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Anyone else bought this? It's a tower defence sort of thing with some third person shooter bits tacked on. You get a crossbow, melee weapon and a load of traps that you continue to unlock as you progress through the game. Kill Orcs, get money for more traps, put traps down in the most evil configurations you can think of and shit back as bits of Orc go flying everywhere as they are smashed, chopped, skewered and burned to death. When the trailer came out for it I thought it looked quite terrible but it is not. It has a lot of charm and it's full of amusing one liners from the Orcs and the main guy. Gameplay is really satisfying and not at all fiddly. You can pick 8ish traps at the start of the level and cycle through them with LB/RB and put them down with RT. I am well over half way through now and it has become very repetitive and that is my main criticism. Environments haven't changed at all the whole time and each level consists of herding the Orcs into a choke point and putting all your defences there. Levels that are a bit more open and require you to guard multiple areas can be quite frustrating and the map doesn't do a very good job of letting you know how close the enemy is to your base on the multi tiered maps. Unless it all changes on the next level I would say the game is a lot of fun but at 1200 points there isn't really the variety you would expect and no co-op or multiplayer modes is disappointing. Definitely one to consider but 800 points is probably a fairer price so I would suggest waiting for deal of the week.

From what I've played so far Revelations is actually very good, it's a bit of a mix of old RE style and the new RE style. You can strafe, even without the circle pad, and provided you make good use of the scanner ammo is less than sparse. The flip side though is that you're very much dealing with monsters rather than villagers, it's rare they attack in groups, and the tone is creepy rather than high tension. Revelations is paced for the 3DS, you've had chapters in Resident Evil games for a while but here they feel a bit shorter, early on at least, and give you a nice little recap when you boot the game up again. The one thing I will say about this structure is that 3 hours in I'm still unsure if the game has really started properly. I began playing as Jill in the tutorial mission, then as Chris for a while, then I think Jill again with some more new features rolled out (it's a bit jumbled), then I played as Jill's partner in a flashback. In fact half of what I've played has been a flashback of something or other, each time to a different time. Hopefully now with a boss beaten, and a Chris level seemingly on the horizon the game will start to settle down. In terms of resident Evil tropes Revelations handles the limited inventory slightly differently. Now you aren't just dumping stuff in one big bag, instead you can carry a certain amount of health, a certain number of grenades, and annoyingly a limited amount of ammunition. This might be a design decision, you revisit areas so had you completely picked it clean on your first run through there's a chance you'll have left yourself short on a return visit, but the capacity (which can be upgraded) is pathetically small. On that note weapons can be upgraded at certain points, with the scanner being fairly useful at finding the bonuses you'll need. I'll admit that once I realised I was going to have to back track and revisit areas my enthusiasm for Revelations took a bit of a knock, but all in all I've really enjoyed it, certainly more than what I played of 5

I know you do son, I know you do. And you used the wrong write you big bell end. I bought it too, made the crazy mistake of only buying it on one console. I am struggling to enjoy it again at the moment, i thought I would love to play this game again as it's been a few years but I'm finding it incredibly dated. I shall play again on Thursday (when I finally get some time to play games again) with the knowledge of what it is and not what I thought it was and see if we get along then.

After seeing a glowing review at Eurogamer I thought this would be a nice counter game to the gritty/bleak violence of God of War, and an excuse to pry the Switch away from the kids. You have to bare with me on the premise - you play as a dung beetle who's the new postmaster on the tropical island of Mokumana, who's guardians are being attacked by the 'God Slayer'. After meeting the previous postmaster, your given a postman badge and told to go meet some fellow further on in the island. Navigating the island is a joy, you push a ball (of what I hope isn't shit) about in front of you and there are numerous pinball flippers around that you activate with the L and R triggers, launching you all over the place. You meet various strange characters and creatures along the way, who give you challenges and rewards. One example is having to find six soot balls in a lighthouse, with the lighthouse essentially being it's own pinball table. Completing these tasks gets you new abilities granting access to other parts of the map, a la Metroid/Castlevania. The art style is great, the music is fantastic and it's a joy to play. All in all, well worth the £15 entry fee.

So in my odyssey to try as many different genres as possible and always branch out into new genres of games I'm not comfortable with I've turned my attention to Artifact - Valve's new strategic card game based on characters from Dota 2. This is the first game like this I've played (aside from Gwent in TW3 I guess - which I did as little of as possible) so I won't be making any comparisons to the full Gwent release, Hearthstone or any of the other card games like this as I'm unable to really know at all how they compare. I'm not really sure what compelled me to play this really, I saw Ben Moore of Easy Allies playing it on Twitch one day when I was bored and decided to watch his first baby steps into it, I found the whole thing incredibly daunting and compelling, something I really wanted to sink my teeth into and have that nice learning curve, feeling yourself getting better day by day. I believe what is unique about Artifact is it has 3 lanes which is a mechanic kind of borrowed from Dota 2/LoL. This obviously makes things more complicated than some of the others I've seen where you only have to focus on one plain. In Artifact you have to focus on 3 all at the same time, with the game focusing on one lane at a time sweeping from the left one to the right. The aim of the game is to destroy either 2 of your opponents towers or 1 of your opponents ancients - an ancient will only be unleashed once a tower has been destroyed. You've got 5 different types of cards - Creep, Spell, Improvement, Hero and Gold shop cards. Creeps are essentially minions that you can summon to block certain actions the opponent may make, they also spawn randomly on the board at the beginning of some rounds. Spell cards mean you can use some kind of spell on a hero or against the opposition. Improvement cards put some kind of constant buff in a lane - like constantly dealing +2 damage to an enemies tower after their turn. Hero cards are the most important cards of all and what you must aim to destroy and protect in order to eventually damage two towers and win a match. Gold shop cards are what you buy at the end of a round and they usually heal one of your heroes or give you some kind of buff - you accrue gold by taking out the opponents' heroes or creeps. The four main cards mentioned above - excluding the Gold shop cards - are also colour coded coming in Red, Blue, Black or Green. You need to pay close attention to the colours of heroes in your deck as you can't use any of the correspondingly coloured Creep, Spell or Improvement cards without having a Hero of the same colour in a particular lane. If one of your heroes gets taken out in a lane then they can no longer use any of those coloured cards until they respawn 2 rounds or so later. The different coloured heroes have their own unique characteristics they bring to battle as well, Black Hero cards are assassins that can take out an opponents heroes easier, Red Hero cards are aggressive tank-types, Green Hero cards are a support-type and Blue Hero cards are used to control a lane. With all the numerous variables above it's important to have a decent deck. With the game you get 2 starter decks of 40 cards each and 5 card packs of 12 cards each along with 2 event tickets. So you get a load of cards to make a decent deck of your own with or you can modify the starter packs however you like. It can be a little frustrating at times when you see an opponent utilise a certain deck so effectively and you go to copy it but find out that you don't have most of the cards and it would cost £15 or so to get them all. But it is really fun just building decks to see if they're effective or not in a competitive game, I spent a good hour earlier just tinkering around with bits and pieces in my deck, swapping out heroes and just experimenting with stuff - it's a lot of fun. I don't fully understand all the intricacies of deck building yet but I'm getting there little by little and my first deck I build earlier has got me my first two online wins earlier tonight. The game is just an absolute blast. It's compelling, addictive, tense and fun as hell. You feel like there is a weight to every single decision you make and one bad move can be the difference between success and failure. I hadn't had much luck for some time as I'm still learning - and there's a lot of skilled folks out there already - pretty much every facet of the game and it is incredibly bewildering and humbling to have to try to learn all these different variables at once and go up against hardened card game players online. It's fun just playing even when I'm losing a load of games, but now I feel like I've got a semi-decent deck and a couple of wins under my belt I feel I have a real chance against most opponents which is great. When you get a win it is a pretty damn incredible feeling. I learnt what little I know from these excellent short tutorial videos:

I think that's all the tags for this, basically it's out on just about everything. Child of Light is actually a surprisingly complex rpg, even if it is a bit on the easy side. During combat you and your enemies share a movement meter. Once you get towards the end of the meter you can cue up an action, that action takes a bit of time to activate. If you manage to land a hit on an enemy whilst they're activating their move you'll interrupt them, sending them back down the meter. You also have a firefly who can slow down enemies as they charge, heal you a bit, and pick up items. If you have multiple characters you can switch out characters, this doesn't spend your turn so you can still perform an action with your new character Out of battle the game starts off like a simple platformer, but then you learn to fly. There's still the odd puzzle element to the map, items to find, even alternate characters it's apparently possible to miss (Brad missed one on Giant Bomb). There's gem stones you can equip to add perks, things like fire damage or resistances. It sort of feels superfluous with how easy the game can be but it's nice that it's there. It looks amazing obviously, and the soundtrack is great, made by someone respected but I'd never heard of her anyway, I'm really enjoying it, it's not the greatest rpg ever, it's just missing something, but it's pretty good so far

This is an odd one. It starts somewhat typical; you play as a young woman called Mina who is fed up of the small village she lives in and wants to go out and explore the world. What makes this a little different, for video games at least, is she wants to do that through cooking. But being a chef in this game's world is a little more exciting than it is in reality. The general gameplay goes like this: Next to the kitchen where you cook the food there is an area brimming with monsters (oh yeah, you're feasting on monsters in this world, too) and you go out chop them up into tasty little bits using a combat system which is maybe more versatile than needed. Rather timely it is very Smash-like: a direction with an attack gives you a move with its own properties (launchers etc) and you have special "magic" moves also tied to a button and direction. But these can be chained together too. It's not to serious about its combat but I do like to launch them, combo, teleport behind them and combo more to keep them in the air. It's fun but kinda needless as you do just need to be killing things quickly for their tasty bits as you are timed. When you have enough bits you put your spoils in the pantry and start cooking. This is done through a match three puzzle game. And this is where it gets surprisingly complicated. I'm not gonna go into it too deeply because I'll be here all night but each ingredient contain either two, three or four Bejeweled gems (lets just call it what it is) and chaining three together intensifies the taste, where it turns into a different gem which can be chained again to intensify the flavour further. But there are so, so many additional mechanics as the game moves on. Different pans can alter the properties to how things are chained. The story factors in too. It's very Monster Hunter in it's story as it adds a plague to monsters to add some stakes (or steaks! lol! *dies of comedy abuse*) to keep things from being too twee. Ben will hate this game. It'll make his teeth itch or whatever. But what the plague does is add further mechanics as you'll have to deal with eliminating poisons and dealing with taste gems that break down and disappear. It's generally well acted, especially by the lead, and kinda funny at times. It's a pretty game too with its hand drawn backgrounds and animations. It does repeat its areas bit but I think its just a function of the insular, low-key story its telling. I've been enjoying it more than I thought I would. I know back in the day there was that platformer puzzle game on the DS that was like this a few people here liked. I think this could be good for those, too.

Started this today, put in about 3 hours. It left a hell of a first impression I must say, absolutely loved what I've played so far. I played 2014's The Stick of Truth and whilst I thought it was very good overall, it lost its way towards the end for me and became incredibly repetitive, leaving a sour taste in my mouth as I limped over the finish line. Being a huge South Park fan and seeing an idea like that executed so well and with all the trademark humour and lore established in the show translated into the game flawlessly was fantastic. Being able to go around South Park and explore every nook and cranny of it, finding chinpokomon and all sorts of mad side quests, it was really cool. But towards the end it became real repetitive and a lot of the reason for that was the combat. It was enjoyable for the most part and quite a bit of fun but towards the end where you're put into challenging fight after challenging fight it felt like a real slog. It just felt too basic for me after x number of hours, it didn't feel as deep or tactical enough as I wanted it to be and just became a chore. Fast forward to 2018 when I finally get round to playing the second South Park game, The Fractured But Whole, and I was somewhat trepidatious as to what to expect. Even though it has been over 3 years since I played the last game the finale left such a sour taste in my mouth that I really didn't know if I was going to enjoy this or not, I thought it would just be more of the same and with Ubi SF taking over development duties I just didn't know whether it would have as much charm and humour as the original game. Thankfully - as mentioned at the introduction, the opening 3 hours of the game I've played today have put all my worries to bed. It has just been an absolute joy to play in every regard, exploring the town again, speaking to all the characters around the town that we know and love. It's just great to be back in South Park again. Probably the best aspect for me though has been the ability to open every door on every house or store and look in a hell of a lot of cupboards for loot, it is just incredibly addicting in a Fallout kind of way, I can't remember an awful lot from the first game apart from the ending, combat and the abortion clinic so I don't remember the first game having this level of loot to find. I remember going to people's housing and exploring the town - looking for chinpokomon especially - but yeah I don't remember there being this level of reward for looking in every draw in a house or store. Another aspect is the little puzzles you come across, some have that metroidvania element to them where you haven't got a certain ability yet so will have to come back later to get to the chest/item just out of reach in a particular locale. That level of exploration, exploring the town and encountering all these little side quests you can pick up like discovering who key'd Randy's car at night or speaking to Morgan Freeman in the Taco stand so he can teach you how to Craft bits and pieces. There's a ton of collectibles too, but the main ones I've found so far are these Japanese-style art pieces called Youi or something like that which are a bit anime looking and quite strange. One of the other new elements is the 'Coonstagram' stuff which encourages you to take a selfie with everyone you can see so you can get more followers - and unlock more missions down the line I presume. So there's another puzzle element of getting someone to have a selfie with you, sometimes it'll be something simple like buying stuff from a vendor but other times you'll have to help Jimmy finish a school project or something like that. There's also this artifact system where you can equip one into a 'hero slot' on your character and it'll give you and your team some kind of boost in combat. Most hilarious one I've found so far is a buttplug I found in Big Gay Al and Mr Slave's house that gave me +35 'might. You can find costumes all over South Park too - of course I got the AC costume with some uPlay units though The aspect that has impressed me the most though and is the biggest improvement from the original is most definitely the combat. I don't remember it especially well from the first game but here it feels SO much deeper and a hell of a lot more tactical with the new tactics grid. The grid enables you and a bunch of enemies to move about turn by turn, using different x, y, x or a abilities but all the abilities require a certain placement in order to attack multiple enemies or knock an enemy back into another for a bonus. A lot of abilities cannot be activated if the targeting square cannot reach the enemies square so placement on the grid itself is key. As well as this there's numerous ailments to consider and AOE damage when certain enemies die, you still have a timed element by pressing A at the right time when taking a hit or doing a move - which fills up your Ultimate meter quicker - but it doesn't seem as full on as the first game and the tactics grid makes everything feel much clearer and less simplistic if that makes sense. A bit more side-scroll XCOM-lite and less Child of Light if that makes sense to anyone So yeah, I really didn't expect to be as impressed as I am with it but it's safe to say it has got me hook line and sinker, cannot wait to dive back in tomorrow. Some pics:

Initial impressions are not positive. I like some of Capybara’s previous games and Jim Guthrie’s soundtrack for Sword & Sworcery was fantastic (and he’s here too) but in a post RDR2 time, I’m not sure I have the patience for this. It starts off with a cut scene that isn’t obvious it’s a cut scene as nothing really happens, unless you press the pause button and it gives you the option to skip it. So I let it run and yet still nothing really happens. Apparently this has gone through a lot of changes through the years but I’m not sure this is what I wanted. You don’t really get any sign posting of where you’re going or what you’re doing but I managed to get a torch and start going into caves but my interest just fell right off. It doesn’t help that the view is incredibly zoomed out and my old eyes are squinting at the TV to try and figure out what I’m looking at. Looking at the trailer from 4 years ago it hasn’t actually changed much: Still, I think it will take more glowing reviews and impressions to make me want to jump back in, because the whole time I was playing I was just wishing I was playing Smash instead.

Played the first 80 minutes or so. Incredibly impressed so far, it has actually managed to exceed my expectations. Got quite a jarring start to it, Kidman randomly shows up and puts you back into Stem, telling you about your daughter (who knew?) being stuck in there. It's just all incredibly convenient and I'm sure Mobius is upto some Shenanigans, they're definitely using Sebastian for something...don't trust them at all. Things go wrong pretty much as soon as you enter Stem, You then find yourself in Union proper, and are funnelled into an extended tutorial, meeting some of the zombie-like enemies similar to the first game. And that's pretty much where I left it. But yeah, I'm incredibly impressed so far, the atmosphere is just absolutely horrific and the whole small foggy town vibe really reminds me of Silent Hill, I just love the way they mess with you as well through the Stem-delusions, so great to just have no idea what the fuck is going on some of the time. Oh and the graphics are a HUGE step-up from the first game, I never subscribed to the idea that the first game looked bad necessarily, but looking back on it now it was incredibly dated, just looking at the character models and lighting in the new Steam engine (modified IDTech 5), it's such a huge step up. The frame-rate has been a pretty solid 60hz but I have had a few dips to 57 or so at times, seems solid enough though to not notice for me. Some pics too:

Managed to put a little bit of time into this this morning. I am absolutely staggered at how good it is for now. Bearing in mind I've not played a mainline FIFA since '14 or '15 this just feels exactly like a mainline FIFA game, doesn't seem to be any compromises at all, feels like the real full-fat FIFA experience to me. I was playing in Docked mode in 1080p and it just felt exactly like I remember FIFA feeling like when I played the last on XBOne/PS4 in the past. I only thing I really noticed as 'missing' is the PL-partnered presentation over the matches, instead they use that older more blocky style that was in place before 2016 or so, I only knew this having watched some FIFA 16/17/18 preview videos but as I haven't played one for a while, again, it felt just the same as I remembered and lets be honest, it matters very little. Only had time to mess around in the menu's, do a bit of team management and controller setup and do one online game. Looked through all the menus and everything looked like it was in there to me apart from the single-player story thing that they came up with last year, didn't touch FUT yet so don't know how many packs you get to start with or anything but yeah that's definitely a huge inclusion right there, will have to have a word with myself to make sure I don't buy too many packs The game itself felt just like FIFA really, more fluid than I remembered maybe? Some of the technical little touches you could do, being able to lean in and shoulder-charge players off the ball and things like that felt new and the ball/player physics felt way easier to zip the ball around in, less glued to the feet than when I last played for sure. It will definitely take me a while to get used to the controls again, I'm so used to playing FIFA on xbox/PS controllers that learning to play on Cradled JoyCons will take a bit of time to get used to, it feels great to play though, just got to retrain my brain to the new face buttons. I'm quite pleased I didn't lose my first game online though despite a hell of a lot of wrong button presses! I'm sure it'll come back to me.

Anyone else given this a go? It's been free on both Xbox and PS4 now so I'be finally given it a quick go, and yeah, it very much is a Souls game. One of the main differences so far is the lack of customising your character. You can obviously level up which way you want and choose equipment but rather than the silent hero from the Souls games, they're definitely telling a story and want him to match the CG. There'a only 3 classes to choose from and I just went for the hitting things option. A couple of other differences from the Souls games: When you die you have a limited time to get your xp back and the percentage of what you regain will be lower depending on how quick you are. Also you bank xp to either spell points or attribute points. Once banked, those points are locked, but xp you haven't locked in can be lost via death. Doesn't run great. It's not terrible but it definitely seems a bit framey on console and there's a slight delay with hitting buttons and seeing animations whir into place. It's alright, might play some more. Certainly won't be deleting it just yet.

This is the follow up to To the Moon, it's a proper sequel, I was under the impression it was just going to hint at the previous game but it's the same 2 doctors and they straight up reference the events of To The Moon. It's also a sequel to A Bird Story. I don't think you need to have played either game, but To The Moon sets the world up better (and is very much worth playing), and there's a few call backs to Bird Story, they're front and centre but I don't think you need the background Gameplay wise it's a more refined version of To The Moon. You explore memories, find key moments which give you an orb, find all the orbs then find the key item that will take you to the next memory. Once you've found that there's a block puzzle to beat, these are a bit more involved than last time. It's not really the gameplay you're there for though, it's the story. I've not finished Finding Paradise yet, but so far it's still a sad little tale, but it's lowercase sad, there's not been a gut punch yet. Mostly it's been more of a mystery story, trying to piece together what's going on. I'm at the point where some stuff has been revealed, as though we're coming to the end, but there's still a lot going on that doesn't have an answer. It's cool though, not as good as To The Moon as things stand but that would be a huge ask

So this is the third game in the Bit. Trip Runner series, the sequel Bit. Trip Presents... Runner2: Future Legend of Rhythm Alien. First impression is I'm disappointed with the title of this game. Runner3 does not do the legacy of the series any justice in terms of title. It sticks pretty well to the formula made in the earlier games so if you've played one you'll know what to expect. It's an auto runner game where the obstacles and collectables create a little tune along with the game's music, and as you progress through the levels the obstacles get trickier. Simple, really. But Runner3 adds a few things to make things trickier. One of them I'm not the biggest fan of and that's vehicle sections. They just turn a very tight and nuanced game into something that feels like it comes from a much worse game. There isn't very many of them but I can't help but have an inner little groan when one comes up. The second addition doesn't seem much but it is applied in some genius and evil ways: a double jump. When I first started playing I thought the double jump was just their to make things easier, like you can correct some badly timed jump. But as you go through the game you start to see that creative use of the double jump is the only way to traverse the obstacles and get all the collectables. And sometimes double jumping is dangerous so you can't do it at all so it's not something you just do all the time; far from it. And combining it with the slight glide (hold the jump button) and the hard drop (dress down to fall quickly which was introduced in Runner2) you get some evil level design to make use of it all. These moves also make it so the levels can have multiple ways of doing them and that is explored in Gold Runs and Gem Runs where the latter is a harder route to collect everything. Sometimes the paths just fork off into a different place but there are also situations where you're required to traverse the same bit of level but in a different and harder way. And it is very hard. I think I remember Runner2 being a little easier than the original but this is much harder, at least to get everything. Maybe just going through the game not doing the gem runs would be easy enough but there is evil, evil stuff in this game and I kind love it.

Space Dave! is a follow up to Woah Dave! that came out a few years ago. It is a retro style arcade game with clever little twists that make it an interesting little game. Woah Dave! is an underrated score attack game and it seems Space Dave! is gonna have the same fate, though I don't think it's as good as Woah Dave!. So I guess that's why I'm starting a thread for it. So what Space Dave is is like a combination of Space Invaders, Galaga and Missile Command. You get waves of alien ships in formation, scrolling along the screen in different ways and you have to shoot them down and protect six trees. You're attacked by simply being shot at but they also dive bomb the ground, destroying the tree and turning the section of screen into a pool of lava, which you then have to avoid while you're protecting the others. You can fix the ground and eventually grow back the tree by killing certain enemies that drop skulls but you have to throw them at the pool of lava yourself. It's taking known, classic arcade gameplay and mixing in these new mechanics that keep the gaming loop really interesting. Oh! and you only get points for picking up pennies so having to pick up items to score adds another element of risk/reward. I think the problem with the game is the visuals. I know they're going for an a look reminiscent of pre-NES games but I just don't think it's striking enough to pull it off. But they're functional so fine. I also think they could have added more types of enemy patterns because there isn't that many and they do loop a bit too often. The bosses are pretty good, though. The fucker I'm on now can fuck off, mind. It's currently under £2 on Switch at the moment and I do think its at least worth that as a score attack game to play for 15 minutes. Or get something that plays Woah Dave! instead.

http://www.abzugame.com/ Anyway ABZÛ is an underwater adventure from the art director of Journey. I don't normally create threads for games after I've finished them, but ABZÛ is only two hours so it's kind of unavoidable. I haven't played Journey so I have no idea how similar it is to that, but in terms of "how much of a walking/swimming simulator" is it, I would say the game is pretty similar to Firewatch (and similar in terms of value for money, as impressive as both games are I'm still glad I bought them on sale and not full price). Essentially in the game you swim through a series of rooms and corridors. There are collectibles to find and light gameplay elements to the game but really they are a negligible part of the experience. Occasionally the game has on rails sections where you are swept along with the current (or the game simply takes control away from you) and these are very impressive. In general, the entire game is impressive, and enjoyable to play. The music is beautiful, one of the best game soundtracks I've ever heard. Like I said in my Steam review, of the four indie games I've completed this year (ABZÛ, Firewatch, Hyper Light Drifter and Oxenfree), ABZÛ would be my favourite. One of the reasons I like it is that it reminded me of the underwater levels in Spyro (and the ambient music reminded me of Spyro). Another reason is that it is an uplifting game, which is pretty rare. I think this would be a good game for parents to play with their children. I give it 8/10.

I've been playing a bit of the campaign, and it is so much better than I was expecting it to be. It is called War Stories and is split into five separate parts following different characters and scenarios. I've only done the first one after the prologue so far, Through Mud and Blood where you and your squad are pushing forward in a British Mk V tank, and it was really good. It is quite poignant in places, and has great use of music. It looks bloody fantastic, too. Not tried the multiplayer yet, which says something of the single player as it's normally the thing I go for first in a FPS. If you leave it on the War Stories menu long enough, a lovely piece of music with a female vocalist starts playing and it is quite beautiful.

Finally Trine has come out on PSN, and rather than the £10 the devs hinted at way back when it's actually £16 (or £17 I forget), which is actually cheaper than Steam still but disappointing all the same. Obviously whether it's worth it depends on the content that's in there and how good it. Also I had £4 in my account still which softened the blow a bit. The game is really good, and shows it pretty quickly. You start off as the thief, who can grapple to certain items and fire arrows, which are a bit shit truth be told but I'm sure will prove useful later. Once you touch the magic stone with her you take control of the lecherous and lazy wizard. The wizard can use a pointer to grab things out of reach, such as platforms or blocks, and he can also create blocks which adds to the puzzle element. Then there's the knight who has a shield on the right stick and a sword on the shoulder or square. The presentation is a bit weird. Some parts of it seem a bit cheap and unfinished, things like the load screen and menus, but then the graphics and voice acting are brilliant. That said there's been a few other things, firstly the knight glitched along while i was walking backwards with my shield up, and secondly a large block i had to pull down got stuck on a wall and wouldnt fall, so i had to force my way through the obstacle. It's really good fun though, the combat isnt perfect, but it looks like you'll be able to use the scenery to help you. There's lots of collectable to find, and some levelling up, which isnt explained all that well yet. Hopefully it's a decent size though

I feel a bit bad for Scanner Sombre, I got it because it looked cool and was cheap, then I read it was a horror game, or at least more of one than some people wanted. It isn't, but that still coloured what I was expecting of it. Truth be told its a bit long as a walking sim, it needs a little bit more going on. There's good ideas but they aren't really punchy enough so they don't break up the trudge Scanner Sombre is an invisible world, you pick up a scanner and a helmet, the scanner fires lasers that hit solid objects and builds the world in your visor (see pics). It's a cool look, especially as the colour changes dependent on how close an object is to you. Because I was told this was a horror game I was expecting this to come in to play, maybe something suddenly being closer or an area you scanned later having an empty patch. It doesn't but its still a cool look, especially around water as your visor can't map it The story I was a bit disappointed by, it shifts later on, maybe I missed the bit where it started to turn but it felt abrupt, I preferred it when it seemed to be hinting at something else, something a bit creepier. Anyway, it's cool, probably looks amazing in VR, and the creepier moments there might be where the horror reputation comes from

Or not-Overwatch. I can't talk about this game without mentioning Overwatch as it is a massive game that a lot of people have played and Paladins is very similar, to the point of being accused of being a clone. But while I don't believe that since games like this take years to plan and the were announced and released very close to one-another I think it's fair to say it isn't strictly a clone, especially since the devs history shows they've made a number of games that look like they could easily and naturally lead to this. But there is also no doubt that they have certainly leaned into being a lot like Overwatch around and post release. So its a hero shooter where you pick a character with specific skills that are tied to a certain class like Defence or Support, but this time you can't change mid-match which is an alteration I'm not against since it potentially requires some creative use out of a character if things aren't going well. If you have played Overwatch then the characters will be very familiar. Some are like character X from OW, and other are like a mix of Y and Z. And there are the odd few that draw inspiration from elsewhere. I kinda like this even as someone who played a lot of OW because Paladins feels like some weird remix where you have a character who is a mix of Tracer and Mei and trying to deal with that combo is kinda fun. On a pure gameplay level it is some OW style fun but it doesn't have the character of OW. A bunch of them are quite fun looking and charming but OW has some straight up modern iconography which is hard to stand next to. And Paladins doesn't have the character or polished presentation of OW. Character voices don't stand out as much and it makes following the gameplay a little harder since you don't have distinct verbal calls and attack effects. You know, the character and the polish in OW helps communicate the gameplay a lot and that's not quite here in Paladins, or at least its not as clear. I'm sounding more down on it than I actually am. Like I said, I'm enjoying what feels like a remix of characters to me coming from OW. And, tbh, since its been a while since I played OW playing a game that has a much lower current skill level is making it kinda chill (though not all the time). Actually, skill level is wrong... I sometimes get frustrated at some players' I've come across and their decision making. Currently I'm into it. Dunno how long for but I'm on Switch if anyone wants to play some not-Overwatch with non psychos.

Do you dislike giant insects? Are you tired of giant insects running rampant all over your city? Would you like to take your dislike for giant insects out on them with lots of guns? Then sign up to the Earth Defence Force and make giant insects rue the day they descended upon your domicile! Ok, so I've been playing this on and off with @Sly Reflex, and I've finally got enough of an impression to see how I feel about it. First off, I'm going to explain the story. Now it's tough, layered and difficult to fully grasp, but I'm going to do my best to get the nuance across... Kill the giant insects. Pick the right gun (s) for the mission and kill the giant insects. Out in the city - kill the giant insects. Out in the country - kill the giant insects. In an underground cave - kill the giant insects. Not sure if I missed this bit, but while you're doing all this you need to kill any giant insects you come across. In all seriousness, there is a story. The bugs have been gone for 7 years, and in that time they've managed to evolve, become stronger, all the rest of it. Nothing is told through cut-scenes though. It's all told through in-ear communications as you play. The dialogue is horrible though. Laugh-inducingly bad. Which in fairness, I fucking love. Music isn't bad either - low budget, suits the game, but much to say about it tbh. The budget definitely hasn't been spent on graphics either. It's all janky to say the least. But again, I like this. If you see ants on the horizon they use less frames, but it gives them this Jason and the Argonauts quality that makes it more charming - at least for me it does. The levels themselves look pretty basic too, but this means that entire fucking cities can be levelled. And I'm not exaggerating. Trying to farm some armour last night I couldn't get one of the enemies in my sights, so I whipped out the rocket launcher and just started obliterating buildings until I killed the cunt. Very satisfying. Now, gameplay... Choose from one of four classes, choose a couple of guns and, you guessed it, go kill the giant insects. I've only really spent time the Ranger - the generic class that can use plenty of different weapons. It's a nice way to learn the mechanics and, at least on normal, nothing is particularly difficult. It's just a shame that it's so reliant on grinding armour and weapons. It'd feel like it's built better if you could just progress without worrying you're strong enough to do the next level. It's unnecessary padding. I'm having a hell of a lot of fun though. This game is ridiculously low budget, but it has an undeniable charm that makes it loads of fun.

I got a discount voucher for this on Steam, and it was already on sale, so I thought I'd pick it up. I didn't/don't know anything about it but it had good reviews. It reminds me a lot of 90s pc games, I'm not 100% sure if I like it but I carried on playing it way after I wanted to go and get a drink and some dinner if that means anything It's a point & click of sorts where you're watching cctv footage of humans going about their day (well, what they do in 1 location). For example, the first screen you have is a guy taking surreptitious photographs of someone. You're "job" is to find out as much about who his and she are, which you do by finding items around the environment, listening in to conversations for key words, then googling combinations of words to get more details. Ideally you want to find a phone number to have a conversation. Or not, really all you need to do is find enough information to reply to an email with a basic question (where is camera 5 located etc). If you want you can potentially use the information to get more rewards, I'm not sure if there's options as to who you blackmail or tell, so I don't know if I could have blackmailed the pervert, but I ended that screen by talking to the management of the victim and getting a reward from them It's not entirely dissimilar to something like Papers, Please I guess, it's work. Added to that you need to feed yourself, keep yourself relatively healthy, sleep, pay the rent, and you have to keep buying screens otherwise you get cut off from the program. This is probably the more annoying part of the game, I think there's an option to not have to deal with this, it's progression, which is good, but managing your finances and time is designed to get in the way of your detective work, which I think is more what I was enjoying. I probably will go back to it, although it sounds like it saves at the start of the day, so turning off when I did means I've potentially lost the screen I solved and the one I've made a load of progress on

So this is a top down racing game. That's the nutshell at least. I saw that trailer for it a while back and just from looking at it I got a strong impression that it had some nice handling in it. And it does. It's like I have a sixth sense or something. But to be honest, apart from the handling and general act of racing the game has some frustrating things about it. So how the career mode works in MBR is you have a path to work through with it splitting off from time to time so you can get extra money, xp and "gears". Gears are obtained by doing special little missions in a race like "drift for so many metres in total" and "beat a lap in xx:xx time". There's actually quite a lot of them and do add a little pressure to the races. You then use the gears to unlock further races. The progress actually reminds me a lot of 2D Mario games; especially the "New" series if you think of the gears as the big coins. The way its done isn't too bad but since there are a limited amount of tracks, at least a lot less than there are events, you play the same tracks a lot. They are very good tracks, but they certainly could be placed in the progression in a way that makes the number of tracks seem less limited. What also is limited is the amount of vehicles. There are three in each speed class: one light, one medium and one heavy and you have to buy these with the money you've earned, and you need all three as some races require a specific weight class so I don't know why they just don't have them selectable instead of going through this buying process that doesn't add anything. It's not like you have multiple cars in each weight class to commit to. Well, there are others but they are in their own speed class and have their own races. Also, the upgrade system is as clear as mud. You get upgrades to engine, tyre, gearbox, etc and they are like consumables and they seem to be finite and when you remove one it is gone forever. It also isn't clear if it upgrades your vehicle. Like you can use it and find it has no effect. I dunno, I could be being an idiot but it kinda sucks. I also don't think the upgrades that do work even affect the performance much. But apart from the puzzling stuff in the menus the racing itself is really damn good. It has some really nice drift mechanics. When I think of Wipeout I think of how cornering is like smoothly carving the apex and this has that too; it's just as satisfying. And I think the perspective benefits it too since you can see more of the track (more specifically what is coming next to the side because of how they are laid out) the game can run faster. It's like a Scalextric track in that there are a lot of u-turns you can speed around nearly at top speed. It feels really good, especially in the lightweight buggies. The tracks as a whole are so good. They group a lot of u-turns together pretty often and there are a lot of angular turns that make me think of F-Zero on the SNES or any Mode 7 racing game except much more elaborate in that they often loop back and cross over themselves. The only thing that catches me out sometimes is because of the top down view seeing ramps and other gradients that affect handling can be hard to see until you're familiar with the tracks. I've been hankering for a good drift-y racer for a while and this is actually doing a pretty good job of satiating that. Thumbs up.

I couldn't find a thread for this, so I'm guessing no one has played it? Anyways. I have a confession.. I'm a big horror game wuss. Any game that has a thick atmosphere of dread or I know that will have jump scares, I struggle to play. Games are really good at that kinda thing. *shakes fist* So when I seen the trailer for this I thought cool, it's a sci fi game set under the ocean like Bioshock. But instead of a 1950's (? I can't remember) art deco it's a industrial Alien type feel. Coooool! ...Then I seen it was by the guys that made Amnesia. Fuuuuuck that. But I started to hear about the story/premise on GOTY podcasts and I really wanted to play it. I noticed it was on sale this week so picked it up. And so far it is indeed really fucking cool. I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum.. So stuff happens.. and you wake up in a underwater base where the shit has well and truly hit the fan. You don't have any weapons so the only way to get by enemies is to hide, peak round corners and try to sneak by. The story isn't force fed too. But you can explore. pick up objects (letters etc) and twist them about to look at them kinda like Gone Home. You can read computer terminals to try and piece things together. If you want more story it's there.. And you'll probably want more story because most interesting part of the game so far for me is there's robots.. But theses robots aren't any normal ones, theses have started to think they're human. And the game approaches the idea of what does it actually mean to be human and mental health in eerie and cool ways. There's a part early on where I checked myself and was like wait a minute! It's just a robot, why I'm I caring. I want to speak about more but I'll leave it there. Has one else played it. It's been tense so far but not massively scary...yet. It's in the sale on PS4 for like £15 at the moment. I'd recommend it.

So, Soul Calibur is out and it's the first game i've played in the series since SC on the Dreamcast, so I have absolutely no idea what's changed since, though I understand it's a bit of a series reboot - with the story continuing on from the first SC. The weird thing is, after one match everything game flooding back. I remembered a few moves with some familiar characters and it soon set in how to get enemies in the air and juggle. I managed to play around ten games online with a mate and the experience was pretty smooth, with only a little stutter happening in a couple of the matches. One of the new features is the reversal edge - where everything slows down and you're both locked into a rock-paper-scissors situation with the winner pulling off some visually spectacular move. One thing that hasn't changed over the years is it's wardrobe, with a lot of flesh in display. Ivy looks like she's just stepped out of an Amsterdam window display, and clothes can be knocked off during a match. So yeah, really enjoyed my brief time with it last night. I'm surprised how natural it all felt after not playing an SC for 19 years. It has two story modes and a character creator to get stuck into so looking forward to getting stuck into the meat and potatoes of it over the weekend.