The Video Games Thread

Topic

What are you playing? Talk video games here.

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Many thanks for your review. Between you and the YouTube videos reviewing the game, it gives me a good idea of what I might be getting into. But… I am into Fallen Order, then the Survivor sequel, and a good 5 other games I have to catch up on.

I am sofa king behind. 🤣

And I like using the Force and sabre. In Order as I am playing, Cal just invited Mirren to join the crew. Mirren has an accent and so I looked up the actress doing her voice. She is Tina Ivlev. Here is a pic of the two:

 

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Ben

To be honest Al waiting a few months is your best bet due to the improvements being made, plus no way UbiSoft resist slinging it into a Black Friday sale.

I got to have a go on a Virtual Boy yesterday. Not something I ever really considered a possibility outside of splurging several hundred quid myself on buying one (which I’m incredibly unlikely to do). But the owner of the retro games, toys and car dealership near me has got one in and had it set up for people to have a go on yesterday, so I went down (early, to beat the crowds I expected, but no-one else was there. For the Virtual Boy! Mad).

So it’s an interesting machine. By which I mean weird. First, the controller. It’s got two d-pads, for reasons passing understanding. The one on the right means that the main face buttons are shoved further inwards than is strictly comfortable. It has shoulders buttons, that came as a surprise, while the system’s power switch is on the controller too, for some reason. Not only is it weird in itself, it’s strange how close it feels to a PS1 controller in shape, yet the subsequent N64 one didn’t.

The system itself is no less odd. The shop had it set up on a tripod, to avoid strapping it to people’s face (which I think you can do) and he said you don’t need to push your face right down into it. I’m not sure if that’s true or if he just wanted to avoid having loads of people’s faces smushed into it. Looking into the viewer felt like being Spock on Star Trek, peering into his science device, just at a slightly different angle. I wasn’t sure if I’d need to take my glasses off to view it properly, but (as a short-sighted person) I really didn’t. The image of the screen feels surprisingly far away. There’s a serious feeling of depth. Not necessarily to the stereoscopic effect (though that does work) but just to how far away it all is. That didn’t mean the image felt small though and I’d say I had the opposite issue. In playing one of the games, a vector-based Starfox-alike, while concentrating on the ship, I couldn’t ever really see the HUD in the corners. I had to actively look around to find that and kept forgetting it was even there. As I said, the stereoscopic effect does work, to differing degrees. It’s not quite as good as on a 3DS but it does work. There’s a focus slider on the device, but I didn’t feel like that really did anything.

The shop had two games and that is the crux of the machine really. The first was that space shooter, called Red Alarm, published by T&E Soft and which plays worse than Starfox. The issue is really the controls, although I think I was meant to be using the second d-pad more than I was. There wasn’t much sense of speed (although that might have been due to me not knowing how to accelerate fully, if you can) and the manoeuvrability was poor. Another weird thing was that it kept flashing “Nintendo Virtual Boy” and “T&E Soft” on the screen while playing, which made it feel like a tech demo rather than a game. Not sure what that was about but apparently it’s intentional.

The other game was Mario Clash, which owes more to the Mario Bros arcade game than the proper Super Mario games. It’s about stomping on turtles that move across two platforms, the twist being they’re on front and rear planes, connected by pipes, rather than different heights. It’s a decent concept, I guess, and the depth of field really works. The game just isn’t fun. It’s immediately quite difficult, with spiked turtles you can’t stomp on the first level, while the platforming elements (there are some higher platformers) feel awkward and I just couldn’t make the jump.

Ultimately, that was the biggest issue I had with my short go on the Virtual Boy. I didn’t mind the red tone graphics and it didn’t seem to be inducing a migraine in me (as I feared, given VR does) I just wasn’t compelled to spend any time with the games, because they were kinda shit. And that’s ultimately what any console is going to live or die by.

Finished Fallen Order and I will eventually move on to Survivor. For now, a break and get back to Gotham, finish up on the Spider man games. I like mixing in a few games to break the monotony.

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Dave

Sometimes when I am farming, I sort of feel bad for the monster I am killing over and over again just to rack up points. 🤣

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Ben

And which game are you on Al?

Ben wrote:

And which game are you on Al?

Who said he was playing a game?

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njerry, Martin Smith, Dave, Sean Robinson

Jedi Survivor

Can’t be a Jedi Survivor without some Jedi Survivor’s Guilt.

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Christian, Al-x, Todd

Al-x wrote:

Jedi Survivor

Oh, now the wildlife butchery comment makes sense.

[Al-x]

All this platforming, tight roping, dark caves, crazy jumps, hanging on a flimsy branch, just for BD 1 to open a chest and get either a new hairstyle, paint job for the droid and so on.

I am freeing oversized birds and hitching flights on them and now “horses”. 🤣

But it’s still fun. I like the meditation circle fast tracking to the other circles. Made for a great escape.

And there is a lot of Tomb Raider in the game too.

 

• This reply was modified 5 months, 4 weeks ago by Al-x.

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Ben

In a very cool surprise, in a way that works independently of whether you have played it, Infinite Wealth weaves in Ishin!

Chapter 8 sees you back in Ijincho with Kiryu. Initially it comes across as a bit of a difficulty spike, but once you progress the main plot, you get a fuller party. Do some levelling up and it gets better.

Then it drops a Reminisce set-up, of Kiryu reflecting on his life, with bits from all the games in the series!  On top of this it drops in a personality power-up system, similar to Ichiban’s but linked to Kiryu’s fight styles.

Did I mention it also weaves in new bond bingo cards? Plus, a really subtle nod to the earlier games with Kiryu and the Survive bartender. If it’s who I think, it’ll be very cool.

What was a great game has only gotten better.  What’s particularly smart is the way the nods to Kiryu’s games work. If you’ve played them, the references work very well. If you have not then they encourage you to go back and play them.

Just over 120 hours and months later, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth is complete.

Well, except for the post-game dungeon they’ve thrown in.

Game is superb, well worth playing but maybe best to play the earlier ones first before booting up this tenth game.

I decided to get the Meta Quest 3s for myself for Christmas. I’ll always love the pure fascination of playing with a VR headset, and the 3 seems to be a big improvement over the generations before that, and in the s version very affordable. when they get to the point where the games are comparable in breadth and depth to normal consoles, this stuff will be insane.

My cousin got Star Wars Outlaws and he told me it’s nice with a lot of stealth being an outlaw. Ok, but I am really into Survivor now and all this Jedi magic. Outlaws doesn’t have that.

Say… anyone prefer 1st person over 3rd person games?

[Martin Smith]

As I’ve probably mentioned before, I have a tradition of replaying an old game in the run up to Christmas. As with all traditions, it’s about chasing the feeling of a Christmas gone by. Originally, one in my teens, when I stayed up late playing the Pokemon Trading Card Game on a Game Boy emulator, got really into it and never played it again, but increasingly one year in my twenties when I replayed Kingdom Hearts and managed to beat the finale boss on just two attempts with about 10 minutes to spare before I went out to the pub for the evening.

This year, my choice is Mario Kart Wii, which is, as far as I’m concerned, the worst in the series. Certainly the worst of the 3D ones. It’s so bad that I never actually won all the cups originally (which I’m good enough at Mario Kart to be able to do easily on all the other ones). I stalled out in 150cc, IIRC, possibly because I became convinced the motorbikes, which are hard to handle, were the best choice to use.

So I’ve dug out my Wii and hooked it up for the first time in about 11 years (I transferred all my data off it onto my WiiU when I got that, so it’s had no use since then), to my CRT rather than my main TV, which has helped the graphics immeasurably. I’ve done the four main cups (the ones with original tracks to the game) on 50cc so far and yes, I definitely still think this is the worst Mario Kart.

The big problem with it is the balance of items. It goes way too heavy on the distribution of big disruptive items. I’ve done races where I’ve been simultaneously hit by a blue shell and a POW block, then by a red shell before I’ve even recovered, losing 10 places in the off. And what MKW does that 8 scaled back on is that you lose your held items when you get hit by pretty much any of those. Maybe not the red shell, but definitely POW blocks, blue shells, lightnings and hitting any track obstacle (like the “real” cars on Moonlight Motorway) robs you of your gear, further disadvantaging you. It makes the “oh would you just fuck off” factor pretty high. It feels like they’ve tried to make the game more like Mario Party, in the way it just razes the playing field flat at the end of the game with bullshit bonus stars. There’s so many disruptive items in here that winning starts to feel more like luck than any semblance of driving skill.

(as an aside, this is why I also don’t like 8 Deluxe as much as 8, as I’m fairly sure they rejigged the item balance to have many more lightnings).

And yet, for the worst game in the series, it does have some absolutely great new tracks and it’s easy to see why they’ve returned in later games (and not just because they’d be easier to up-res than older ones).

• This reply was modified 4 months, 2 weeks ago by Martin Smith.

Heh. Yeah, well, Mario Kart wii is the only one of the series that I own, and the only one I ever played apart from, y’know, early SNES ones probably. Anyway, I played regularly with my kid when he was at that age, and we still get it out now and then when we have visitors with kids or something. And it’s still fun to play, for me. But what you said definitely rings true where the items are concerned.

This looks like it could be cool:

It does.

A whole load of good stuff got dropped at the Game Awards:

Okami 2,

Turok,

The Outer Worlds 2,

Onimusha remake,

The Witcher IV,

Project Century

And Infinite Wealth has hit its endpoint.

Got one of Ichiban’s personality stats to 10 and all the others to 9.

Took out the Robo Michio Rangers – which was unexpected.

An even bigger surprise was defeating Amon. Haven’t done that in any of the others.

Have Smackdown option unlocked for all areas.

Is there stuff left to do? Of course there is. There is the Big Swell dungeon, the numerous minigames but, after just over 136 hours, it’s time to set this aside and deem it done.

So I succumbed and bought a Meta 3. I know this isn’t proper proper gaming and whatever, but fuck you, I’ve got cyberspace now.

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Ben

So after I did all the farming to get everything in the skill tree, now I play regularly and get skill points so fast. I know have 14 points I don’t need.

YouTube spoiled Survivor for me. I know what happens next…

Still a fun game. I won’t delete it after I am done.

 

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Ben

I got Astro Bot for Christmas. It’s incredible, just an absolute joy to play and a reminder of how fun and inventive videogames can be. Immediately an all-time favourite.

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Ben

Started playing Arkham Shadow on the Meta 3. The storytelling is pretty good, and it’s quite awesome to be Batman in VR.

Heard a lot of good things about the Batman VR game.

And don’t let anyone tell you VR doesn’t count as gaming.

Heh. I’m just kidding really, but I’m also well aware that you don’t get the kind of big, sprawling, super-involving games you’ll get on a console – stuff like The Last of Us or Baldur’s Gate 3. Once you do though, I think VR will take off like crazy. Arkham Shadow is a first step in that direction.
(Also, this is one of my main reasons why I’m only getting this kind of machine. I can’t afford to get immersed in this kind of big game, I simply don’t have the time. And I like that it can be kind of a workout, too, if you pick the right games.)

Ben wrote:

Heard a lot of good things about the Batman VR game.

I’ll give a more full accounting of the experience when I’m past the first steps in which a lot is still tutorial stuff.

If you want to terrify yourself there’s Resident Evil 7.

Also Skyrim.

Not sure if either was done for Meta 3 though.

Skyrim’s still too complex for Meta. There’s a – supposedly pretty good – version of Resident Evil 4 though. The horror flagship title is Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners, though. Supposed to be very good indeed. And there’s an Alien game coming, Rogue Incursion, that’s supposed to be good.

Arkham’s gonna keep me occupied for a good while, though, and I’ll just be playing Beat Saber and the like as a workout a lot of the time, anyways.

There is an Alien game, which’ll be scary if they pull it off.

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

So ends a game I did not expect to complete, especially with the Sukhotai underwater sequences.

In the end, it’s good but not great due to some very deliberate design choices that made it much harder for me, even with assists active. Overall, the good aspects outweighed the bad enough. The story, world design, characters and graphics all made me want to get to the end. This remained so despite poor 1st person platforming, messy combat, useless guns, bad signposting and evil underwater sequences.

Whether it’s first or third person, there’s always an aspect of doubt as to whether the character will make the jump that doesn’t happen in 2D platforming, only 3D. First person amplifies that effect. I’ve never liked first person platforming and that remains so here.

Signposting – there is a rather deliberate decision to not render it too obvious. The problem is I need it to be too obvious. There were times where the interactive element blended in with everything else.

Combat is messy, but that can be designed to look so without messy controls, which it also had. A colour takedown indicator would have helped on distance needed to trigger. Enemies are also a bit too good, with too much health, even on the lowest settings until upgrades are got.

The stamina system is irredeemable. The game would be immensely improved by its removal.

What does work? World design is superb, the way they bring to life the era of the 1930s is superb. Voice acting is excellent, with Voss being a superbly creepy villain. Graphics and sound are excellent.

Things that would improve accessibility is adding sound direction indicators next to the subtitles. In the absence of those it took me ages to find Savage in Gizeh Village. Have a more obvious highlight of whip pulls in temples, they oddly do this just fine in camps. Have an option to increase water survival, slow the snake instant kill.

Exploring the various environments, even Sukhotai with that crappy boat, is very fun. What’s far less fun are the cryptic puzzles. If Machine Games were running hardcore escape rooms, customers would be dying in them. There is a small number of them I liked, but the majority I loathed. I did not expect to hit 100% for fieldwork. Some of that was great, other bits not so much.

Boss battles, I think the game would have been better off without them. They feel like a nod to video game conventions contributing little good to the game.

The disguises, assuming you can find them, which I wouldn’t without a guide as it doesn’t advertise them, are clever and can transform how you play. That unwillingness to advertise is a double-edge, it can be very satisfying to find a route through but sometimes you’ll want it not to be so quiet about where to go.

The stealth can work, though I often found the sight lines to be too long and captains being able to see through a disguise just because irritates. The carry body ability remains mystifying even now as there’s rarely any good stash points for them.

For £15, as part of GamePass, you should absolutely play this. Should you buy it for £70? That’s a much harder sell. I found a good amount of it to be rough, which contrasted hard to its other, better, smoother aspects.

A New Game Plus that doesn’t boost the difficulty would make for a very fun time.

Would I play the DLC? I don’t know. If it goes the usual road of making harder content, probably not as I didn’t find this that easy to play.

Would PS5 haptics boost it? Perhaps, but I’m not sure they’d help that much for this game.

Overall, I like what they did here. They managed to craft an adventure game that is distinct from both Uncharted and Tomb Raider. It has a high level of presentation, but would have benefitted with some more polish in places. Maybe that happens for a sequel.

In that respect, I do wonder how well it’s doing when the stat for completion of the story is 8.9%. Even allowing for people bailing fast that looks absurdly low.

So ends another Game Pass one month run, the final tally as it expires 6 Jan.

Two completed games:

Creatures of Ava

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

One major perk:

Persona 3 Reload Season Pass

Four games that didn’t work for me:

Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty

Rage 2

Dungeons of Hinterberg

Sea of Theives

Of those, Hinterberg was the surprise.

Like Assassin’s Creed III, it started well, then, like that game did very short, random severe penalty QTEs, Hinterberg did a dizzying minecart bit, followed by a lane switching section that was too fast for me. A Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart style slowdown would have solved that but alas.

Still, it’s a good set of games, well worth doing.

Next run is March as by then there will be three, big new games and I may look to finally playing Hellblade so I can then boot up the sequel.

Hmm. It’s interesting because this is a relatively conservative step up from the Switch. Which given how much the Wii U flopped after the Wii (Nintendo’s previous big mainstream success) after making a big change in form factor and concept, is understandable. But I’m not sure there’s enough here to convince people to upgrade or that it’s not just the long fabled “Switch Pro”. The name isn’t really helping on that front either (the other big problem with Wii U – even I didn’t realise it was an entirely new console for a good while after it was announced, having stopped paying much attention to Nintendo at that time).

I mentioned to my sister (very much a casual gamer) this afternoon that they just revealed this and a new Mario Kart with it I guess and her response was “will it be compatible with the old Switch”. Yes, it’s backwards compatible with original Switch’s games, I said. “No, I mean can I play the new Mario Kart on the existing Switch?”. I suspect this is going to be a tough problem to get past (although I guess the 3DS had the same).

Also, going from really colourful Joycons to, as standard at least, black ones with a coloured ring around the analogue stick is a massive downgrade. They look so dull.

Worth mentioning that they’re doing preview events for the console (as they did for the Switch), which you can apply to go to from tomorrow. It’s an online ticket ballot, though I suspect there will be much higher demand than the Switch one I got to go to back in 2016(!).

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Ben

I completed Astro Bot today – all bots, all puzzle pieces.

It’s simply one of the best games I’ve ever played, it’s endlessly charming and inventive all the way through to the end credits.

I can only hope that there will be more of these in the future as it feels like the imagination here is endless and I’d already love to see more.

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Ben

I’ve been playing Final Fantasy 8  Remastered lately (I’m a bit into disc 2), which is really interesting, both in its own right and relative to its immediate predecessor.

I played 7 for the first time about two or three years ago and I was mixed on it. I liked the characters and story but I found its presentation hugely flawed. It had a chibi character model style that looked a bit naff, not least because the characters never felt at home in the pre-rendered environments. This was completely different from the graphical style of the battle sections, which had more normally proportioned characters in polygonal environments. These looked better but were entirely disorientating because the cursor direction was impossible to predict. Pressing left wouldn’t move to the character to the left usually but to some random enemy across the field. It made the already stressful active time battle system even more fraught with errors. And then there’s the heralded FMV sections, which are all a few seconds long, not that well directed and stick out really.

It’s impressive then how much FF8 improves on all of that in just two years. The character models are more realistically proportioned and the same between the field and battle. They look far more at home in the pre-rendered environments, which are more impressive themselves than 7’s. The FMV is far more impressive – not just the cut-scenes being better produced, but there are several moments where you’ll get a bit of animation going into a pre-rendered angle, such as the camera swooping to give an establishing shot. It’s impressive, confident stuff. The battle navigation is much improved too, with the option to just have a little menu box to select targets making it much more accurate.

That said, I don’t think the story and characters are as good as 7. Squall is pretty unlikeable and the collectively they’re all idiots, really. The frequent slips back to controlling another set of characters is just a bit frustrating more than anything and falls into one of the game’s biggest flaws: constantly changing up the party, forcing the movement of equipment and builds.

This is the double-edged sword of FF8’s big idea, the Junction system. Rather than each character having their own types of gear that can be replaced/upgraded to improve stats, here you can freely equip characters with Guardians Forces (the summon entities that recur through the series). These improve the characters’ stats by allowing you to junction magic to them. For instance you could junction blizzard to strength, increasing the strength stat by the quantity of blizzard spells you have. Stronger spells give bigger boosts and certain types of magic work better on certain stats (Life and Regen give bigger boosts when junctioned to HP than to Magic, for instance). It’s a really deep system, especially when you factor in junctioning multiple GFs to characters. The upshot of it is though that the characters themselves are almost irrelevant to the builds you get after junctioning. Their stats aren’t that different for the most part and made mostly irrelevant by the boosts from junctioning. You can swap Junction set-ups easily between characters, which reinforces that they’re just vessels with nice faces for completely customisable builds. It reminds me of FF6’s magicite system but taken to the nth degree.

The other really interesting system for FF8, which plays into junctioning, is the Draw system. Magic here isn’t determined by buying spells, MP or anything like that. Instead, it’s harvested from enemies and occasionally “draw points” in the field. These let you take magic from enemies (infinitely) during combat. It gives another element to battles, where you balance holding off defeating enemies in order to farm draws to build up your magic quantities to improve your junctioned stats (and have more magic to use). You can also use cast magic through drawing, essentially allowing you to bogart an enemy’s magic directly without stocking it. It’s a great idea. It’s like the old blue mage concept but done in a way that doesn’t suck and require you to get your ass kicked repeatedly waiting for an enemy to use a certain spell on you so you can copy it.

It helps that combat isn’t too difficult. I’ve had one Game Over so far and that was against an optional boss that I was a bit under-levelled for. And that’s unusual because the game also has an innovation on that front. You don’t really need to grind or bother levelling up in this game. It scales all enemies based on what level you are, so there’s a consistent challenge level. In fact, there are lots of battles in the game, especially boss battles, where it just doesn’t bother giving you any XP when you win, which does feel odd and a bit of a rip-off. It’s very hard ingrained behaviour to disregard, levelling up. But levelling up your GFs and improving your junctions is more tangible and beneficial than increasing character level for the most part.

There’s other interesting stuff here too – the card game that you can challenge loads of NPCs to and the item refinement system, where you can get magic from item drops and the aforementioned cards. It’s just a shame that the story isn’t that interesting or most of the characters that endearing. Rinoa has a pet dog that will jump into battle to attack enemies or heal people and yet still I’m not that invested in most of them. Which is a shame.

New Shinobi game looks pretty cool.

It does, was very surprised when it dropped.

 

Knew Sega was doing something with Shinobi, but not what or that’d it’d be out so soon.

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Dave

I took a break from all the Jedi games and went back to Spiderman 2. Sofa king rusty!🤣
I got to deal with these Kraven camps with the robot bird drones and robot tigers.
There is some beacon that emits a yellow pulse and it messes me up. Now I have to get to that first.
YouTube videos.

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Dave

Warner Bros continue to be…. Warner Bros.
https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/warner-bros-is-reportedly-closing-three-game-studios-and-canceling-wonder-woman/
Monolith Productions is to be closed and the Wonder Woman game axed. The patented Nemesis system will remain more buried than the Ark of the Covenant.

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Todd

This looks great!

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Martin Smith, Ben

It does. Total surprise but looks good.

Sweet!

More details here:

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Ben

The Miles Morales spin-off of the PS4 Spidey game was on sale a few months back so I bought it (I have to admit I was mistaken and actually thought it was the proper 2023 sequel at the time).

The original Spidey game is what got me to buy a PS4, and I did really enjoy it at the time – but once I finished the main story I never played it again. Knowing that this MM spin-off is a kind of continuation I wonder if I’d not be as impressed if I decided to replay the original now. The spin-off was a bit of a slog with very repetitive gameplay and largely un-fun boss fights. The ending was an improvement over the rest of the game’s set-pieces both in gameplay and story (I hated the unskippable cut-scenes) but once I was done with that I had no inclination to catch up on side-quests and collectables.

And that’s a wrap for the gloriously titled Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

For all I have my criticism of it, the finale act did a huge amount to boost it.

The problems are a camera that can’t quite keep up with the action and, at times, can be the game’s most enduring enemy. That an enemy doing a special move is immune to both health loss and interruption becomes irritating. Especially when they have next to no health left. The whistle shoot indicator is often too short and useless. Talking of short windows, this is the game in the series where I couldn’t enjoy exploring heat moves because the pop-up prompt was frequently too quick. Enemy guarding and evasion became more ridiculous as the game went on.

What of ship combat? I don’t think it goes as far as it should. The ship never quite handles well, the deck concept doesn’t really work and it relies too much on attrition battles. The biggest problem is you can upgrade the ship far faster than the crew so you can blast an enemy ship to pieces but lose the deck battle.

That’s a lot of flaws so what does it have going for it? A lot of charm, good locations, some fun systems, varying minigames – there’s a smaller number of chapters but they are long. Ultimately, you want to explore and complete as much of the game as you can and get to the very fine, and very satisfying, finale.

The game has a very charming sense of fun, including a great opening musical number. While it has its limits, upgrading the ship with laser cannons is cool. By the game’s end the Goromaru was doing an excellent impression of B5’s White Star, slicing up vessels with a drift laser barrage! The outfit options allow for a lot of choice and you can even fit out the tiger cub.

Overall, it’s one of the weaker games in the series, but it goes out on a high note. It sets things up for the next game. It re-using locations isn’t a problem for me and the new ones are rendered well. Madlantis, in particular, has a real sense of menace to it. Worth playing? Yes. Especially for the finale and endgame where you have your crew and boarding party obliterating everything.

Forza Horizon 5

Just saw that PS5 DualSense haptics will feature in this! And the RRP is £54.99.

I’m going to be double-dipping on this, aren’t I?

I picked up Split Fiction to play with my daughter on the PS5 after hearing universally strong reviews.

It’s a fun idea for a game – a co-op split-screen platformer/action adventure that has to be played with two players, with a plot based around authors who become trapped in virtual recreations of each other’s stories.

The locales and level themes are varied, and there are lots of inventive gameplay mechanics and clever co-operative solutions to puzzles that makes it a lot of fun to play. Plus plenty of optional sidequests to explore.

And the challenge level is set just right to feel occasionally tough without ever really becoming difficult or frustrating. A nice game to play with kids.

Perhaps most appealingly for a game that has to be played co-op, as well as local splitscreen there’s also a free pass for a friend to join you online and play, even if they don’t have a copy of the game themselves. A very nice option to add.

Plus the developer has very publicly committed against paid add-on content, microtransactions etc., which is an excellent stand to take.

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Ben

If you don’t already have it, seek out It Takes Two. From the same team, it was their previous smash hit.

There’s far more to Fares than just saying “fuck”, though he likes that word and is good at deploying it.

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Dave

I just finished playing Stray Gods, which I got as a Prime Gaming freebie a while back. It bills itself as a roleplaying musical, but it’s not an RPG really. It’s pretty much a visual novel or Telltale Walking Dead style light-adventure at best, though it does offer branching choices, often tied to three different personality traits (empath, quick-wit, headstrong), so I guess they’re calling themselves an RPG based on the similarities to how Mass Effect kinda sorta does that.

Anyway, the game’s about Grace, a 20something musician who meets a woman named Calliope, who sings a song with her and then, a couple of hours later, turns up at her door, dying. Calliope turns out to literally be Calliope, the Greek goddess/muse and passes on a glowy orb spirit thing that is her godly essence to Grace. This gives her the power to push people into musical numbers that reveal their true emotions/feelings etc which she has to use to prove her innocence of Calliope’s murder to the other Greek gods (called Idols).

It’s a cool game. Nice mostly low-fi art style with awesome character designs and takes on Greek gods. The voice acting is top notch (though Troy Baker cannot sing) and the songs are mostly good. They all branch into three different versions (tied to those personality traits) and those changes can be somewhat jarring at times, plus there’s a little too much musical theatre “performers singing against each other to show disharmony” but generally they’re a good time.

Not a very long game – took me a few evenings – and not really much there in terms of gameplay, but worth a go if you see it cheap.

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Dave

I’ve owned so many versions of Street Fighter II over the years that I really didn’t need another one, but I picked up Ultra Street Fighter II: The Final Challengers from a few years back on Switch as it sounded interesting – a remaster of the game that keeps the underlying mechanics exactly the same but with the sprites and backgrounds redrawn in an HD anime style that’s incredibly faithful to the original designs, and with newly recorded versions of the same old music and sound.

The result is a version that somehow feels like the SF2 you remember as a kid, looking slick and sounding great (and without any additions that would change the underlying game, like extra frames of animation that would interfere with timing).

Plus there are loads of additional game modes (including a two-player co-op version that lets you both be on screen at the same time beating up a third opponent), and there’s even the option to switch back to the original pixel art and sound if you prefer that.

It’s a shame this is only on Switch as it’s probably the definitive version of the game.

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Ben, Martin Smith

Huh, hadn’t heard of that one.

Of the later SFs,SF6 really lives up to its rep. Lot of fun there.

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Dave

Always shop around.

Spotted Monster Hunter Wilds going for £49.99 at The Game Collection, steelbook version too.
Quickly nabbed AC Shadows, as the pre-order price was good, but it also had £10 extra reward points attached.
Waited for that order to complete, got the points, nabbed Monster Hunter Wilds for just under £38!

Assassins Creed Mirage

This is a real mixed bag. The main story, in gameplay terms, starts and ends terribly. The concept of Basim gaining in ability is a good one, but it is over-balanced at the start far too far against the player.

If you can get to it, with a few skills unlocked, it gets far, far better. The investigation structure gradually sees you acquire quests and unlock the map. This structure is very effective.

As usual for AC games, the strongest plus point is the world design. Baghdad is a brilliantly realised city, with much to explore and it feels suitably vast.

Weaknesses are the Marksman enemies, it’s a neat concept but it doesn’t work that well. Combat, even at the end of the game, never really feels right. And then there is a very heavy-handed notoriety meter.

Above all, the game cheats – guard sightlines are long. They get magically alerted to you in missions purely because the game says so. What’s that? You killed all the enemies before moving on? I’ve bad news, it’s spawned new enemies.

It’s signposting is poor and vague, possibly in the belief that avoids accuations of hand-holding. The bad and sometimes impossible architecture of Valhalla is back, with doors barred that must have seen the occupant die of hunger, as how did they exit? When you work it out, it can be good, but its mostly irritating. Oh and the economy is miserly.

Overall, should you play this? If on a subscription service, perhaps. Buy it? Only if you are a big fan of the series. And even then you may find it lacking.

Ben wrote:

Assassins Creed Mirage

Regarding Assassins Creed: Now there Shadows and it looks sofa king tempting. But I am too far behind in games as it is now. I can wait a while. 🤣

Looks like another winner from Dotemu:

So Switch 2 then. Out in June and costs £395. £75 for a physical copy of Mario Kart World, £67 for Donkey Kong Bananza. Both of which look great, but man, that’s a steep price, especially given first party Nintendo games rarely drop in price.

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Dave

The Mario Kart World bundle is £429.99.

Nintendo Switch 2 preorders in U.S. delayed because of Trump’s tariffs

Nintendo will not take preorders for its new game console next week, the company said Friday, as it evaluates the impact of President Donald Trump’s new, far-reaching tariffs.

The Japanese electronics giant had been set to accept Switch 2 advance orders in the United States on Wednesday, but that’s now been pulled off the table — though Nintendo insisted that its June 5 launch date “is unchanged.”

“Pre-orders for Nintendo Switch 2 in the U.S. will not start April 9, 2025 in order to assess the potential impact of tariffs and evolving market conditions,” according to a company statement. “Nintendo will update timing at a later date. ”

The company just revealed details of the hotly anticipated Switch 2 two days ago, saying it would sell for $449.99.

That same day, Trump revealed he would hit Japanese imports with a 24% tariff.

Nintendo also has strong manufacturing ties to Vietnam, which was hit with a 46% tariff.

Michael Pachter, managing director of equity research for Wedbush, said he doesn’t believe these tariffs will end up being enforced. But he understands why Nintendo hit the re-set button.

“It’s just too uncertain,” Pachter told NBC News on Friday. “They don’t want to tell people $449, when the price is going to be $500, $600 or $700. We don’t know.”

Gift givers and high income consumers could probably afford that kind of tariff-induced price hike, but working class gamers will struggle, he said.

“It’s at the edge (of mass affordability),” Pachter said. “But for lower income people, absolutely this matters. If you’re making 15, 20 bucks an hour, it’s like, ‘Oh, Jesus, I got to work for two weeks to get enough take home pay to pay for this thing? That’s crazy.'”

Friday’s announcement stunned American gamers, who’d been eagerly awaiting the Switch 2 rollout and continued play of such popular game franchises as Super Mario Kart and Legend of Zelda.

The mobile Switch 2 is also expected to have a more powerful processor, making it more performance competitive with rival home console makers Sony PlayStation and Microsoft Xbox.

Switch 2 is billed as being more accessible to popular third-party titles not made by Nintendo, such as “NBA 2K,” “Hogwarts Legacy,” “Civilization VII,” and “Elden Ring.”

It’s going to be quite funny seeing the reaction of the Americans currently explaining away the already high price of the Switch 2 (and moreso its games) as due to the tariffs when the tariffs actually affect the price. There were quite a few doing that in the chat of the Treehouse livestream yesterday (which was predominantly people telling Nintendo to drop the price), with a certain amount of “you shouldn’t have voted for Trump” gloating mixed in.

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Todd, lorcan_nagle

I played Metroid Dread the past week or so. I love Metroid games so it was pretty disappointing to start this and hate it to the point of almost completely binning it off within a couple of hours. I gave it another shot though and it won me over to the point that I 100%ed it, but I do think it’s fundamentally flawed. The control scheme is not great, especially Samus’s movement being on the analogue stick. It’s too imprecise for fast paced action. The 360 aiming is not better than simple 8 directional aim. Graphically, it’s kinda bland really. That and the slipperiness of controlling Samus really reminds me of the New Super Mario Bros series.

The biggest problem is the EMMI sections. They’re awful. You have to play hide and seek with these one-hit-kill monster robots and it’s never not a pain in the arse. It’s an evolution of the SA-X chase in Metroid Fusion, but that worked because it was a novelty. Here, you have to do it so many times, it just becomes tedious, not least because they’re cheap as hell. Despite the EMMI zones they patrol being massive, they’re always near the door you enter them through and quite often can be on you within seconds. You’re supposed to be able to hide with a cloaking device thing, but it never works, they always manage to coincidentally walk into you. None of this is helped by having to do the same fight against a mini Mother Brain to get the deus ex machina temp weapon upgrade to kill each EMMI.

The annoying thing is, aside from that it’s a pretty good Metroid game. What finally won me over was a really good section of an hour or so where you don’t have to deal with any EMMI stuff and you get to do proper Metroidvania stuff and a big, fun boss fight. But every time you get to enjoy some of that, you’re then pushed back into having to deal with an EMMI again.

 

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I’ve started playing Loom now. It’s a LucasArts point and click from 1990. It’s the one kinda mocked in Monkey Island by the guy in the SCUMM Bar with the iconic “Ask Me About LOOM” badge. I’ve played it before and it’s got a fun central gameplay gimmick: you have a “distaff” which has a musical note interface. By learning and repeating short note patterns from the environment you can do magic – for instance there’s a dripping vat of green dye which does, say, CDEC. If you perform that tune on a cloak, it’ll dye green. If you play the reverse on it, it’ll be bleached. Unfortunately, its story is pretty arcane and obtuse, featuring a whiny unlikely protagonist and so the game doesn’t have a great reputation and I wasn’t too bothered by it when I played it.

However, I learned a few years back that the version of LOOM widely available now, on Steam and GOG etc, is the talkie CD re-release from a few years down the line. While that added voice acting and much nicer VGA graphics, it butchered the game’s script, so the spoken dialogue would fit on the CD. So I’m playing the original EGA release. I’m only 10 minutes in so far, but I compared the opening of the EGA and VGA versions and the differences are huge. There’s actual exposition in the EGA version. The VGA by comparison doesn’t particularly explain anything and what little it does say is given almost a completely different context compared to the original. It’s a stark difference.

Nintendo are being both greedy and stupid here:

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-nintendo-switch-2-mario-kart-world-bundle-may-not-still-be-on-sale-at-christmas/

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Martin Smith

Ben wrote:

Nintendo are being both greedy and stupid here:

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-nintendo-switch-2-mario-kart-world-bundle-may-not-still-be-on-sale-at-christmas/

That’s surprising. You would have thought that would be a perennial bundle.

Ben wrote:

Nintendo are being both greedy and stupid here:

https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/the-nintendo-switch-2-mario-kart-world-bundle-may-not-still-be-on-sale-at-christmas/

Please understand, download codes are expensive and labour intensive to manufacture. They couldn’t possibly keep producing them indefinitely.

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Todd