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Nier Automata isn't quite what I was expecting. The demo, which is the prologue of the game, makes it seem like a fairly standard Platinum Games game. A tight linear action game with Witch Time when you dodge. Instead its that combat dumped in to an rpg And I don't just mean it's got a levelling up system, I mean it feels like a modern Final Fantasy game (or what I imagine they feel like because I I've only ever watched them being played). It's got big desolate spaces, using real world locations, all destroyed beyond recognition, in place of standard jrpg locations. Levelling up is a bit odd. Generally it just means a touch more health and damage, you don't get new skills. The way to do that is to increase the amount of 'chips' you can power. Chips are either dropped or bought and can do minor had things like show how close you are to levelling up, or increase your health, let you fire projectiles from your attacks, and auto heal, these have various levels themselves, meaning if you get a good one it might have a bonus health boost when triggered etc I really like the desolate look, I really like the robots, some bits can look a little simplistic but it's a cool aesthetic The only thing I'm not keen on is the amount of trudging around the map you have to do for side quests. The world isn't massive but it's big enough that returning to the desert is a bit tedious. Aside from that I'm liking its oddness

Started this last week and put about 12ish hours into so far. I've been looking forward to this a long time as a fan of the series, with the semi-recent remake of the first game (Abe's Oddysee) New N' Tasty reinvigorating my love for it. It started off as a one-to-one remake of the second game (Abe's Exoddus) but over time - believe it has been in development around 6 to 7 years - it grew into something more than that, a complete reimaging of the second game and a rejuvenation for the series too with added abilities, new action segments, a huge expanded story based on AE and tons of new levels that weren't in the first game. After the excellent New N Tasty I didn't expect this to get such middling reviews, which made me a little hesitant to start it. Thankfully I had nothing to worry about and have found the review scores a tad baffling based on what I've played so far. It is fair to say it is a departure from the classic Oddworld games of old, they have added a double jump, you can no longer use the D-Pad to control Abe, there's modern elements like a crafting system, the ability to tie up Sligs instead of killing them, medals that get awarded for carrying out a certain number of actions or collecting a certain amount of collectibles in a level. On top of this some levels have an action focus to them now where you'll have to run to escape being killed by Sligs and Glukkons in air ships whilst the platforms around you are crumbling into flames, later on there is also a section on a train which ends in a boss fight. So this is a quite a different beast compared to the original titles and even New N Tasty it's fair to say, some folks won't like that, others - like myself - will embrace the changes more. Thankfully though, despite all the changes mentioned above the way the game plays remains largely in tact. You still possess Sligs and can make them explode, you still recruit Mudokens and lead them to safety through butterfly gates, there's still tricky sections where you can't use possession and have to use stealth to avoid enemies, just scraping through to the other side. Thanks to the new additions coupled with those core Oddworld systems there is much greater variety to the game, you'll go through an action-based level where you're getting chased by a Glukkon Blimp, then encounter a level where you're possessing sligs to clear a path through, levels where you can't use possession and have to rely on stealth and timing to make it through, others where more metroidvania elements come into play and you'll be heading into dark caves to find a power source to move on. The levels themselves are obviously much more impressive than the original games but perhaps more surprising is how they're much more impressive than even New N Tasty. You are still on that 2D plain controlling Abe, but the camera does pan around certain paths through the environment and there is much more going on in the background with Blimps, Snipers, mine trains wizzing past, as well as a greater number of Mudokens to save at times (sometimes in the 100s). One level - that is technically the most impressive - is on a train that is whizzing at high speed through the desert, culminating in a boss fight against a Slig in a giant mech. I will say though that one level so far frustrated the fuck out of me. It was the longest chapter so far and its key mechanic is using smoke to hide yourself from enemies, the issue is that in some parts of the level there aren't any smoke valves to hide in, you have to create your own smoke grenades to hide yourself and any Mudokens that are following you. The aiming is really finicky to perfect and on top of this the game is a little janky when it comes to detecting you and your squad in the smoke, a lot of the time I was fully covered but one or two Mudokens could be seen at the end and a Slig would just fly on by, another time they'd get shot up and I'd have to restart from the checkpoint and try again. At the start the difficulty was considerably more forgiving that the older games thanks largely to the double jump and an abundance of checkpoints but since then the difficulty has thankfully ramped up considerably to something akin to the games of old. The checkpoints are still a bit of a crutch and the double jump still helps you out of a few tight spots but some sections like the boss fight mentioned above have been pretty brutal to get through. Graphically, the game is very much a mixed bag. There's something about the art style that just feels a little bit washed out compared to the older games and New N Tasty, on top of this the game uses a very subdued colour palette, lots of browns, greys and muted greens throughout which doesn't help. On top of this the texture quality of rocks and other natural elements all look pretty shoddy with only the industrial areas looking ok. The game does shine with the background details though and the train level mentioned above did impress me quite a lot, but for a PS5 game it is still not really up to scratch. It is obviously an indie title so allowances for that have to be made. As for flaws, the game can be a little buggy at times. I think on about 5-10 occasions I've had an issue where Abe will get stuck mid-jump and no controller input from me will get him moving again, resulting in a checkpoint restart being needed. The controls are also a little finicky and imprecise, a lot of times I've had it where I'll try to climb down or jump up a platform in a hurry and somehow it won't work out. The most glaring issue though is the projectile system, you have to throw crafted/found items quite a bit in order to coat Sligs in a flammable liquid and set them on fire, use smoke to block a security camera/enemies view, rocks to kill bats etc. and it's just very fiddly. The game asks you to be precise at times with your aiming of these projectiles but the system they give you just isn't up to scratch, you're aiming with the right stick then pressing R2 to fire off projectiles whilst controlling abe with the left stick and having to switch items holding in triangle. It would've been much better if you could aim with L2, adjust your throwing arc with the right stick and then let fly or if time temporarily froze whilst you're throwing projectiles to allow you to be more precise in your aim. Overall though, I'm really enjoying it so far and couldn't put it down for the first 5-6 hours. It's included with PS+ this month so if you're a fan of the series or action/puzzle-platformers then I think you might get on with this so give it a go. Definitely not one to sleep on that's for sure, I almost slept on it myself (due to its proximity to Nier) but it gets a recommendation from me. Pics to follow:

Started playing this today, put in about 3 hours. Not really sure what to make of it at the moment, the game looks bloody gorgeous (You can see where Coldwood spent that EA money!), the soundtrack is great, but at its heart it just feels like an average platformer really. If I had to compare it I'd say it feels most like LittleBigPlanet, that kind of floatiness to the controls (if that makes sense) happens in Unravel too, it definitely isn't a tight platformer like Ori and the Blind Forest or Donkey Kong Country, and I don't think it was ever trying to be like those games in its design, but the controls could've been tighter and snappier in my view, from what I've played anyway. What I didn't realise going in was how incredibly infuriating and frustrating a game it is, it just gets me so fucking riled up it's unreal, I've got stuck twice already and had to look up what I need to do online, was just pottering about for 15 minutes trying to get past a certain section and of course I find what I need to do, feel like an idiot and I'm on my way. Some of the problems can be put down to the timing-based platforming sections I've encountered I guess (where the controls don't help), coupled with the harsh check-pointing employed. You can figure out what you need to do in order to progress, almost complete an entire section, accidently drop into some water and suddenly have to start all the way back at the previous checkpoint, just seems needless really. Despite the issues the game has and its mediocrity (in platforming terms) I am still vaguely enjoying it, it's pleasant enough, the environs are amazing and Yarny is charming enough to keep me playing, but I can already tell its going to be a bit of a slog if it goes on for any longer than the 5-6 hours I'm assuming it lasts.

Played about an hour and haven't got any of the Bioshock style powers yet, but it's done a pretty good job of teaching you some of the basics. The tutorials are hidden as gameplay elements (follow someone, play hide and seek etc), but a little on the nose for a while, once things start to kick off though it does a better job of setting things up so that if you want to do a stealth kill then you'll get an easy chance, if you want to do a drop attack then there's a convenient pipe above a guard. Or you could just walk up and stab people, whatever annoyingly on the pc it's got the same quirk Witcher 2 did, that it's 2 handed attacks mapped to the opposite mouse button, so the sword in your right hand is mapped to the left mouse button, while the gun in your left... Not a big deal but I did alert a few guards by dropping down and shooting a guard in the head instead of a nice quiet throat slit

Yakuza is undoubtedly one of my favourite gaming franchises. It’s been consistently excellent for many years now. Yakuza Zero is one of my favourite games of all time. So,I’m always up for more. This entry has shifted from the usual over the top action, to an RPG style. Quite the difference. The reviews have said that it’s paid off, for the most part. Though there are some massive difficulty spikes near the end, that require some hefty grinding. Anyway, I’m a couple of hours in. There hasn’t been much gameplay yet, it’s almost entirely cutscenes thus far. Yakuza games always start slowly, this entry apparently takes about 10 hours to get properly started. Another new addition is a brand new character, Ichiban. He seems decent enough, though it’s too early to say how he compares to Kiryu. We will see how it plays out.

I started this one today. Beat the first world and onto the second. Early impressions is combat has a nice "swimming" movement to it albeit it is very floaty like the spinoff games. Worlds are massive and some of it almost feels like an anime/Disney take on (old) God of War games. Music is great, as usual. Hoping to hear some old tunes return (hopefully Hollow Bastion). I started it on Proud mode cause I figure if I've played three of these games back to back and can't handle its hard mode at this stage well then I'm really just hopeless. So far it's not very difficult but it is a reasonable challenge. It makes it so it isn't just a mash X fest. It is very heavy on cutscene interruptions in the early hours however and it gets sort of annoying, it's a bit Metal Gear at times. WRT spoilers I'm going to defer to riksp or someone else as to the best approach. I'm thinking anything that was in a trailer is fair game for an open screenshot because this is a very pretty game with lots of shiny stuff that's fun to show off. Or maybe all screenshots could be put in spoiler text it's all the same. No HDR in this game, interestingly.

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

For some reason I got it in to my head that this has more direct control in it, but it's more Oregan Trail, resource management. Not my sort of game really so I sort of regret buying it, but I'm going to stick with it a bit The problem is its difficult all the time. I was expecting it to ease me in, but within an hour I'm having to go without stuff to try to stockpile coal because I can see a cold snap coming. To do that I need to prioritise technology that makes coal use more efficient, makes heating more effective. Problem is my population want things like medical tents and food. In terms of resources, you need coal for your generator, wood and steel for buildings, I had a decent amount of steel so I've stopped collecting that in favour of wood and coal, then I got loads of wood from an expedition so have moved my people off that too to try to stockpile coal. Your civilians are a resource too, a resource that gets sick all the time and moans about everything. You can't have all of them collecting coal and wood, you'll need some to hunt at night for raw food, to work in the cook house to make meals for everyone, and to man the medical tents While your doing this you also have to manage happiness and discontent, people being cold and hungry isn't good, and they'll set you tasks such as heating the tents, do that discontent decreases, miss it by 5 minutes like I did and there's a huge spike. I also lost a day to not understanding how the scouts worked, but they've brought back workers, food and wood so they're pulling their weight so far

I played and completed this in one sitting, it's about 3 and a half hours or so maybe. I'm pretty slow at games like this so it might actually be less. Essentially it's a 'PT-like', I didn't know that going in as I only knew about the controversial aspect that there's apparently a Pooh bear reference in the game (I didn't find it, guess it's very obscure). It's a welcome change from something like The Medium which was tepid in just about every category, here you've got some fairly effective scares (albeit a bit cliche) and some really effective atmosphere. It's a walking sim basically, puzzles are simple observation puzzles. You go through the same environments over and over and put the square narrative puzzle piece in the square shaped narrative hole. Like P.T. tho it makes good use of repeated environments and unlike P.T. this is a fully realized thing with a self-contained story and not a drip feed teaser of something much bigger So yeah you can make a good horror walking sim as long as you remember to make the environment do a good job at telling a story. Obviously at this point the mystique of this title has sort of overcome all discussion about it. It's really quite good I'd say but it's still a indie type horror game that will have you thinking while you're playing it but not necessarily after you're done with it

Just to let you know what you're in for, Sea of Solitude starts with this screen: It's a beautiful game in places, similar in visual style to Rime. The introduction sees you in a boat in the titular Sea of Solitude. Playing as a young girl who's quite literally overtaken by darkness (seriously, she just has facial features, the rest of her form is just black and a little undefined), you're given a guiding light in this sea of darkness, and that provides the only source of light around you. It's a platformer in nature, so from time to time you have to leave the safety of your boat and walk around the flooded city its set in. When you do climb out of the boat the world around you becomes dark and stormy, and there's a creature that stalks you in the depths of the water. Basically, everything feels like a very heavy-handed discussion on depression. As you work through your problems and face your difficulties, you eventually bring light to the world around you. This is where the visual beauty kicks in, because it becomes bold, vibrant and just stunning to look at in a very stylised way. One touch I adore - you have to remove corruption from the world (this is what makes the world brighter again), but your character's backpack gets more and more full as the game progresses. Again, a very obvious metaphor, but one that's done in a subtle way. It was only near the end of my session last night I actually noticed it. This isn't a game that's ever going to set the world on fire - the controls sometimes feel a little loose, the story has less than zero subtlety, and the graphic design is an acquired taste (but exactly the kind of thing I love). But given that it's a very stark look at the different aspects of depression, it also feels quite brave in a way. I also don't want to give spoilers away, which is why I haven't discussed any of the main story beats, just given a little overview. It feels relatively short, I reckon I'm about half way through it - but I'm really enjoying it at the moment. As much as you can 'enjoy' a story about a young girl's crippling depression.

Don't think this ever migrated into the Games thread, but I started playing it today. It's pretty clunky, but already has a few interesting ideas in terms of making you work things out whilst investigating/researching and linking events together when using the psychic flashbacks. The Lovecraft vibe is quite obvious, and combat best avoided at times rather than head on. Promising few hours, so I'll be seeing this through.

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.

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

I picked this up on the pc the other day for a fiver, supposedly the story is great, clever even, but the game itself is a bit so so. Which so far is about where I am with it, it's a less fun MW. I'm also struggling to sit and play it for an extended duration, as soon as a checkpoint ends I feel the urge to turn it off for a while. The story is fairly interesting so far, it's not hit the twist yet, but knowing that something terrible and fucked has happened is enough to keep you interested in what's going on It looks fairly good, the AA isn't really doing enough considering how many hanging wires there are. It's pretty well acted too, it's been Northified so you'd expect that, but he seems to be the worst of the 3 main ones so far

Can you spoiler tag your latest post above please @Nag? Only glimpsed the first line, but saw things I didn't want to. Anyhoo...played the first 100 minutes or so earlier. I'm very impressed with it, I really wish I hadn't of played the Beginning Hour demo though as that pretty much ruined the surprise of the first hour of the game for me after you reach the house (guess the clue was in the name but I stupidly listened to some Journo's say it's not related at all to the game...), few different bits and pieces though and I liked the continuation of certain elements like finding the bolt cutters and fuse I wasn't able to find in the demo made things feel a bit different. Absolutely adore the atmosphere already, it's just dripping with dread, what I wasn't expecting though is just how Resi it would feel, you walk along a corridor, see the flashing of lightning streaming in and rain pouring down the windows and you can't help but think of the Spencer Mansion from the original, even the animations when you pick up and examine an object remind me of that so much, I like the little touches like the wrist watch and the items too, all very Resi. The gameplay itself is cool, I'm getting a definite Outlast/Alien:Isolation kind of vibe with it, but it still manages to feel distinct enough and Resi enough for me personally to differentiate from those titles, it definitely isn't scary though, I just don't feel threatened at all by the Bakers really, you get a brief 'Ahh, gotta run' when they get in close but if they catch me I just jankily leg it away from them, no idea if I'm meant to be shooting or running most of the time either. The graphics and lighting effects are incredible too (although the character models are a tad ropey at times), it can be a gorgeous game when you're walking through a dimly lit corridor or something, evokes the Train from RE0 a bit and of course the Spencer Mansion in the original (I know I've mentioned this a lot). Someone from the development team definitely saw the first season of True Detective as well, there's even a shot in the beginning cutscene which is pretty much ripped straight from that, love the whole deep South swamp vibe to it. So yeah, I'm impressed, probably more impressed than I thought I'd be and can't wait to play more, hopefully put some more time in at the weekend. A few pics:

Managed to pick this up for £13 yesterday and played through up to the fourth Hospital. It's Theme Hospital in all but name. It's been ages since i've played anything like this - used to love playing Theme Park and its ilk back in the day, and 2PH ticks all the right boxes, giving a nice rush of nostalgia but at the same time not feeling dated. If you've never played Theme Hospital, the premise is pretty simple, you're put in charge of various hospitals with you trying to increase the hospitals reputation and cashflow. You get a steady influx of patients with various illnesses, all of which are quite silly (my favourite so far is the patients that are deluded into thinking they're rock stars - the hospital is soon over run by people dressed as Freddie Mercury). The game is also pretty funny, it's actually made me chuckle a few times.

I've seen so much praise for this, review scores and whatnot, i was sort of sceptical but got it anyway. was sort of underwhelmed in the areas of graphics and emotion, it does look really nice and the story is alright i guess but too much hype. anyway onto the important bit - it plays flipping brilliantly, the enemies sometimes seem a bit pointless, especially at the start, then you unlock something really cool that makes them more interesting/not-pointless. it's a platform puzzler metroidvania sort of thing - with only a small amount of puzzling so far, more like complicated and satisfying platforming like super meat boy/guacamelee, it's tough but not super difficult yet anyway, and i'm not that good at platformers. some sections are so much fun i didn't mind dying and retrying if i messed them up. controls great too which is pretty important when things get tricky. so yeah double thumbs up so far. edit - oh yeah there's an interesting save system too, not many proper checkpoints but you can save/checkpoint pretty much anywhere you want, but it uses energy so you can't do it all the time, and that energy can unlock doors so do you save or keep the energy in case you need it? not sure what i think to this yet but it's not been a massive help/hindrance either way. and there's a sort of rgp lite levelling up thing where you unlock perks and stuff. edit 2 - mini bosses so far have been a bit disappointing. not sure if i've fought a proper boss yet.

Had a few matches on this, I think I just need to accept the fact I don’t like Battle Royale Games. Feels loads better to play than Fortnite and PUBG (only 2 others I’ve played). But the gameplay loop in these games just doesn’t nothing for me, run around the same environment searching around for loot for a while, shoot a few bullets, miss, die, wait a while to load a new match and repeat. I just find it tedious and boring constantly looking for loot at the beginning of every match. Especially when I’m bad so don’t last long when a gunfight starts, it usually just feels like a waste of time. Ill give it a few more matches just to see if it clicks, maybe as I start getting a bit better. Hope it’s does. I’d like to be involved with something like this for a change. It’s definitely got the best chance just because it actually feels good to play unlike the others I’ve tried. Otherwise I’ll just go back to TF2.

Played the demo of this on Friday and thought I’d give my thoughts on it. Played around 40 minutes to an hour and I definitely would’ve liked longer with it which is a good sign. Graphically it’s very colourful, it reminded me quite a bit of the game Rime mixed with a more cartoony AC Odyssey with a sprinkling of Zelda. To play it’s immediately reminiscent of AC Odyssey. The way the combat system works with all the special abilities is very familiar, but it is definitely more flamboyant and less grounded, it feels like the system has been jazzed up and some of the moves you can pull off are a little closer to DMC than the weight of AC:OD. The way all the landmarks and points of interest are pinned to the top is very similar to AC:OD as well but then a lot of games use that system nowadays. The most interesting aspect to me was the puzzle aspect. I only came across one in my short time with the game but it was a nice surprise, reminded me a bit of some of the puzzles you’d come across in BOTW and was satisfying to complete. The way Fenyx moves is very familiar to BOTW too, there’s a stamina bar that depletes as you run and climb. She sprouts wings when you Glide which looks and feels very similar to Link’s glider in BOTW. It has a playful sense of humour to it as well. The way the demo plays out is that Zeus and Prometheus are narrating a story but keep getting it wrong, so things change on the fly for Fenyx as they adapt their stories in an attempt to get things right. The two have a lot of character and are nowhere near as stoic or uptight as some of their other interpretations in games over the years. Overall I was impressed with it but needed more time real to nail down a recommendation. It’s a lot of fun though and I think it will be a great world to get lost in but I can’t shake the feeling that it might be a little bit unoriginal and not doing a lot of new things per se. Saying that, I’ll definitely keep my pre-order after playing the demo, I love new IP and want to play some more after this brief taste.

Having played the opening scene of this game I'm going to cautiously give it a "highest recommendation". In fact the opening scene was pretty much perfect so I'm looking forward to getting stuck in. Two of the games planned five acts have been released so far. The official website gives a pretty good description: So far the game has a Cormac McCarthy feel to it which I really like.

Way back in January 2013 this game raised £1.5 million on kickstarter, was released in 2015, followed by a Horizons "season pass" which looks like it is receiving its final major update this year. I bought the base game at some stage during the last two years and have finally gotten around to playing it. I've played it for over four hours so far. The game has a number of tutorial missions (and videos) which explain some of the fundamentals of the game, piloting and landing your ship, combat, travelling between planets. There's certainly a learning curve but I think I have the basic piloting, landing and navigation parts down now. I can't really speak for combat, I completed the basic combat tutorial but I haven't yet encountered any combat in the main "open" game, which I've played around 90 minutes of. You start off with a ship, 1000 credits and a mission to deliver data to another port. I completed that mission and you are then told which places to visit if you wish to learn about various aspects of the game. Each port has a mission board where you can take on a variety of missions, but you can't take on missions of a higher rank than your current rank. I'm still at the starting rank "Penniless". So far I've completed one extra mission, to supply copper. I haven't even scratched the surface of the surface of the game but just playing this most basic part of the game has been fun so far. I've been playing on PC, with a controller. Aesthetically, the game looks and sounds beautiful. The hyper space jumps or whatever they are called are amazingly eerie.

Horace is a narrative platform adventure about a robot butler that's absolutely full of charm and wit. It's very British in character with tonnes of jokes and references to old computer games and 80's and 90's pop culture. The story is told through cutscenes in a pixel art style narrated in the robotic voice of Horace, and really goes places. Just when you think it's going to be a tale of robotic domestic bliss, everything changes. The game itself has some pretty fiendish platforming with metroidvania style uprgades and is really fun to play. The levels and and what you need to do in them show a lot of imagination and variation. Death comes regularly, but infinite lives and and instant respawns help alleviate frustrations. My only criticism is that it's maybe a little long, but I had a blast with it.

Aviary Attorney was kickstarted back in January 2015 and released just before Christmas the same year, pretty good going by kickstarter standards (although probably not the best time to release a game on Steam). Actually, i've just realised that it's a British game, developed in Coventry. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/384630/ss_92cad3d06e54d0058103a0db5ae13458d4eacd34.600x338.jpg?t=1452042223 http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/384630/ss_53bbbedb6973ec88412db36b28845950a21ef3ff.600x338.jpg?t=1452042223 I've played the first chapter and Aviary Attorney is pretty much exactly what it looks like. The game has a gorgeous art style and all the characters are animals (so far). The two main characters are the defense lawyers Falcon and his assistant Sparrowson. The story is set in 19th century Paris...and the dialogue is full of puns. It's a funny game. The first chapter/case was about the murder of a frog at a dinner party. It was a pretty snappy intro to the game and the highlight was the trial at the end.

I think Murder By Numbers was pitched to me as Picross meets Phoenix Wright, and initially that seems to be a big grand, it's just picross with a murder mystery plot. A reasonably well told plot, it's got quite a sharp script, big characters, it's kind of funny at points, especially with how they use their still art assets to animate a scene, it's well done. The gameplay though is just scrolling around an area to find a hidden object, when your cursor glows red to say you're on it you trigger a Picross puzzle. If you don't know what picross is, it's like sudoku mixed with a crossword. You have numbers on the side and top of a grid, e.g. 3, 4. That means of that row a run of 3 blocks will be coloured, then a run of 4, its your job to completely fill in the grid. The solution here always ends up being a clue (near enough), something relevant to the mystery. where it does start to remind me of Phoenix wright more is that you can talk to the other characters. Mostly this is simple, you run down a list of questions. However, you can start to present them with the items you've found, which can trigger them to offer up more information, and move the plot on I'm enjoying it. I'm hoping it gets a bit more meaty. I was going to say gritty, but I don't think it needs to, it's tame really, but equally it hasn't really reached something like Danganronpa, which is silly, but compelling and adult

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.