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Made a start on this last night, got about 2 hours in. Not much has happened so far but I do not want to give anything away at all about this game so will put all of this in Spoilers: Needless to say I’m very impressed. I honestly couldn’t put it down, if I could’ve stayed awake I would’ve happily played it all through the night.

Played the demo of this on Friday and thought I’d give my thoughts on it. Played around 40 minutes to an hour and I definitely would’ve liked longer with it which is a good sign. Graphically it’s very colourful, it reminded me quite a bit of the game Rime mixed with a more cartoony AC Odyssey with a sprinkling of Zelda. To play it’s immediately reminiscent of AC Odyssey. The way the combat system works with all the special abilities is very familiar, but it is definitely more flamboyant and less grounded, it feels like the system has been jazzed up and some of the moves you can pull off are a little closer to DMC than the weight of AC:OD. The way all the landmarks and points of interest are pinned to the top is very similar to AC:OD as well but then a lot of games use that system nowadays. The most interesting aspect to me was the puzzle aspect. I only came across one in my short time with the game but it was a nice surprise, reminded me a bit of some of the puzzles you’d come across in BOTW and was satisfying to complete. The way Fenyx moves is very familiar to BOTW too, there’s a stamina bar that depletes as you run and climb. She sprouts wings when you Glide which looks and feels very similar to Link’s glider in BOTW. It has a playful sense of humour to it as well. The way the demo plays out is that Zeus and Prometheus are narrating a story but keep getting it wrong, so things change on the fly for Fenyx as they adapt their stories in an attempt to get things right. The two have a lot of character and are nowhere near as stoic or uptight as some of their other interpretations in games over the years. Overall I was impressed with it but needed more time real to nail down a recommendation. It’s a lot of fun though and I think it will be a great world to get lost in but I can’t shake the feeling that it might be a little bit unoriginal and not doing a lot of new things per se. Saying that, I’ll definitely keep my pre-order after playing the demo, I love new IP and want to play some more after this brief taste.

Good god,does this look incredible. I'm no graphics whore or anything. But it looks jaw-dropping. Only an hour in. But very much enjoying it so far..

Played roughly five hours of this over the weekend. It's very similar to the first game to the point where I was thinking of just hijacking that other topic, but I'll play by the rules. When I say similar, I mean that you play as the same character, in the same world, meeting up with the same NPCs. It's been too long for me to remember if the world is actually 1:1 or rather some sort of "remake", but I think it's the latter. The story is a bit weird (alien invasion, protagonist gets infected, mumbo jumbo) and there's absolutely zero explanation as to why he has to start from scratch again in terms of skills and abilities, which I actually found very charming in an unapologetic 'I'm sequel to videogame!' kind of way. The biggest difference to 1 so far is that you don't start off as a walking paper cutout. Sure, most of the enemies can and will kill you, but against mutated rats and insects you actually stand a chance. I see this as neither a good nor a bad thing. It's obviously designed in a way to be more approachable and short-term rewarding, but I actually enjoyed the feeling of being at the absolute bottom of the food chain in Elex 1 and having to rely on Quest XP to level up or companions to do the dirty work for you. But I realise just as many if not more people will prefer being able to swing a pipe and do actual damage from the first hour onward. There's a couple of cool little details I noticed about NPCs. For one, they use that Uncharted system where, if someone in your party gets interrupted during dialogue because a combat encounter happens, they actually finish their lines later when everything has settled. There was also one cool moment where I saw two NPCs talking to each other and I pressed the button to talk to one of them. She then said I shouldn't interrupt her, finished her discussion, and then went back to me to scold me before the actual dialogue branch started. I've actually never seen that in an RPG, or any game for that matter. It also negatively influenced my standing with her, as there's some invisible relationship thing with major NPCs going on, too. Of course this being a certified eurojankTM game, you have to accept that it's not a looker, that combat is still very wonky, and the unusual unpolished aspects that come with it. But I'm really enjoying it so far, particularly as I've always liked PB's dual progression system with skill points and trainer perks. Makes the whole thing a bit more tangible as it bypasses the illogical construct of the classic RPG fundamentals. Not that this is an issue in other games, but it's a design idea I find very clever. Sidenote, this is also their first game that runs almost flawlessly on console. Performance mode on Series X only ever drops a few frames in very busy village settings, otherwise it's rock solid. Definitely not a game for everyone, but I think shiny and dwarf and some others might enjoy this. I'm not sure if I'd recommend playing both Elex games and I'm not far enough into this to say which one is better. So far this seems a bit more streamlined, but I've also read that the mid- to endgame is inferior to the original -- guess I'll see, but so far, so good.

Super hard indie platformer? Count me in and watch as I never complete it. This is made by the people who made Towerfall and although it is 2D and retro styled, it’s a completely different thing as it’s a single player game, more like Super Meat Boy. There’s optional collectibles (strawberries) but the thing I find concerning is part of it is gated by other collectibles. Featured in this video by Dunkey: I’m on the third chapter and it hasn’t been too difficult so far but I can see where it’s headed.

this is so far pretty much what i expected, i don't like open world and this sort of game structure usually, but gravity rush and sunset overdrive i really like due to the fun traversal and i think/hope this will be the same. the city is amazing, been having fun swinging about collecting stuff. it can be easy to die, even on easy, guess it'll get easier as i power up.

Wow, no thread for this? I'm surprised. Been dipping and diving into lots of different PC games and struggling to find something that really grabs me. This is it, I think. I'm only about 90 minutes in, so far it's an adventure set in a dilapidated world that feels marked by communism, or on the verge of some sort of ugly class upheaval. You're a very hungover detective who doesn't really know what's happening but there's a case you got to investigate. But maybe the real thing you got to investigate is who you are and what has happened to you. Sound familiar? I really like it so far. It's basically just a game about reading lots of text so far and passing/failing speech checks. I don't really get all the systems yet, but it's like PS:T through the lens of Jack Kerouac or William S Burroughs. Absolutely fucked up and manky but very beautifully written heaps of text everywhere. The screen where they show you all your perks/specialities is so aggressively wordy. I don't know if there is actually any combat in the game because every perk seems to be based around some personality trait

Finally getting round to playing this. Far as I’m concerned, Ryu ga Gotoku can do no wrong. From the outstanding Yakuza series, to the insane but glorious Fist Of The North Star. So I had high hopes for this. Reached Chapter 2, and I’m really enjoying it. Kamurocho is as familiar as ever, and looks just as amazing as it did in Yakuza 6. They’ve added some new mini games, though to be honest they’re pretty weak. Following people in forced stealth trailing missions is never my idea of fun. Here, you can quite often have several one after the other. Which is a ball-ache. They’ve ditched Kareoke, which is a real shame. As blasting out “BREAKING THE WORLD” was always fun. The English dub is actually really well done, they’ve clearly put effort into it. I usually prefer the original Japanese audio, but they’ve done a decent job with the dub. The combat doesn’t feel quite as satisfying as Zero’s, a lot of moves are locked in the skill tree. Still, it’s off to a good start.

First "new" game of 2024! (Technically, I've had the twin-pack of this and T7 sitting on my shelf for ..a while) NOTE: I did look to see if this had a Thread already. But aside from a News Thread. Only saw pages for the older SC's titles. Anyway, I've started this up with Libra of Soul. Haven't even touched Story/Arcade modes yet. Immediately, I'm hit by how much lower budget this than previous titles. The previously bombastic opening cinematic that this series has been known for since Soul Blade? Not present?? Now regardless of otherwise decent gameplay, SCV was a clusterfuck that nixed the series. But purely from this secondary mode, I'm unsure why we are immediately back at SC1 in terms of the narrative. Hopefully this will be explained in the story mode? Although basically the traditional Edgemaster Mode by another name. It starts with character creation. Which I haven't liked since this series got it in SC3. But modern gamers loves this shite so whatever. A brief look, turned into an hour play session. My character (Zark VI, naturally) adopted the Siegfried weapon style. There was no rust this time. Muscle memory kicked in with the first battle. Admittedly for the specific challenge missions (Critical Edge only etc) I did have to look up the buttons. But the general move set was with me from the offset. When thinking about it, the last SC game I played (SCV) would be 12 years old at the end of this month. So I was surprised by the moves and combo strings I could pull off. It's definitely ticking the familiar boxes for me so far. Eager to get back to the next session.

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.

More detailed thoughts later, but for now what difficulty is everyone playing on? Hard is kicking my arse.

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

Been mucking around with this over the last couple of nights, probably put in 4 or 5 hours (maybe more)... I'm not going to pretend we have GotY on our hands but it's doing exactly what I expected of it, namely leaving your brain behind a blasting the ever living fuck out of anything that moves. It's nailed the look and sounds of the movies, at the start you have a fairly basic create a character menu with male and female options, there's four classes each with their own perks and abilities... so far so normal. I went with the Demolition class as I wanted to be like Drake in the film and repeatedly shout "right on Vas" while I'm mowing down Xenos with the Smartgun. The fodder "runner" enemies don't really offer too much in the way of tactics, they'll head straight at you but some of the other types do use hit and run tactics using vents and stuff to get behind you and cause a little mayhem... I've also just got to a level where it's almost turned in to a Gears game (there's a cover system... which is no use at all with the Aliens) as I'm fighting the Working Joe's from Alien Isolation. I'm only around half way through the game (there's 4 acts with 3 missions in each) and there's been a decent amount of backdrops so far. I can imagine the game is going to get pretty difficult too especially if I play above normal difficulties as when more than a couple of Warrior type enemies appear things generally fall to shit... and that leads to the games biggest failing so far, matchmaking is fucked, so far I've found one game and the game taking the place of real players really doesn't cut it. I hope that they can sort out whatever is going on with that because it is putting a slight downer on the whole experience.

i've played persona games before but no smt games, i guess so far it seems pretty similar but without the daily routine/social link stuff, and the demons/personas are in your party rather than being sort of summoned. you have to talk to the demons to try and recruit them, although this is often bollocks as they ask for loads of stuff and then just run away, i still like it though, they say weird things and it can be pretty funny. the demons mostly look familiar too as they're pretty much the same from the persona games. i'm playing the super easy mode (which is free dlc), and it's really easy, i could have coped with some more difficulty, maybe a mode inbetween the normal one and the super easy one. but it's supposed to be quite long so the super easy mode should help with that. it's probably a good job i'm on the easy mode too as my main heal spell changed into something useless, and i've probably given most of my good healing items to demons while trying to recruit them. so i don't have many ways of healing at the moment but it hasn't made much difference. minor spoiler for stuff near the start of the game this is a ps2 game i think, i'm not sure if any graphics have been upgraded, it doesn't really look like it, it just looks like a ps2 game in much higher resolution. so far it's alright, i'm quite enjoying it but it's not been amazing or anything. i'm going to keep playing anyway.

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

Played about an hour of this, which is not a lot but you're looking at apparently 6-10 hour runtime. Walking sim-esque, echoes of Miyazaki about it (Ico, Last Guardian), seems like a companion based puzzler with lots of pretty environment puzzles, but what I played was pretty linear. What might make it more interesting is it seems to have a strong environmental narrative focus on it, why are things the way they are. What is this city, what is going on with its inhabitants. I'll leave it at that, seems interesting but nothing mind-blowing really in the opening. I would have played more but I got about 2 hours sleep last night so I'm running on fumes. Will update with thoughts when I actually complete it I reckon It's a very pretty game, lots of screenshots and wallpaper material. At the same time I think the game is pretty enough that spoiling lots of views will rob people of the better parts of the game. So check out this screenshot of a cat hanging out in what is considered to be a pretty upmarket apartment in the cyberpunk dystopia FWIW, no HDR or ray tracing or anything like that. Lack of HDR is strange but I like the muted look tbh, don't really need the eyeballs seared right now. The game is so linear that the lighting they use is good enough as is. Runs at 60, these are PC impressions btw but I imagine it's identical to PS5

FAR: Lone Sails is a beautiful indie game that definitely has that special something that the best indie games have, at least in the opening 30 minutes that I played. It looks like this: You’re basically piloting this hunk of metal across a barren wasteland. Gameplay has been very simple so far. The ship will move slowly if you open the sails but you can also fuel it to make it move faster. And then occasionally you come to roadblocks like this which require some gentle puzzling (so far). It looks beautiful. And everything is communicated visually. There’s no dialogue or tutorial. Very impressed so far.

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I’m very bad at it but 2042 seems alright. There was a 10gb update so I missed out on all the bugs I think. The only jank I’ve noticed is slow texture loading at the beginning of a match (ps4 pro) and sometimes your body might go a bit mad when you die. The levels I’ve played on have been ok but I’ve not played enough to have memorised any of them. The one with the skyscrapers and has a huge tornado rip through the middle of the map was a stand out moment. I got killed because I was stood staring at it. It looked awesome was giving me anxiety. They seem to have stopped giving you anything if you have played any previous BF games which I don’t mind I guess but some recognition would have been nice. Just some gamer card art. I don’t understand the load outs just yet. You seem to be able to give anyone anything? Like give an assault guy a medic pack instead of ammo? I didn’t play around with it much so idk. It all sounds very nice and the pro version looks a lot better than the base ps4. God knows what the og xb1 version must look like. The menu and UI and a lot cleaner and user friendly than what I remember of 1 and 5. It’s Battlefield.

FromSoft isn't messing around! Giant Mech✔️ Missile launcher✔️ Big gun✔️ Laser sword✔️ Jet propelled agility✔️ ..And go! This isn't Metroid however, this is your standard tool kit. Master it quickly. You get about the first couple minutes to introduce you to the controls. Then, you're on your own. Free to roam and battle as you wish. Your first objective has four markers, to be approached in any order. Naturally there is a lot of distance between each and From is quick to demonstrate that the enemies have the advantage. This is their base, you are the intruder. Be prepared to fight waves around any given corner. Some nice little Codec-like voices are your only warning the enemy has spotted you. The controls have come a long way since early AC's. After only an hour or so, I get what they were saying about taking what they've learned from Souls (more from Sekiro, really) and applying it to AC. Combat is fluid, reactionary and fast-paced. It all feels really intuitive, however. I imagine the first boss will be a rude awakening to any new to AC. I died a handful of times. But, this isn't Souls. This ain't no Vanguard either. I didn't defeat the boss by learning it's patterns, tells and counteracting them. No, I beat the boss by making the most of my own abilities. Your handler gives you one hint to dodge a specific attack. But it's more important than it seems. I mentioned Sekiro before, because you have the same meter system to the boss fights. Get the bar into the red with sustained damage and not only does this put the boss in a stunned state. But they take more damage too. Be careful that it does work both ways. Not to mention the cooldown to all your weapons and dodge/agility capabilities. This is all demonstrated in the first boss fight. When I "got it", I smashed the boss quite easily. I didn't get long to play today and likely even less time tomorrow. But just from the opening mission, I'm very impressed.

I don't know anything about the main game mode, only played the free battle royale rip off mode. Played that mode loads. It's a rip off of that playerunknown battlegrounds (pubg) game, I'm not too up on that game but the main differences I think are that there are no vehicles in this and you can build stuff in this. There's some controversy about ripping off the idea, and maybe some other stuff, I'm not sure really. I guess the first copies of something popular always get more stick. On the plus side this game has sold me pubg and I'll be getting it on Xbox. Anyway back to fortnite, I think it's great, especially in a team, you start in the party bus with about 100 people with only a pick axe, look at the map, pick a spot to drop in, if there's people going to the same place do you try to get there first and get a gun and fight straight away, or divert to somewhere else. the map constantly shrinks in size as the storm covers the island, loot is random. I prefer to start near the outside in usually less populated areas, running in with the storm there's less likely to be people behind you, but you probably won't get as good loot as if you'd gone to a town. When you see someone do you fight or hide, there's constant decisions like this going on, it's always different and often cool stuff happens. when you get to the end do you build a fort or try and hide. I'm not sure I'm really explaining it very well but then apparently loads of people watch pubg on the internet so everyone probably already knows. I think my friend said this, it sums it up well saying it's a bit like playing a zombie/apocalypse survival film. The building works well too, you can get some really impressive structures people have built at the end. Anyway yeah it's really good, especially for free. Anyone else playing it? Oh yeah I think I should give them some money, but currently I don't like any of the outfits and they're about a tenner each or something, which puts me off, if it was maybe a pack of 5 for £15 or something, and I liked a few of them, I think something like that I'd be much more likely to spend.

A Space for the Unbound is an adventure game set in Indonesia in the 1980s. It’s about a couple of high school students but there are magical elements to it too, which gives it the atmosphere of something like a Studio Ghibli or Makoto Shinkai film. I’m impressed with it so far. If nothing else, l would love to see a Final Fantasy game made in this style.

I bought the All in one pack for this way back in 2017, played it once, and assumed my free trial would be long expired but no, it’s still active, for however long. I played it for two hours today, basically to the end of the introduction to the game, which felt like it was more or less completely offline. Impressions so far - well the graphics show the game’s age, it was originally released in 2012 on the Wii. But the cut-scenes and close-ups are quite nice. There is no voice acting in the game but the music is nice, and already I think I’ve heard more variety than in the entirety of XI. Battles are initiated by running into enemies in the field, you can move around in battle which seems to be the biggest change, although I’ve no idea if it serves any practical purpose. Four years ago (!) I struggled with the Japanese but I can read it more smoothly now. I have a week off with absolutely nothing to do, so I’m gonna sink some time into this. It will be my first mmorpg experience.

Played for a couple of hours and I'm happy to say that, so far, I've loved every minute... everyone already knew it was going to be a spiritual successor to Dead Space and apart from the inclusion of melee combat that's just how it feels. You play as Josh.... sorry Jacob.... who for reasons finds himself locked up and awakens in his cell with things very much already fallen to shit... not long after you receive your first melee weapon and after a quick tutorial you're left to it... I was worried by the dodge mechanic in this for a while but it's actually not too bad... there's no timing window, something I'm immensely grateful for as I have none, instead as long as you're holding left or right when the enemy swings you'll dodge... just don't dodge in the same direction twice. As for the hitting things, it feels meaty as in The Last of Us 2 meaty... and messy which I suppose trying to batter a monster to death would. I've picked up a pistol but so far I've not had much cause to use it... ammo seems sparse. As expected it looks really nice, they nailed lighting and sound... something that would've been criminal coming from the guy who gave us Dead Space... he sure knows his outer space. I've already died a number of times on the middle difficulty with some pretty disturbing death scenes... I think I'll be seeing lots more of these during my run time.😂

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