Search the Community

Transistor is an isometric action RPG from Supergiant, the makers of Bastion. It's set in a place called Cloudbank, which mixes cyberpunk elements with early 20th century Art Nouveau stylings, it looks gorgeous. I just looked back at the Bastion thread on here, and I'd forgotten that we weren't as crazy about it as the rest of the Internet seemed to be. I still think it was a very good game, I feel more fondly about it now than when I was playing, and still think the atmosphere, the presentation and the way they delivered the story to you were the best bits. They've succeded in those areas again with Transistor. The art and music are absolutely stunning. I also really like the world they created. Just like Bastion, it excels at creating a lonely, melancholic atmosphere. And I enjoyed playing it a lot more. Although you could potentially play this like Bastion, I can't imagine it'd be that much fun. You don't have much in the way of defensive or evasive moves, instead, combat is all about using the "turn" ability. In combat, there's a bar along the top of the screen. As long as that's full you can use your abilities to fight enemies, or you can hit a button that pauses everything and puts you into a tactical view. Here you can move and queue up attacks that get executed when you resume normal time. These attacks happen much quicker than you could manage in real time, and let you setup up combos. The cost of this is you can't use your abilities until the bar is recharged. I found this combat a lot of fun. Your abilities in the game are called functions, you start with one or two abilities and get more as you level up. You have 4 active function slots, mapped to the controller face buttons, but as you progress you can unlock passive and upgrade slots. Each ability behaves differently depending to where it's equipped. Putting it in an active slot makes it something you can use in combat, but if you put it into an upgrade slot, it will add extra effects or bonuses to the active ability it's applied to. Putting it in a passive slot will do something else again, such as limited health regeneration, a shield that deflects a certain amount of damage, etc. Each function also contains a small biog of a character in the story, but it isn't complete until you equip and use it in an active, upgrade and passive slot. This is a pretty good way of encouraging you to experiment with different combinations (if you care about this background story). I loved messing around with different combinations to see what they could do. The story is delivered in pretty much the same way as Bastion, you're dropped into the world without really knowing what's going on but build up a picture via a trickle of info as the game goes on. This time it's a little more vague than Bastion, and you're left to infer a lot of stuff. It's lead to some interesting theories online. The soundtrack is amazing: http://supergiantgames.bandcamp.com/album/transistor-original-soundtrack One of my favourite things is a feature that serves no purpose in the game other than being awesome: holding down one of the bumper buttons makes the character stop. The background fades a little, she is spotlighted in the middle of the screen and starts to hum the music. There seems to be a hummed version for pretty much every background track, and they sound amazing.

If you didnt like the one before then you wont like this. If you liked the one before then you'll love this, miss the cell shaded graphics but appreciate how much they've tightened the controls. Truly the Prince has never moved so freely. Wall runs are executed at almost any angle as long as your vaguely pushing in the right direction and pole hoping is simply pushing in the direction of the next obstacle and pressing jump - he does the rest himself. The hook of the game is an impressive one - the use of water. Holding the L button freezes time and makes water solid, meaning you can swing from jets of water from the walls and climb springs that burst from the ground. Some of the way Ubi have implemented the water as platforming puzzles is nothing short of genius and in turn makes you feel like one when you flawlessly cross a tricky looking cavern. The R button is your run/climb button so at times your playing with both Triggers held down and it takes a few goes to get used too. I wish it had the graphical style of the previous effort, this one with its 'real' people comes over a little wooden, but to be fair with the platforming so good its not really an issue. Ive just done a really impressive section in The Observatory but i had to stop and come to work, but all i wanna do is play this. Brilliant stuff so far.

I checked my receipt and I bought this game for €9.99 on December 31 2011. Better late than never. I loved Rome Total War and I also played a fair bit of Empire Total War (which I shamelessly pirated once I had access to mega-fast internet in university). But I think it’s safe to say that I haven’t played a Total War game in ten years. The game opens with an awesome cut scene. After that I played the ridiculously long tutorial which took about two hours (and you can’t save in the middle). But at least it was thorough. In the course of the tutorial I played one battle and once was enough, I’ve never enjoyed the battles in TW games. I’ll start a proper campaign tomorrow. 2011 graphics.

That's a very old trailer but I don't think the game has really changed much. It's basically a turn-based strategy like XCom, Advance Wars, Final Fantasy Tactics - except it's faster-paced and does away with a grid to move on. You have a circle showing where your character can move to in that move and that's it. There's a few different mechanics going on so far where I'm up to. Unfortunately, I've got to the point in the story where they introduce a medic class but my opponent has one and I don't so I'm getting my ass handed to me. Along with the campaign and usual online matches, it also does asynchronous matches like Frozen Synapse which is a great idea. Art style is great, some funny lines in there too (a quote straight out of Anchorman comes pretty quick into it) and I'm enjoying it when I'm not dying a lot.

Moonlighter is a game about running a shop by day, and adventuring at night. That is the most basic way of explaining it without getting too complicated. You want to know more about it than that, so here goes, Moonlighter is viewed top down and is split into a few parts. There's a bit where you manage a shop and a bit where you go out adventuring to stock the shop with items to sell.. Lets get the fighting bit out the way first. There are 4 (maybe 5) dungeons in the game that work off tile sets and are randomly generated each time you enter them. You know the deal. The fighting is not complicated, there's a few weapons that you can equip, 2 at a time, and then go hit or shoot stuff. You can heal yourself if you have potions, as well as use and evasive roll which has a very large invincibility period. Killing enemies or opening chests in the dungeon has loot in them, or artefacts as the game calls them. It's these artefacts you sell in your shop. Except it's not as easy as that, because of course it never is. Item inventory plays a big part in this. Remember all those times you spent moving stuff about in Resi 4 trying to get everything packed in? Well, it's the same here, except it's got a different spin. Items from chests sometimes have requirements on them. They either have to be kept in the left or right of your bag, or the top or bottom. Now this doesn't sound too bad, but there's other items with arrows on them. You have to read the banner on these items, because it all comes into how you pack your bag. Some of them immediately destroy items if the arrow is facing towards and item, some items break an item they're pointing to when you teleport back to town, other can break if you take too many hits, there's an item that changes whatever is pointed at to the item it is so you can transmog a bit of junk into something nice and finally one where the arrowed item sends something home to your box back in the shop. Dungeons are split into 4 floors, with a boss on the fourth floor. They gradually get harder as you plunge the depths. You have a pendant that can teleport you back to the shop, however the deeper you go the more gold it costs to send you home. If you are caught short on gold you can also sell items to a mirror which you find when you go down a floor. You get a percentage of whatever the item you put ins worth. There's also another item called the catalyst which allows you to put a gate down and return to the point you're at for 2000 gold each time, although I'm sure this will go up as you get further into the game. This is a one use only, you have to pay each time, but I can imagine once you're rolling in it plopping it outside the boss door will be the smart thing to do. I think the biggest pain in the arse here is selling stuff to the mirror, instead of assigning it a button so you can send shit right to the mirror you have to directly drop the item in and it sort of feels like it was done with a mouse in mind and not a controller. It's easily patchable, whether they'll do that is another question entirely. If you do not survive the dungeon and your HP reaches zero, it spits you out. Any items in your bag are lost for good. However, items on the top line of the inventory are kept, so if there's something really important you need you can bring it out with you no matter what. When you're in town you have a shop where you can put the items on a table and open the doors. People come in and depending on how you've priced stuff will take of leave it. Occasionally you'll get a rich person come in that will buy inflated prices. More likely you'll get shoplifters who you have to apprehend once they've picked something up and tried to do a runner. If they get out the door your items are lost. What to do with the gold you earn from all this? There's a blacksmith, a enchanter, a trader, a decorator and a banker you can spend gold on to bring into your town. These all use gold and items found in the dungeons to craft and upgrade weapons and armour, as well as enchanting them. The trader can get you items at an inflated price if you can't find them yourself, and the decorator allows you to put RPG like buffs on your shop, such and making people move faster or tip more. The shop itself is also upgradable. You start off with a chest and a table with a bed to sleep in. As you progress you get more storage, bargain bins as well as more places to put decorative items that later the way your customers act. The bed gives you a set amount of HP above your standard health, I think it's bugged because it specifically says you get the buff after sleeping in the bed but you get it whenever you return from a dive. There's also cash registers that add tips to the base cost of an item which help mark up those items you cannot sell for a lot. There's other stuff in here as well, stuff like supply and demand also rear their heads, if you flood the market with a certain item people will refuse to buy it at a regular price. I think that's about it. In a way it reminds me of Rogue Legacy or The Swindle in that although you can die and lose your stuff, there's a part of the game where everything is still set in stone and is safe as long as you've banked it. Although I've not actually seen the boss of the first world I'm not that far off it, depending on how hard it is I'll have probably beaten it the next time I play. I'm wearing the thickest armour I can, I'm wielding the toughest weapons I can craft, it's just a case of getting to the fourth floor and giving it a hiding so I can get to the next dungeon and repeat until the end. This game isn't for everyone, but there's a select few here that would be all over it. It's also the type of game I reckon would play well on Switch.

released during E3 Devolver Bootleg is a compilation of fake bootlegs of Devolver's more famous games, based on what I've played that mostly means retro takes on some Devolver games, but there are a few reimaginings in there. Hotline Milwaukee is very similar to Hotline Miami, more retro, and unfortunately with worse controls. Hotline Miami was fast and largely reliable and responsive, Hotline Milwaukee relies more on 8-way movement that feels like needs to be dialed in, as such it's not as responsive and you'll die because you weren't facing the way you needed to be. Aside from that it's pretty faithful, more of the same Enter The Gun Dungeon is a rogue-like dual stick shooter, only it doesn't use dual sticks it just uses one, and isn't all it could be entirely because of that. It's basically Binding of Isaac, retro-ified, except you lock in to a direction when you shoot, meaning you're way more vulnerable and while you can shoot and move, you can't aim and move. I'm also shit at it, but I do blame the controls, I suspect I could break the back of it eventually like I did with Binding of Isaac Shootyboots is Downwell. I'm not entirely sure how Downwell plays because I've never played it but in Shootyboots you're in a giant boot leaping down a giant well. You charge up to jump and can shoot for a period while airborne. I liked this, it's not amazing but it's a decent enough retro take on what already looked like a retro game Catsylvania I am shit at. It's a slow, clunky Castlevania-em-up with a large slice of Ghouls and Ghosts added in. You're a cat in a suit of armour, get hit and you lose the armour but are still a hench cat with a sword. It's a bit dull and slow, maybe it gets better as you get further in because I really didn't get very far at all Luftrousers is a retro (almost Atari) version of the Vita classic Luftrausers. It's pretty similar, just slower and easier early on. It reminds me of Amstrad classic Harrier Attack, except without bombs. Actually there are bombs but I couldn't work out how to fire them. Also I don't think it saves your progress which is a bit of a shame because I spent a while playing it. Initially there's only a handful of enemies, and you're rarely attacked by more than one or two at once, once you get to level 10 it starts throwing UFOs at you as soon as you dispatch one, you're not left alone for a second and don't have the range of movement you do in the original. I liked it though, it's probably the one that would work as a standalone game better than any of the others I've played There's a few others, a couple of 2 player games and one based on Ape Out/Donkey Kong Jnr that I'll get around to at some point

I seem to remember @illdog posting about playing this, but I can't find the thread where it is. I'm a big fan of the original Megadrive game and this is basically that game but looking a bit better with added enemies and friends, online multiplayer and stuff. I don't think it's a sequel, seems more of a reboot of the first game. Anyway, it's a rouge-like if you haven't played it before and it is '90's as fuck. The music has always been great with extra funky basslines, and this one is no different. I was a bit concerned when they announced it that it would end up being shit, but a few hours of play on it so far and it's been fantastic. I'm not sure what people new to it would make of it, but for fans of the original, it's great. Level 0 is still there, so they didn't fuck that up.

Finally, after years of watching videos of other people play this, bought the Switch version and had my first go of this with a couple of mates. Initially, we had the bomb defuser holding the Switch out of the dock but as there are two couches in my mate’s living room, eventually just settled on sitting on the couch not facing the TV and either using a laptop or phone for the manual. If you don’t know what it is, one person can see the bomb and has to cut wires and press buttons. The other person (or people) either download and print out the bomb manual or view it on a screen and have to guide the bomb defuser by communicating what the bomb holder is looking at. Colours of wires, how many, etc. It’s a manic affair and best if you swap over a few times, as then the bomb defuser will know what information the manual guy is really after and which information is superfluous. On the PC and PS4, it’s playable in VR which is probably the best way to play it. But we figured out we could actually play it together on Skype with only one copy. It really starts ramping up in difficulty, throwing memory puzzles at you, morse code, etc and we got as far as extra modules you had to keep an eye on that couldn’t be solved from the manual. There’s these things called “needy modules” where they’ll be like a short timer on it and before it gets to 0 and blows up the bomb, you have to hammer a button to reset it. That’s along with the modules that will actually disarm the bomb. Plus the lights will occasionally go out for a few seconds. Or the alarm clock next to the bomb will go off really loudly so you have to put the bomb down and hit snooze on the alarm. It’s fantastic but I’m glad I played with people I have good friendships with!

This is looking and sounding ultra sweet. Anyone excited? A sandbox racing game? It's gotta be at least worth a look! Anyway, there's a demo coming next week! Click me. Could be just PS3, just 360 or both. Me wanty.

I've put about an hour or so in to it so far, so far the opening is much better than the first game. In the first game once Claptrap had led you to the first town the first few quests all involved going to the same couple of places, this might yet be the same but it feels a bit more tunnelled so you see new areas. They seem to have done a bit more with the incidental characters too, the quest givers have got more than 3 lines now. The enemies bounce around more than they used to. The bandits roll to avoid bullets, and the bullymongs (a bit like skags only bigger and faster) jump around. It's quite hard hitting them regardless of the accuracy of your gun, and letting them get in close with a slow reloading shotgun is a bit risky. It runs well on the pc, but the unreal engine load in is still there, more often when you open a box and the bullet/money textures need to load. And on that note, things like changing what the boxes look like was a good way of making it feel fresher than the first game, and you start in a snowy area rather than another desert area

So this is a twin stick shooter by the resogun people, there are 6 worlds/levels with maybe 15 or so stages each, and a boss stage. there a humans to save, and combo, by collecting/saving the next one before a countdown expires -for better score. there's loads of hidden humans/levels/scoring things to find - too many for me - but my memory is crap so i never remember where all that stuff is. you can roll out of the way/through stuff, and special weapons to choose from, my favorite is the rocket launcher, but it seems like the smart bomb is supposed to be the best (they have a small delay before you can use them again), they are all pretty good apart from the sword. there are powerups too, most important is the shield, so you can take a hit, then you need to get more points to gain another powerup/shield - if you've already got all the other powerups then the next one you get will be shield - otherwise they're random i think. you get a powerup each time this bar fills in - i guess by scoring/killing stuff. it's brilliant, but annoying at the same time. for me it's much better than some of their other twin stick games that have upgrading/loot/ammo/reloading - none of that stupid stuff here, this is more a proper arcade game. the annoying stuff comes from lack of visibility, of all sorts of stuff - where is the edge of the playing area? - can't see stuff because of explosions - hit boxes seems quite big, or there's a delay from pressing roll/dodge to becoming invincible. basically that stuff leads to deaths where it doesn't seem fair which leads to annoyance, also when you die after a respawn you get back into the action really quick and can die again instantly before you've worked out where you are, so sometimes one annoying death can turn into 4 and yeah annoying. but it's also great fun and i keep going back to it to get a better score so it's obviously doing something right. also when you continue you lose all powerups, so depending on what stage you're on it can be extremely hard to make any progress - other shmups do this a lot better, you've already lost your score so what does it matter - have a max-power power up. oh they are possibly working on a mode with better visibility. there's a few different modes - arcade mode where you play all the levels in order - with different difficulty modes. there's some challenges on a smaller set of stages where enemies are faster etc. with gold/silver/bronze medals. and there's a mode where you can do one world at a time. i've sort of 1cc'd the middle difficulty arcade mode (see spoiler) and am trying to do the difficulty level up, but the 3rd and 4th bosses take up loads of lives, not got past the 4th boss yet. scoring i'm not too sure about, seems to be just, collect everything, get all secret stages and combo all humans - which is more than i can cope with at the moment. to combo the humans i think you need to know some stages where stuff spawns so you can kill it quick enough so your combo doesn't run out before the stage ends, but some stages it doesn't seem as tight on timing. anyone else playing this?

Refunct is cool as fuck, really chilled It's a first person platformer, which ordinarily is immediately bad game design, but it's very generous with ledge grabs and how likely you are to just fall off something. The game is jumping up pillars to activate switches, which will cause more pillars to rise. What's cool is that you pretty quickly start to learn how to play without being told how to (although it is worth mentioning there is a duck button). You go from carefully lining up jumps to rebounding off. It's really short, like 20 minutes or so, but it is also only 65p on Steam at the minute

I bought this ages ago but have only just started playing it. It's a pretty good action RPG - my only memories of Wonderboy (bar Jack Black and KG) are from the simplistic original platformer and one on the Master System that I didn't like because it had stats and shit (like this, really). I think it might have been Dragon's Trap. Oh well, will have to hunt it down. Anyway this is a great little game, it's quite frustrating in places - as soon as you die you go straight back to the title screen, and saving costs you money so it can get quite tough. So far I'm enjoying it and it's something a bit different so I'd recommend it. Here's a bit of gameplay footage to watch.

Very much impressed with Telltales output these days. Walking Dead is brilliant. As is The Wolf Among Us. So being a massive GOT fan, I was well up for this. And Episode 1 is a very good start indeed. Pretty important to state though that the opening section has a massive spoiler if you're not caught up to the events of the start of Series 4/Book 3. So be aware of that. It's the tried-and-tested Telltale format, which I'm perfectly happy with. You play as the Forrester family, and interact with a few of the series main fore-runners. After his frankly god-awful role as Ghost in Destiny, Peter Dinklige is back on form here as Tyrion. 5 more episodes to go, but this is a promising start.

This is a Metroidvania set in the retro robot future by our friends at Double Fine. You play as a floating head in a space helmet that can vacuum the heads of of resident robots and land on their bodies and take control. Certain coloured doors must be opened by certain colour robots, so sometimes you gotta find the right colour then take it back to an area to be able to progress. Apart from the unique hook it's pretty much a Metroidvania by numbers. Lots of back tracking, unlocking of powers, sprawling maps with hidden rooms. It's a good one mind, it's set in the future with a 60's vibe which gives it a cool look. I've finished it 100%, took me about 11 hours. It can be a bit of a pain getting around the map sometimes which is a critisim I find in most of these type of games. Also, when there's a lot going on and you find yourself with out a body it can be fucking hard to see your tiny head amongst the lasers, explosions and colours. Overall though I h(e)ad a great time. Currently part of Xbox Game Pass which was a nice surprise as I've been waiting for it to go on sale since it came out. Here's the Giant Bomb quick look if you fancy it: You can pick your starter head, i was a woman so that guy aint my headlander! Definately worth a go.

Started this earlier on the Switch. Played the opening 20 minutes or so. The game reviewed well when it came out last year and the comparisons to Studio Ghibli were enough to convince me to buy it. The game is basically a side-scrolling adventure in a Ghibli-esque world, or something out of an Enid Blyton story. The setting seems to be a world where forgotten things go, most of the characters in the game seem to be objects and household items, things like that, but you play as a girl. There’s also an older man who is trying to develop a way to get back to the real world. From what I gathered. The game looks beautiful and the opening is very cinematic.

I don't know what the reviews are on about, I'm having a great time. What it is is essentially more Crackdown. Do you like Crackdown? You'll like this. Do you not like Crackdown? You wont like this. It's honestly that simple. I've played about two hours maybe, im just wondering arond the map doing the things that pop up. Breaking out imprisoned citizens here, blowing up a malitia car depot there and all the while powering up Terry Crews. The more powerfull your agent, the more fun you have. You learn more moves, you do more damage, you jump higher, boost further - life is good. Best part is that it's free for Game Pass subscribers and for £7.99 it's worth getting on board. More Crackdown! Yayer!

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

I wanted to start this thread mainly so "run" could be in the sub-title bit, and maybe a video, but that bit has gone so i'll have to type something about the game i guess. i'm quite far in, about 3/4, wasn't enjoying it at first, there's lots of story/unnecessary stuff at the start, and i was just hammering the same button to win (playing on easy), but as the games gone on it introduces new stuff at a nice (in this case slow) pace and forces you to use different attacks/mix it up a bit, so i started to have some more fun with it, to the point i'm enjoying it now, it's fun. Even on easy it's not so easy you don't have to think about it, you don't have to think much mind - just enough to make it fun. the controls could get confusing though, there are a lot of button combos you need to know, but the slow introduction of new stuff helps here and i haven't struggled too much with the controls. there's lots of platformey type bits which mix it up a bit, they aren't bad but aren't particularly good either. so yeah good stuff, after a slow start imo anyway.

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

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

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

Burning Daylight is a free narrative game on Steam. To describe it pretty succinctly it's like Inside with 100% less platforming but 100% more dicks I don't want to spoil it too much because the narrative is really all it has going on, but it's cool, fairly short, and free, so it's worth your time. You wake up in a pile of discarded bodies, bollock naked, dick literally swinging in the breeze, and you move through the world revealing more about it as you progress. There's some light puzzles, nothing too involved, and not too often It's a bit of a shame there isn't a bit more to discover, not so much with the story, more that it's very linear but the world is quite busy, it's a shame there's not a few more things to interact with that aren't directly tied to the plot there's also a man having a wank in a dirty old chair

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

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