutters... Hugh has a gun but without the aid of Diana's hacking skills it's about as much use as a pea shooter. The hacking quite cleverly is done using the four face buttons of the controller, think of it as up, down, left and right where you'll try to set a path through various different nodes which will set off different effects... it's cool and in the heat of battle a bit mind frying. Once hacked this opens up the timing for Hugh to get to work with his guns. The shooting feels great (although I do wish I could shoot faster) as does the movement... I know it's not for everyone but I love the weight that Capcom gives it's characters. Hugh is really well voiced and Diana is just the right side of being endearing rather than annoying... childlike characters are hard to pull off in games so far I think they've done alright in this. I like the fact you can go to your safe hub at any point in the levels through shortcuts that are opened up... ditto for being able to return to previous areas whenever you feel the urge... and you'll want to as you won't be able to collect everything on the first visits. The games made a really good impression on me so far and I'm looking forward to putting more time in.

The writing is great, it looks wonderful but I’m stuck on the first dice game to get the ring to feed mutt 😭 I just don’t understand the bloody game despite all of its instructions. My dog is hungry I must work it out! Stop saying I’m bust!

Well this has turned out to be a very pleasant surprise... So let's get this out there straight the way, although this has strong rhythm elements you could (up till where I've played at least) get by with a bare minimum of rhythm... yeah you'll get damage perks and better scores but you can button mash your way through just as well. It looks lovely, very stylized with a look of Lollipop Chainsaw or Sunset Overdrive and for me pretty humorous too without going too far that way. Special mention must go to the soundtrack which so far has been pretty amazing, especially the original music and the way the whole stage seems in sync with the beat. There's a fairly decent amount of accessibility options too for people, who like me, have no rhythm whatsoever... so far so enjoyable and it's a game I probably never would've given a second thought to if not for my Game Pass sub... Great stuff.

I've been playing this on the side since it came out on Switch, as it's a really good handheld title. It's out on everything though, IIRC on PC since last year. Oddly very little talk online even though it ticks all the boxes for a hit. I don't know if it's the lack of a mascot and it having a rather 'faceless' presentation, or just multiple unlucky release timings. In any case, this is a bit of a mix between various games and genres, like Tetris and Carcassone put into the roguelite corset, but in combination plays like none of them. Explaining this will be a bit boring, but it generally revolves around building a landscape on a playing field by putting Tetromino-shaped blocks on it. The blocks themselves fulfil certain functions: plains, forests etc. generate produce like wheat and wood, others help increase said production (a farm for example), while the third group, military units, bolster your troops in case you land on a field with an enemy. Unlike Tetris the blocks don't fall automtically (at least up until the higher difficulties), but reaping your rewards does require completing a row. The Carcassone element comes into play because it's generally advisable to logically combine blocks of the same type by building a forest, a mountain range or a river, as a lot of production and military facilities work with multiplyers linked to large biomes. The roguelite part of it, meanwhile, is that it features three areas you have to go through and your 'deck' of cards/blocks grows with every stage you beat – even though, to me, it feels more like a classic arcade game than a modern roguelike. Think of a shoot'em up, but instead of shooting enemies you lay out the land and instead of powering up your weapons you unlock new lands. You do unlock some permanent upgrades by fulfilling certain conditions though. I realise this probably sounds very unexciting but it's quite a fun game. There's a lot of depth to it, especially after unlocking secondary factions. The first one, the eponymous Duchy, is a relatively straightforward agricultural deck which is designed around harvesting large fields and interlocking them with military outposts that generate units based on the fields surrounding it, for example. But every other deck has its own unique gimmick they bring to the table: the Order is a religiously-themed, crusading faction that benefits from building and using 'faith' as a currency, the North cannot combine miltary units during its combat phase but can pillage production units for larger benefits, while the Tribe is designed around strategic runestone placement, so that it's central stone momunemt can harness the produce of as large an area as possible. There's also a truckload of additional cards/blocks you can unlock, which are independent from the factions, and add their own little twist on things ('nobles', for example, are very powerful but can't be rotated). But if you don't like some of these, you can banish them, effectively removing them from playthroughs. Combat is a rock-paper-scissors affair, so carefully ordering your units to attack can lead to victories vs. numerical advantages, as seen in the little screenshot below (I won a 162 vs. 180 with 1 unit left). There's a ton of stuff to do here, too. After about 20 hours I'm still not done unlocking all the aforementioned cards, but there are multiple difficulty settings, a trial mode, an endless mode etc. It takes a while to click, because it really showers you in information early on, but when it does it's genuinely good fun. Reading through dwarf's Titanium Court topic, this basically seems like the more approachable little cousin of that game.

This is the first game from a new French studio I think is made up of a few ex Arcane folks, and published by Konami. It's a puzzle adventure game in the vein of something like Limbo, with added stealth elements. There's some strange backstory seemingly involving aliens who are staging a takeover of the planet via manufacturing food or something? Anyway, they suck up the octopus you're controlling from the sea and dump you in the factory, from where you try to escape. It looks very nice, the animation of your octopus character is fantastic and full of personality (even if he does seem to only have 6 legs). Your abilities like being able to stick to surfaces or camouflage yourself are fun to use. The puzzles aren't too difficult and the punishment for failure of getting killed is pretty lenient, with checkpoints generally being pretty close together. There were a few frustrating moments where I died and had to repeat a challenging section which I thought should have had a checkpoint after, but I can only think of a couple of those. I had fun with it. It's cute and funny, and although it felt a little rushed towards the end I enjoyed my time and came away feeling positively towards it. It took me about 5 hours, so plug that into your personal price/value judgements, but I think it's worth trying.

It's finally here and I've been playing it... 😁 Off the bat it looks and feels fantastic, I've really gotten used to these games feeling fairly heavy to play and this feels no different... it's got a nice sense of inertia on the characters and if you've played any of the remakes I think you'll feel right at home. Grace seems like a cool character, I really like the small touch with her hands shaking as she aims due to her being terrified... whereas Leon is just a bad ass from the start, I've never been a Leon fanboy but I already like him in this much more... maybe it's the age thing. Probably played for around four hours so far but I've not made too much progress due to deaths/reloads... I'm playing standard difficulty with modern saving on my first playthrough... just picked up the level one wristband. Also stuck with third person views for both characters. Rhodes Hill seems like the closest thing we've had to that classic Resident Evil mansion or police station we've had in years... the zombies are amazing and there's more things to avoid in this place as Grace than we've ever had... it's constant cat and mouse. I can't wait to pile hours in to this...

This is a massive WRPG based on the Harry Potter book/film series from the early to late 2000s. Potter, Malfoy, Hermione, Ron, Neville & Co. aren't in this though as it is set in the late 1800s, so it's set in the same world and there are certainly plenty of references to the books/films, certain character names etc. and some fan service in terms of locations you'll visit (particularly the intro which is super cool for a Potter-fan, which I won't spoil) but it doesn't try too hard or wink metaphorically at you too much if that makes sense. You play as a new character of your choice who joins Hogwarts as a 5th year, one of the few Witches/Wizards that have done this in history. The game is set in Hogwarts itself and its surroundings, no real surprise there. Hogwarts itself is absolutely gigantic, filled with labyrinthian corridors, dungeons, classrooms with all the key locales you'll recognise from the films like the moving staircase, broom lawn, clock tower etc. everything feels exactly as it should do, everything is in its correct place from the films and just feels right. Outside of Hogwarts is a humungous world to explore based on the Scottish Highlands, with plenty of greenery, forests and undulating hills, flora and fauna, Hogsmeade is largely the shopping district where you'll get all your bits needed for your classes and adventures throughout the region, it's every bit as charming as it is in the films and an absolute delight to just walkthrough and take in all the kookiness of the wizarding world you inhabit. The two core pillars to the game, as in many games I guess, are combat and exploration. The combat is easily what has surprised me about the game the most, I think when you look at it in videos it's quite easy to dismiss as being perhaps a bit overly simplistic but in your hands it's got a lot of depth to it. There's a weight to the spell casting that isn't easy to get across on video, I don't really know how to describe it but there's a wind-up to the animation, a motion, a movement to it, it's not just firing off little bolts of whatever spell, it feels like you've actually cast it if that makes any sense at all lol. Different enemies will have a shield that corresponds with a certain spell colour (red, purple, yellow are the main combat-based spells) which you'll have to use to break their shield and ultimately defeat them. You can have up to 12 named spells in the spell wheel at any one time (need to hold R2 and press one of the face buttons to cast), these act as special spells on a cooldown meter. On top of this you've also got your regular no-name spell which you can cast at anyone at anytime by pressing R2 (or by using L2, going into a 3rd-person over the shoulder aiming mode) which you can keep firing off at enemies whilst your special spells are on a cooldown. There's a lot of different enemy types I've encountered so far. These Guardian/Statue type things I guess a little bit similar to the Gargoyles in Souls games or something (maybe?), your more standard dark witches/wizards, Ashwinders which are kind of suped up dark witches/wizards, Spiders, Wolves, Trolls, Goblins, these little furball looking things that reside in rivers/lakes (can't remember the name), so there's a lot of variety there and each have their own strengths and weaknesses for you to exploit. Combat in this game is far from easy as well, it's not anywhere near something like Souls or something like that but you do have to think about your attacks, strategies etc. quite a bit, it's not mindless button mashing in the slightest, there is some strategy involved and some threat associated whenever you enter a combat scenario. Exploration is handled a little more how you'd expect really, I absolutely hate the 'Ubisoft game' analogy as I feel it's a lazy quasi-criticism, I've played many and they're all slightly differently to one another but the closest analogy I can give to how this game handles its exploration is AC Valhalla. The landscapes are very similar on the surface of it, one being set mainly in England and this being set in the Scottish Highlands, there are these 'Merlin Trials' which are very similar to a lot of the little puzzles and glitches you see dotted around in that game. Standard kind of stuff like getting a ball from the top of a hill down into a hole, lighting three pillars before the time runs out, exploding 4 rock columns, having to lead a group of fireflies into a column to light it up, just little bits and pieces like that. There's a lot of collectibles to get, the field pages are the most plentiful of the bunch, I think Hogwarts alone has over 100 of these that you get by pressing Revelio to reveal hidden objects in the surroundings, much like the pulse mechanic in a lot of games that reveals hidden items, there's also Chests, little statues, seals to find where you'll have to lead a dragonfly-type thing to a cabinet to squash it into the hole and open it up. Nothing too ground-breaking here or anything really no one has seen before, but they all work well in harmony with one another. Again, similar to AC Valhalla there's also dungeons and caves you can enter dotted around the landscape, the infamous bandit camps where you have to clear them out and find the chest to tick them off as completed, Balloons in the sky to pop whilst flying your broom, broom time trials, mini-games with your wand you can compete with other students at Hogwarts. The game has such a fantastic atmosphere to it and is such a joy to explore, whether that's just walking around on foot or flying around on your broom, it's always visually arresting to just meander even if you don't have a set goal in mind. The attention to detail here is just absolutely staggering, there's a sweetshop in Hogsmeade and every single individual kooky wizardy type sweet is included in such an special authentic way, every aspect of the game feels extremely polished, it runs well and everything feels like it has that same attention to detail that the sweetshop has, it really is a sight to behold. Graphically, this is a current-gen showpiece, the world feels so alive and helps bring everything to life and look as magnificent as it does, the music in this game is absolutely fantastic as well and helps place you into this world. There's a few ditties in here that will sound familiar if you've seen the films but nothing is a straight up rip from the movies, everything feels unique and makes you feel like you're on your own adventure in this world, not reliving Harry's. The sound design with all the spells like 'Lumos' sounding exactly how it should from the films, is really special. Again, it just helps drive home how much attention to detail was spent in this world and getting everything right, in terms of world design and world building, it's nothing but a masterpiece. The story itself has been interesting too, I'm not too far in as I've been mostly ignoring it and doing collectibles, side quests and all that good stuff, but yeah it has been intriguing so far and I can't wait to learn more, I've only just got my broom at 22-ish hours in which is meant to be something you get within the first 3 hours, so I think I'm quite behind on this front lol. Talking of side quests, they're in here but largely unremarkable really, they're standard kind of side quests where you'll have to clear out a bandit camp to get an item or something like that, nothing out of ordinary. Occasionally you do get assignments from the various different classes at Hogwarts which will give you a couple of tasks to complete, this are usually more interesting and reward you with a nice little classroom scene once you hand it to the Professor in question. So yeah, I think it is absolutely fantastic so far. I just wish I had more time to play more of it really, it's one of the best WPRGs I've played in recent years, feels like its had an awful lot of money spent on it and is just dripping in polish and attention to detail. A must-play if you're a fan of the films/books but I think a great game (so far) in its own right and well worth playing still if you're not. Pics:

Finished the prologue of this after roughly 10 hours, so maybe a good enough impression for a topic. It's very much as advertised, Greedfall through the lens of Dragon Age: Origins – or the other way around if you want. Meaning it's very much tackling similar ideas and themes to the first Greedfall but whenever some evil monkey or brigand comes you way it turns into a pure D&D type combat with tactical pause, commands and whatnot. In terms of narrative this does a 180 and instead of playing a diplomat from the side of the colonialising factions, you play an inhabitant of the island. It all takes place a couple of decades before the first game, so it's early days, and hostility among the natives not quite as pronounced yet. It's a difficult subject to tackle and the game does it with a bit too much naiveté at times. If, for example, you need to shut down a mine whose gold-cleansing procedures poison a river, all you need to do is tell the workers they angered an evil spirit. Other moments are more in line with the severety of the situation and during the prologue you have two companions who play two different tunes (one open-minded, one entirely xenophobic), which leaves you as the blank slate in the middle. Like the first game, it doesn't really comment on the issue, which is the right path IMO, but it adds an interesting and unique layer to what is, essentially, a fantasy RPG. The island is home to a coming-of-age ceremony your character goes through and doubles as a tutorial where most mechanics are explained organically (combat, stealth, crafting, decision-making, the whole thing). After you leave it opens up a lot more and it becomes immediately apparent how ambitious the game is. Greedfall, or most of Spiders games, are very flatly designed games, in the literal sense. But the moment you set foot on the main continent you're presented with a hub world that's not only vast but also immensely vertical, a massive piece of terrain with flora, fauna and forgotten ruins to explore. It's an enormous leap for a team whose RPG path humbly started out with Live Arcade game Faery all those years ago, and that no review I read even bothered to mention. When out and about you inevitably will get drawn into combat, and like mentioned at the start it's here where it's an entirely different beast than the first game. I've yet to make up my mind about it, because despite offering text boxes upon text boxes informing me about all the different buffs, debuffs, and idiosyncrasies of its system, the early game plays more like DA: Inquisition: target an enemy, tell your team to do the same, and do a nice rotation through your skills whenever the cooldowns are up until the characters with the red outlines are dead. During one boss fight, pictured below, I had to move my team out of harm whenever they did some AOE attacks but so far it's been a very gentle introduction to its systems, most likely by design, considering the stark shift from the first game. Maybe it'll stay this way on normal, maybe not, but in any case it does give you all the options you need, including a tactical pause and staggered command inputs. It also features two separat combat modes which incrementally reduce the control you have over your teammates, likely moving it closer to something like DA: The Veilguard. I haven't tried these out because they recommend the default, full experience. So far I haven't done many quests and such, but most allowed different approaches, like sneaking in a bandit camp to free a prisoner or buying his freedom in exchange for either a real or fake relic from the nearby ruins. Some systems like stealth are a bit undercooked but still allow you to knock out some enemies pre-fight to turn the tides in your favour. One aspect imported from D&D I don't like is how skill checks outside of combat are dice rolls, ie. lockpicking a chest or a diplomatic dialogue choice having a 80% success rate. This boils down to the discussion of save scumming we had around KCD, but if my 80% lockpicking check fails you can bet I'll just reload and try again – in this specific case I wish it was dumbed down and binary, like how Mass Effect just locked away options you didn't have the skills for. So far it's difficult to say whether I like this more than the first or not. The latter had a more impactful opening, but this feels more cohesive and complete in its vision and the more I play and the better my understanding of its mechanics are, the more I'm enjoying it. I haven't been able to spend much time with its final set of party members yet, but there's two early favourites there already, whereas I barely remember the first game's at all. Visually it's not a big leap though, at best a tiny step. In quality mode it looks roughly the same as the original, but performance mode reduces resolution and detail noticeably, even on my 1080p screen. Most likely a result of the more complex systems and the both larger and more dense level design. I've been hopping around a bit too many games lately, but this has finally drawn my focus and it's a good one to sink your teeth into. Kind of wish it wouldn't have launched into the weird Crimson Desert hype because had reviewers gotten more time with it they might have enjoyed it more, as it's not the kind of game to rush through for a deadline. It would have needed the help because as it stands, with Nacon's fortunes up in the air, I fear we might be looking at Spiders' last release.

After saying I wasn't going to I went ahead and started this today... only managed maybe 1.5 hours due to adulthood being crap again but I've liked what I've seen so far... In my time with it so far Hazel has watched her house get washed away with her mum still inside thanks to a huge Hurricane and set out to try and find her... we've discovered she's a Weaver (she hasn't yet) who can basically see and manipulate strands to help in combat and with traversal... the look of the game reminds me of The Nightmare before Christmas even though it's not really anything like it... it just has this really nice animated look with the character models in cutscenes looking really good to me. Combat boils down to pretty much what you'd imagine for a third person game, admittedly I've hardly opened up the levelling tree and I suspect I'll be getting new abilities and fighting different types of enemies in due course. The voice work and music has been really good so far and I'm betting this story is going to get fairly dark fairly quickly... knowing this isn't the biggest game in terms of size and that I'm already liking what I've seen of the story/characters means I'll probably stick with this now until I hit the end... just wish I had more time to play the damn thing.

Minishoot' Adventures (I don't know why there's an apostrophe in the title) is a mashup of a 2D Zelda style game with a twin-stick shooter, and it's amazing. I played the demo during the recent Steam Nextfest, then bought it during the summer sale. The demo appears to be still available, and even at full price it's good value at under £13. The plot's about as light as you'd expect from this type of game, but it plays brilliantly. The movement and shooting feel great, exploring the maps for secrets is satisfying, and the abilities and upgrades to your ship as you progress are fun. I 100% completed the map, and beat the "true" boss in a bit over 13 hours. It's seems like it's only on Steam right now, but it absolutely ought to be on consoles. Here's hoping.

Started this earlier (didn't try the demo earlier in the year) played for around 2.5/3 hours. Not sure what to think of it yet, it OK to play I guess... definitely not as tight as Elden Ring, there's been a few times where it's seemed like the buttons were a tad unresponsive... and I've also been stun locked which is very annoying. Looks wise it could quite easily be a sequel to Bloodborne... it's very similar. Looks pretty decent though, nice and sharp... I'm playing in quality mode but I have no idea what that does to resolution and framerate in this though. Like most Soulsborne games I'm feeling a little lost at the moment tbh... what with the amount of random items I'm picking up and the amount combat notes being thrown my way... we'll see how far I make it in this as I've read it's fairly difficult and unlike Elden Ring I can't ride on the coat tails of better players so don't be too surprised if my next post on the game is in the "Sacked that off mate" thread.😂

Randomly decided to fire this up yesterday, maybe finally a topic other people will join in at some point. Anyway, after a solid 40 minutes in the character creator, which is simultaneously very good but also oddly lacking in some areas, I went through the tutorial area they showed in that gameplay clip a few months ago and then did the first proper mission afterwards. Decided to play an elven mage which resulted in a couple of not-important lines during dialogue so far, so I guess the times during which elves were this universe's slaves are over. Combat wise the mage can choose between flinging ranged attacks from a staff or using a magically infused short sword in close combat, in addition to your usual skills you unlock via (a very convoluted) skill tree. My mana pool is very low at the moment so I can barely use those right now, so I hope that changes, because the basic stuff feels a bit dull I think. Not bad, but ... pedestrian? But then again I've barely started and haven't really used the command wheel for my party members either, so I'm not going to judge it on that front yet. Visually this is probably the most impressive game I've played all year and a far cry from BioWare's usual output and an excellent showcase for Frostbite. I'm playing performance mode and it's basically a flawless visual experience, really smooth, really clear, barely any noticeable pop-ins or other distracting graphical scratches and such, while also maintaining all the visual flourishes you'd expect from a current-gen AAA product. I only very briefly switched over to quality but didn't see any noteworthy improvements that would warrant the more sluggish framerate. Annoyingly, while there are a ton of accessibility options, you can't turn of the quest marker for the main quest, so you permanently have some weird snowflake on the screen. Hopefully they patch that out before I'm done with it. The only other gripe I have with its visual presentation is the artstyle, or rather character proportions, as everyone's head is simply too big. We're used to this for dwarven races, but it looks really weird on slim builds like elven characters. But I do enjoy the overall experience so far. Feels good to play a high-end RPG again, even if this falls into a very streamlined action RPG territory that's very far removed from its Origins, eh, origins. Very linear so far, more reminiscent of the earlier games than Inquisition in that sense. So far I like that aspect but that might shift after a couple of hours.

I played 4 hours of this last night. Premise is you inherit this mansion, I think from your grandfather or something, I forget. You 'draft' rooms randomly and create a floorplan which can lead to different things. Some rooms have several exits, or none. They might have currency you can use to open doors, buy things and so on. They might also contain some lore in them. Some rooms have debuffs, eg you might spend more steps going into them. You might have ways to workaround this though, either in the floorplan or in some other strategy. What's more interesting is the ways in which certain rooms can be combined with each other, like the security room has specific interactions with other rooms. There's no reason to go into detail on this cause the game is about accumulating these details yourself and learning how to combine them to unlock secrets, solve puzzles and figure out how to progress to the antechamber. At first anyway, maybe the game changes later but I've no idea Being real about it, I feel like the 'eureka' moments have been spread rather sparsely across the playtime so far and I'm not loving it, I'm sort of giving it the benefit of the doubt. But due to the nature of it it's guaranteed to be one of those delayed gratification type of experiences cause you need to learn lots of tricks and gimmicks before you can really synthesise it into something clever, and I'm not quite there yet, tho I did figure out something rather cool about the security card system which I won't spoil. But from what I see lots of the rooms and unlocks have multiple applications so it's probably a game about rewiring your brain to these multiple possibilities. You should definitely take notes, I have notes saved in a text editor. Best analogy I can use to describe is that it's like starting off a 1000 piece jigsaw, you're just kinda feeling a bit aimless. I'm sure it turns into something else entirely eventually though. Its pace is definitely an issue so far though

My battle brothers First up, so far, orcless. Zero orcs. This time you're fighting the Tyranids, a hive mind swarm of demon like creatures (who may not be demons in the lore, but they've blade like appendages rather than arms), and while you might first encounter a small cluster, generally this prompts waves to follow. A lot of the time you're fighting them in standard combat, swinging your chainsword, countering and dodging the larger monsters, and taking out the distant projectile throwing Tyranids with your bolt gun. There'll be points though where you have the high ground and have to try to delay the swarm by throwing grenades or exploding barrels as the Tyranids scamper over to swarm your position It's fun, it's a bit basic and samey, but it's fun. In some ways I wish you felt a bit more indestructible than you do, but I suppose that's less interesting as a game, and the Tyranids are a threat. There's also another enemy type that's more like the rats from A Plague Tale, nicely you generally get a flame thrower for these sections, that's fun If its anything like the original it's going to kick on in the 2nd half, and there'll be some more variety. I think I'm currently trying to get to a lost/stranded Magus, which feels quite early in still. Also I watched this this morning which was quite a good background to Titus up until this point, I'm not sure how much he's a character outside of the games, but there's a lot there

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.

This came out last year, it's the second game from a small developer located in the Netherlands. The setup is that you're playing the squire of a legendary knight who goes missing during the prologue, so you have to step up and try filling his shoes in his absence in handling those knightly duties to keep the kingdom safe. The game itself is a mix between classic action-adventure and platformer, meaning it sends you off into an open world (going by its map, neither too big nor too small), where you're going to do all sorts of things between helping villagers, fighting off monsters, sliding around on your shield and doing some platforming on the side to explore the world and find secrets. It's a playground-type design that doesn't dig deeper than surface level, so don't expect a BotW's system's complexity but rather the more classic, but still enjoyable Fenyx Rising template. It does try to inject some depth into the combat in particular, though ironically this is the game's weakest link so far, with sluggish movement, slow attack speed and difficult to judge attack animations making it feel very unresponsive. Though this could very well be remedied with upgrades, of which there are two: combat moves and shield upgrades. I'm only a few hours in so haven't unlocked much but there's some potential here at least. But the star is really the world, which feels densely packed but also not overwhelmingly so. You rarely have to run around for more than a few seconds to find an interesting spot or the glowing lure of 'praise orbs' (the game's version of XP), which leads to a very satisfying exploration rhythm, helped by the fact that outside of combat it does feel rather nice to control, with double jumps et al. It does become quite talkative at times, but manages to make its weird inhabitants very charming despite all of them lacking facial features and usually just having a helmet (or a bird box, or an anvil) as a head with white pupils moving around. In fact there's something about its presentation that just works, despite neither art direction nor pure visual fidelity being exemplary. But it's a nice game to look at and exploring the world is accompanied by a very upbeat, colourful orchestral score that fits the setting like a glove and is reminiscent of classic movie leitmotivs. Its only one noticeable downside in that area is the 30fps cap, which like the character models seems to be the result of an inexperienced team rather than the game itself being too heavy for consoles. But this is very fun so far, feels refreshingly European, too, despite using US spelling. A good palette cleanser of a game you can just hop in for an hour or two here and there. There's also a generous demo available, which is how I found out about it when it launched last year.

I played through the virtuous mission, this looks extremely good on PC. I'm trying out M&K with Metal Gear for a change, the new controls are a sort of Phantom Pain-ified take on Snake Eater. The fundamentals from Snake Eater are still there, but you have crouch walk and what feels like much more fluent transitions between different states when moving Snake, whereas I remember it being quite rigid on the PS2 game, even by 2004 standards. At the same time, this version of the game seems like it could be insanely easy. I decided to challenge myself with extreme mode, knowing that the new controls would make it easier. But even at that, it's just very easy to headshot guys and move on. That might be the M&K though, probably should swap to controller. But this was always meant to be a far-away fixed camera angle game with slow, considered movement and it definitely shows imo. But I think the level of detail and interactivity is still very strong, in ways that you easily forget with these old Metal Gears (I should say I'm playing like an asshole and killing people, throwing them off bridges. This is a "sneaking" mission, suggested not mandatory. The enemies seem pretty alert on harder modes so if you want to be Mr Perfect then it's going to be rough) I'm skipping cutscenes, Snake Eater has the corniest story. Just want to see how it plays and have it be a chill out game