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This is a bit like old 2d zelda games, but at the same time not that much like old 2d zelda games, there aren't really specific dungeon areas, or there are but they aren't like zelda dungeons, the world is maybe a bit like something like fez or the witness as it's a bit puzzley, but also not quite like them. the game world is full of hidden paths and secrets, anywhere there's possibly a hidden path or chest, there probably is one, you spend a lot of time walking into walls and into areas you can't see properly to find this stuff but i like the exploring. the combat is supposed to be pretty hard and i nearly got killed by one of the first bad guys so turned the accessibility options on pretty quick - infinite health and stamina - this sort of negates some of the items/pickups which are for combat/health but you don't really need them any more, for me it's definitely the right choice as i'm rubbish at the combat and would probably die a lot and give up, and the puzzling/exploring is still good fun and the main draw of the game for me. there is a problem with infinite health though, it's a very open world and you can pretty much go anywhere from the start - especially if the harder enemies can't stop you. so from the start i probably followed the proper path for the first hour, got the sword etc. then the next 2 to 3 hours were spent doing the wrong things in the wrong places, but you can still get powerups/collectables in these areas so it's not a complete waste of time, but i'll probably need to go back to these places later. but i still enjoyed this exploration. i think i had most of the other weapons in the game before i got the shield which i think youre supposed to get early on. but after this i looked up some stuff so i could make some progress, as i wasn't sure what i was looking for i thought these doors were blocking me but turns out they were for later on but finding out how to open some of them as i go along will save having to find them again later. anyway then made pretty quick progress through the first main section of the game but then i didn't know what to do after that so looked up some more stuff just to point me in the right direction, turns out you need to collect things, i already had one of them. the game barely explains anything to you, well it does but in a round about way - you get manual pickups - like pages of the in game manual, but they are only partially in english. the manual does explain a lot but you can miss the pages or get them out of order so it can be pretty confusing. some things i wish i'd known earlier than the manual tells you - i found these by looking up stuff on the internet but think the manual tells you at some point: so yeah overall i'm enjoying it, the exploration and puzzles are fun. i think i'd prefer more hand holding personally as while i have worked a lot of stuff out on my own i've also looked up quite a lot too. edit - it's on gamepass

There wasn't a thread for this, I think. Unless it got deleted. Anyway, I am 20 hours in. At the end of the first 'area'. It looks like a Souls like game on the surface, but the similarities are largely on the surface. This is mostly a hardcore action game in the same kinda vein as Ninja Gaiden, but with Soulslike concepts to how it designs its action rather than the more DMC-like ethos of NG. But I wouldn't really consider it like Souls, cause I think Souls is a lot of exploring and dealing with traps, and then some simple but punishing combat. This is purely about studying very complicated combat, and exploring very simplistic and repetitive levels. At least, that's the impression after clearing the first area 20 hours in or so. So it's really hard. If I'm quite honest, it's a game which can make me fairly miserable. I'm not having the best of times with it at this early stage, so I'm not sure if it's a future candidate for 'fucked off game' or whatever the thread is called. However I am really interested in what's going on with its combat, and it really demands that you study that combat to pass even the basic challenges the game throws your way. You have three stances, high mid and low. High is heavy attacks with lots of stamina drain, lots of health and 'ki' damage ('ki' is what they call stamina). Mid is in between that and 'low', which is fast and low committal. Each stance has different properties to its dodge as well, and I think block costs different amounts of ki in each stance The reason for the three stances is a mechanic called 'Ki Pulse', which is a timed 'burst' of white energy after every active skill and combo string. You press r1 at the right time and you recover your 'ki'/stamina more quickly and has other properties later on. So for the BnB combat in this you're looking at trying to figure out an approach which combines these different stances, taking note of attack properties and recovery times, as well as ki cost and trying to space the enemy out. It sounds like a lot, right? It is, it's a lot. It's a really hard game. The RPG comes in the form of lots of inventory management, which sucks. It also comes in the form of a FFX Sphere Grid style upgrade system for your different weapon skills, which is the part that's really interesting. You use a weapon a lot and it gives you a skill point which you can invest in certain skills. Like a quick kick for a chain-scythe type weapon, which is useful to proc 'ki pulse' cause it's quick and recovers quick. Or a parry move (which seems universal to every weapon), which can get further upgraded to have followups. You can equip/unequip the moves and replace with others God hand style (parry is not my style, it's hard enough to react to reactable shit in this so I use alternatives). More impactful are these buffs you unlock which grant different properties to the ki pulse for each stance. So if you get a perfect ki pulse on high stance, you get a damage buff. On mid stance, you get a 'free' block (which is a lot more important than you think for fishing for openings, at least at the beginner level I am at). then low stance gives you a free dodge. tbh, I've not been using that one as much, but mainly cause I don't know when to do so. But anyway, skills and buffs get chained together looks to be the gist of it. You don't just mash square to get through (I think). I'm speccing for fists and 'Kusarigama', which is like a scythe on a chain that pulls guys or your own guy in, and has moves to retreat and back off. Mainly I'm using the fists right now though. In general the combat is sort of based around dealing lots of posture damage, which when fully depleted puts regular enemies in a spot where you can grapple them and boss enemies in a spot where every attack deals hitstun and you can go to town. So fight design and your build combine to create very difficult combat puzzles. They repeat enemies and minibosses a lot to make you learn harder and harder variants of that combat puzzle also Here is me finally defeating Bojack, and putting an end to his terrible nonsense once and for all. Pretty basic gameplay but it's a very hard game to learn even basic stuff in. Also, you have a kind of Oni mode, called Yokai. You power up and mash the buttons, use it during the monochrome segments where they drain your ki. You can also cancel anything into a quick yokai move which you equip. The moves do things like toss spears or summon snakes. Apparently there's some defensive ones as well So yea, there's some pretty deep stuff going on for an action RPG. On the combat side anyway, everything else seems fairly prefab (levels and enemies). It takes forever to figure out basic stuff tho btw, I'm playing on PC. The port is great. It wasn't great when it came out but I guess they fixed whatever was wrong with it from back then.

Forspoken demo, put a few hours into it and beat the boss on normal mode. It has some neat ideas, and I think it is sorta like an air dashy Dragon's Dogma. However the luminous engine (FFXV engine) is still such a dog when it comes to combat. Or maybe not the engine, whatever framework it is the FFXV people build their combat off. My big problem with it and also XV is the way melee attacks are contextual based off proximity and your character sort of magnetises to enemies. The automatic feel is still just absolutely terrible. On the other hand, Forspoken has a really cool magic system which has some interesting layers to it. Here's the boss I beat up. Here I slogged for an eternity killing these dumb gators. The visuals of this game are not well suited for a game like this. The particle effects make it very noisy to look at. The resolution is not high enough and the framerate is not high enough. This kind of game needs 4k 60 native, it has this weird reconstruction stuff going on that doesn't work well with the particles maybe. It just doesn't run well enough in this build for the combat to feel good. Hopefully at release it is better. That said, I'm still interested in this game. Even if it ends up a 6/10 on release it's rare you get open world games with varied combat. Especially magic combat, which is usually just about keeping away. When you chain the spells together and mix in the range attacks and distance closers it can be pretty cool looking edit I played some more later, I actually had a really good time this time. I'm more confident in the game now, maybe it can be a 6.5 lol I think the general idea in combat is your r2 spam melee moves are your main damage moves, and your cooldowns set up safe opportunities to spam them. Other than that you need to hang back a bit and spam the 'gun' attack. The radial wheel is not very clean to use, I wish they had a better shortcut mapping system. But I think it works well enough, especially if you set it to pause on opening the wheel and play it like FFVII Remake's wait mode a bit

Have spent around 7 hours with it or so, just mashing around in neutral. The game looks beautiful. I prefer its look to strive, even tho I like the 2d look of that I much prefer the clean look of this, where everything is more readable. Right now you're thrown into a very mixed pool of skill levels, tho there is a generally high enough level of cluelessness and the new mechanics are so powerful that you can sort of get by. I don't know what cancels into anything so I'm just really mashing out opportunities to knock somedown and hit them with fake-ass meaties. Did a 5 match set with some random luke and it was 3-2 to him. had a one and done with a juri just now, she won, but I'm happy I converted drive impact into super at around 15:00. That's my gamer goal achieved for now, who cares that I got bodied :x Then I played Mr Hadouken, the reason I got so bothered by the fireballs is i forgot which of Kimberly's kicks low profiles the fireballs, it's forward down medium kick I think. Also I kept trying to do it on frame disadvantage, anyway put a stop to that shit Drive impact seems.. well impactful. It's a very high committal move with lots of startup and recovery which armours through your opponent's offense (you take some damage but it takes multihits to knock you out of it, or a grab). I imagine at mid to higher levels it introduces a more dangerous kind of RPS into pressure and neutral interactions. It's one of those things where it's hard to know how people will feel about it until the meta settles after the game's release. Right now it's one of those mechanics which I'm just giving the benefit of the doubt to, that when the full game is understood it won't feel so caveman-like. Your ex gauge or whatever it is called is used to control your access to your ex moves (think they have a different name in this, it's when you press two buttons at once for more powerful attacks and conversions). But it also gets drained on block, so if you're very passive you get 'burnt out' or something which means other than you get dizzy and stuff and they can just wail on you. But there are also mechanics in the game to gain that meter back, only one I know of is the parry mechanic which is when you see someone sort of go all blue and smokey, don't really know how to leverage that yet though. I guess there's other things which return meter but I need to learn about it more There's also a mechanic called drive rush, it uses 3 out of your 6 bars to extend pressure and combos, similar to GG roman cancel. You can see the Juri use it, it's when she goes all green and shit (and you can see me labbing it in the training before the match). Seems like a hell of a high cost to do that though. Training mode has cool utilities to display when something is special cancellable and also where the 'links' are in move properties to link into the next normal, which is very useful as the concept and timings of links is something I'm not used to. They seem to have really good teaching tools for that kinda stuff. I'll probably spend a few more hours with it but I largely don't go too crazy with fg betas cause it's just not enough time for me to comfortably spend figuring stuff out. But getting a general sense of the system mechanics is all I really want atm anyway. I don't think I'll main Kimberly in the main game but mostly cause I want to try a more of a zoner character, and everyone in the beta is a rushdown from what I see. I think her gameplan is a combination of controlling neutral space with the canister bombs, and using same bombs to setup pressure concepts in the corner. She has a sprint move which can be cancelled to throw people off, haven't figured out how to really use it tho. She has command grab finishers to some of her stuff. Some of her stuff seems mad fake to me though, like the cross up heavy kick forward thing she has. I don't know how you make that ambiguous, tho ultimately again this is not the character I'm interested in playing just the one that appealed most in the beta. I'll probably stick with her going forward into additional betas tho, to keep up some learning momentum with how short these things are. Diaphone has some cool stuff with the character https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1614357197 Netcode is fine, rollback like Strive. Get basically the same number of frames in this as I do that. Anyone else get in?

Full disclosure I’ve only played 30 minutes of actual gameplay as my eyelids weighed about 500lb. I really like the style of it and opening. Once you’re set free to play you’re pleasantly set up for revenge. The next gen (playing on XSX) has proper elevated this game from past entries. It looks gorgeous but most impressive of all is the draw distance, amount of vegetation and that it is all crisp and clear to boot. Gameplay is how you’d expect from a far cry, or any half decent fps really. The machete is nice and lethal for stealth plays. I’ll be making good use of that. It was real fun to have my own personal alligator run alongside me. I look forward to diving back in.

I’m blitzing through games now. Norco is a point and click adventure game set in New Orleans. The location alone gives it a very strong Gabriel Knight vibe. I say point and click adventure but Norco is closer to a conversation ‘em up. Most of the gameplay in the first hour plays out through conversations. Similar to games like Read Only Memories and Va-11 Hall A, and of course, Disco Elysium, without the rpg elements. The game also has a strong Kentucky Route Zero vibe. Let’s see if it lives up to the reviews.

Booted this up for the first time today just for a look see... played for a couple of hours and completed four levels. For those not in the know it's a Steam punk (I guess) take on Westerns mixed with Vampires which I thought was going to be much more shooter orientated than it is... it's actually much closer to the newer God of War games than Gears of War, shit, you even open and smash chests the same way as Kratos does. So there's a definite leaning towards melee combat over ranged but there's Guns involved obviously being a Western. These work on a cool down rather than relying on ammo drops and are mainly used for hitting exposed weak points with the rifle or chip damage for the pistol then there's the sawn off which is great for obliterating shields... all standard stuff for anyone who's played a third person adventure game anytime recently. So far in terms of levels it feels very old school with very linear levels designed to funnel you from one encounter to the next. As for looks it's been a very mixed bag so far, actual game play looks ok, I'm not sure if it's a design choice or what but there's a really weird glow with everything... fire sources are ridiculously bright and this isn't even an hdr enabled game and then you have the cutscenes which everything just looks muddy and crushed to fuck... I'm not sure whats going on there. Funnily though the pictures I'll post look a damn sight better then they do on a tv.🤷‍♂️ So a bit of a mixed bag... plays fine, looks a little ropey.

So, the first game was a very enjoyable car-crash. They’ve skipped straight to 3, because why not. And this is legitimately one of the funniest games I’ve played this year. It starts by ripping off the intro to Skyrim (and openly admits as such). Then you’re set loose into the world, to cause total carnage. If you played the original, you’ll know what you’re in for. If not….Jesus, where do I start? You’re a goat. You can lick things and drag them around. You can headbutt stuff. That’s pretty much it. The rag doll physics are proper funny. Head butting an explosive barrel, causing people to go flying is a riot. You can catch on fire/electricity, and spread that through a crowd. There’s various tasks to do, which gift you in game currency. Which you then use to unlock add-ons to customise your goat. Currently I’m rocking a molten lava skin, with 4 paint cans stuck on my feet, and tennis balls on my horns. Most of the add-ons are cosmetic only , but some have powers you can trigger at will. My personal favourite is a firework launcher. Which when fired at cars/ people, causes them to go rocketing into the air at 90mph, ragdolling furiously. That’s had me cry-laughing repeatedly. As you run around the open world, you’ll encounter random missions you can do. Which reward you with more cash, and usually a cosmetic. There’s already been several Easter eggs relating to other games/franchises. So again, many laughs to be had. Oh, and it’s 4 player online co-op as well. Not tried that yet, but I imagine it’ll be utter carnage. So, yeah. This has been bloody hilarious thus far.

it's a bullet hell game, and it's really good! which was sort of surprising as it's by NGDEV, i've not played all their previous games but the ones i have played were sort of average i guess. i'm not sure how to explain what makes a bullet hell game good to me, it's all about the dodging, so the bullet patterns have to be fun to dodge basically, i feel like there's a lot of shmups that don't get this right enough, as in they get it right part of the time and they're fun enough, but only cave stuff and a few others get it right most of the time, and it's early days but this seems to be doing a great job here. imo anyway. there's a few difficulty modes, practice, missions, a roguelike mode which gives you random powerups or something? there's a nice bullet hell tutorial too which explains some stuff really well. unfortunately i also have a problem with the game which is the checkpoint system, i really hate checkpoint systems, i mean it's not as bad as it could be and a lot of people seem to like checkpoint systems and i want people to try the game because it's so good so i'll try not to whine about it too much! I'd usually post about this in the shmups thread but giving it a go in a thread of it's own, see how it goes (probably badly) pc only for now i think but as the trailer below shows it's coming to everything. anyone else giving it a go? edit - steam link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2025840/Gunvein/

Started this last weekend and have got about 90 minutes in, in Act 3. Hasn't made much of an impression on me either way at this stage. I really like the atmosphere and unique HR Giger-Alien-esque inspired visuals, it looks and feels really unique and the only similar title I can come up with is something like SOMA. The way it plays is a little less original, it feels much like an old school PS2-style puzzle game really, there isn't a lot of direction and you're completely left to your own devices to figure out what's going on and what you need to do at any given time. So far I've been put in a level that you're free to wander about and in that level are various weird contraptions you'll have to suss out what they do and what goes into them etc. and once figured out this'll eventually open a door to a new area. The beginning of Act 2 was a bit of an anomaly though as you're just put in this linear desert-like environment and left to figure out where to go, luckily it's pretty easy to discern the path but yeah, no puzzles during this bit. I have been using a guide throughout as I'm so bad at puzzle games and got stuck for awhile at the beginning just in the prologue area lol. So yeah, it's alright, I wouldn't pay anywhere near the £33 they're asking for it on Steam but as a short GP title it's a nice palette cleanser of a game as long as you don't expect to much from it. Pics:

I’ve played about 3 hours or more of the campaign which I believe is about half way. It’s alright but it’s like a ‘best of’ of the series. Think of it as a Now That’s What I Call CoD! Track listing includes: A swimming bit. A sniper bit. A gunner in the skies bit. All the hits dating back many years. The story and overall attitude of the game is awful I’ll say that. Dude bros with guns. No one is likeable or too much different for anyone else. The game is very linear as to how you can tackle each short segment. Be a few metres away from where it wants to be and you’re killed. I look forward to multi once the campaign is done with.

Well this pretty much came out of nowhere. Like, I didn’t even realise it was out. I remember it being announced, but not much after that. The original Tales game was one of the best things Telltale came out with (Walking Dead peaked after their first season, and by the end was crap). I’m not an expert of the franchise, I’ve only finished 1 and 2, and some of the DLC. But that didn’t stop me from having a great time with Tales. So, now we have the sequel. Though it’s “episodic”, it plays out as one big game, giving you a break between episodes. I’ve just finished Episode 1. And so far, it’s off to a good start. The dialogue has been amusing enough. The story, which switches between 3 playable characters, seems solid enough. There’s zero puzzles, so you’re mostly down to making dialogue choices, and occasionally wandering around the area to trigger the next set piece. There’s a fair few Quick Time Events, but they’re easy enough. One review said that the hacking mini game is laughably easy. It is indeed, and makes you wonder what the point of them even is. It warns you “failure has repercussions”. But honestly, you’d have to put your controller on the floor, to fail them. The IGN review said the final episode is a train wreck, and almost ruins the game completely. We will see how that plays out. But so far, yeah, this seems decent enough.

Roller Drome seemed to get talked about a lot right before release, then no one mentioned it again. It's a CEL shaded roller skate arena game with similar muted colours to Sable. Presumably deliberately it reminds me of old 70s genre films. The concept is kind of Running Man, you enter arenas and have to shoot the house players. To reload you have to do tricks, this refills your ammo, killing enemies gets you health back,and there's a bunch of different enemy types. I wasn't feeling this originally, it just felt flat and boring, frustrating even. Movement can be a bit odd, you don't control your momentum, press forward to start then leave it, concentrate on steering, jumping and tricks. Get close enough and there's an auto aim to shots, with some of the weapons having slight tricks to them. There's a dodge, time this with the slow down time mechanic, usually used for aiming, and you get an extended period of slowed time. There's challenges to the levels, things like performing certain tricks, kill enemies with certain weapons, and I think it's this stuff that was annoying me. It's probably best to just beat a level then revisit it and try to get one or two challenges each time, that's not how I was approaching it. You need to beat a certain number of challenges to unlock the next set of levels, so I was trying to beat everything all at once, you just don't have that sort of control early on, or I didn't, I did much better when I came back after a break and went back to the earlier levels. I'm still not sure I see the really high scores for it, but when it does all click with you it is fun, really fun at points

Sam wants meaningful feedback so I'll try and give some here. It certainly is a follow up to Fallout 3 in that it is still that at it's core. You have a big, dilapidated open world for you to rummage through, explore and have your own little story. It's that stuff again. But the introduction to this game makes it difficult to like. Your character and equipment just aren't up to snuff when you start off. I died a ridiculous amount on my first proper task, and even when I found a craftier way of completing the mission unforeseen things would happen and I'd have to go again. I just felt like the game was slapping my hand every time I tried something which didn't happen nearly as much in Fallout 3. I also got attacked by a high level glowing Ghoul when I was minding my own business just after I'd talked to a merchant and was killed instantly... while on the main road just outside the starting area. They have improved the shooting but it seems at the moment that V.A.T.S isn't as good so I'm unsure how to play it now. In F3 since the shooting was so shit I only ever used it as cover fire while V.A.T.S charged up then I'd go for a full attack but that doesn't seem to work as well here. During the mission mentioned previously I feel like it wanted me to go full CoD since enemies were lobbing grenades and molotovs like confetti and I just couldn't do anything about it. I just ran off. Maybe it gets better as more unlocks become available but I don't remember being this frustrated during the intro of the previous Fallout games. They had their issues but not like this. It feels really slap dash and unconsidered. But I think the game looks fine. It's the least of my worries.

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:

cheers for the games Duck! it's early days, and a bit all over the place, but i quite like what i've played of this so far. i worry i'll get annoyed with the aiming in the long run. needs more auto aim imo.

I’m about two hours into this on the Switch. I’ve been playing the main game, haven’t tried the visual novel prequel thing yet. But I’ll probably play them concurrently. The game takes a few twists and turns early on, but nothing overly dramatic. So far, typical jrpg opening (as jrpg stories go). The combat is quite unique though. Enemies have elemental types and during battles there is an elemental field, which, depending on the elemental spells used causes certain elements to get stronger and the opposite type weaker. For example blue and red (water and fire) are opposites. If you use a blue elemental spell, the blue area of the elemental field (this is shown on the screen) will grow larger, and blue spells will become stronger and red spells weaker. One interesting tactic connected to this is when fighting enemies of different element types, their spells can antagonise each other, which can affect the order in which you might want to take them down. In addition to that, when you do a normal attack, you can choose between weak, medium and strong. Weak attacks have high accuracy and strong attacks low accuracy. Every hit that connects raises the accuracy of subsequent attacks. It’s up to you how you choose to string combos together. There’s more to combat than that but those are just a couple of interesting points.

Played til 3am last night, found a dragon. Hardly done ANY story stuff but it's structured in a way where you can't really tell if it's story or not, I did one thing which I thought was pretty out of the way and then it ended up kind of tying in with the story. Managed to kill me some giants and some mammoths, the enemy scaling seems to be pretty nicely sorted, nothing has been particularly easy but it's obvious that there are different levels of challenge available to you. The example pre release was fallout, and taking on one of the giants reminded me of one of the super mutants from that game, they just roam around waiting to be found and if you keep plugging away and are smart then you can take one down, I used a combination of sneak and range, taking a few shots then running off where it couldn't get and then using sneak to hide and then wear them down. Then rushing in when the giant is low on health with my two swords. Levelling up feels better, like a mix of how it was before by doing stuff and it gets better, but also by you choosing skills along those branches you increase, effectively unlocking the ability to choose something on your skill trees. It's never felt like a grind in the way it did before, it's like it was sold to us, you play how you want and you level around that. I'm sort of aiming to be a snooty sneaky character but I also want to be good with two sorts and I think I might start putting more time into crafting stuff, items or weapons I'm not sure yet. As far as critique goes, there are small flaws to be found, examining a texture very very close up shows that it isn't perfect, I don't particularly like the controls( I'm playing on PC don't you know) but the things wrong with it are so minor that you either won't notice that much or won't care, there's so much that it does right. More impressions later on, but can't disagree with the review scores. Edit: for the records it does actually look amazing.

I played this on game pass, having tried the demo during one of those Steam events and liking it. Beacon Pines is a cutesy storybook adventure with darker undertones. The big conceit is you find "charms" through talking to characters, looking at things in the environment or overhearing other characters etc. At certain points in the story you're presented with the option of choosing from 2-3 of these charms to decide what action take in that situation. The story branches off according to the choice you make, you might die a grizzly death or head off on a completely different version of the story. You can go back to any of these branches and try the other options, sometimes you'll find another charm down one branch that lets you make a different choice in an earlier decision. The branching thing is more superficial in the end than how the game initially presents it to you, you end up exploring most of the decisions on the way to getting the ending anyway, but it's fun and engaging. It's about 5 hours or so in length, which is just right. It doesn't overstay it's welcome. The presentation and art style are top notch.

I’m about an hour into this on Switch. It has the same kind of relaxing vibe as A Short Hike, although I would not say it’s as good as that game, so far. The art style reminds me of Hidden Folks. The game is literally just you running around taking pictures for people. It’s very pleasant, although for Eurogamer to call this “essential” is stretching the meaning of essential…

About time for some impressions, I think. So its a 2D fighting game made by ArcSystem Works, a studio famous for its 'Anime' fighting games. They usually have a lot of systems and movement options as well as combo systems that can be extended to let players do some crazy stuff as long as they have the execution to do them, which is usually quite hard to do. They have made it simpler here. The first thing is its very easy to 'get in' in DBF since you have a button that activates the 'Dragon Dash' which has you fly across the screen and home into your opponent, and it also goes through most projectiles so for beginners fighting each other having that is useful for swiftly getting in. But it is very punishable, so learning when to use it properly is an early lesson. It has a few mechanics to aid beginners because I'm sure they recognise that this is a Dragon Ball game and a number of people playing it won't necessarily be into fighting games, they'll just be fans of the show so letting them have a good time is a priority here. One of the other ways they do this is by having auto-combos (performed by repeatedly pressing the light attack (LA) or medium attack (MA) for a more powerful variant that ends in a metre costing super). They're not a thing I'm fond of as they won't teach you the game that well but they do make for some cool looking action. The auto-combos, in fact, are totally unique combos. In a lot of other games, they are the same visually as manual combos but do less damage. And since they are unique here its a shame to see them locked into the auto-combos and not be able to do them manually. For example, Frieza, a character I use has a really cool looking move in the first part of his auto-combo which launched them into the air. So what I sometimes do to mix things up is perform the first half of the A-C then go into a manual one when in the air. But I wish I had the option to do this move anytime. But while there is a very flashy and basic fighter there is a high skill ceiling here as well, which you will discover at the time of writing when you go online. It isn't as high as ArcSystem's other games but there is still quirky stuff. Since this is a 3v3 fighter you can call in a member of your team to do a one-off move and jump out again. Using these can give you the ability to get hits in and continue combos where you couldn't without. Or they can be used to cover approaches, help defend etc. There is also the little mechanic also found in ArcSytem's other games; the jump cancel. Its something I've always known about but I've not really put serious time into learning but if you want to get beyond hammering out basic stuff you gotta get used to it. Essentially any medium attack can be jump cancelled. A common thing to do would be crouching MA (which puts them in the air a little), standing MA (pops them up a little more) then hit up while the animation is still happening to quickly meet them in the air. Since you can only use your proper launchers and Dragon Dash once per combo link it frees you up to use them later in the combo and its the mastery of this that really frees up the fighting system as a whole. It's here where it really gets fun. I've not really played the story yet but I hope to get round to it soon (it's kinda bonkers it's about the Dragon Ball gang being controlled by an entity and they turn to the camera when referencing this entity) and it also has this weird turn-based map system between fights. There's other stuff. Sparking Blast and how the online seems to be kinda borked at the moment in that the games run fine until it kicks you out of the lobby for no reason, but this will do for now.

I have very mixed feelings about this. I love the feeling of adventure, of not knowing what's down the road and if you'll be able survive. It's brilliant when you do overcome the odds and press on after a tough battle. The combat system is great with loads of customisation on offer, you're even encouraged to change class altogether. The Pawn system works really well, being able to hire and fire helpers and changing the composition of your group entirely as the situation demands. Despite all the good bits, the game so far has felt as though i'm playing the middle portion of an RPG where i'm clearing up fluff quests just to pad out the leveling process. There's been no gravitas or urgency to the quests so it's difficult to differentiate between the story and side quests. Things like not having fast travel I can understand why they left out even though it's annoying to have to walk to the same places over and over. I'm surprised more games don't use the MMO style flight paths to get around. You still get to where you're going quicker but you have to travel to a specific place, rather than just magically teleporting everywhere. It's a happy medium between the two. There's other things which are pretty minor and affect my enjoyment more than they probably should. For instance, why did they overlook mini-map markers for people who have something to say? It's incredibly frustrating having to run around looking for colored speech bubbles above NPCs heads. Likewise with the Pawns. As good as the system is it grates when in combat and you're unable to issue commands for something as simple as a weapon buff - the option just doesn't exist. Most of the time you just have to wait for them to apply the correct buff which is very frustrating against the larger enemies. For all it's issues, there are times when this incredible game shines through, and that's what makes it worth playing. I just wish it was more consistent.

Been playing a lot of this the past week, the openmw version (which is an open source re-implementation of the game engine to run better on modern systems, with more modern visual tweaks while still being the same old ass game). It's a game I've a ton of half hearted attempts at getting into but this is more of a proper attempt, primarily cause I figured out how to install openmw on steam deck and get save syncing working between it and pc using something called syncthing. If people are interested there's guides out there to get openmw working on deck, you want that, you don't want vanilla cause it won't run as good or play as well. I did try to see if there was a thread to bump but seems there isn't, so I mean the effort was made there. Maybe it exists but I can't find it 🤷‍♂️ Anyway, it's cool. It's very interactive in the way Bethesda games usually are but moreso in some ways and less so in others if you compare it to their modern output. Everything is dice-rolley as fuck. Even casting a spell can fail if you aren't properly learned in its school of thought, even if you have the spell 'learned'. Getting around doing quests means following actual directions relative to specific cities and locations on the map, one quest in particular is given to you as a series of sermons from a church which follows the teachings of 'Vivec', who is like Morrowind's JC figure, telling you to go to specific locations like caves beneath vivec city or a big wall made out of the remains of deceased dark elves and give offerings. You have to figure that shit out yourself, it's up to you, and it's a cool approach which demands you actually spend time reading books of lore and listening to what people say to even know what the hell a 'ghostgate' even is or why you probably shouldn't press beyond it cause it's a bit shit on the other side. Anyway, this will be the time I beat Morrowind. The really wordy bits where you spend ages reading actual novella length backstories of a Dark Elf queen and demigods tearing things apart and putting them back together are pretty well suited to deck gaming, tho in general the whole game is tbh. It's got an immersive sim quality to the way you can figure out some stuff, like it doesn't have a fast travel system, not really, so getting from Pelegiad to Balmora is a bit of a pain but there are some workarounds like this involving alteration and special potions There's others which require you to invest a bit of time into the game's systems, like being able to use telekinesis to open booby-trapped doors from across the room, or use the same skill to pickpocket someone really far away without having to take risks out in the open. Right now my khajit is a neophyte in a lot of this stuff and all his potions have the fun secondary effect of causing temporary status decreases, so a little bit of poison to go along with the buff, but my more recent potions have less of that in it. It's clunky and difficult but a lot of the quests and skills force you to invest the time to interrogate the RPG clockwork which allows you to do lots of interesting stuff, while at the same time improving your understanding of the world itself and its history. It's not quite botw cause you don't have a physics engine but finding different interactions is still a lot more interesting here than in Oblivion imo which while it had tons of physics interactions they did not improve the gameplay which was mostly just action based. I never played enough Skyrim to really have an informed take on it but I didn't get into it in any of my attempts (X360, PC and PCVR). Besides Morrowind it is probably my biggest gaming blindspot, but unlike Morrowind I'm not as likely to address it I think cause I kinda know what it is but MW still has lots of fun unknown stuff for me cause even now it feels pretty unique and worth playing, even 20 years on Quest wise it's being mostly ascending to apprentice-hood in the thieves guild and mages guild, at the same time as trying to decide which of the three houses suits me best (decided Hlallu cause they about money) and deciding if I want to do a fighter's guild quest where someone is asking me to kill fellow guild mates, if there's any consequences to it or whatever. All my stats are heavily speech and money focused, which is a probably weird way to play the game. But the way you are supposed to do things anyway is cram points in your misc skills to get the most level ups rather than just focus on your base 10 stats. So figuring out the mysteries of conjuration, illusion, alteration and mysticism is what I'm into, too magicka starved to go into the deep end of some higher level magicks or destruction tho

So this is an odd one. Because the game tells you nothing at all going in, I think it's important to know what the set-up is, but some people might feel it's a spoiler, so I'll hide the conceit behind a spoiler tag. I'm enjoying what I've played so far although the controls are a bit fiddly. It's a fantastic idea that you rarely see in games (and the medium is well suited to it) so I hope it does well for them. Epic Store exclusive for now, I believe. Also on Game Pass on Xbox.

This is like edgy Deus Ex, it's immersive sim with a Rob Zombie soundtrack, or if JC Denton shopped at Hot Topic. It's the most 2004 thing you'll ever play, but it manages to thread the line well enough that it stays interesting. Especially if you were into the style this game is going for, if you had like an emo or nu-metal phase or whatever. Also vampires are supposed to be edgy so it would be dumb to complain about. It's an immersive sim with all the same building blocks as Deus Ex. Social engineering skills, special combat abilities, hacking emails and picking locks type of stuff. Hack to find the password, or intimidate a guy into giving it to you. Rewarding players for thoroughly exploring levels to find unique ways to deal with things, tho the actual missions in the game are a bit of a mixed bag and not quite on a Deus Ex 1 level. You do get the standard selection of nice and dickhead dialogue choices tho, with interesting consequences which interact well enough with the game's economies (mentioned below) It's probably more about the style and atmosphere though, and what makes it unique though is some of the other economies that exist in the game. One being your 'humanity', which goes from 0-10. You gain humanity if you help save an innocent, you lose it if you harm innocents (which can also mean stealing, not just killing), both of which can happen organically in gameplay or as a consequence of a quest decision. So if you explore thoroughly and pick the right dialogue you can remain a decent vampire, but sometimes it's not a bad idea to fall into beasthood a little bit. Maybe a guard is in the way and you don't want to engage with the terrible stealth mechanics, for instance. Flipside is you will lose out on certain dialogue options if you become more of a monster (have not seen what so far). The other thing is masquerade violations. Betraying the existence of vampires is one, feeding in plain sight can trigger that. Apparently they send vampire hunters after you and if you get 5 violations the game completely ends, or something like that, which sounds pretty hardcore to me. I don't know how you would trigger it outside of doing something incredibly stupid tho. Then obviously blood is a resource as well, used for 'casting spells' or buffing yourself. You can also feed it to other people Its story is about vampire politics and stuff, trying to take control of LA. There's some branching story decisions it looks like depending on which of the main story factions you align with but not sure how far it goes. I picked my clan by just picking answers from a questionnaire and was assigned Tremere, not cause it seemed the most interesting but I figure it's better to sort of role play it and pick whatever suboptimal class the game throws at you. They're physically weak and good at shooting guns, hacking and blood magic which causes everyone in the vicinity to vomit blood and stuff, so you'll know me by the trail of bloody vomit and hacked emails. There's another clan called Malkavian which sees the future which apparently means their dialogue choices spoil future events in the story, which sounds like a really funny and novel idea but definitely not how I wanted to start off. I'm way into it, I think. The technical quality of it is a mixed bag but it's pretty immersive. Anyway hopefully they pull that sequel into shape at some point.