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Is this an indie? I think it could be so it gets an 'indie' sticker. But the game! It's pretty good! I say pretty good but what I mean is it's text book good. It doesn't do anything wrong and it uses the 'Metroidvania' template pretty well and has some interesting uses of its mechanics (I'm getting sick of using that word but I don't want to get specific as they get kinda surprising). What I will say is that there is a flip dimensions ability that mixes things up, but only in the same way as Outland does. Remember that game? Guacamelee! is a lot like Outland in some ways so if you liked that you'll like this. But I suppose the combat is better in this. You're a Mexican Wrestler so flinging folks about is important and you do have a big repertoire of combos and moves to do that are fun to pull off and hurt things a lot. You also have a bunch of fun internet jokes to laugh at about cats and stuff in the game, you know, all that referential stuff we enjoy. Like you climb a big mountain and near the top you find the the dead body of the thing from Journey and you go 'hahaha! I know that reference! Choozo Staues! hahaha!' It's so funny, it's like those guys who make the Scary Movie films and stuff made it. In summery: a pretty well made game that is fun but with with shite, incestuous nerd comedy. Play Outland instead.

Not started it yet, as I've said elsewhere I'm still reluctant to as I've not finished P3 (think I'm half way...) and not even started The Answer chapter on the FES edition. But I am listening to the soundtrack CD that comes with it, and its every bit as good as the soundtrack for Persona 3 was with Reach Out To The Truth being my favourite track so far.

Quoting the kickstarter - "Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring. Descend at your peril!" Anyway, it was funded for over $300,000 in March 2014, spent a year on Early Access and eventually released in January this year. It's due out on PS4 later in the summer. It got good reviews and and has a "very positive" Steam user rating with around 15,000 votes. I've played it for an hour so far, it's cool. The game is structured like Sunless Sea in that you have a base, a safe haven, where you can buy provisions, recruit new members, take on quests etc etc. You can only set out with a party of four each time, but you can have way more than four people hired. One of the things you can do in the base camp or "hamlet" is assign people to certain activities which will reduce stress (like dread in Sunless Sea). If someone is assigned to an activity, you can't take them with you on your next trip. I'm not going to drone on about the mechanics in the game, but it is pretty similar to Sunless Sea really. Combat is turn based. Your party stands in formation and different characters have a preferred position...it's not what it sounds like. Both yours and the enemies position will affect the range of your attacks. That's all I can say about it so far. I did the introductory quest.

Seems like this is totally awesome to the max. it plays a bit like samba de amigo without the maracas (which sounds like it might be bad but it's not) - notes come out from the centre to 6 points, 3 left (hit by up, left, down) and 3 right (triangle, O, X), there's standard stuff like 2 at a time, and holding notes. but to keep it interesting - a big circle means flick one of the analogue sticks, this is like the clap in donkey konga and the kick pedal in rock band drums - as in it messes with your head at first - i'm still at this stage - but also this is optional, i guess it gives you more score, but missing them doesn't count towards pass/failing the song (i think i read that somewhere), which is nice. i've worked through all the songs on normal, and they're good fun, occasionally difficult with the added stick flick (which i was sort of getting used to on normal) - but moving onto hard i'm having to ignore it to try and just pass the songs - which seems pretty tricky, you can't miss that much stuff. i've had to replay songs quite a bit on hard to pass a few - still early days. but i don't mind replaying them as the gameplay is really good fun, and the music is great (if you like persona 4 music anyway). and the presentation is out of this world, not that that really matters but it's really slick and looks ace. now the bad - i should have waited for an english version as there's a story mode like the fighting game, but i haven't a clue what's going on (beyond dancing to defeat monsters), hold triangle to skip text at super speed anyway. and i sacked that off for the free play mode. there's about 25 songs i've unlocked so far. so yeah if you like rhythm action games and persona music it's a big thumbs up imo.

So this doesn't even try not to be Castlevania. It's got the same intro screen and everything. Even the C in "Curse" is the C from Castlevania. This is proper old school retroness - 8 bit music, 8 bit graphics and 8 bit gameplay. If you've played any old Castlevania game you'll know exactly what you're in for and if you haven't you're a cunt and you should fuck off. You only get to pick Normal difficulty from the off but you get to pick between two gameplay variants. Casual in which lives are unlimited and enemy hits don't knock you back and Veteran which plays like the old Castlevania games and offers more of a challenge. You set off on your side scrolling adventure from left to right in control of (i forget his name). He has a sword and that sword has limited range and can only be poked in front of you. You destroy lamps (instead of candles) which drops mostly ammo for sub weapons but also yields hearts for health regen and cash for good old fashioned points! Although they are worth bagging as got an extra life at 20,000. I've only played the first two levels so far but each level has predictably ended in a boss fight. Upon defeat of said boss you unlock a new ally of whom you can control. You can switch between allies with the shoulder buttons and each has their own health bar for tactical switching. The first ally I got was a chick with a whip, a higher jump and a ground slide. This new ground slide technique is handy to go under things that the main guy couldn't (cos for some reason he cant slide). I noticed plenty of opportunities to use this slide on the first level so I guess at some point you can go through it with her, maybe after completion, i dont fucking know. She also has a different set of sub weapons also. I've just beat the second level boss and unlocked a third character so i'm gonna go try him out. The game hasn't been too tough so far, i'm yet to lose a life but I'm expecting that to change. I've enjoyed the music so far as well. Do with that info what you will.

No impressions of this? I thought some people had it. If you don't, well you should. This game is pretty damn amazing. I think if you played Origins you'll know what to expect when it comes to the normal platforming levels. You sprint, jump, punch and bounce your way through a bunch of levels that make some pretty creative use of Rayman and the gang's skills. Of course, it looks amazing, again, with those lush hand-drawn graphics and it has some of those funky ditties again. But there is new stuff. You have music levels which are awesome. It's a shame there are only one per world as I'd play the heck out of a game that was just all these; they're just so much fun. I guess they're not unlike the levels in Origins where you chase the sprinting treasure chest but seeing the levels and the enemy placements sync up with the music as you take them out just adds more of a silly playfulness to it, and they are really imaginative with it, too. The other thing they have which I think is only on the Wii U version which I played is having levels where you take control of Murfy, a new wee flying fella with a big underbite. They are controlled solely using the touchscreen of the Gamepad and you basically interact with the environments with it. Like you move platforms around so an AI controlled Goblox will navigate the level. Early on they're not great but they do build into something a lot more interesting, and again, there is some real creative stuff going on with this different way of playing. Though some of the final levels have it fall apart slightly where Goblox will just do dumb things and get himself killed when you do the right things... it's like the levels get a bit too complex for the AI to handle. But over all, it's amazing. Maybe the lows are lower than Rayman Origins but I think the highs are much higher than in that. It still manages to be surprising despite being a strict follow-up and it is just one of those games where you can tell everyone working on it loved working on it; you can tell, it just pours out of the screen.

I might as well say something about this since I'm stuck. So on the surface this is basically a classic Metroid game under another name, and I'd even say it's classic Metroid a little under the surface, too. It's hard to get away from the comparisons. But it does have it's own stuff. Gameplay-wise it is less predictable than it initially looks. You can see that there are ares you can't traverse but it doesn't quite use the same kind of abilities as you'd expect from a game so inspired by Metroid and Axiom Verge certainly does a pretty good job of surprising you. I kind of don't want to talk about them, but I will say the drone is pretty inspired. It plays a pretty good shooter. The enemies are really fiendish which really do cause a problem not long into the game and the weapons you get are weird and unexpected, too. They maybe a bit too situational so you will use the default a lot but there is some satisfaction in figuring out the best way of using the weirder ones. It feels quite Turbo-Grafix-y more than Metroid-y in terms of action, actually. I don't think I quite understand the story, though. There is a bit too much jargon that comes across really stupid, sometimes, but the atmosphere is spot on. The environments do pull off the surreal, dreamy, alien sci-fi thing really well. The soundtrack helps a lot; it's mostly really good. I know this has past a lot of people by, it hasn't had much attention for some reason but I would say it stands alongside Shovel Knight as a good modern take on an older style of game. I kinda hate it now because being stuck really blows chunks, especially on games like this.

This is a little known indie RPG from a couple of years ago that has a 16bit JRPG style. On the surface it pulls a lot of inspiration from Chrono Trigger with regards to its battle system, but instead it has a sci-fi setting where you play as a team of future spies. It has been good so far. Well, the story I'm a bit unsure about. Maybe it just needs some time to pick up but currently it has a dodgy mix of some regular sci-fi and a Saturday Morning Cartoon, but in a way that isn't quite working for me. I just want them to pick one so far. But I've been very impressed with the battle system and that's the star of the show here. You have basic moves, moves that can be used once until you've gone in a turn consuming defensive stance, the moves have a lot of different kinds of properties even early on. Every fight with basic enemies feels meaningful. JRPGs are often more of a marathon than a sprint, where you have to get from one place to the next, doing lots of simple fights and making sure you're prepared enough for it. Here, all of your health and abilities are restored after a fight so they're very self contained, puzzle-y things and don't shy away from making regular encounters feel like boss fights in another game like this. It's cool. It's very cheap on Switch as of now and if you want something to challenge your decision making in a JRPG style I think it's truly worth looking at.

Steamworld Heist is a game that’s out on everything. It was initially released on 3DS in 2015, and I’ve played it for a couple of hours on Switch. It’s a fun turn-based space faring rpg with an eye-catching visual style. Battles take place inside ships and the ship layouts are randomised. Missions are selected from a node-based map. I’ve been playing on the default “Experienced” difficulty and it seems like a reasonable challenge. I’ve had a couple of characters die during missions. When a character dies they don’t receive experience for that mission but they are resurrected when the mission is over. The game has all the features that you would expect from the genre - special abilities, equipment, loot, new characters to recruit - but it’s the visual style and the ricocheting of bullets (as you can see in the picture) that makes it unique and fun.

Surprised I couldn't find a thread for this... It's been out a while and i'd eyed it up on other platforms but ever pulled the trigger, but finally bought it on the Switch and it's superb. It's a rogue-like where you keep pushing further through a dungeon, unlocking new equipment that makes your life easier for the next run with the big twist being that all movement has to be timed to music and monsters also have their own movement pattern to the beat. The soundtrack's superb as well. It has that 'one more go' factor, and it never feels unfair. I'm still pretty shit at it, and have only made it to the third area so far but it's still throwing numerous surprises at me even in the first few stages, and I can feel myself improving the more I play. It seems the perfect fit for the Switch - a game you can pick up and play for five minutes or a good long session.

I just realised we don't have a thread for this. It came out in Japan in 2014 but only came out over here last year. As you can see by the tags, it's out on pretty much everything bar PC. For anyone that doesn't know, Puyo Puyo is Mean Bean Machine and it mixes that with Tetris. The game modes are insane. You can play against people playing one style while you play the other one (or the same if you like), you can play a weird hybrid mode where the two styles are combined and you will get Puyos and Tetris pieces in the same zone, you can play an alternating mode where you play one style for say 30 seconds and then it switches to the other style, or you can play a puzzle mode where you have to fill in certain puzzle shapes. I played quite a bit in multiplayer over the Christmas break and it gets really fierce and fun. I wouldn't recommend playing online against randoms because fucking hell. You can view replays of other people playing and they are like machines.

Ok, so I wasn't even going to post about this game. I was genuinely just going to sit in my depraved little corner and get through it, with none of your eyes having to witness what mine have witnessed. Then I got this trophy... ...so now all you fuckers are gonna live through it too. The story follows sisters Rinka and Ranka who have been sent to Bikkhuni island on their quest to find a cure for the V-Virus they're afflicted with. God knows how out actually affects them, but it needs curing either way. They do this by training, rising through the ranks and learning how to control this awful, awful medical condition. Now, because Japan, Rinka and Ranka are both scantily clad schoolgirls. See Exhibit A. As they get to the island, the sisters meet a stoic character, Mana, and a chirpy flirt, Momo (I think). They're also scantily clad. Your honour, Exhibit B. Not gonna lie, I was scared to Google that in case of Rule 34. Anyway, the game is played by exploring levels, brawling in open arenas before finally coming to a one on one battle against a level boss. Each pairing has an Extar half, and a Liberator half. All that means is one fights, while the other gives combat bonuses. Now, the interesting part. You earn bonuses by beating up enough scantily clad generic schoolgirls to gain the energy to transform, via an Ex Drive. Right now these seem very innocent, but I'm only on the lowest level for them, so it could become filthy. Let's face it, it's gonna get wrong. Fast. Anyway, during the one on one brawls, if you beat your opponent enough, her clothes burst. In... Convenient places... So all that's left are rags around the boobs and crotch area. Classy. If you win well enough, they end up in nothing but their underwear. Classy. If you win even better than that, the poor girls will catch a chill, because they end up completely naked. Now, remember the part up above? Where I said I wasn't gonna post anything until I got that achievement? That's earned, as it says, by increasing a character's Boob Rank. Now I genuinely wouldn't have known this exists if I hadn't looked through the trophy guide online, but in the dressing room (oh yeah, you can choose each girl's outfit, down to her underwear and accessories. Super fucking creepy) you can use the touch screen to prod the lovely ladies wherever you choose. This levels up your Boob Rank. Every now and then you're thrown a Heart Ticket. I'm not even gonna explain what these do - here's a video (spoilered, because of course I fucking have to spoil it)... I played that. Many, many times. Until I got a Boob Rank up to the maximum. I'm not even sure what that is! One thing I'm genuinely happy about with this though, the script completely plays into the ridiculousness of it all. At least, I hope it's playing into that, and not trying to be sexy... Oh and before I forget, one other way of getting bonuses items of clothing is by finding the Chest Checkers dotted about some of the levels. Literally robots that fondle the girls. If their level is high enough, they get the bonus. This game, this game is a bit fucked in the head. But (butt?), the fact that it is trying to go down the comedy route with certain storylines makes it much more palatable. Also, I now have a trophy on my list, for all time, called Intimate Connection. I think I've hit my line on sordid WTF-ness with this one.

VA-11 Hall-A (a.k.a. Valhalla) is a cyberpunk visual novel/lite bartender simulator, released in June 2016. The bartending element is fun and simple. Characters will occasionally ask for drinks, sometimes they will tell you directly what they want, sometimes just what kind of drink they want, and you have to choose the right drink and prepare it correctly. It's not complicated and in the two hours I've played I've yet to make a mistake. If only another game I've been playing was as sensibly designed as this... I thought the game had been kickstarted but googling it shows I was wrong. The wikipedia page has a lot of background information on the game. I can see references to things like Policenauts and Blade Runner and Valhalla is definitely in that vein. The characters that come to the bar have been interesting and it seems like the game is going to have a lot of recurring characters which is cool. Aesthetically, the game looks lovely, not least the title screen which has a kind of PS1-era feeling. In fact it might just be me but the game kind of screams PS1-era Final Fantasy... Before each day of work you can set the music in the jukebox, and once you are playing you can just sit back and listen, or switch between songs as you like. The game has other neat small touches like the fact that you can change the channel on the tv. Also, I liked the reference to Stein's Gate.

Cleared some space on my Wii for this most precious of gems. Looks awfull on the 42" but fuck it, i love this game from the bottom of my asshole. Im really interested to hear from someone who has never played it becaue my rosetints ae welded to my face. I love the soundtrack so much, honestly, i ony got to my first oppertunity to save and i had a massive boner. Even when you save it the music is awesome... Im gonna bum this hard like i do my girlfriend when she's asleep.

Crossing Souls is an indie adventure game made in Spain that was kickstarted way back in December 2014. I’ve played about an hour of it so far. The game has a heavy 80s kids-on-an-adventure film feeling, so I think a lot of you would like it. In fact so far it has felt like I’m playing through a film, which is cool. The lovely music helps. You play as a gang of five kids on their summer holidays (in 1986 to be precise). Each kid has unique abilities and you can switch between them on the fly. You start off with just one member of the gang but quickly round up rest as you move through town on your way to meet the final fifth member in the gang’s secret treehouse, which is as far as I’ve played.

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.

I saw Ed playing this earlier, I think a few might like it. The easy description is twin-stick shooter meets clicker. Here’s a video as it explains it much better than I can. It’s out on all the usual suspects but I bought the Switch version as I was looking for something addictive to replace my Stardew addiction. It’s pretty good so far though hasn’t quite got its claws into me. Comparing my current play to that video, my guns are underpowered and I’m not constantly getting money from the planets like he is so I suspect that’s an upgrade somewhere along the way. There’s a knowing-ness about the guy that pops up and gives you tool tips. One of his lines was, “to all the people that find my voice annoying, you should’ve heard the ones we discarded”. You can also turn his voice off in the menu.

I'm surprised there isn't a thread for this. It was on sale for the Switch recently and I've wanted to play it for a while. I'm a good chunk into this now and I'm quietly enjoying it. It's a relatively straight forward JRPG with a general plot about escorting a young woman who is going to willfully sacrifice herself for the greater good of the land. I think it has a similar general premise in that regard to Final Fantasy X. It's a meloncholic game what with it always kinda dark and snowing all the time with a very stripped back, piano based soundtrack with an art style similar to earlier Final Fantasy games. It's actually very Chrono Trigger in the combat system, it almost feels like its taken right out of it but they added a system linked to the Active Time Battle system where if you wait while your bar is full and able to make a move you can charge up stronger versions of your moves. It's a neat, subtle little risk reward system which I like quite a bit. It gives the battles a wee bit more tension. It hasn't wowed me with an amazing plot or character driven scenes but it's just a bitter sweet little 90s Final Fantasy game. It's cool, I'm glad I did end up liking it.

I've seen a couple of people on my Switch friends list playing this. I completed the first one on the PC and then got it for free on PS4 so played through it again but I'm having difficulty remembering what is new in this and what isn't. It seems more focussed on exploring as a platformer - I don't feel like I've done anywhere near as much digging down as I remember doing in the last one. One ability I have unlocked which may or may not be new is the hook shot, which is pretty cool and I've gone back to old areas to find secret places. So far I give it the thumbs up. I was itching for a Metroidvania to play and this is more or less that.

I never did get round to playing the first one on the Wii but that can be said for a lot of my Wii collection. A rainy (and jobless) Thursday last week however prompted me to unwrap the second one (part of my 360 backlog). So its Mickey and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Mickey with a paintbrush that can use paint to fill things out or thinner to erase stuff. Oswald has a remote control that shoots electricity so as to open gates via control panels and he can also shock enemies with it. You traverse between hub worlds, each laden with NPC's that give you seemingly no end of stuff to do via sidequests. The hubworlds are connected by projectors that are basically 2.5D A to B platformers full of tickets (the in game currency) and little secret routes hiding more goodies. It's littered with little problems, depth perception being one, inconsistent jumping being another and camera angles to drop on top. I often felt that each jump was too high for Mickey, he can double jump but even then it felt like I was clipping through the top of platforms as opposed to landing on them. Oswald is also a complete cunt, one of the dopiest NPC's i've ever had the misfortune of having no control over. He has knocked me of platforms to my death, gotten stuck about 8 miles away leading me to back track so he can navingate the simplist of obstacles and he sometimes outright refuses to stand where I need him to 50% of the time. Mickey can throw Oswald in the air and jump up and catch his legs so they can glide to far away platforms, problem here is Oswald always goes far too high up in the air to start with therefore you have to wait five or so seconds for him to slowly float down so you can grab him. And that's fucking annoying! Yet... despite these irritants, it's a good game which is not at all what I expected. I really enjoyed it. The platforming was fun and the bosses were fairly inventive. I found loads of secrets and it turns out I didn't find even half of them. I felt like I ploughed through it a bit too quick but I do find myself wanting to go back and explore a bit more. Your actions have consequences as well, depending on how nice you are (by using paint to befriend enemies instead of thinner to destroy enemies) so it does warrent another playthrough if you feel so inclined. There are costumes and badges to collect, photo's to take, gremlins and spirits to find. I just didn't expect the game to be such a package. Reckon i might check out the first one.

Just wrote a long post for this and lost it through my own stupidity. Oh well It's out on the vita at the end of the week, I thought a few people might be interested as it's kind of Persona's social link stuff mixed with Phoenix Wright's gameplay, set in a 999 style story. I'll try to keep the story short as it's what took the most writing before. There's a school that only takes the 'ultimate' kids, but not necessarily those with the best grades, more like the best baseball player, pop star, gambler, fan-fic writer, biker gang leader etc. It's a school so revered that graduating from there is a guarantee of success. Your character however isn't an ultimate anything, he got in because he won a lottery that allows a nobody to join. Unfortunately for him someone has taken over the school, who knows who but they've left a mixed-race demonic robot teddy bear in charge and he has some rules. There's no leaving the school, ever, you're all to stay for the rest of your lives, unless you do something terrible like murder someone and get away with it, in which case you graduate for the good of the school. Unfortunately the way things are rigged if you don't work out who the killer is the rest of the class is killed, solve the case and just the killer gets their punishment. Let me say straight off the bat that Danganronpa Trigger Happy Havoc takes an age to get to any actual gameplay, or the trial aspect which is what you're really here for, there's a lot of story and exploration before then (over 4 hours worth). The exploration is largely without purpose, just to advance the story and introduce you to the mechanics. you'll also get free time to spend with other people, potentially leading to bonuses to take in to a trial. Eventually though there's a murder, which means talking to people, searching for clues, piecing things together, and then a trial. In the story you have to convince the majority to vote the right way otherwise you're all going to die, but in the one trial I've done so far that just meant getting things right, there was no individual voting. The trials are really action packed, there's statements you have to shoot down with truth bullets (or something like that), evidence to present at the right time, a comic to pice together, then a rhythm action game. All this is against a clock, with lives, so if you take too long you die, rush and guess you die. despite how long it takes to get to a murder I've been really enjoying it. There's also clearly a bigger story going on than just what I posted above, it's definitely got that 999 thing going on. Even with the characters, things aren't always as they seem but in quite a believable way (so far). The script is... ok. There's been a few funny bits, but some of the jokes barely make sense, I'm not sure if that's a translation issue or what. Either way the whole thing is mental, likeably so

I can't decide whether to play Mass Effect, Yakuza 0 or Zelda at the minute so I decided to distract myself with one of this months PS+ offerings, and to be honest, I've kind of fell in love with it. The concept is that you play as a colon (one of these ':', not the place where poo travels through) platforming through the history of writing, from the first known cave paintings back in 30,000 BC up until today. You collect asterisks as you go, and each one gives you more information on how the written word has evolved. For example, I've just completed the Garamond era which led me through the first printing presses and the way they improved to make it easier and more accessible for people to get hold of books. Part of this area also has burning books, so I assume it's around this time that actually happened. You also collect the letters of the alphabet and ampersands along the way too. As far as I can tell these aren't essential, but you do have to stray off the beaten path (barely) to collect everything. It's such a simple idea, but it's one they seem to have balanced beautifully. The music is nice and relaxed, and the actual levels seem pretty simple up to now, so it all just culminates to feel like a super-chilled out game. I'm liking it a lot, although barring the possibility that the levels become much more difficult, I can see me finishing it tonight.

Picked this up while it was still 20% off. (It no longer is, I don't know why I'm telling you...) The game has a bunch of options allowing you to mix and match remastered visuals and audio (voices, music, sfx) with the old visuals and audio. It seems to be a recurring theme with these games but the "remastered" visuals are just awful compared to the original, at least to my eyes. It's probably subjective. I've been playing with the original graphics and remastered audio (you can change on the fly to compare). The game also has a developer commentary that you can activate manually in each room. I've listened to around five snippets so far and none of them have been very interesting. I might turn it off because the commentary automatically plays during cut scenes, and drowns out the audio in cuts-cenes which is annoying. It's my first time playing the game and I've really enjoyed it so far. The animation in the game is beautiful, and the voice acting and music is very good. It seems to be quite a cinematic game with as many cut-scenes as there are puzzles. The game has a lot of character and the writing has been very good so far. From what I've read Full Throttle has the reputation of being "short but sweet" so I'm looking forward to playing through it.

So this is the Shantae game that was Kickstarted quite a while ago. It finally came out at the end of last year and after glancing over at it whenever I was reminded it existed with some encouragement it hasn't lived up to it. Wayforward are usually solid when it comes to their own projects but I'm wondering if this is struggling what with it being post Shovel Knight. It started off fine, familiar, dorky and cute; a vibe the games always do. They're never difficult games but throw enough low key platforming that is solid enough to carry this easy going adventure. But this time, after less than a couple of hours when you've accumulated some Zelda style heart containers, it gets far too easy. Life pick-ups are everywhere, as are consumable items, and an ability to turn magic into health and on top of that nothing does more than a fraction of damage... and there is a defense buff. The Metroid aspect of the game finding hidden abilities is solid enough but having it pointlessly easy to get around is more of a chore than it should be. You can just walk through everything and enemies don't do more damage as the game progresses. There are a few challenging areas that have pits and spikes that throw you back to checkpoints that are quite far apart, and the bosses have something of a challenge to them but that's about it. I'm playing the Wii U version and I'm kinda disappointed with that, too. Just a minor thing but it kept bothering me. I'm sure the last game had Gamepad features, and I'd bet that this was meant to as well. The only thing you can do on the gamepad is run the game: what is happening on the TV is happening on the Gamepad. No map or anything. And what is weird is the item screen has these big, chunky icons that look like they should be pushed, but I have to pause the game and cycle through them. Why isn't this shit just on the Gamepad? I swear it must have been on the cards with how the UI is designed but it doesn't work like that at all. I'm no game maker or anything but I just can't see that being a hard addition, especially since Pirate's Curse did (I think, I could check but I'm too lazy). I dunno. It doesn't all play bad, the main loop somewhat remains in other places. It looks really nice. It has hand draw animation for the first time and the levels look really nice, most of the music is great and it's got a lot of the components that made the other Shantae games the fun time they are. But maybe they were games that were always treading water but had enough going on as a whole to still be satisfying. And with this one some things have give.

Anyone else tried this? There's a demo up on psn It's actually pretty good so far. It's Minecraft but Minecraft if it was directed. So you hit blocks to gather materials but you have to build certain buildings to attract villagers, who will then perform roles in your town. I'm not entirely sure what yet, I've just got my second villager but I'm not sure what the other one was up to while I was out. And by 'out' I mean wandering the game world completing a quest. This also doubles as an excuse to smack the shit out of some monsters and collect some materials. Eventually, so I'm led to believe, you have to defend your town from monster attacks. I'm not up to that yet, but I've got to say I'm impressed by how much this isn't just a Dragon Quest reskin of Minecraft