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

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

Helldivers 2. I've put a bit of time into it now. Here's what I think. It's almost all good. Movement and shooting feel great. Shooting has a mechanic I've never seen before where you have a reticule that is fixed where you aim, and one that moves around it depending on how much you are being rocked. If you are springing about the actual aim goes all over the shop, but if you take a knee and control your bursts it stays accurate. It feels really good for the most and makes you really think about your positioning and shooting, especially when the terrain dictates how you must commit or respond to a conflict. The fights are mostly regimented even with randoms, with people cycling in and out as fights bubble over the map and keeping some sort of structure. When it gets really mad and people start scattering it becomes a bit of a mess, but that's part of the charm in that sometimes you're going to be pressed. I've had games where I have seen people be bait for the entire run, and then I've had dives where it was me that was basically being the lightning conductor that everyone thanks for keeping the attention of the more dangerous mobs that require flanking and precise fire to kill. Only 2 factions in this game at launch. Robot and bugs. The way you fight either faction is very different, I feel like the bugs are more a case of zerging the best they can and just absorbing lots of gunfire, whereas the robots it becomes a bit more tactical. Not that they take over or anything like that, it's more a case of them shooting back and having more offence compared to the bugs defence. They have defence as well, but generally it's just a well placed shot that takes them down. The map from the previous game makes a return, but I think it's altered somewhat to before. For the uninitiated, it's a big circle broken up into tetrominoes. Super earth is in the middle and the factions are on the outside, you fight them towards the outside of the circle, conquer their world and that takes them out of the game until the war is over. If any faction makes it to the middle of the circle, it's a collective game over for everyone. I think they have altered how this works in some manner, because previously although it was tetrominoes you had a linear progression between the middle point and the far edge. Now it looks like any adjacent tile can be invaded so theoretically even though you only have 2 enemies, they can approach Super Earth from any angle. I might be wrong there, but this is how I am reading it. The only other explanation I have is that Arrowhead plan to put 2 more factions in the game so you are fighting on 4 fronts. That's just speculation on my behalf. Other changes you might want to know about. A lot of the strategems are now infinite and just have timers on them. If you played the previous game you would know that if you called a heavy weapon down and you lost it, that was it. Now it's very much a case of just wait for your timer to run down and call another in. In fact sometimes this is preferable if you are running low on ammo. Some strategems have had a rework. The ammo one now has a global cool down and has 4 ammo slots in it. For me this is a mixed bag. Some people are awful at just calling them in the wildest of places. And then you are fucked because your ammo is miles away because the one person that refused to come with the group has all the ammo and you have to wait it out. Or you have people chucking them into areas that are too hot to get ammo. It's just the usual 3head and selfish plays you can come to expect. Same with people walking under air strikes, or throwing air strikes on places you need to traverse though. It's not always like that, everyone is different. Some teams are well oiled and consistent, some are dog shit and couldn't give a fuck if you kill all 3 team mates as long as it means they have full ammo and kill that one bug. Reinforcement has also taken an overhaul. Gone are the infinite call ins, now you have 10 drops for one player with an extra 5 added on for each extra player. You can bolster this with some loadout stuff, but once those lives are out, that's it. Unlike Helldivers 1, if all players die, it will drop all players back into the field if you have the lives to do so. Unlocks are done via a few methods. Gone are the unlocks for beating certain missions, now everything relies on samples, credits, medals and the games premium currency super credits. There's a season pass that's not really a season pass, but it is a season pass that has loads of different weapons and stuff you can unlock, as well as armours and other gubbins. This uses medals which are earned through play. The paid season pass I think can be bought for super credits you find or unlock through the normal battlepass and has all the things you would expect in it, flashier customisation and some weapons that are similar to the free ones you unlock, but not really? For instance I got an explosive assault rifle from a dead body and although the bullets exploded, it was way slower on the fire rate. I sort of preferred the vanilla one if I am being honest. Speaking of weapons and different stats, you can hold reload and alter the fire rate and magnification. If you do intent to play this, or already have it, you can also look down your gun in first person if you aim and then press middle mouse button. I assume that will be a stick click on controller. Helps for those extra long distance firefights. The other currencies can be found all over. There's credits that can be gotten that allow you to buy more strategems. The other thing you can collect are samples with allow you to make the ship that is dropping said drops more efficient. Mostly the perks are just stuff like they have a smaller call down time, or a quicker cool down. Some are more specialised like making the centre of explosions larger for more destructive possibilities. I feel like the asking price for these is a bit of a piss take actually, and also I have a sneaking suspension that the difficulty wall I mentioned at the start has migrated here, as there's different rarities of sample and I am suspecting it may be a case of the rarer ones showing in harder missions. Bad points then. The servers are pretty fucked at the time of writing this. I just played an hour before writing this and had a few disconnected games. Once I got in it was all fine, but those frustrating moments looking for a match only for it to lag out. The only other really bad thing I can point out is it makes my PC sweat like crazy. Even RDR2 on ultra isn't putting my hardware under this much pressure. Some optimisation would be nice. It is a very pretty game and there's quite a bit of destruction going on in it, nothing that will blow you away, but yeah, it all has to be accounted for performance wise. It does look very pretty though, I'll give it that. Will Helldivers 2 have the legs to carry on being the game that I hope it will be? I'm not sure right now. I think it has more mass market appeal than a lot of other 4 player co-op shooters, but I think that it depends on Arrowhead being compliant with listening to what works and what doesn't in regards of the game and adjusting accordingly. We're still heavily in the honeymoon period right now, and I am thinking that it could be a long running thing, but the ball really is in their court and they could smash it or they could fumble it really hard depending on what happens.

I don't know how to give impressions on this without getting in the weeds. In terms of features it's an old fashioned 2D fighting game. You have an arcade mode (which is kinda interesting in that the better you do the harder the end boss gets) and there is a story that is literally an anime that you just watch, which is what the last game did too but it's still wild to me. There's also a pretty intense Mission Mode that does it's best to teach you the deeper mechanics of the game which if you're the studious type could work pretty well. I could do with spending more time in it myself but getting wrecked by someone using my character then trying to rip them off in the next match is more fun for me. It's the good netcode that saves it though. Well, the matchmaking is pretty rough at the mo but it plays really well in game. It just means there's always people to play with. This came online at midnight and I was ready to play it so I went to the east coast of USA since it was a more sensible time there and while it was a little choppy visually my inputs were barely delayed, if at all. I really hope they put this in a DBFZ2, in fact it would be shocking if they didn't. I've not saved many fights yet since I think I'm still pretty scrubby but my Gio is coming along a little. And this fight with Zato was fun when I wasn't put in the corner with all his nonsense:

A collaboration between Grey Alien Games (Regency Solitaire and a few more card and puzzle games I've never played) and Night Signal Entertainment (Home Safety Hotline, Night Signal). It's PC only the moment, I believe. The game starts with your character starting up his computer and messaging his sister about an exciting thrift store find: Forbidden Solitaire - a 90's CD-ROM game they were obsessed with as kids because it caused a huge furore with parents and eventually banned/withdrawn from sale. You start playing the game, and periodically get more information through instant messages from the sister who is digging up weird and disturbing things about the history of the game. Eventually, surprising nobody, the cursed game elements begin to kick in too via glitches and flashbacks giving further insight into the development of the game. The story isn't going to win any awards for originality, it's in line with other games of this type and I enjoyed it a lot. The solitaire game is fun to play, and it captures the 90's PC game aesthetic it's going for brilliantly. I had a great time with it.

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

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.

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

This arrived yesterday and I've played 11 hours so far...it's really good, it's a bold statement but I think it's the happiest I've been with a game in terms of expectations and how it's been to play it. It's very skyrim in the exploration. It really isn't linear at all, I'm on chapter three now and it's unbelievably open world. This might be the one in the series that brings people in, it's hardly a final fantasy at all.

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

Started playing this a few nights ago thanks to a free 30 day code I received from a guy on another forum, always wanted to give it a go but didn't want to pay the money to take the plunge I suppose. Decided on a Female Miqo'te (Seekers of the Sun) Lancer with the Oschon Guardian, I'm situated in Phoenix in the Chaos server, Level 8. No idea really if any of what I picked is any good. The game put me into 'Grimaldia' which is a set of forest cities. As for the game itself...still undecided really, very early days 4 hours into an MMO but I like a few things about it and dislike a few things about it really. The world itself seems cool, the servers are stable and even though the graphics aren't upto 2015 standards really it looks alright, runs incredibly well at 1080/60 and I've been using the GamePad throughout without any major problems except I can't seem to find an option to invert the right analog stick which is annoying, but I've got used to playing in default now, despite it not feeling wholly natural. The way they introduce you to the game is very good, you're definitely eased into it, in one little secluded area of the map (Grimaldia), everything is told to you simply and tutorial boxes pop up for pretty much everything, there is still a lot to take it but it doesn't feel like you're bewildered or bamboozled by information and the world itself like other MMOs I've played in the past. Only really explored Grimaldia and its surrounding but it is pretty cool, the scenery is nice, the buildings have a lot of character to them and its cool seeing people potter about with Chocobo's in tow (how the fuck do I get one of them?!). My main gripe though at the moment is the quests, they're all very fetch-questy and traditional MMO staples as 'kill 6 of this creature', 'deliver a message to this person', 'go round up these naughty people and tell them to come back' etc. the coolest one I've done was some woman that was being accosted by this bloke that was a criminal and asked me to meet with him on the edge of town instead of her to see what his deal is, every other quest has been incredibly forgettable and dull, I've played 4 hours and these quests just keep popping up and up and up, they don't seem to go away, but there's not really anything else to do so I keep on just doing them regardless. I didn't understand why I couldn't complete some of the quests earlier, the little 'complete' box was not able to be clicked so I just left these quests uncompleted and went to do some others, tried again later into my session and realised if I pressed left or right on the d-pad I could select a quest reward, once selected the quest was able to be completed felt so stupid. Another stupid moment I had was when I had to get Level 5 gear to do a quest, went to the shop, dropped a load of cash on a set of Level 5 stuff and then realised after that I could've got all of it from the quest rewards I was missing all that money wasted, oh well :oops: Not sure about the Fate-public event quests either, it's a cool concept and when they work and loads of people come to one spot to batter some cunt its a nice spectacle but most just get in the way and are annoying really, only had people turn up in 1 or 2 out of all the ones I've attempted. The combat is really cool though, I mean you can just sit back and just press 1 button here and there, it's not very involved on the face of it, but you feel involved in it which is the key thing, and it feels satisfying enough that when you defeat a tough-ish enemy you're slightly elated. There's definitely something compelling about it though, it just feels like it could be a standard RPG at the moment, it doesn't feel bewildering at all really and I'm just pottering about doing quests, thinking about upgrading weapons, armour etc. like I would a regular RPG, I do hope the quests get better the further it goes on though as I think I'm out if it's another shit-ton of hours of these quests.

Apparently have 4 hours in this already, which must include some alt-tab time, I'm not sure. I nearly beat the third area on my first run but since then it's been a string of failures. It's pretty much the same thing as the first game, but better looking. There's 5 characters now, I've unlocked 4. Two of the new characters are 'Regent', which is a class based around summoning a sword and 'forging' it to deal more damage. I didn't get far with him, but he has a second resource on top of energy to cast certain powerful cards, so there's multiple things you have to manage and build towards to make him powerful, between forge, energy and the mana stars. The other new one is Necromancer, I haven't used them yet. On my Ironclad run I didn't see much that was new, but I did have a card which lets you hatch a bird and play a powerful 0 cost card to deal some damage. The build I tried to do was limited in terms of block and relied a lot on vulnerable, but I just couldn't do enough rounds with the last boss to keep up. There's also some new mechanics for The Silent, one called 'Sly', which is a property which executes a card if it's dismissed directly. A discard build seems powerful with that class. As it's Early Access, it has some placeholder art, but it's the best placeholder art ever. Otherwise I'm not sure right now you could tell this is an EA game, it feels really polished. It's mostly an iteration of StS1 as far as I can see. My biggest weakness remains not being more disciplined about picking cards which have direct synergies with what I already have and ending up a bit too bloated.

Let me start by saying I hate the Americanised spelling of the title. I'm just copying exactly what's there, though, so don't pull me up for it. Now let me follow up with what @Sly Reflex said for EDF 5... "If you've not enjoyed these games before, abandon thread now. There's no point in you wasting your time here. It's more of the same with tweaks, mostly good tweaks, but nothing that's going to convince you you want to spend time with the series." I've been playing this online co-op with Rosie (it was one of her free games the other week, so I'm like a pig in shit), and honestly, it's tons of fun. The story follows on directly from EDF5, and the invaders aren't happy about earth turning the tide in the last instalment, so they've amped it up to wipe out humanity altogether. I've currently only played as ranger - the default character - but there are a couple of tweaks that are fantastic for QoL. You now have a slot for a backpack weapon. This could be anything from a vehicle to a healing grenade, to regular grenades, to your very own turret. This is a great addition that means you're not completely fucked when the crowds become overwhelming and you're trying to reload. I've been using turrets a lot, just to try and thin the herds in harder levels. The turrets also have a decently large angle of fire, so they're not bad as anti-air solutions, either. D3 have added a visual indicator of damage. Great for the numbers people who like to try and figure out the hit points of any given enemy. I've not given it my full attention, but I do keep a side-eye on the numbers as they tick up and consider whether it's worth reloading or not. Lots of new enemies, as well as plenty of familiar stuff from 5. Off the top of my head, I think there are at least 8 new enemies. That brings it out to about 12-15 different enemy species, not including the kaiju or palette swaps of enemies. Some of the older enemies have been tweaked. There's a new variation on the jumping spiders, for example, that fires electric threads. So that's a new one to consider. I don't know if it's just because we're both playing ranger, or if it's because we suck, or if I've been carried more than I realise in 5, but this one FEELS harder, too. So much so, we've been playing on normal just to try and boost our armour and weapons before heading into hard/hardest/inferno. One of the big criticisms I've seen online is that some assets, maps and exact missions have been recycled into EDF6. Without delving too much into spoiler territory, this is true, but it's also done in a really smart way that feeds the narrative beautifully. Look, this is still B-Movie bullshit, but it's B-Movie bullshit that makes sense(ish). I've been all in on this series since 4.1, and I fully believe that if you didn't like it before, you won't like it now. It's still janky, it's still running on the same 20-year old engine the last few games have utilised, it still descends to single digit frame rates when shit kicks off, and enemies look like they're animated by the same guys that made Jason and the Argonauts when they're in the distance. However, if you've been on the fence, or unsure, or just haven't had much experience with it in the past, I think this is the one that's worth jumping in to. Don't expect much fun in single player. Get a mate or three and have an absolute blast in co-op. Honestly, I think the series has taken over my brain a little bit, because I'm currently playing this 4-5 nights a week with Rosie then dipping into 5 with Sly and a couple of people online each week on top. It's great fun, and if Helldivers 2 has ran its course for you, I think this is definitely worth taking a punt on. Maybe wait until it drops to £30, though. There's enough content to justify full price IMO, but it's far too samey level to level to drop £50-60 on.

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

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

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

Dropping the trailer to introduce this one seems like the best course of action here, to be honest. Remember Muramasa? That awesome PS3/Vita/Wii title? It had gorgeous, 2D, hand-drawn visuals, a stunning colour palette, and was a fantastic Metroidvania-style action game? Yeah, this gives me all those vibes. It's beautiful in movement, the design of the characters is great, and it plays really nicely. You're tasked with repairing books. You do this by hopping into said books, finding tears in the pages, and painting/stitching/magicking them back together. Along the way there are perils to test your reactions and battle skills. There are certain areas you can't access straight away because you don't have the powers. Like a ground pound, for example. You know the drill by now with these games. I'm only a couple of hours in, and had my ass handed to me repeatedly by a rock boss. I knew the attacks but just couldn't get the patterns down, so it took me 5-10 attempts, but I finally got through it last night. One thing that's super-cool - the map is essentially colour-coded. If there are still things to do on your current screen, the map is in greyscale. Once you've repaired that screen/page, it goes to full colour. Makes it really easy to reference what you need to do, figure out where you need to go, all that good stuff. Honestly, if you were a fan of Muramasa, or - and this is a game I've been trying to remember the name of for days but it's only just popped into my head - Odin Sphere: Leifthrasir, I reckon this is worth a go. It's gorgeous and plays nicely.

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

Played the first 3 hours earlier. I like it so far but it barely feels like I’m out the tutorial really so very early days. A lot of mechanics are being introduced still and it feels like the reigns haven’t been let go of yet so I’m not free to fully explore the world yet. First things first. There’s a lot of cutscenes. Almost all of them during the Prologue are ones we’ve seen from past trailers so in some ways we’ve all seen the opening hour but without the context you’ll get in the game. After that you’ll start to see some new stuff but at this early stage most of it is just introducing you to characters and locales with not an awful lot going on in terms of plot or anything. I’m not sure I need to go into a deep dive over the way the game plays as we’ve seen the gameplay trailers in the past. If you’ve seen those clips with Sam delivering packages that’s pretty much all I’ve done so far, the tone has definitely been on the serious side - thus far at least - with the piss grenades and Kojima wackiness completely missing during the opening stages of what I’ve played at least. The way it feels to pilot Sam though is probably what has surprised me the most, I read someone else somewhere compare piloting him to driving a car in GTA or something which had me a little bit worried because I assumed he’d control like a tank but instead he controls like a Sports Car if anything. He is incredibly nimble and controls very intuitively which I was shocked about, the walking speed is a light jog as well which means you get places really quickly. Holding L2 and R2 in will enable you to keep your balance much better and it’s a godsend when you’re carrying something heavy or traversing mountains as it will stop you flailing from left to right wildly. The way you load and unload packages feels very intuitive as well and it’s somewhat novel in letting you pick it up and then rearrange it on your person, it feels very tactile. I’ve made 3 deliveries in total in my time with the game so far. It seems fun enough to me to simply get lost in the world and walk about eventually getting to your delivery point but as mentioned previously I haven’t been fully let off the reigns so far so have only been able to explore very linear corridors which have been funnelling me to the next exposition point. I have met the ‘BT’s’ once so far and the whole experience completely weirded me out. I fucked it up first time around and was flailing wildly not knowing what to do before being chased by some kind of monster thing so I reloaded and gave it another go. The atmosphere in those moments is so damn tense creeping around them whilst crouching and holding your breath, the BT’s themselves give me the creeps, they’ve got such fantastic sound design. It probably goes without saying but the visuals are absolutely phenomenal as well. They world design has a really unique art design to it, I don’t really know what I can compare it to really other than possibly Nier Automata maybe? It just has this washed out melancholic but vivid quality to it that I’ve not really seen much elsewhere. If you like somber indie tunes you’ve come to the right place as well, in particular moments the music will swell and the camera zoom out to give you a sense of place whilst adventuring along. Kojima has a great music taste. As far as negatives go, so far the writing has been a little ropey in places and I couldn’t help but laugh when Kojima’s name comes up under every casting title during the credits as well. So yeah, so far so good really but it’s still very early days. I’ve been pleasantly surprised with it this far but am eager for the leash to be loosened so I can fully explore the world.

Maybe a premature topic as I only played this for an hour or so but it seems very good. It's a classic platformer channeling the feeling of an N64 or maybe early PS2 game, where you play as a funny-looking frog who gets catapulted into different dimensions. Movement feels extremely good and responsive, so classic platforming actions like dives and jumps are satisfying to pull off. Because it's a cartoon frog, you can, of course, also use your tongue and use it as a grapple, to gather items and to interact with switches. One interesting feature where it deviates a bit from the classics are the fruits and seed you can find, which open up the level design a bit. The two I found so far allow you to grow mushrooms (help you jump higher) or vines (which can be attached to any wall and allow you to climb up). There's still a place for curated level design so they're not available all the time, but whenever they are they open up the world in a rather meaningful way, not unlike the climbing on BotW would, though of course on a smaller scale. Interestingly it doesn't have enemies, which I just noticed after my first hour with it concluded. Needless to say it doesn't feel like it's missing something, but still wanted to point it out. Technically it's flawless on Switch 2 (even in handheld mode thanks to the recent update), can't speak for how it runs on Switch 1 but I don't think anyone here is playing on that anymore anyway. PS5 and PC should have no issues whatsoever with it.

This is down as a clicker game, which I suppose it is just without the clicking, more scratching. You wash plates, earn enough for a scratch card, hopefully win enough to buy another, and so on. As you earn you can spend money improving your luck, size of your coin and strength of scratch to speed up the scratching. Eventually you can buy a machine that scratches the cards for you, although this is dangerous if your luck isn't high enough and there's ways to lose money on the card. After the machine you could buy a desk fan that means you no longer have to drag each card to the machine, just turn the fan on. Then eventually a cat that will claim your winnings for you. You'll level up cards so that winnings are increased, then unlock more expensive cards that pay out more. Eventually you can be earning billions The end game is a card that is all or nothing, you either win or die. On death you can trade in your jackpots (top prize on the cards) to gain perks, including earning more money from the off, making your next run easier It's fun. It feels like it is one of those games you'll put down one day and never touch again

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

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

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

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