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So, this has been out a while on PC and is soon coming to consoles and now i've finally got around to giving it a go. Like the first game, It's an insanely open CRPG where you can pretty much tackle most situations anyway you like and has an excellent elemental based combat system (cast a rain spell and electrocute it to shock everyone, poison clouds are combustible - that sort of thing). The customisation is nuts - you can spec out your starting character any way you like, even specifying the main instrument used for dramatic musical moments (I went for the cello). You can even choose which specialty you want any other characters who join to have. Once your past the first 'tutorial' area your left to your own devices exploring an area around a fort. There's very little hand holding here and every NPC is worth talking to - the writing is fantastic. The detail level in the areas is bonkers. I'm only a few hours in, and the fights have kicked my arse a few times (still working out a solid character load out) but it's awesome. Oh - and it has full co-op as well which i'm hoping to start up this weekend with three others.

This hasn't reviewed amazingly, and while I loved Far Cry 3 and Blood Dragon, I couldn't muster to energy to do the same stuff again in far Cry 4 and 5. In fact I booted up Far Cry 4 towards the end of last year because I wanted a nonsense fps to play, and I still couldn't. I ended up doing the pacifist ending, then booted it back up and ran about it bit, then realised I just couldn't be arsed For whatever reason the more I've seen of Far Cry New Dawn the more I've been interested in it. I think knowing that it's shorter is a big part of it, like I said I loved 3 but the amount of time I spent with it, doing the same routine over and over did start to drag by the final island, although at the time I put that down to me doing everything before moving the story on. New Dawn looks amazing, maybe a bit too amazing. I'm playing it on high settings (it can go to ultra) on a GTX 1080 at 1080p, and I still get framerate drops to 50 every now and then. It's less when there's lots of combat, more when I'm in dense woodland with lots of mist and fog. Which I mention because it is ridiculously dense, so dense I've been bitten by snakes I couldn't see, and have to rely on watching when and where my A.I. teammate starts screaming and where she's shooting at. I'm impressed with how it looks though, I had this pegged as a bit half-arsed, and granted it could be I didn't play 5, but the colour and the environments look great Gameplay wise it's kind of just Far Cry. It's not as reliant on taking back encampments as the old games, although there are still some, and there's no radio towers. You're still randomly getting attacked by animals, and there's still a skill tree, you're still playing good guys vs bad guys. Enemies take more damage before they go down than I remember, with some enemies having a 2nd health bar, possibly a 3rd but I've not seen that yet. You're kind of dumped out in to the open world pretty early, you have a story mission but it's far enough across the map that you can't help but do other things along the way. A lot of the side stuff involves you stopping trucks, be it for all important ethanol or less important humans, chasing them down isn't fun, being in the right place to stand in the road and shotgun the driver in the face is fun, that said I've not managed to get an ethanol truck yet. Beyond that, I've just been rescuing people by killing bad guys I'm really enjoying it though, played for hours tonight and I've still not got halfway to the first proper story mission. Before I go there I've got some treasure to find, an ally to recruit, then a bunch of buildings to kill everyone in, then I'll do the thing I've been asked to do

Hey, maybe don't buy this Vice City squad, I come to you with gameplay clips littered with copyright claims. Not that there's a shortage of videos out there about this but it helps to see how little the gameplay has changed as well. I'm a couple hours into the opening sections. Actually, I could be a bit beyond the opening sections. Was this game short? I'm already at the bit where you are doing missions for Diaz. Visually I think it looks ok, I think they could have done a lot more work here tho and it's a bit perplexing that this is more demanding for my machine than The Witcher 3 maxed out. No ray tracing or anything like that is in it. It could be a rough one to play on PC for this reason but maybe the settings are more scalable on lower settings. I think the volumetric lighting is what is killing it. Also the game comes close to dying every time I pause, I found out I'm not the only one with this issue so it's a problem with the PC version. Vice City now is a game that is hard carried by its soundtrack I think. I don't think I could stick with this type of thing without these tunes. It's also weird to think Vice City is now more retro than the year 1986 was when Vice City itself came out. It's like a russian doll of nostalgia or something. I will say for VC first thing you should do is turn HDR off and set contrast to 0. The default contrast level is hideously oversaturated and destroys the tone of the game. At zero it is not a million miles away from the original's visual style Going back now also it really feels like Ray Liotta phoned in his performance as Tommy Vercetti, but the people around him do a good enough job to make up for that fact. Especially the lawyer guy. It's weird to think how they got all these really big movie stars in a game like this (Burt Reynolds is in this game, if you forgot). Nowadays you can see that these movie people don't exactly translate their talents to the digital screen, some of them are pretty bad at adapting to it. Or are just used to sell the game. But back then this was a really big deal for Vice City. There's one visual thing which has really annoyed me early on, the rain effect. It is a constant streak of white lines that make it impossible to see anything and actually made me feel a kind of motion sickness I've never felt with a game. I haven't heard anyone else talk about it, it could be a subjective thing. But man, it is rough to look at. On the other hand they add a cool effect where you get puddles and the grass gets wet. You slide in the rain also, I think that's new. Might not be but it seems new. Gameplay clips, spoilered for post length not spoilers cause this game is 20 years old now

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

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:

First off it's slightly different from the demo, for one the intro is much longer, which lets you see more of Arkham and see more of the Joker. The game itself starts off with the same tutorial battle against the goons, and is the same up until you beat Zsasz. In the demo you then do some more stealth stuff, here though it takes you through some basic climbing stuff and a bit more fighting, before you move onto the 'boss' fight against against one of Jokers mutated henchmen. The fight is a massive anti-climax, it's really just to teach you to dodge, which might be for the best as the camera is a bit like Gears' (right behind you) and so it's a little hard to manoeuvre around. I thought I'd worked out the tactic to beat him, but well I'll leave it to you lot to find out. It's pretty good so far. At points it looks brilliant, at points the ps3's lack of AA shows through. Characters faces are still bizarre, the the environments are really well fleshed out, it doesn't just feel like a crate has been dumped in a room to fill it up a bit. I've just got to a bit where I have to backtrack. On the way through I noticed rooms, items and areas that I couldn't access yet, so my guess is that Arkham might not be all that massive. Although there's every chance it is, and the game is just longer than I'm expecting

Played and finished this in one sitting earlier today. It's definitely an interesting game and attempts to be an Interactive Film in lots of ways really, got that art style from Firewatch and The Witness about it and its told in a very filmic way with lots of fast cuts between scenes never staying in one place too long, the price (£6.99 on Steam) is very much the kind of price of a film ticket/DVD too and its only 2 hours long. The game has no spoken dialogue and you're left to your observations and readings in first person to put together the plot. You start as a young FBI Agent tasked with locating a missing person in a small Virginia town who's partnered with an older more experienced Agent to show you the ropes and things go on from there. Music is a huge part of the game and helps tell the story in lots of ways, making up for the lack of spoken dialogue, the score is spellbinding, fantastic, incredibly powerful and moving at times and fits the game perfectly. I loved it up to the final third and was following the plot intently, but the last third of the game gets a bit too clever for its own good and becomes too bizarre to make sense of really unfortunately. Would still recommend it though if you're in the mood for a short game or fancy a slightly different film experience. Added a few pics:

Somehow I was convinced radiofloyd played this when it came out in Japan and made a topic. I played it for about five hours over the weekend, which is roughly the length of the tutorial/prologue. Origins and VIII are the only Ys games I've played, so I'm not an expert on the matter. Chronologically this seems to take place almost at the very beginning of Adol's adventures (after 1 & 2 to be exact), but in classic fashion it's not really necessary to be aware of those other games. Characters hint at certain things early on, but it's very much self-contained otherwise. So in Nordics you end up in a very cartoonish, pop-culture version of northern Europe with Vikings Normans who have claimed the northern seas for their own. After some exposition and the game introducing major NPCs, stuff happens, magic happens, and you then sail around the archipelago with a young Norman princess, Karja, in tow. While the whole Norse/Viking theme has been a bit overdone in the west in recent years, it's nonetheless interesting and refreshing to see it through the anime/Japanese lens for a change. I'm definitely quite enjoying the setting, and Karja is a surprisingly likeable sidekick, a bit of a tsundere voiced in a very bratty tone, but with a reasonable side to her as well. I remember some people, myself included, being a bit disappointed when they announced it would only feature a party of two, but after experiencing the battle system for a bit I can see that any more would easily have overwhelmed the player. There's a couple of ways in which you can fight: the basic one is just running around as either Adol or Karja, attacking by yourself and letting the AI take over the other character. I find this relatively useful when engaging groups of smaller enemies, in a 'divide and conquer' kind of way, as the AI draws some aggro, too. While playing like that, however, you can always change to the other character by pressing a button, which happens instantly and also works mid-combo. There's not much use for that early on, but I can see maybe casting special attacks with longer durations and then immediately switching to keep the pressure on as an option when unlocked. There's a second Duo mode for combat which activates while holding the right trigger and it's here where it becomes a bit much to wrap your head around early on. In this mode, both characters are linked by a magic chain and can't move, but they can block and parry (with very forgiving timing) and attack in unison while also having access to a different set of special attacks fueled by their combined Mana pools (in a funny twist, you can also use these if one character can make up the cost with their mana bar in case the other doesn't have enough – no idea how the developers expect you to properly gauge all that mid fight while parrying and dodging). But all this is only the very baseline as the game keeps giving you tools upon tools in rather quick succession. Early on you unlock a grappling hook for traversal, but it can also be attached to enemies, you unlock launchers for air combos or a unique move activated by holding the attack button which lets Adol cast a burst of fire and Karja a pillar of ice, affecting certain elements in the area (plants, water etc.). And that's just the feature handed to you in the first 5 hours. I find it a bit overwhelming at the moment, but it's cool to see so much depth and potential – I did really liked VIII, but combat in that game mostly revolved around last-minute dodges and not much more. The other big part of the gameplay, outside the usual traversal and exploration, is naval combat, which I think is a first for the series. So far this feels like its weakest link, as the ship is rather unwieldy – but not in a physically realistic, but rather a 'that's an odd control scheme' kind of way. In the early game you have two options to attack, a long-range cannonball to slightly damage and stun ships, and a short-range barrage which does enormous amounts of damage. So you use A until you get close, use B to finish them off, rinse repeat. It does suggest a lot of upgrades to you ship which I'm hopeful will make these encounters more fun and engaging the further along you get, so I don't want to judge that aspect too harshly as of yet. It's not as immediately gripping as the ship combat in AC Black Flag for example though, just to set expectations. I'm playing it on Switch, and compared to VIII, which suffered from severe aliasing or IX with its wonky framerate (at least going by its demo), this feels like a more polished product all-around, with clean visuals and an almost rock-solid 30fps with good frame-timing. The downside of this is that a lot of objects and NPCs pop in very close to the character, which I'm not too bothered about, but not everyone is as forgiving. I suspect the PS5, or I guess even the PS4 version, to have none of these issues, but in any case there's a demo on every platform to check for yourself. As always, can't do screenshots on Switch anymore, so here's a Karja plushie:

Saw that this is getting sold for 15-20 bucks, so I decided to unwrap my full price release day copy and give it a go. Only played the first hour so far, which is the usual prologue/tutorial affair, pairing your player character up with her mentor while she explains both game features and a bit of the lore. I'm rather lost on the latter to be honest – the titular Unknown 9 are a group of knowledge keepers who fell victim to their own hubris or something, but the intro sequence only showed eight of them, so I predict a 'chosen one' plot twist at some point. The gameplay is probably best described as low-budget Last of Us/Uncharted hybrid without guns. You go through linear levels, do some easy-mode platforming and climbing and some areas are filled with enemy goons you then have to dispose of, either in hand-to-hand combat or stealth. The game seems to nudge you towards stealth, which I've been following so far. It's very by the books: tall grass makes you borderline invisible, you can take down enemies from behind, get a one-off chance to disappear again if you cross LOS. Where it tries to differentiate itself a little bit is through the player's supernatural powers, which allow her to use some sort of spirit world wallhack, affect pre-determined objects around the map or take control of an enemy for a short time, Geist-style. Conceptually it's all very cool, and I quite enjoy watching the takedown animation, which sees her pull out the soul of an enemy and knock it out, as she lacks the physical strength to do so with their material bodies. But in terms of how it plays you can tell that while this wants to align itself with the TLOU style, it only had a fraction of its budget to pull it off, and it shows (and feels). As mentioned, there's also combat, which seems more of a last resort if stealth should fail. So far it seems very basic, with one standard attack and one stronger attack activated by holding the same button. You can also use your special powers here, though, and there's a skill tree which I haven't looked at in detail yet, so maybe it'll be more open later on. So far I can see why this hasn't really lit the world on fire, because it's about as janky as your average Piranha Bytes game. Considering they went through the effort of hiring a proper actress for the main role (she's played by Anya Chalotra from the Witcher series), it's rather jarring how bad facial animations have turned out, with the protagonist in particular having severe dead-eye-syndrome. Visually it's also rather low-end and doesn't even run that well with a wonky 30fps target, though I might have to get back to this because I was playing it in its 'ready to play' state but not after the installation was fully complete. Didn't find any fidelity settings either, so I actually might have been playing the Xbox One build (speaking of: for such a small studio to be forced to build last-gen versions still is a bit nonsensical IMO). One really cool thing about this is its setting though. There's only so many dieselpunk games taking place in India out there and while I haven't seen too much of it yet, this might end up being its biggest strength. But yeah, really janky, low-budget stuff that was probably too ambitious for the amount of experience and money involved. I don't know if anyone here played Velvet Assassin on Xbox360 but it sort of reminds me of that game, in the sense that it's similarly janky and out-of-date compared to its contemporaries but wraps a stealth game into a somewhat unique package.

I got this a while back and I see no-one else got it so I'll put something here about it. I was always going to get this because frankly it feels kinda tailor made for me. It looks like another pixelated "Metroidvania" but that would actually be fairly inaccurate. While the action looks like it takes inspiration from those kinds of games its actually closer to the Wonder Boy games - or more specifically Monster World IV. This feels like if SEGA published a game to compete against Metroid in the 16bit era and it was made by Treasure. It's that good. So you jump and shoot around (some really nice, tight, satisfying controls), solving some surprisingly clever puzzles and fighting really cool bosses. Whats interesting about the bosses is they nearly always bring a new mechanic with them that you have to learn to use over the fight. Sometimes you even take control of another character entirely that you've not used at this point. It really brings a new panic to the fights, but you have enough life to learn and make a few mistakes without dying and having to start over. It's got a real JRPG scale story as well. You often have party members, there is loads of lore and your antagonists get some JRPG level characterisation as well. It really has more than you'd expect for an action game. I wouldn't say its that good, but I admire the thought. It gives the game a certain personality at least. Like Axiom Verge, it's entirely made by one guy so a certain personality is gonna come out I guess. Early 2018 has been kinda insane for these kinds of games but don't forget this one as well. It's the real deal.

Pretty good, this. It's impressive what Guerilla have pulled off on a stock PS4. I've put around 4hrs in, level 8 and defeated a boss in a settlement that was attacked. Left it just after there as I had to go to work. I'm not certain when I'll be back because Zelda.

Played 2 hours of this so far and have got through the Prologue/tutorial section pretty much - the section which Journo's played through during the tutorial. So far I'm incredibly impressed with it I have to say, way more than I was with RotTR and probably around the same as TR 2013 - although admittedly my memory of that is a little hazy by now. The first thing I noticed was how goddamn gorgeous this game looks, this is the first game in the series that I've not played in 720p/900p at 30 on consoles and goddamn what a different experience playing on PC - granted it will still look pretty great in almost 4K 30 on Xbox X but at 1440p/60 with everything set to Ultra boy does it shine ?. I thought RotTR had a distinctly last-gen look to it and here whilst there's still a few rough looking textures here and there the whole engine and graphics as a whole looks much improved. I think the lighting is the most impressive though, going through caves, water and a small Mexican town, the way everything was lit was just astonishingly beautiful. It's a shame that so much of the early story has already been revealed by previews and trailers, but the beginning is pretty spectacular. You start out after the shit has hit the fan then go back before it hit the fan to find out what the hell went on (although I knew this already thanks to previews). And it's pretty damn fantastic, lots of slow exposition through a beautiful Mexican town where you can just take in the scenery, music and vibe of the place as you slowly make your way through and investigate followed by some light tutorial stuff and a tomb (yes an actual tomb this early!) which was great fun followed by a nice light puzzle room. After this things go bananas in a typically TR kind of way and lots of mad shit happens which involves you gunning down lots of dudes and running away from collapsing buildings/mountains. I just like the somewhat slow build up this time around, it feels a bit more organic in some ways than having you thrown in at the deep end for the 3rd time in 3 games and let's you appreciate the bombast when it does come all the more. The things they do with the characters already has me way more intrigued than I was for the entirety of RotTR which helps an awful lot too I just hope it continues to bring home the drama. I guess in terms of mechanics, controls and gunplay you know what to expect if you played the previous two games, although I will say I think the new rappel manoeuvre and the way you can now stalk enemies from shrubbery-covered walls is really cool and feels such a good fit for the Jungle environs. I have had some technical issues though. The photo mode is borked for me, everytime I access it the camera does a weird juddery motion and then as soon as I quit the mode everything is ok again, I have also had some huge framerate dips when hanging from ledges which is odd as its been a solid 60 everywhere else so I've had to turn off a few of the superfluous graphical effects and that seems to of remedied it. But yeah, so far I'm way more impressed than I expected to be with it and I can't wait to dig into it again tomorrow night. Some pics:

I played 30 minutes of it. It asks you to create a bethesda account before even being able to play which is really annoying but you can get around by setting steam to offline. Anyway it seems good. Kind of more focused on just murder arenas from the look of things. But I'm totally ok with a game like that. You can turn HUD off but it's hard to play. The HUD is a bit much tbh, I need to spend some time figuring out what parts I can turn off. Playing on ultra violent

Ok, so I’m 2 hours into this. I’m an absolutely massive Yakuza/LAD fan. In over 40 years of gaming, this is by far my favourite franchise. The reviews for this have been universally high. Let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first: charging separately for the New Game+ mode, sucks. There’s an entire dungeon, and trophies/achievements locked away behind that. That’s pissed some people off, and I think understandably so. There’s also multiple Micro transactions, ranging in price from £5 for instant level up boosts, to £12/£15 for other stuff. I won’t be bothering with any of that, and so far, the game hasn’t been obnoxiously highlighting them. Right. I’m 2 hours in, and it’s pretty much just been cut scenes. Which is pretty typical for a LAD game. That being said, I’ve already noticed two improvements that have been made to the combat system. You can manually control the movement of each character before making a move, making it much easier to pick up items to hit enemies with. One of the more annoying elements of the previous game, was that if you bumped into another enemy in the middle of your attack, their was a good chance they’d hit you, and cancel your move. That’s been scrapped entirely, thank god. There’s no difficulty options. When I watched the IGN video review, they specifically mentioned how annoying the difficulty spikes became about halfway through LAD. That was what made me eventually give up on my PS4 playthrough, and I found challenging to get through when I eventually finished it on PS5 last December. The reviewer said that there’s none of that difficultly spike nonsense in IW. Hopefully, he’s right… In terms of story, there’s no “Previously on LAD” to catch up newcomers to the story. Most games in the series have optional “movies” to watch, which explain what’s happened before. There’s none of that here. So if IW is your first time to the series, I’d suggest watching a video of at least what happened in the last LAD game. I won’t spoil what’s happened so far. But, I will say, it’s been an absolute joy seeing Ichiban and his friends again. Kiryu is my favourite character in all of gaming, but Ichiban is quickly becoming a firm favourite too. He’s likeable, charismatic, and amusing. Whereas in LAD: Gaiden, you had to wait a few weeks for the English dub to become available, here it’s available right from the start. I played LAD in English, and had no issue with doing so. So, I’ve chosen the English dub for this. There’s been a lot of hate thrown at Jong Jea, the YouTuber chosen to portray Kiryu. I’ll reserve judgement for his full performance. The footage of Kiryu doing karaoke that leaked a few weeks ago was legitimately awful, autotuned to buggery. But, I’ll give him a fair chance. What I can say though, is I’m very dubious about his ability to pull it off. Kiryu is a legend approaching the end of his “career”. From the lines leaked previously, he sounds far too young. Still, I won’t write him off just yet. Im away on holiday for a week after today, so won’t get to play much more. But once I’m back, this will be getting my full attention.

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 think I'm going to do a video of this because I don't think a post is going to get over how good this is and how you should play it. Based on an old, presumably renewed, European cartoon called Marsupilami that I barely remember, it's basically a Rayman Legends clone without the touchscreen and co-op stuff It's a 2D platformer, or 2.5D I suppose, but the depth doesn't play a part at all I don't think. Simple stuff, you can jump, land on enemies heads which will kill them and bounce you up. you have a standing attack, a spinning roll attack, and you can slam down to the ground from the air to smash pots and break through floors. Eventually there's enemies you can't kill, boulders you need to avoid and outrun, then also things like toucans and grips that you can grab to either launch you in a specified direction or help you with some in-air platforming It's got a lot of ideas, a couple of different types of bonus stages, and even those get mixed up. The levels can be fairly simple, but eventually can get very, very difficult later on, especially if you're trying to find all the feathers and secret bonus levels. Marsupilami throws lives at you, so you're never likely to run out, and you can revisit easier levels, or even bonus levels, to rack up lives or tickets (to enter a different set of bonus levels that are all about amassing lives). Collect 100 fruit and you'll get a live, smash enough pots you'll probably find an extra life or two. The feathers are used to open up a couple of extra stages to try, nothing really beyond that, but there is an achievement system to keep you going If I were going to add some criticisms, it's a little short. It's a few hours, I'm not sure how many but certainly less than 10, maybe 5? You're basic movement is a little slow, I've found I took to rolling a lot of the time, which isn't a smart idea, but it's quicker. It's also a little jerky on the Switch, I think because it's 30fps, and while mostly it's fine, it's when you need to react suddenly or correct a movement that you really notice it. There's also a slight issue with your ability to slide down walls, a good skill that opens up some really inventive moments for secrets and the like, but it's a very generous snap to, so you'll latch on the wall when you don't expect it, slowing you, messing up your timing, or making you leap off in the wrong direction. Apart from that though, I can't fault it. I'm not saying it's a 10/10 game, but I do think it's a really good platformer, certainly one of the better games I've played this year

Yessir! I like what I've played alot, probably done the first hour. Its extremely similar to the first one but that's no bad thing. Poor fucking bitch, she's already taken a hell of a beating. Agree with Nag on the looks, its stunning. That snow... Controls are lovely: fluid and intuitive. Lots of stuff to do and already had tons of action. Looking forward to spending all Saturday with it.

I put an umlaut in the thread title 🪓 Quick thread post to say like some others I imagine I stayed up a bit last night to check out the intro to this. Very familiar, almost expansion like in how familiar it is. But as someone who's several GOTYs are FFXIV expansions I don't really consider that a huge negative, but it is noticeable coming into this from 2018. It's like changing a disc, if this was an older PSX rpg. It's neat tho, it has that IMAX level presentation to its cinematic fights. Dialogue between characters is maximalist in every degree. Every mythical character is super expressive and drawn like a caricature out of a HBO mob drama, or a scenery-chewing performance from a Tarantino film, which I'm way into. I like the contemporary treatment of it all. I mainly want to ask the question here tho to the 120hz VRR users, what settings are you rolling with? I messed around with quality performance last night and I feel the fps wasn't quite as smooth as I'd liked (I don't know if it is the 40fps or not) and the resolution was very soft looking to me. The visuals aren't quite where I'd expect them to be. If that is the case I might just stick with quality and 30fps. For a game that's as deliberate and slow in its movement as this I think I can get by with that, it worked fine in 2018. But slightly foggy and soft visuals would spoil a lot more of what's going on here, imo.

Played an hour, on PC. The game defaulted to High graphical settings, so I left it at that. I chose the Vagabond class. So far, so Dark Souls. Looking forward to losing my life to this game. The opening cinematic is very cool. One of my Steam friends has already played this for 8 hours.:.

The controls are really weird, I keep pressing the Touchpad for map and calling my horse with the wrong D-Pad button (thanks AC Odyssey). The gunplay doesn’t feel like it’s evolved since the OG RDR. It’s so incredibly clunky having to click in and out of cover and move up to the next position, felt like the analog stick was stuck in treacle. I’ve only had a few gunfights but every one has been a chore so far because of it, you just feel like just staying in one cover position so you don’t have to keep moving. I really didn’t think I’d be saying this but the R* game it most reminds me of is LA Noire. Early on there’s a cabin you have to search and I was just going around hugging walls and inspecting/picking up objects like LA Noire, you can do this with almost every richly detailed interior too. The quality of the writing, cinematics and atmosphere created though is truly phenomenal. The opening feels like you’re in and the attention to detail of the world and environmental design is astounding. I’ve been overwhelmed already with everything there is to do, I sat down and played Dominos at the camp for 40 minutes last night. I haven’t even discovered a lot of the side activities either, it has all been so bewildering that I haven’t quite got a handle on it. I’ve been a little disappointed with the ‘talk to strangers’ thing too as a lot of people in the only town I’ve been in have only had the ‘Greet, Antagonise, pull weapon’ commands which don’t really seem nuanced. I have had a couple of cool stranger interactions outside of the town though. Overall though, it’s just intoxicating and I can’t wait to dive back in and properly get used to my surroundings and all the different systems at play. The gunplay is easily my biggest grievance and if I don’t get used to it or it improves I feel it’s going to massively drag the game down in terms of enjoyment for me.

I didn't know about this until a few days ago (not that i remember anyway), just released yesterday, and it's pulled me away from persona, for a bit anyway. normal price is ~£12 but seems to be on offer for ~£10 currently. Initially interested because of comparisons to REZ, i like shooters like that, even the dragon one on the xbox one that didn't seem very popular. but it turns out it's not as similar to rez as I was expecting, the shooting (on the right stick) is simplified a bit and shares game time with rhythm action line following (on the left stick). On the normal difficulty you aren't asked to really do both of these at the same time, but i think that changes on harder difficulties. The shooting is quite similar to rez, but you can only aim within a circle and quite a lot of stuff is conveniently at the edges of the circle so easy to aim at, because you will be expected to do two things at once. The rhythm action bit is following a line with your ship in time with the music, a bit like that old psn game i can't remember the name of (and didn't think was that great) but it works really well here, and is good fun, imo. the music is not what i'd normally listen to, don't really know how to describe the genre either, dubstep maybe? but it fits in really well with the game and i was enjoying it. there are some problems mind, the auto lock-on can target stuff you don't want when a missile is just about to hit you, and coming back from a hit can instantly cause another hit, but these might just be me needing time to get used to it more. i've done all the 15 levels on normal, then re-did a few to get more stars to unlock the next difficulty setting but not had much time on that yet. so yeah i've been really enjoying this. wasn't sure if i should pick it up but glad i did.

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

Played the first hour and a half myself tonight as well, I definitely wasn't blown away by it, but I had fun with it, and it definitely gave me a kick to be in Max's world and to play as him being a fan of Fury Road. I was impressed though with how well polished everything is, some of the particle effects, sandstorms, explosions and the intricacy of the way the guy moves around on the back of your car is pretty cool, and they've stuck incredibly to the art design of Fury Road, some locations from the film have been mentioned and some enemies I've fought that were in the film already. It really does film like you could be cruising around in Fury Road, incredibly exhilarating feeling cruising around in your own car as Max, the voice acting helps a lot too, all been rather good and the story missions I've done so far have been better than I expected them to be. The melee combat, so far, to me, has been the weakest part of the game, it has the template of the Batman: Arkham games, but somehow it just doesn't have the rhythm that that game employs to go from one enemy to another with ease and feel awesome as you do so, it just feels like an average kind of combat system, like they've just got the combat template from Rocksteady, dumbed it down a bit and thrown it in the game, already feels a bit repetitive as well, but it can be satisfying, again, early on though. Seems like a huge game too, in my session earlier I was just pretty much going through the opening tutorials and main story missions to get my car, meet certain characters and learn all the mechanics of the game, but there is a lot to get stuck into, not encountered any side-missions as such, but there's been a few side-activities I've got distracted by already when they show on the map and collecting scrap and making sure you've picked it all up at a certain location is already rather addictive. Definitely seems like Avalanche/WB have employed a Ubisoft-style design philosophy as well, everything I've seen and done so far has been reminiscent of what you do in the Far Cry games in particular, like scouting bases, then liberating them to wear down a factions influence in a certain area, the car handling also feels similar to FC also. So yeah, pretty positive first impressions, need to play more obviously, but it's one huge game to get stuck into and I reckon is a must-buy for any Mad Max (especially Fury Road) fans out there, definitely the most authentic MM experience you're ever likely to get in game-form that's for sure.

Oxenfree was released way back in January which I guess makes it a retro title by today's standards. I don't know about the PS4 or Xbox One but it's currently heavily discounted on Steam so now is as good a time to pick it up as any. As it turns out, I already own it. It looks like this. http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/388880/ss_aae01eea5fc489c7fbb20c2e92440c1cf92f4e83.600x338.jpg?t=1465496144 http://cdn.akamai.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/388880/ss_75af452f6e7f6c5dc1ada4f001abcccac6c57db7.600x338.jpg?t=1465496144 I just played it for sixteen minutes so I can give you sixteen minutes worth of impressions. So far it's been a pleasant side-scrolling walk and talk simulator. Not a million miles from Life is Strange if Life is Strange was side-scrolling. The conversations so far have been kind of typical preppy American teenage stuff. At the beginning of the game the characters are heading to some kind of after dark party on an island. The main point I'd like to make is that the game has a really good electronic soundtrack. The art style has a bit of Kentucky Route Zero.

Guess I might as well, even if ultimately nobody else is going to play this. A bit of backstory, this is the third game from Red Thread Games, Ragnar Tørnquist's studio, which he founded to conclude his Dreamfall saga (with Chapters) roughly a decade ago. Their previous game, Draugen, is IMO an overlooked gem in the 'walking simulator' genre, easily on par with the likes of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter and What remains of Edith Finch, so I might as well use these lines to recommed it. Dustborn started development shortly after Draugen's release five years ago, so for a double-A title that's quite a bit of a ride. I remember posting its first screenshots in a forum that got closed down in 2020, which feels like an eternity ago and predates all the Sweet Baby backlash internet assholes have been throwing at it. It takes place in a near future in the USA, or rather the SA, because united they are no more after the assassination attempt on Kennedy failed and took his wife's life instead, turning him into a cynical and bitter person who proclaimed half of the country a police state and left the other half to do as they please. The game is build around the idea of a road trip and you and your fellow travellers ride a bus from the west to the east coast, looking for some sort of safe haven where they plan on selling some valuable cargo. Fundamentally this is some kind of Life is Strange esque narrative adventure, in which you run around blocked-off areas to explore a bit and talk to people. It doesn't have 'person X will remember this', nor are your choices black and white. There's also no morality bar or something like that. Instead, your choices affect which one of three main personality traits of your companions will end up being the most pronounced. So if I keep using the brutish Sai to knock down walls and afterwards compliment her for doing so, she will slowly turn into a 'punch first, ask questions later' type. It's not a high-level examination of psychology, but an interesting take on this whole morality aspect I think. What it doesn't do well is the mise-en-scène of all these dialogues, because frankly there isn't any. It's people either standing or sitting around, looking at each other and talking, while you can spin the camera around a bit. This is most likely a budgetary constraint but it does drag it down - maybe it's a personal preference, but even very static over-shoulder dialogue sequence à la Dragon Age Origins would have been better than what they used here. Unfortunately the writing can be very hit and miss as well. There's one moment where you have to cleanse Echoes from people, which are remnants of misinformation-spreading propaganda thought bubbles influencing people in their line of thinking. At some point I noticed this must be some commentary on social media and then, not two minutes later, one of the characters just literally spelled it out. But there are some good moments as well and your crew, while not particularly likeable, is at least an interesting bunch. Oddly for a game in this style, Dustborn also has combat segments. It's super clunky and unpolished, but I can't deny that it can be some fun and is a nice diversion, especially as it amounts to, at best, 5 minutes every hour of playtime. There's basic attacks, dodges, parries, some special moves, team-up attacks. It's simple, but cute, though the lack of lock-on means you miss quite a few of your bat swings. Both in combat and during some dialogue scenes, you can also use the main character's Vox abilities, which is kind of this universe's X-gene and gives certain mutants Anomals special powers. In your case, that means controlling people with your voice, which can influence dialogue branches and, among other things, stop opponents in their tracks during combat. During the latter it's a pure gameplay system, but using it during dialogue sequences does have repercussions on your standing with teammates or how the story progresses. There's also a (surprisingly fun) rhythm minigame in there, as the cover under which the group travels is that of a band. And a sort-of ghost-hunting minigame (for the aforementioned Echoes) that unlocks new Vox powers. And maybe more, I don't know – I'm only about four hours in but the game just seems to throw random stuff at the wall in regular intervals. I've not fully formed an opinion on it yet. I think the first 90 minutes to two hours are almost excruciatingly boring as it just drops you into the narrative without much introduction (for that, you need to read a prologue comic from the main menu) in regards to what you've been doing prior to the title screen and why you should care. At a certain point it introduces a couple new characters from the protagonist's past, and then goes on a tangent with a bit of mystery stuff and I started enjoying it a lot more. Guess we'll see where it goes from here. On last note but I like the visual style. It's a clean, comic-style look somewhere between Borderlands and Sable, and chapters are introduced with fake comic book covers and such. Gives it a lot of personality the in-engine stuff not always manages to fully pull off in motion.