Search the Community

I'm only a couple of missions in so far. Very much what it said it was - a Diablo clone in a Minecraft skin. Very simple, at least so far. The reviews have been all over the place, from slagging it off, meh, to highly recommended. Early on, seems fine to me. It's on GamePass so worth a download regardless.

I very briefly tried some of this yesterday on PC. I will say you can tell that this is a 8 year old game, especially by how its graphics menu operates. You can't set rendering resolutions in game, you do it via the launcher in 'environment settings'. Which actually doesn't set the rendering resolution at all, you have to edit a configuration JSON in the documents folder. Which doesn't always work. It also doesn't run super well in the lobby. I have a 9700k and it constantly hitches when there are players getting loaded in, it runs on DX9 or something. Also when I loaded a main mission the game crashed immediately. However when it worked it seemed semi interesting. It's more of a hack and slash MMO than what I usually play. The first boss is an 'attack the weak spot' affair and you time button presses to do extra damage or whatever. You eat healing items, so I think everyone is a DPS in this game basically. I've yet to do a group mission (I need to be level 5). I want to at least do a few of those. I've a lot of time off due to COVID cost saving measures so I hope to actually put a decent dent into this at some point. Someone on ResetEra tells me you really need to stick with it until level 40 to see what it's about, so lets see about that I guess. I think this is on Xbox now as well. If you want to try it on PC you have to chance your Windows region first to US to find it on the windows store. (I could not find an existing topic for this)

I've only played the first couple of bounties, but so far I'm really liking this. As per the trailer, it captures that 80's violent action film vibe really well. The 16-bit style graphics look really good, and the the synth soundtrack is great too. It has tons of character. Gameplay wise, it's a run and gun platformer. You fire forwards in the direction you're facing, you have a jump, a dash and a thrown weapon, and can duck or take cover from enemy fire in doorways. You have a pistol weapon with infinite ammo, and can pick up more powerful sub weapons with limited ammo, or a melee weapon. Each bounty (level) is a short action platforming section that leads up to your target, which is a mini boss fight. It's fairly straightforward, but is smooth and plays very well. I've only tried one player character so far, so don't know if they have gameplay differences. It's Epic exclusive on PC at the moment. With the £10 coupon thing in their sale going on right now it only cost me £7.99.

After what must’ve been 20+ hours of watching streams I finally got a Closed Beta code for this yesterday. You play a 5 v 5 best of 24 round match in a round based format, attacking and defending the ‘spike’ which is Valorant’s equivalent of a Bomb. On attack it is your aim to set and detonate a Spike at either A or B objective points, on defence it is your aim to defend those points, you can also win a round by taking out all the opposing team. Each round goes very quickly and seems to last no longer than 2 minutes or so. You play with an array of 6 characters with various special abilities, this will (presumably) be added to as time goes on. Every round there’s a buy screen which enables you to buy a variety of weapons, armour and abilities for your character. To look at the game is a mix between Overwatch and CS GO, watching streams of it I was incredibly daunted by it as it seemed the skill level required may be above my remit, but it looked fun and satisfying enough to satiate me so I definitely wanted to try it and see what it feels like with my own hands eyes. Only played a couple of games so far but it’s safe to say first impressions are incredibly positive. Unfortunately I’ve rarely played any CS GO so I can’t give too much of a comparison with that but I will say that from the little I’ve played of both, Valorant seems a little more fun, is a bit less intense and overwhelming. The closest comparison I can give for how it feels to play is like everyone is a Widowmaker (from Overwatch) alt of some kind - but not just equipped with sniper rifles - on one of the smaller Overwatch maps. As soon as you jump into a much everything immediately feels very colourful and vibrant which help the different maps remain distinct and full of character. You’re greeted by the buy screen, once this ends you’re put straight into the action. Almost immediately things feels quite intense, all the maps are quite small but are just about the right size I’d say and with a reasonably degree of verticality to them, there’s a lot of corridors to necessitate the angles necessary to get good shots off onto your enemies. It’s just incredibly fun though, I‘ve played a lot of Siege so there’s some similarities there trying to get headshots off at tight angles and the intensity between rounds is familiar but there’s not the same level of destructive or defensive abilities/characters here and most of the abilities are focused on offence or cutting off sight lines I’d say. What I struggled with the most is getting used to your characters abilities. In the thick of the action it’s very difficult for me to even think about them really, I just hunker down and try to get the shots in rather than sussing out what ability might be effective in a certain situation. There are some abilities like an ice wall, icey floor, an arrow that shows enemy positions etc. That are quite similar to Overwatch and are handy at the beginning of rounds before the action begins but as soon as you’re sneaking around corners looking for an enemy to appear in your crosshairs I struggle to think about that stuff so far. On top of all the abilities and characters you’ve got to get used to you also have to get used to the various weapons on offer and how the operate. It’s a lot to take in and will take time until everything comes together completely but just in my second match I saw a marked improvement in my KDA, it does feel a bit easier to get in an Siege surprisingly as you don’t have to have such a photographic knowledge of the maps in this as you do in Siege. Will play some more at some point and hopefully add some further impressions here, it’s safe to say my initial thoughts are wholly positive though. If you’ve got a PC it’ll come out for free in the Summer at some point, I’m not sure how much longer the Beta is running. Definitely well worth a go though with such a low entry fee, I definitely think for someone who isn’t into CS:GO (like me) there’s lots to like about this.

This is this month's PS+ game. Its been on my Switch list but I'll have it here for now. It's been a good, chill game to play at during these times and I reckon I can do better than those that run things now. Its kinda cathartic. Yeah, my first attempt I fucked up the water lines and poisoned everyone but it's a learning process... I've built a fairly well functioning city. Its a modest little place but everyone's happy and healthy. It's bustling and pretty green; it's nice. I've bought up some more land to expand but I need more money to build. I could really do with a university as occasionally a place goes out of business due to my undereducated population. But industry keeps complaining when I tax the dirty, polluting fucks. Maybe they're just mad because there was a point their building kept burning down and fire engines couldn't get to them because of my incremental and patchy expansion. It is a bit of a mess. But my next section will be city planning perfection.

Started playing this this evening. @Nag will be pleased to know the servers are still a bag of shit. Once it finally installed I completed the first... Mission? Then it logged me out and proceeded to get itself stuck. The game play seems like a lot of fun though.

I'm glad this is (reportedly) a short RPG. Not that I'm not enjoying it, but it's incredibly simplistic. Everything is telegraphed to keep u on the right path; every time u get to a new town there's one, just one, upgraded weapon waiting for u in the shop, same with armour. The enemies are perfectly scaled for, and u never take a wrong turn and find some beast far out of your compass (who u can get your revenge on later). And I'm going to have to read up on the upgrade wheel, where u spend experience points. It seems simple enough. You have many things to upgrade in the usual strength, intelligence etc paths, but then you seem to have to assign these various upgrades to your character, and u only get a couple of slots, rendering most of your upgrades meaningless. I'm pretty sure I'm not quite understanding it tho. It can't be as I've described. There must be something I'm missing.

Ok, so I wasn’t sure about this one. Sure, the Predator license is ideal for a quality gaming experience. But I was a bit weary, as the team’s previous game, Friday The 13th was a mixed bag. A fun concept, let down by a toxic community, general jankiness, and lack of consistent support (though that was due to the court battle relating to the franchise). So, I downloaded the demo for this last night. And it’s definitely made a good first impression. There’s no team-killing for a start, something that constantly ruined the experience for Friday. You have a choice of either Fireteam (4 humans), or Predator. The fireteam has to complete various objectives (hack computers, take over control points). Multiple enemy AI will try to stop you, so it’s most effective to team up, and defend objectives when you’re capturing them. It plays like pretty much any FPS, with your typical selection of weapons (Assault Rifle, Shotgun, Pistol). Firefights can feel pretty tense, especially if an alarm gets triggered and you start getting swarmed with enemies. Then....you hear THAT sound. The tell-tale clicking of the Predator. Or it’s cloaking device activating. Or worst of all, see the red beam of its laser cannon pointing directly at you. At that point, all hell breaks loose. The Predator takes quite a lot of damage to take down, spraying recognisable green blood all over the place. Taking it on, one on one, is an extremely bad idea. If you get downed, there’s a chance your team can get you back up. Unless the Predator rips your spine/head off. Though that’s a gamble, as in doing that, you’re locked in place for several seconds, giving the rest of the team time to pump the Predator full of lead. Once the Predator finally dies, two things can seem to happen. If you’re quick enough to shoot it in the head after pulling it’s mask off, you can capture its body. Though you’ll get attacked by a ton of mercenaries for a few minutes, who can shoot up the body and decrease its value. Or, the Predator activates it’s self-destruct mechanism. A large red circle appears on the map. Anyone left in it after it detonates, is going home in a matchbox. If a member of the fireteam is killed, it’s possible to respawn them by “calling for reinforcements”. Which involves legging it to the specific radio point on the map, and defending it for a short time before your team-mate respawns. Though again that’s a gamble, because if the Predator is attacking you, you’ll have your hands full as it is. I spent last night purely as Fireteam, and had a bloody great time with it. I played as Predator for the tutorial, obviously it’s more complicated to play in comparison to Fireteam. Practice will certainly help, no doubt. There’s also a decent ammount of customisation options for both sides. Some are locked behind level progression, others in lootboxes. Lootboxes are earned in game, or bought with in-game cash. The game seems quite generous with money, and duplicate items give a decent bit of cash. Overall, I really enjoyed my time with this. More than I thought I would to be honest. I’ll certainly sink some more time into it over the weekend. And I had that much fun playing it with Gary, that I’ve preordered the full game. Well, I’m hardly spending money on petrol travelling to work for the next few weeks.

I don't usually sit down and play a game for two hours when I'm trying it for the first time but I've just done that with this game, the kickstarted "classic point and click adventure" from Ron Gilbert and co. This game is great. It's funny. Of course it has references to previous adventure games. It looks lovely and everything works really smoothly. There are two difficulty modes, hard and casual, but they read more like normal and "simplified". You're not allowed post in this thread if you chose casual. Anyway, I don't want to spoil anything that's happened in the opening couple of hours but I'm strapped in for the ride.

Ok, so this is pretty cheap on PSN right now (under £4). I remember enjoying the first T&E back in the day, so I figured I’d give this a go. If you ever played the first one, you know what you’re in for, as this is kind of a remake. If you didn’t? Well, how to explain it.... So, you accidentally blew up your spaceship into 10 different parts, and sucked the Earth into a black hole. Now you have to traverse multiple levels, slowly rebuilding your ship. There’s various types of humans that want to kill you, which you can dodge by either jumping in a river, or hiding in sunflowers. There’s tons of presents throughout the levels, which do either good things (jet powered skates, spring shoes) or bad (damage you, set off an alarm so enemies home in on you). You can gain XP from finding items, or taking part in a rhythm-action music game. Its weird, definitely. But then the rest of the series was too, so I’d expect no less. And at £4 (on PSN, other formats will vary) you can’t go wrong really.

Started this earlier with @Sly Reflex we probably got about half way to 2/3rds of the way in at the 3 hour mark. I like it, I was actually a bit bored at the beginning but thankfully it picked up in the last half of our session. The first part just felt like if David Cage made a co-op game really, there are tons of QTE’s, some shonky writing and it just felt a bit like a pastiche of famous prison break films/tv shows over the years rather than its own unique story. It’s an ambitiously original game though, but perhaps not as unique as I was expecting, a lot of the co-op stuff is the standard ‘boost me up here’, ‘turn valve to progress’ etc. That we’ve all seen before in numerous other games and the focused split-screen action windows we’ve seen before in the likes of 24. Where the co-op split split screen stuff shines though is when it pushes outside the norm. Moments like one player being a lookout whilst the other digs a hole in his cell or having to coordinate paddling, take downs or door smashes so you time them just right and don’t alert the guards/police really shine. There’s another sequence where you have to keep swapping a tool between both characters to avoid detection by the guards and another involving a laundry basket that are both fantastic. The setting has been done an awful lot of times and carries a certain amount of baggage with it. Despite attempting to put it to the back of my mind I kept being reminded of Shawshank, OITNB and Prison Break. The entire thing feels an awful lot like Prison Break series 1-2 and if you’ve seen those it may take some of the mystique away from the story beats. Probably my favourite moments in the game are when you’re left to just mess about and compete with your co-op compadre. There’s this place where you’re left to your own devices for awhile and I was staggered that every little detail you wanted to look at or interact with was available to interact with. Go up to the sink and you’ll get a monologue, you can set a fire or turn the tv on and relax, go up to some musical instruments and you’ll be put into a music rhythm game and compete for a high score against your partner or even compete in a game of horseshoes. Just that freedom to explore and the way every little detail had been thought about and given the individuality and creativity to shine was great to see, even the responses to the two characters changes depending on the piece of equipment you’re interacting with and one of the characters can even wipe out the actions of the other or have wildly different results. The graphics and engine are astounding though. I believe I read this is Hazelight’s own engine which is even more impressive, and for a game built on a modest indie budget it really shows, particularly in the lighting and particle detail department. Foliage and texture quality has impressed too but NPC character models and animations are where you can see the money being saved. Still about half of the game left to go but at the moment I’m enjoying it without being overawed.

Well. I usually enjoy Rebellion’s output. Sniper Elite is always good for a laugh (who doesn’t enjoy shooting Nazis in the bollocks?). Strange Brigade was a lot of fun. And I mostly had a good time with Zombie Army Trilogy, until I got close to the end, and the massive difficulty spike really pissed me off and stopped me from playing it further. So, I was certainly interested in renting this. First impressions were good. It has the satisfying combat of the Sniper Elite series, and at first, it seems like it could be fun. However, there’s a significant problem: it’s fucking ridiculous, even on Easy. I’m playing Solo, but it’s quickly becoming clear that its going to be nigh on impossible. Most games are generous with health packs, or regenerating health. Not so here. You can hold one medkit maximum, and they’re pretty rare. Your health doesn’t regenerate at all. Well, there is a way to get some health back, by performing a melee kill, but the ability to regain health from that requires you to have killed 10 enemies in a row. There is an ability that lets you get back up after being downed, Borderlands style. But you can only use that once per level. Each level consists of 4 chapters. I just finished Level 2, and that really tested my patience. Especially when the “special” zombies start making an appearance. Those often require to hit a specific weak point. Good luck doing that when you’re constantly getting ganked. I fluked my way through the last two chapters of Level 2, the final one consisting of having to defend two generations, for a stupidly long time. All while horde of zombies keep damaging them, meaning you have to repair the bloody things. All while constantly running out of ammo, or health, or both. The words “for fucks sake” were uttered multiple times. With a team, it would be more bearable. But as per usual, Rebellion don’t seem to understand how to make a game fun in single player. With at least 4 more Levels to go, I don’t imagine finishing it. I play games to have fun, not have my patience tested to breaking point. A challenge is one thing. Taking the absolute piss, is another.

This game is an absolute gem. I’ve played it for five hours since yesterday. It’s a first person exploration game, with no combat. Instead you play as a painter, exploring an island, talking to its inhabitants and painting pictures of various things on the island. I’m hooked. It looks and sounds beautiful. The island of Eastshade is a fleshed out world with its own history, visiting the opening village of Lyndow and the large city Nava is as impressive as the first time you arrive in Oxenfurt or Novigrad in The Witcher 3. All of the characters are animals. I’ve been playing on PC using the Xbox controller. Top stuff so far.

This is a spin off of XCOM, with much the same principles, but a few changes to some key aspects of the game. It's launched cheap, I think about £8.50, 50% off, I can only presume to get people to play it and generate some buff around it so they don't have to advertise it, and it is competing with Gears Tactics I'm enjoying it so far. It's still XCOM, you set your units behind cover, choose to shoot, use an ability, defend or overwatch. You'll still need to heal, use grenades, and you'll still miss from point blank range. The difference in the main combat loop is that it's now turn based in a traditional srpg sense, so not team by team, now a couple of your characters might get a turn then one of theirs. you'll get a few moves that can push turns down the queue or bring yours up. It doesn't sound like a huge difference, and some turns it isn't, but it is another level of tactics, worrying about which enemy to target The stuff around the main combat is kind of similar to main XCOM. Characters still level up and learn new skills, you have to research new technology, equip gear. The world still gets panicked and turns on you, I'm not sure what the consequence is other than a game over, but you can do missions to ease a districts rising stress, now instead of satellites you can put teams in districts allowing you to freeze the meter or reduce it every few terms. The big change is that characters aren't just generic, they're set with specific moves. You only start off with 4, but you do start to add more. It's not particularly character lead, I don't know anyone's personalities really, but I know that there's a couple of characters I like to use more than others. I like the big guy who can smash things, I feel like I should be using the shield guy more, he can boost defence of other characters, I should probably make more use of that. The Psi alien can learn levitate and mind control enemies, neither of these seem to work the way I'd expect, he might need to be replaced. His move should be stopping enemies from attacking our team, seems to barely ever work, so maybe I'm not understanding it. One change that I've noticed but might just be an early game thing, the game relies on 'breaching'. You burst in to rooms, time stops, there may be perks or downsides to the breach, but it happens a few times a mission and is used to break up rooms. It means you're dealing with quite small rooms, lots of cover, I've just got a guy who seems to be a sniper build, I'm not sure how much use he's going to be. But it's nice to have some tailored moves that force your hand to try some new stuff. The only issue I have is the issue I have with all XCOM games, I always feel like there's something I don't understand, the macro stuff. I always feel like I'm missing something, or I'm not building the right way and I'm a few turns away from getting a game over I can't recover from

Picked this up in the Steam Sale. I'm a big fan of the early Flatout games so this seemed a no brainer. I saw a quote stating that this is the spiritual successor to Destruction Derby and that's pretty bang on the mark. 24 cars thrashing around short simple tracks with plenty of weight behind them. It's brilliant fun. There's a real low-key Sunday morning cars in a field vibe to it all, you can almost smell the grease from the catering vans. It's also pretty tricky - I haven't played much but halfway into the first tour it's fairly hard to finish in the top three. There's also your standard destruction derby events and a load of different vehicles. I've raced cars, lawn mowers and i've seen school buses mentioned.

Well, decided to pick this up while it’s still half price in the PSN Spring Sale. As you’d expect from the guy that brought us Katamari Damacy, it’s mad as a box of frogs. You start off with the Mayor, a green Cube. And as you interact with the environment, you gradually unlock new friends, and more stuff to play with. The more you do so, the more extra friends you unlock, and that’s pretty much the gist of it. All while a Katamari style tune plays in the background. It’s obviously not going to be everyone’s jam. But I’m quite enjoying it, it’s certainly a fun chill out game, while I wait to rip peoples spines out in Predator.

This is fantastic. Apparently it’s inspired by a comic book or something. It’s an rpg where overworld traversal takes place on like a beautiful board game map, which then transitions into proper exploration for dungeons and other “explorable areas” (not unlike the transition in the PS1 Final Fantasy games). The character art and background art is lovely. Combat is turn-based, jrpg style. But the game has a couple of original, interesting ideas. Aside from default attacks, characters have abilities that cost mana, but you also have a stat called overcharge. Default attacks give you overcharge, and if you use abilities that cost mana, the game uses your overcharge first before taking from your mana. So if you have 20 overcharge, and you use an ability that costs 25 mana, you lose 20 overcharge and only 5 mana. It’s an interesting system that differentiates the game from other turn based RPGs. Also, attacks and abilities have casting speeds (eg instant, very fast, fast) which is another thing you have to take into account. I bought it heavily discounted but it’s been easily worth that so far.

No impressions of this? I thought some people had it. If you don't, well you should. This game is pretty damn amazing. I think if you played Origins you'll know what to expect when it comes to the normal platforming levels. You sprint, jump, punch and bounce your way through a bunch of levels that make some pretty creative use of Rayman and the gang's skills. Of course, it looks amazing, again, with those lush hand-drawn graphics and it has some of those funky ditties again. But there is new stuff. You have music levels which are awesome. It's a shame there are only one per world as I'd play the heck out of a game that was just all these; they're just so much fun. I guess they're not unlike the levels in Origins where you chase the sprinting treasure chest but seeing the levels and the enemy placements sync up with the music as you take them out just adds more of a silly playfulness to it, and they are really imaginative with it, too. The other thing they have which I think is only on the Wii U version which I played is having levels where you take control of Murfy, a new wee flying fella with a big underbite. They are controlled solely using the touchscreen of the Gamepad and you basically interact with the environments with it. Like you move platforms around so an AI controlled Goblox will navigate the level. Early on they're not great but they do build into something a lot more interesting, and again, there is some real creative stuff going on with this different way of playing. Though some of the final levels have it fall apart slightly where Goblox will just do dumb things and get himself killed when you do the right things... it's like the levels get a bit too complex for the AI to handle. But over all, it's amazing. Maybe the lows are lower than Rayman Origins but I think the highs are much higher than in that. It still manages to be surprising despite being a strict follow-up and it is just one of those games where you can tell everyone working on it loved working on it; you can tell, it just pours out of the screen.

Hello. So, Tacoma could be classed as a walking sim i guess, its an exploration game at heart. It's set aboard a space station of the same name. You play as Amy, sent on board the Tacoma to gather information about a serious incident at the station leading to the disappearance of all crew members. Set in the year 2088, technology has advanced in the way of Augmented Reality and serves as your guide around the ship and as a modern mobile/PC but right in your face like. It allows Amy to review the crews movements and interactions with each other as you build up a story leading up to the incident and beyond. This is played out in small AR recordings that appear in front of you, the crew members represented in humanoid form but as colours instead of features and clothes. These can be manipulated, rewound, paused and fast forwarded so as to enable you to concenrate on specific crew members or conversations. I wont say anything else about it gampeplay or plot wise. It gave me the feels though. Once I got to know each character a little more and understood their potential plight I started to give a fuck about them. Obviously you're investigating the past and are unable to help them, curiosity driving you forward accompanied by a feeling of helplesness (in my case). Anybody else given this a go? I'd like to hear someone elses opinion and talk about the game a little. It's only a couple of hours long if that.

I massively bounced off the first game, Grow Home. It was awkward, a little too twee and just not a game I had a good time with, at all. So obviously it's only natural I try this one anyway. And I'm really glad I did. I had so much fun with this game from start to finish. I just really enjoyed it. The artwork and animation were adorable, the gameplay was still incredibly awkward, with your character, B.U.D. seemingly having legs with a mind of their own. Once you built up a little bit of momentum it became really difficult to slow down or stop. But that also tied in with the other systems in play. It was all based around climbing. The story involved collecting the parts of your crash landed ship, M.O.M. to reach orbit and jet off home again. Her 9 different parts were scattered all over the planet, and your job was to navigate your way to each one. Climbing was done with the shoulder buttons, LB/LT made his left hand grip, RB/RT the right. So when you built up a little bit of speed and needed to stop, pulling back then hitting the shoulder buttons would get B.U.D. to grip on to the nearest surface. There were a few other goals - scanning all of the planet's flora, growing star plants, that kinda stuff - but as long as you were restoring your ship you were heading in the right direction. I played it start to finish over the last week or so, and had a lot of fun with it, but at one point my brain said 'this is like a cute assassin's creed'. I'm really starting to enjoy Ubisoft's more artsy stuff. It wasn't fantastic, but I did have a lot of fun with it.

Doom! Doom is back! ROAR etc. And after a 5.02 gig update I got to play it too. After a pleasingly short intro you're straight in to the action because stories are for girls. The movement is super slick, old school Doom style, you really ping about like you are wearing buttery shoes or cum-laden socks. Certain enemies dont hang about either. You start off with a pistol but soon pick up a Shotgun. You can shoot enemies to death or.. shoot them till they stager, then they glow orange and blue and this is your prompt to melee them to death in what's called a 'Glory Kill'. The benefit of this is that it makes health pop out of the dying bad guys body. If in real life you stabbed someone in the head and cake popped out would you do it? I've added an Assault Rifle, Plasma Gun and a Chainsaw to my arsenal since. The actual weapons can be upgraded from these little floating robots you see here and there, for example my shotgun can be charged by holding the L trigger, then upon firing with R it spits out powerful explosive rounds (that then need a small cooling off period before re-use). Each weapon actually seems to have two upgrades each, Ive so far also upgraded my Assault Rifle to spit out a volley of missiles which is cool and a second shotgun one that lets you fire rounds in quick succession. You can swich between uprgades with Up on the D-Pad. The chainsaw is a little different. So far it has three fuel cells. The bigger the enemy, the more fuel cells it will take to kill. The plus of using your chainsaw is that it will cause enemies it kills to spill ammo, super handy if your running low so using it it becomes tacticle. Also, the fuel cells have to be refilled by little gas containers that seem to be scarce so far, this obviously stops you using it all the time as it's a one hit kill machine so they had to nerf it or the game would be a piece of piss. It's a really good idea and well used. The levels are fairly decent in size, i have only done the first three but the third level was pretty big. The story is there, it's just introduced slowly and in bits instead of a big lump at the beginning. You bump in to a couple of people along the way, i wont spoil the story incase your interested in discovering it yourself but there's hsit going on, giving you purpose I suppose, if it's needed. I had to use the map to find my way a couple of times as the in-game pointers send you in a specific direction but there are two or three levels of depth sometimes and there is no up or down indicator. This isn't a problem, just saying. The doors make the same sounds as in the original too, i liked that. You need red, blue and yellow keys too which is a nice touch and you pick up green armour in both bits and in whole, like a floating chestplate, just like back in the day. What else. You upgrade your armour, like you can make yourself less vunerable to environmental hazards like exploding barrels and you can give yourself a spidey sense to detect secret areas (of which there are apparently tons but I think i've only found one). There are also in game missions that reward you with upgrade tokens, like kill two enemies with one shotgun blast or melee kill x number of enemies in a certain way. You also get rewards for killing a certain amount of enemies which I just narrowly missed on the third level. It's kinda tough. I'm playing on Hurt Me Plenty (normal) and I've died a few times. The enemies are furious and when they are in number it can be a battle to survive. This is a good thing, makes you play cautiously, backing off where you can, going for glory kills to top up your health, hopping you've saved a chainsaw use to earn some extra ammo. Finally, not far in to the game, scenery wise it reminded me of Metroid. Sandy scenery as far as the eye could see and a desolate lonely feeling. And later, when I was battling hordes of enemies with a similar backdrop I got to thinging how cool a Metroid game with these controls could be. But that's just a deam. Anyways, I wont get to play this again untill Saturday but then I was gonna have a go on the multiplayer and report back. Enjoying this so far.

I'm going to start by saying this is no way a 4/10 game. I know I'm a Castlevania fan, I know I liked the first Lords of Shadow when others didn't, and I haven't finished this yet, but it's really not that bad. The fighting is fun, it flows better than the first game, it's a tad more forgiving too, a bit like DmC compared to the old Devil May Cry games. They've introduced a mastery system, the more you use a move the more you fill it up, once you do that you empty it to increase your mastery of that weapon. I'm not entirely sure what that does tbh, but it encourages you to use the moves you've unlocked. Which is the point I was going to make about the combat, you can tell it's easier because you can choose what move you want to do rather than just hammering whatever's effective The platforming is fairly simple, occasionally there'll be hazards you have to avoid, these could be clearer, but at least it's got something to it. I've also found odd occasions where it's not always clear what you're supposed to do, one of them was simply because I wasn't on the exact spot I needed to be so the jump point didn't highlight, although the one I couldn't possibly reach did. It's not just the platforming that suffers from a lack of clarity either, the boss fights can sometimes, but it's really the stealth sections. The stealth comes in 2 types, ones where there's guards and you have to distract them, posses them, or turn in to a rat to get around them, these are more common. In theory having a change of pace where you have to use your brain is a really good idea, but they're awkward and messy, and just not all that interesting. The other type involve key characters hunting you down, one of them was deemed bad enough it was singled out by GamesTM (I think), I didn't think it was that bad but I'd accidentally read some advice. Certainly it wasn't fun, parts of the ground made noise that gave away your position, a combination of Dracula's loose control and the collision detection on it meant it was a bit clumsy, but I did it in 4 attempts. Certain bits have been great too, When the script is good Carlyle is good, his delivery of "god failed" is great, shame some of the rest of the script and acting aren't quite so great. Anyway, video here, which looks worse on youtube that it did before I uploaded it. The original file was something like 40GB though, so y'know, you can't have everything

Mutazione is a narrative game following a 15 year old girl who sets off to a distant town to visit her estranged grandfather, having received news he's on death's door. The titular town was once a busy place until several decades ago it was destroyed by a meteor, and which slowly mutated the people animal and plant life left. The game itself mostly involves talking to the townspeople and getting to know this community and their lives, planting musical gardens, and solving the mystery of the giant tree in the middle of the town which sustains the island. It's gentle, slow-paced and relaxing stuff, lasting about 5-6 hours. I had a lovely time with it.

Reviews: 1up - A GameInformer - 9.5 Nowgamer (PS3) - 9.4 Nowgamer (360) - 9.3 CVG - 9.2 Gamestm - 9 Eurogamer - 9 Anyone picked this up? For PC or console?

This came out today, I think? Nvidia's cloud streaming solution. If you have an Nvidia account* what you do is you run the Geforce Now program on a PC (has to be a PC) and you login to Steam through it and add games individually to your library. Basically it is a VM. You literally install the games in a VM, but don't actually install it. It's weird and doesn't make much sense. Also because it is a VM you have to keep giving the 2FA key each time as steam will think each login is from a new machine. From a UI perspective it is absolute dogshit to get up and running. But once you have a game linked you can jump in immediately and access your steam cloud saves. So I was able to pick up Doom from where I left off. The streaming experience is pretty bad for me though. Visually it looks slightly better than I remember Doom Eternal looking on Stadia, not that that's a fair bar to compare to as it was a demo last year. But it is way laggier on my 2.4ghz home wifi and turns into unplayable territory quite often. But sometimes it works fine. They list 5ghz as a requirement but that means you need to be near a router so it really isn't there yet for me unless I kick my housemates out of the common space and declare it as my man cave which I think would be undiplomatic of me. I don't really think this is an amazing service or better than Stadia or anything but it's major advantage up front is this steam library connection stuff. It doesn't ask you to invest deeply into its ecosystem beyond paying a monthly sub if you want. This is more the thing I want out of cloud gaming, an addon to existing ecosystems rather than this closed garden thing Google are doing which just seems like such a shitshow from waiting for publishers to announce games, having to port everything to its weird variant of Linux etc etc. You have to pay for better queues, better quality streams I think and RTX enabled games (ray tracing). I've just added Civ V to it which is one game I actually think I would like to play regularly on this. The switch version is nice but not quite all the way there UI wise. *You don't need anything for an account other than a gmail if you don't want to give Nvidia login and password stuff. Obviously they'll get your data and whatever but it's easy to setup