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What Remains of Edith Finch is by Giant Sparrow, the people behind The Unfinished Swan, which was inventive and clever. What Remains of Edith finch is shorter, denser, and feels less like a collection of chapters bundled together, and more like a cohesive narrative It's a narrative game, not a huge amount in the way of gameplay other than finding which objects you can interact with. You've returned to the family house, which is almost like a Tim Burton bit of architecture, all your family has died off, often in tragic or strange circumstances, and so your mother took you and abandoned the house hoping to leave whatever "curse" has beset your family. You wander through the house, discovering the stories of your ancestor's lives, and sometimes deaths The vignettes are brilliant. Some are shorter than others, but some really are fantastic, or fantastical, inventive, joyous, and every so often, heartbreaking. You can see the legacy of Unfinished Swan in there, but I was also reminded of That Dragon Cancer, and while it's a horrible thing to say about a game that's as raw and honest as That Dragon Cancer, but Edith Finch does it better, even if it doesn't have the same weight behind it It looks great too, at points I was genuinely surprised by how good it looked. There's some points where it's just that the fidelity is amazing, maybe it's running at a higher resolution on the Pro or something, but there's other moments, an underwater section in particular, that just have superb art design

So had a quick go of this after it unlocked last night, initial impressions are mixed, they've changed the combat a bit and i'm not sure about it yet, sometimes it's fun, sometimes it's annoying, and i've really struggled on two sections so am a bit worried i won't be able to finish it on normal, some of the enemies can be really annoying. having said that the original started with bad combat but i really liked that after you unlock a certain move so maybe this will be similar. and there were easy/hard options so hopefully you can switch between them - also wonder what they change as i personally would want to just make the combat easier and leave the rest, but someone else might struggle with the platforming i don't know. everything else was pretty similar to the first game so far - it looks amazing and there's been some mild puzzles and platforming - generally really enjoying it outside the combat. hope there are some more demanding platforming sections like in the first game. there are combat trials and timetrial sections too - i enjoyed the timetrial one - as above not sure about the combat one - probably could have come back to it later when more powered up. oh and they changed the save system to a seemingly more normal one with pretty frequent checkpoints - that's probably a good change Also apparently there are performance problems/bugs, 2 patches already on xbox? i'm playing the gamepass version on pc and haven't had any patches, bugs/problems. this is a game i would have purchased, but it's on gamepass so i didn't, which is an odd thing. anyone else getting it/trying it on gamepass?

Started this off earlier and put just under 4 hours into it. This has set the record of making me cry the fastest in a video game, just felt overcome with the music in the tutorial ? also the fountain in the middle of the village at the beginning of the game is just amazing, I must’ve walked around that fountain about 30 times just listening to the lovely music (cried again here), amazing. As soon as I got free reign to explore the village I explored every corner of it, there’s not much to it but it creates such a strong sense of place and unique vibe, it’s already memorable and familiar even in my short time there. Combat feels like a more simplistic version of Automata’s. It looks flashy and feels good but is bit more shallow than Automata’s. If I had to compare it, it feels a bit like FFXV’s (without all the warp-strikes) or one of the earlier KIngdom Hearts games. You start off without any ranged abilities with just your sword to rely on, but pretty quickly you pick up a ranged weapon which has added to the variety on offer and cool abilities you can pull off. Story-wise not much has happened so far, I’ve just been given a few meaningless tasks to do by Popola, been to my first dungeon and met a certain literary figure. I’ve done a few of the side quests too just to see how bad they are for myself, and yeah, they’re not great but I don’t mind them so far, they’re inoffensive, a damn boar kept fucking me up in one of them.

I started playing this and beat the first boss. It's mostly like Crash 1 I think but with lots of new tricks and gimmicks. So far I'm not loving it but not hating it either. I just find it very frustrating as it is extremely punishing of pixel perfect miscalculations. Depth perception is also a thing I struggle with on it, even more than other Crash games. They put in this shadow circle under Crash so they seem to at least be aware of it but it doesn't always fix the problem. I don't know if it's the level of detail in the stages or something else but I am dying a lot particularly with all the new mask juggling mechanics It's really good looking but I'm looking forward to next gen ray tracing as the screen space reflections here have lots of artifacts. I've just noticed it a lot more in games recently that use that technique. Other than that it's very early Pixar looking in a good way. This happens way too often It's more of the same with some decent ideas so I doubt it will win over any new fans or necessarily alienate any old ones. Unless you really don't like the difficulty in Crash 1 which is the camp I sort of fall into. It's the same ultra linear tightly constrained design but now that they have lots of graphics budget on PS4 they don't need to do the thing where they hide the rest of the level behind obstacles like the ND games so that's a cool difference Pretty cool first boss

You know the first thing about this that made me smile? It comes with a manual! I can't really recall the last game I had that came with a real one? Anyway, this game (at time of writing, I'm not upto the second boss yet) warrants being remade. The original game was made in 1986. Gaming has changed a bit in 35 years and a straight up port isn't really going to garner any positive attention. Which, looking at some reviews and scores, this really has. Which, so far, I can only agree it deserves. Oh and two things. 1) I never played this Alex Kidd game, so there's nothing rose tinted there. 2) I definitely won't be playing this with the infinite lives cheat on. With how extremely generous auto-saving is in this remake, it isn't really necessary.

So, I just started this up. I’m actually surprised Konami got off their arse to put this together. They’ve been absolute morons for years, and done literally nothing with their numerous IPs. All they did last year was Metal Gear Survive, which I don’t even need to comment on. So I genuinely wasn’t expecting them to bother with a collection like this. Contra is getting one later in the year, and I bloody love Contra, so will naturally check that out. Anyways. How does this hold up? Pretty good, really. The first game in the series i ever played was 4, due to never owning a NES back in the day. It remains one of my favourite games of all time, from the gameplay to the gorgeous soundtrack. I didn’t think we’d see this anywhere other than a Nintendo console. But I’m very glad to be replaying it. As it’s just as brilliant now, as it was then. I never played the Megadrive version, again due to not owning one at the time. So I’m looking forward to giving that a shot, as it’s generally held in high regard. As for the rest? You’ve got all 3 of the NES games, which I will get though after 4 and Bloodlines. Two gameboy games, which don’t look especially great, but I’ll play them for completions sake. And Kid Dracula, which I have no idea if it’s any good or not. As is par for the course in these kind of collections, you can quick save your game at any time. Though on the PS4 version, you access the save menu by pressing the Share button. Which of course either takes a screenshot, or video, depending on your setting. And there’s no way of changing that to say, the Options button, or touchpad. It’s weird. Maybe they’ll sort it out in a future update perhaps. There’s no way to change button configuration either. You also get access to various promotional material/ concept art of all the games, which is a nice touch.

Couldnt see a post for this, feel free to delete if there is one. So, this is my first Metro game and the first thing I will say is that the story/setting is so immersive that its made me want to go through the other ones. As a game its not the most polished although its really good, solid 7 out of 10, theres just a few little things here and there and it sort of reminds me of Elder scrolls Oblivion at points which is a weird comparison but its what it reminds me of, its just got a bit of a clunkyness to it. The load times are absolutely ridiculous at times, 2 minutes to load up the game. The first time it happened I genuinely thought my PS4 had just given up but apparently its standard. It would be interesting to see what people who have played the series think of this one, mainly @DANGERMAN because I seem to remember him being a long time fan. I get the impression that its a massive departure from the series traditional feel, and I dont know if they decided to just do something different because they wanted to make a kind of open world game. The reason I say that is because it definitely feels like an early PS4/late PS3 game in terms of its open world approach, it gives me some slight Half Life 3 vibes.

Well, ive installed it, and my poor little surface is sort of struggling to play it. Unless the main character saying every line is part of the story.... Looks good though, going to have a play around with the setting and see what we can do, more details when I get a chance to play it properly. Music in this game is absolutely lovely so far, im really liking the game from the brief 20 minutes. EDIT: Changed Resolution, and everybody is happy now. Was trying to run it at 2160 x 1440, looks lovely now.

I was just two and a half hours playing the Balan Wonderworld demo. It’s not half as bad as I’d heard on podcasts that had also clearly only played the first two levels of world one before turning it off and deciding to tell everyone it’s the worst game ever. The opening levels are a bit crap but the later sheep and the cog worlds are much better. I’m not talking Mario levels of quality but certainly gets better than the opening world. Plus the later costumes you find you can use when you go back to previous worlds to get to further trophies which in turn opens up more worlds. The music is also better later on. Not completely awful but an alright time waster and with so few games of its kind on xbox and PlayStation beggars can’t be choosers.

Great! A game in a series I've enjoyed on and off since the third installment on PS1 has gone 'free' on Game Pass - let's try it out. Hmmm... It's taken me 5 minutes of scrolling and about 15 button presses just to get to the main menu. This isn't the greatest start. No matter, let's see what's about... Wait, what? It's automatically taken me to the options screen now? Ok, ok, I'll just back out of there, then I'll see what's going on. Mishima Saga? WTF is that? Fuck it, let's go. Oh yay. More menus to click through. JUST LET ME PUNCH SOMEONE DAMMIT! Ok - difficulty on Normal. Finally into it. Punching time. Wait. No. No it isn't - I'm dropping young Kazuya off a cliff. Nice throwback, but I just want to fight. Yay, fighting time! The above was a description of my first 10 minutes with Tekken 7. When I finally got into it, the story mode was AWFUL. I played on normal, because fuck it, it's Tekken, how hard can it be? Turns out it gets very difficult, and extremely cheap. To the point I had to play cheap myself to even it out. One fight pits you as Heihachi against Akuma from Street Fighter (because remember when SFxT was a thing? What happened to TxSF? I wanted that so much more). That was tough, but I got through it. Then a little later it switched the roles, and I almost threw my controller at the screen. Then, putting you back in control of Heihaci, it had you fighting against Kazumi. Who can fire lasers, fly, has a fucking tiger that can attack you, can disappear and has unblockable attacks. But the sidestep isn't responsive enough, so you just end up repeatedly getting wailed on. Oh and she has regenerating health. And the final boss is demon Kazuya. Who can do all of the above (except for the tiger bullshit) but stronger. On each of the 13 chapters you have to beat most characters twice - the only exception to this is where you have to defeat 5 army grunts or 5 of Jack-4/6 in a row. But you can't lose a round either. You have to win two rounds without taking a loss on every single chapter. There's also a final chapter that I didn't see last night where you have to defeat Devil Akuma. Really not looking forward to that bullshit. All I wanted was an old-school Arcade mode. Ten fights, best of 3, stupid character movie at the end. What I got was this fuckery. I'm gonna go back in the next few days and look for some traditional modes, but last night I had to take my Kindle up to bed with me to try and dispel some of the irritation. That shouldn't happen with a game.

OK, so I finished the first episode today and I don't really want to give too much about it away because it is so very special. As a result I don't want to give anything away and will put the everything in spoiler tags for those who want to read about them. Lots of pics incl. my choices:

Spent around 4ish hours with this, I'm quite enjoying it so far. The games made by Tripwire and published by Deep Silver and they've billed it as a shaRk PG (very clever)... I don't know how much RPG there is in there but there's upgrades and the like. You start the the game tutorial as a full grown female Bull Shark where you're shown the ropes as games do nowadays, and pretty rapidly you meet Scaly Pete (or murdering scumbag if you prefer) who basically kills you... but not before finding out you're pregnant and chucking the baby back in, this becomes you. so, the game begins proper with you as a pup, leveling up actually adds to your age and thus, you grow. Completing tasks and finding collectables rewards you with evolutionary features that aren't quite realistic... I have electric teeth at the minute.? Combat is simplistic but enjoyable enough, trying to take out boats is a little messy but I can forgive that... it feels like it may get a little samey but we'll see.

Nier Automata isn't quite what I was expecting. The demo, which is the prologue of the game, makes it seem like a fairly standard Platinum Games game. A tight linear action game with Witch Time when you dodge. Instead its that combat dumped in to an rpg And I don't just mean it's got a levelling up system, I mean it feels like a modern Final Fantasy game (or what I imagine they feel like because I I've only ever watched them being played). It's got big desolate spaces, using real world locations, all destroyed beyond recognition, in place of standard jrpg locations. Levelling up is a bit odd. Generally it just means a touch more health and damage, you don't get new skills. The way to do that is to increase the amount of 'chips' you can power. Chips are either dropped or bought and can do minor had things like show how close you are to levelling up, or increase your health, let you fire projectiles from your attacks, and auto heal, these have various levels themselves, meaning if you get a good one it might have a bonus health boost when triggered etc I really like the desolate look, I really like the robots, some bits can look a little simplistic but it's a cool aesthetic The only thing I'm not keen on is the amount of trudging around the map you have to do for side quests. The world isn't massive but it's big enough that returning to the desert is a bit tedious. Aside from that I'm liking its oddness

Been playing this over the last few days, it's been put up on Game Pass but it's actually in Game Preview... so not finished. To the best of my knowledge this is the first game I've played in that state. I'd love to say this is Left for Dead with Dinosaurs but I never actually played those games so I'd be guessing... it's a three man co-op shooter, 5 characters to choose from all with their individual skills and load outs. There's no real story as such and only 6 campaign missions at the minute (one of the reasons I'm classing this as completed, I've cleared all those missions) there are expeditions (basically free roam of the entire map) with objectives to complete in each area. It looks ok, I guess... some views are very pretty but there's also an element of jank to the game that I'm not convinced wouldn't be there if it was a full on 'finished' game... the guns feel nice and chunky though. Missions pan out with various objectives and end in a (done to death) stand off when waiting for extraction, I've faced off with a couple of mutant T-Rex though... that alone is worth it. All in all I found it a decent way to waste a few hours blasting away hordes of Dinosaurs... and what respectable man doesn't fucking love Dinosaurs...

Played about an hour of it so far, and its pretty much the PS2s version of Zelda. Its weird because there is something stopping me from getting into it, its taking me a good 20 minutes each play to be used to it and then once ive done a major thing I dont feel inclined to get on to the next one... The graphical style is nice, but just nice, its so blurry that I think thats one of the things that requires you to spend a few minutes getting used to before you are happy with it...I think it could have quite easily be done on the Gamecube. There are one or two standout minutes in the graphical style that make you appreciate the difference, but on the whole I kind of feel like im playing an Xbox game without my glasses on. The story and setting are pretty good, like I said theres a bit of Zelda in there and also it reminds me of Goemon with its quirkyness and ecsentuated characters.

Started playing this today, put in about 3 hours. Not really sure what to make of it at the moment, the game looks bloody gorgeous (You can see where Coldwood spent that EA money!), the soundtrack is great, but at its heart it just feels like an average platformer really. If I had to compare it I'd say it feels most like LittleBigPlanet, that kind of floatiness to the controls (if that makes sense) happens in Unravel too, it definitely isn't a tight platformer like Ori and the Blind Forest or Donkey Kong Country, and I don't think it was ever trying to be like those games in its design, but the controls could've been tighter and snappier in my view, from what I've played anyway. What I didn't realise going in was how incredibly infuriating and frustrating a game it is, it just gets me so fucking riled up it's unreal, I've got stuck twice already and had to look up what I need to do online, was just pottering about for 15 minutes trying to get past a certain section and of course I find what I need to do, feel like an idiot and I'm on my way. Some of the problems can be put down to the timing-based platforming sections I've encountered I guess (where the controls don't help), coupled with the harsh check-pointing employed. You can figure out what you need to do in order to progress, almost complete an entire section, accidently drop into some water and suddenly have to start all the way back at the previous checkpoint, just seems needless really. Despite the issues the game has and its mediocrity (in platforming terms) I am still vaguely enjoying it, it's pleasant enough, the environs are amazing and Yarny is charming enough to keep me playing, but I can already tell its going to be a bit of a slog if it goes on for any longer than the 5-6 hours I'm assuming it lasts.

I started this one today. Beat the first world and onto the second. Early impressions is combat has a nice "swimming" movement to it albeit it is very floaty like the spinoff games. Worlds are massive and some of it almost feels like an anime/Disney take on (old) God of War games. Music is great, as usual. Hoping to hear some old tunes return (hopefully Hollow Bastion). I started it on Proud mode cause I figure if I've played three of these games back to back and can't handle its hard mode at this stage well then I'm really just hopeless. So far it's not very difficult but it is a reasonable challenge. It makes it so it isn't just a mash X fest. It is very heavy on cutscene interruptions in the early hours however and it gets sort of annoying, it's a bit Metal Gear at times. WRT spoilers I'm going to defer to riksp or someone else as to the best approach. I'm thinking anything that was in a trailer is fair game for an open screenshot because this is a very pretty game with lots of shiny stuff that's fun to show off. Or maybe all screenshots could be put in spoiler text it's all the same. No HDR in this game, interestingly.

Credit to Genesis Noir for having an unusual story. Before time and existence a good give physical form to his experiences to make sense of the world, falls for a beautiful jazz singer (also a god), her ex gets jealous (also a god), and kills her. The explosion from his gun is the big bang that starts the universe as we understand it, and you travel through time to find a way to make the bullet miss her, something you can do because you don't experience time as we do. All of this is jazz themed, but you'll bounce through various times, from cavemen to feudal japan and so on As a game, its not really anything special. I've played it on pc and did everything with the mouse, it's almost always a case of clicking on something or spinning something, it's rare the puzzle itself is especially difficult. What can be difficult is knowing what's expected of you. I got stuck really early on because I didn't realise I could click on something, and that was all I had to do to move on. I've had it be temperamental too with what you're clicking on which has again led me to being stuck on very simple puzzles. The only but I had was on a clock puzzle later in the game. I needed to set a particular time, but I couldn't back out from the clock view to see the time again. I think something similar may have happened earlier in the game too looking at the clue board. It's not great but there's some cool things to look at, it's original and I could see some people really clicking with it, it didn't really do it for me though

Anyone else picked this up or are planning to give it a go? My girlfriend and I have cleared the first world with three stars on each and haven't broken up yet so I think we're good for marriage. So far it's a massive improvement over the first. Everything feels tighter, there are loads more recipes to make and more interesting level variations, and you can now throw stuff across the kitchen. It has online co-op and vs too this time around!

Just to let you know what you're in for, Sea of Solitude starts with this screen: It's a beautiful game in places, similar in visual style to Rime. The introduction sees you in a boat in the titular Sea of Solitude. Playing as a young girl who's quite literally overtaken by darkness (seriously, she just has facial features, the rest of her form is just black and a little undefined), you're given a guiding light in this sea of darkness, and that provides the only source of light around you. It's a platformer in nature, so from time to time you have to leave the safety of your boat and walk around the flooded city its set in. When you do climb out of the boat the world around you becomes dark and stormy, and there's a creature that stalks you in the depths of the water. Basically, everything feels like a very heavy-handed discussion on depression. As you work through your problems and face your difficulties, you eventually bring light to the world around you. This is where the visual beauty kicks in, because it becomes bold, vibrant and just stunning to look at in a very stylised way. One touch I adore - you have to remove corruption from the world (this is what makes the world brighter again), but your character's backpack gets more and more full as the game progresses. Again, a very obvious metaphor, but one that's done in a subtle way. It was only near the end of my session last night I actually noticed it. This isn't a game that's ever going to set the world on fire - the controls sometimes feel a little loose, the story has less than zero subtlety, and the graphic design is an acquired taste (but exactly the kind of thing I love). But given that it's a very stark look at the different aspects of depression, it also feels quite brave in a way. I also don't want to give spoilers away, which is why I haven't discussed any of the main story beats, just given a little overview. It feels relatively short, I reckon I'm about half way through it - but I'm really enjoying it at the moment. As much as you can 'enjoy' a story about a young girl's crippling depression.

Don't think this ever migrated into the Games thread, but I started playing it today. It's pretty clunky, but already has a few interesting ideas in terms of making you work things out whilst investigating/researching and linking events together when using the psychic flashbacks. The Lovecraft vibe is quite obvious, and combat best avoided at times rather than head on. Promising few hours, so I'll be seeing this through.

This is a bit of an odd one, it really should have been called something else - it gets a lot of hate from project cars 1/2 fans (understandable really) as it's a departure - it's not a sim any more, and drops stuff like pitstops. this isn't really a problem for me, while there was some good stuff in 1/2 i was never a big fan, and i think there's a gap in the market for what 3 is trying to be. the handling is more inbetween sim and arcade now - like pgr/driveclub. so it's a similar game to grid and shift now i guess - but while both of those were decent imo there was something not quite right about the handling, this seems better in that regard, although probably not as good as pgr/driveclub. it's much better on a pad too than pcars1/2, i didn't play those with a pad but apparently there were problems - this one i've only played with a pad so far, and it's been good. one thing it still has from previous games is a great selection of tracks - saying great maybe understating how good the selection of tracks is, it's pretty amazing really i think there's ~40 real tracks (lots of these have multiple layouts too), and 10 made up ones. it has some from old toca games that aren't in games often like knockhill and oulton park, etc. so it's sort of close to a pgr style handling game with lots of real life tracks - which to me sounds like it could be the best thing ever - it's not the best thing ever. although i am enjoying it. then we have the problems - there are many problems with the games structure imo - the timetrials - just let me keep going - don't like having to restart every lap. - the 3 lap average time events need to be more lenient on voiding laps imo. - generally it's really harsh on voiding lap times - which i think is fine for online leaderboards but should be relaxed for the career mode stuff. - getting money to buy new cars is really slow going - which compounds into other problems - can't buy cars needed to do events to get more stars to unlock more events. games like forza and GT throw loads of cars at you - this should be the same. - lots of xp points wasted (you need these to get money) restarting instead of finishing events - although i now think i've solved this one - always finish an event and see your xp go up then restart at the last opportunity to avoid more loading but still get the xp. - oddly long loading times from an ssd - although ~30 to 40 seconds is still faster than some games from hdd. - the difficulty is all over the place, and unlocking stuff is tied into the difficulty - for me there should be difficult events with gold/silver/bronze medals etc, but getting bronze should be easy and fine for unlocking everything - here you need the 3 stars/gold etc as much as possible to help unlock stuff. i might have been making things harder for myself by buying the deal of the day cars sometimes from the store thinking they will come in handy, but they are for much later in the game. i've played ~12 hours and think i have 5 cars. also oddly you can pay money (in game money) to unlock events instead of properly unlocking them with stars - this is odd but a very good feature because of how hard it is to unlock stuff normally - but seems like they realised the unlocking system was crap and this was a quick fix for it or something. the graphics are not supposed to be any good, but i think it looks alright, and it runs really smooth, at 4k, with like 32 cars on track sometimes, this is on pc anyway. oh except when it rains, that's less smooth - i should mess with the settings to sort that out. despite the problems though i keep coming back to it, i am enjoying it. the handling is good, the selection of cars seems good if i could buy them, and the selection of tracks is really impressive. i hope they get chance to make a new one of these, with a different name, and with the career/structure stuff improved, i think it could be brilliant, and i'd like to say i think it could be a big hit but i'm not sure this kind of thing sells very well these days so who knows.

Can you spoiler tag your latest post above please @Nag? Only glimpsed the first line, but saw things I didn't want to. Anyhoo...played the first 100 minutes or so earlier. I'm very impressed with it, I really wish I hadn't of played the Beginning Hour demo though as that pretty much ruined the surprise of the first hour of the game for me after you reach the house (guess the clue was in the name but I stupidly listened to some Journo's say it's not related at all to the game...), few different bits and pieces though and I liked the continuation of certain elements like finding the bolt cutters and fuse I wasn't able to find in the demo made things feel a bit different. Absolutely adore the atmosphere already, it's just dripping with dread, what I wasn't expecting though is just how Resi it would feel, you walk along a corridor, see the flashing of lightning streaming in and rain pouring down the windows and you can't help but think of the Spencer Mansion from the original, even the animations when you pick up and examine an object remind me of that so much, I like the little touches like the wrist watch and the items too, all very Resi. The gameplay itself is cool, I'm getting a definite Outlast/Alien:Isolation kind of vibe with it, but it still manages to feel distinct enough and Resi enough for me personally to differentiate from those titles, it definitely isn't scary though, I just don't feel threatened at all by the Bakers really, you get a brief 'Ahh, gotta run' when they get in close but if they catch me I just jankily leg it away from them, no idea if I'm meant to be shooting or running most of the time either. The graphics and lighting effects are incredible too (although the character models are a tad ropey at times), it can be a gorgeous game when you're walking through a dimly lit corridor or something, evokes the Train from RE0 a bit and of course the Spencer Mansion in the original (I know I've mentioned this a lot). Someone from the development team definitely saw the first season of True Detective as well, there's even a shot in the beginning cutscene which is pretty much ripped straight from that, love the whole deep South swamp vibe to it. So yeah, I'm impressed, probably more impressed than I thought I'd be and can't wait to play more, hopefully put some more time in at the weekend. A few pics:

I've seen so much praise for this, review scores and whatnot, i was sort of sceptical but got it anyway. was sort of underwhelmed in the areas of graphics and emotion, it does look really nice and the story is alright i guess but too much hype. anyway onto the important bit - it plays flipping brilliantly, the enemies sometimes seem a bit pointless, especially at the start, then you unlock something really cool that makes them more interesting/not-pointless. it's a platform puzzler metroidvania sort of thing - with only a small amount of puzzling so far, more like complicated and satisfying platforming like super meat boy/guacamelee, it's tough but not super difficult yet anyway, and i'm not that good at platformers. some sections are so much fun i didn't mind dying and retrying if i messed them up. controls great too which is pretty important when things get tricky. so yeah double thumbs up so far. edit - oh yeah there's an interesting save system too, not many proper checkpoints but you can save/checkpoint pretty much anywhere you want, but it uses energy so you can't do it all the time, and that energy can unlock doors so do you save or keep the energy in case you need it? not sure what i think to this yet but it's not been a massive help/hindrance either way. and there's a sort of rgp lite levelling up thing where you unlock perks and stuff. edit 2 - mini bosses so far have been a bit disappointing. not sure if i've fought a proper boss yet.

Got this through yesterday. It’s brilliant. Looks and feels great, always preferred this to Mario Kart and even from my short go last night I stand by this thought even more now. Loads better than Team Sonic Racing too. Transformed is a different matter though.. Anyone who enjoyed it back in the day get on it. Just as good as I remember it being. Negatives? It hitches every now and again surprisingly (playing on a X1X). & the load times are excruciating! I’m not one to normally complain too much about long loads as long as they’re infrequent but here they are frequent and seriously bad. To the point I could see it ruining the “quick go” and “just one more race” elements causing me to play it less. We’ll see.