The Video Games Thread

Topic

What are you playing? Talk video games here.

Replies

I am too busy and slow, but I am getting there on Survivor. I was on this desert planet and doing these puzzles with timers. Then I found out I can go to settings and slow down the timer. I finally did it and wish I knew earlier. Would have saved me hours.

I don’t know how many of you are into this Baldur’s Gate 3, but someone with a lot of time (bless them) worked out an X-Men mod

https://mod.io/g/baldursgate3/m/mutant-powers-x-men#description

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

Finished Dawntrail! Well the main quest part, still have the crafter and gatherers to do. And the game dropped a pile of post-game activity on me too.

Given what a bastard of a trial Endsinger was, I didn’t know how Interphos would go. In the end it proved to be comparatively straight-forward. Not sure how I survived a major attack and died once due to walking off a ledge!

After that, went and got the trio of society quests up and running and then started Crossroads. It started running in an interesting direction then it dropped a dungeon on me.

Yuweyawata Field Station has quite the reputation and I can see why.  If the game is going to have faster mechanics then they need to be clearer, both conceptually and visually, which they are not. It’s OK on the first boss, but the second is visually confusing. Did survive its red pool combined with movement override, unexpected but welcome.  Third boss drops 90% of the arena away, but before that its rock spiral attack wasn’t that easy to read. On these latter two bosses I did get close to dying but evaded it.

Got past it but it does raise the question of who this kind of content is for and what it is doing in a mandatory story quest. Those two aspects look to be at odds for me. It would be a shame for FF XIV to fall into the trap of listening too much to elite players.

I finally played Return To Monkey Island across the last few days. I was little hesitant about it because I was burned by Ron Gilbert’s last adventure Thimbleweed Park. It had been really enjoyable, but then absolutely disappeared up its own arse, making a load of not-as-clever-as-it-thought-it-was meta-commentary about the limitations of the game and the quirks of Kickstarter stuff so for instance one of the Kickstarter rewards was getting your name in the town phonebook, which a lot of people did. In the game’s finale, this is called out as one of the things that doesn’t make sense about the world as the game, as the phone book has far more people in it than the population of the game. This is as the world of the game is revealed to be a video game and your player character turns it off. There’s also a thing where the sheriff, the coroner and someone else are all the same person using different vocal tics, which works as a kinda fun weird quirk of a strange town, but then at the end the character that’s seen through the fourth wall points out that it’s a limitation of the game’s budget or somesuch. It was really unsatisfying to spend hours invested in a game and then have it just go “oh none of its real! None of this matters!”

But with my PC upgraded, I thought it was time to return to Monkey Island, a series I adore (except Escape, obviously. I’m not mad). Gilbert wouldn’t burn me twice would he?

I really enjoyed it for the most part. The art style absolutely isn’t what I would have picked, but it is undeniably well made and animated. The voice acting is mostly excellent, with a huge amount of returning actors (the only problem I had is the replacement voice for LeChuck. Weirdly, minor character Gullet sounded more like classic LeChuck than new LeChuck did). There’s some properly funny lines, as you’d hope, and the puzzles were generally pretty good and not too obtuse. I made good, steady progress and was entertained.

But then I finished it tonight and my immediate reaction was “oh fuck off“. Because yes, Ron Gilbert did it again. Does the story have a satisfying conclusion? No because Ron decided that rather than actually craft a proper ending, he’d just do another bit of pseudo-intellectual msaturbation. As Guybrush descends through Monkey Island after LeChuck to open The Secret, he arrives back on Melee Island, but it’s a theme park type place with characters you’ve met previously just cardboard cut-outs and animatronics. Stan appears and gives you the keys to turn off the lights and lock up. You open The Secret and it’s a t-shirt (a callback to a running gag in Monkey 1) and Guybrush goes off with Elaine, like a middle-aged sadsack leaving an escape room/low rent pirate Westworld. It then cuts back to the framing narrative, of Guybrush talking on a bench to his kid, who complains that the ending doesn’t make sense and Guybrush spouts some bollocks about the nature of story telling and the Secret means different things to different people and… just fuck off Ron.

It’s not that I’m expecting some grand reveal of what the Secret Of Monkey Island finally is. I’ve not been on tenterhooks for 30 years to learn that or anything. It’s clearly a macguffin that can never have any satisfying explanation/reveal. But I’m not the one who created a brand new story explicitly about said Secret. I just wanted to play a fun pirate adventure story with some characters I love, but apparently I need to get some condescending bit of homespun “the journey is more important than the destination” bollocks instead of a satisfying conclusion to the narrative I’ve been engaged with. Which I’m not convinced Ron actually knows how to do. It’s like he’s stuck living in the shadow of barely anyone understanding the ending of Monkey Island 2 – which he very obnoxiously taunts people with here by having the opening seemingly pick up from it, only to turn out to be Guybrush’s kid and his friend play-acting the story of Monkey 2 in the future – and keeps leaning into it in the hopes that, I dunno, people will get this one and hail him as a deep thinker or something?

Seriously, going “ah but the true value of a story is not the ending, but what you take away from it” is not big or clever. It’s the cheap way out of actually giving your story a meaningful ending. It’s absolutely worse for video games where you have to be more actively engaged and for longer than you would a movie or possible even a book.

Wait…did Martin just post part of the redacted Epstein Files?

2 users thanked author for this post.

Todd, Dave

njerry wrote:

Wait…did Martin just post part of the redacted Epstein Files?

Far more explosive and ill-tempered.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Todd, Ben, njerry

Martin Smith wrote:

njerry wrote:

Wait…did Martin just post part of the redacted Epstein Files?

Far more explosive and ill-tempered.

An island is involved, I see.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Martin Smith

Capcom have enabled a very fun weekend via a pair of demos.

Pragmata – Demo

To my surprise, I actually made through the demo on Casual.

Story is intriguing, graphics and sound are excellent.

Gameplay was a bit weaker as the camera can be a bit too close in and extra weapons are temporary, not permanent. The trick is in being able to quickly see a hack path, while aiming at an enemy, while keeping track of others, and evading attacks. How easy, or for me difficult, you find this multi-processing may decide your view of it.

Generally, it was only with confined combat I found it very tricky. Larger, open spaces give you far more latitude, which certainly aided me in the boss fight.

Monster Hunter Stories 3 – Demo

Wow, just spent an hour on the demo, did the intro and first expedition.

Capcom have expanded the series to an absurd degree. Monster ability and skills are clearer and more set, far greater out of combat use too. The strategy and tactics are far deeper, as demonstrated by the two boss fights.

It’s undeniably smoother, especially compared to the first game I’m working my way through. World design is a huge leap, with superb environments. Though that was expected with it being RE Engine.

Bugger, I really don’t need to buy another game in 2026 and do have the first duo to do, but this demo makes a very strong case for a buy to support the series.

With this and the Pragmata demo Capcom are continuing their very successful roll.

And I still have stuff to do in the demo!

Another near 90 minutes later and I’ve taken the demo as far as I can:

• Hit the level cap
• Got a load of new.monsties
• Got some new weapons and armour
• Nabbed all the Catavan stands.

That last one is more hazardous than it sounds as there’s no warping, so if you get to one, you still have to get back from it and there’s some very nasty monsters near some of them that you have no chance against.

Overall, very smart and a great showcase.

Lots of updates from the latest Sony State of Play, including this surprise drop:

That was one of seven games I had no idea existed.

Kena’s sequel looks amazing. Then there’s John Wick from Saber.

The new 007 trailer had a perfect opening.

They showed off a huge amount of good stuff.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Yakuza 3 Kiwami: Dark Ties

Ultimately, sad to say, this is a missed opportunity and one that manages to make the new twist ending even worse.

First, Dark Ties main plot with Kanda and Mine is incredibly sleazy, still, you, as Mine, get to go Highlander on Kanda, right? Nope. Mine’s arc is flat: He starts as an arse, he refuses all opportunity to not be an arse, and at the end, remains an arse.

The final scenes are baffling. Mine talks of himself as another man who has erased his name, but that only works if you know the later games, who is this for? Oh yeah, also, if you fall on a hedge from a 10 storey fall you’ll survive.

Their last game had an anti-hero lead in Majima, but he has a charm of his own that Mine utterly lacks.

If you’ve bought the game, still play it, you can get a good 10 hours out of it. Mine’s fighting style is nowhere near as good as Kiryu’s styles, and has a rather counter-intuitive button layout and combinations to boot, but you can have some fun with it.

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

My completions for AC games is patchy. AC2 and Brotherhood, yes, Revelations, AC3, Black Flag, no. Origins onwards, yes. I can’t say I expected to complete this one.  And it got close to that.

Syndicate’s world design is design, its gameplay OK, as is the story, but its main missions are frequently awful and the optional objectives abominable. And it proved that way across the Sequence 9 missions.

Optional reqs like don’t kill anyone or requiring a carriage to be returned, right in the middle of a host of enemies in a restricted zone. The final mission was up and down, the bit with Evie was horribly narrow, the next two parts far better, then came that terrible “boss” fight.

After that, did some clean-up attempts but the associate missions are a real mixed bag. The game is far too fond of throwing out a time limit from nowhere. Tried the first Dreadful Crime but even with a guide it didn’t make much sense of it.

Do have the Jack the Ripper expansion, so will give that a go. Have done more of the game than I thought, plus the main sync percentage is far better, above 90%.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

I really liked this short 7-minute video from Second Wind:

Aside from the main point that games can now change drastically for the better post-launch, it also makes reference to the sheer amount of games now out.  That there is more than anyone can keep up with.

And it might be that becomes my major reason for stopping at PS5-XBX-S2, that I want the time to play the collection I’ve amassed.

Only done two levels of Marvel Cosmic Invasion so far and, well, sad to say it ain’t all that. Hopefully, as I continue with it, it’ll improve enough.

One problem is the oddity of missing beat ’em up staples. There’s no grab or throw attacks, no weapon pick ups and little in the way of destructible items.

Another is over-complication. The dual heroes, each with their own health bar to juggle is one example. Flying is another. Do either really add that much? No. Neither is the block well executed.

The biggest problem, far from unique to this game, is the belief players want all the cheap bastard bullcrap of retro beat ’em ups, as I don’t. This game is cheap, lots of projectile attacks that magically pass through enemies, the bosses are very cheap, which adds up to a less enjoyable experience.

My sense of dis-satisfaction is probably amplified by the characters starting off weak and having to be powered up. That can be done well, River City Girls is a good example. Here? Not so sure. In some ways it’s akin to Asterix and Obelix: Slap Them All. Great graphic style but very shallow gameplay.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Dave, Martin Smith

Where Winds Meet

Well, as expected, it finally went full Genshin Impact. After an incredibly badly designed, very confusing and boring campaign quest, it then does a rubbish boss. Difficulty through the roof, compromised controls, maybe 1 in 3 attacks landing due to the boss size and how close I have to get. Damage done? Miniscule.

And, as far as I can, I’ve got the character powered up as much as I can.  Yeah, there’s a handful of gear upgrades but those are only for HP. There’s one weapon upgrade to get.

I suspect the answer will be I should be using a different weapon. The game offers multiple styles, the boss should be beatable with any of them.
It was a nasty, low trick when Genshin Impact sent the World Tier difficulty soaring and the same is true here. For a free-to-play title that apparently needs to keep players, its baffling to me. Then again so too was Honkai’s invisible search indicator.
Shame, as they just dropped a new trailer for part 3. No point watching that as its stuff I can’t get to. The game near killed itself months ago with the Dao Lord, it was sheer luck I got past it. Still, where that failed Five Remnants has finally succeeded. I had thought this one might not do this on difficulty, but nope, it has.
Are gacha games a plague on the gaming industry? Yes, they are. Both Genshin and WWM have great world design that I want to explore, which it combines with nasty bastard progression systems.

Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag Resynced

Revealed in full earlier and out in July.

I’m not sure we were expecting a remake from Resynced, I was thinking far more remaster.

Things that sound great:

The influence Shadows has had on the game, especially with regard to following / eavesdropping missions, which killed the original’s story for me.

Revised visuals using the newer Anvil engine. The comparison shots doing the rounds show the work done. The original still looks good, but the new goes further.

Only factor I’m wary of is the combat being parry heavy, but so long as that’s more optional / quicker way to win, should be OK. So long as carving enemies up also works, unlike the original.

Lego Batman: Legacy of the Dark Knight

This turned out to be a very weird game. It’s mostly good but gets in its own way too much to be great. And, compared to its predecessor, Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga, it feels like a step backwards. Its visual communication is less clear, enemies no longer have health bars.

In the second half of the game I ended up doing something I do very rarely, which is skipping stuff. It was sections or puzzles I either didn’t like or understand, sometimes both, that I didn’t enjoy, so decided I didn’t want to play. Some Waynetech crate puzzles were incomprehensible to me, ditto some of the plants, Batgirl’s hacking mini-game – did three of those and that was enough, a large chunk of the Joker Tumblr chase because it was so annoying and the finale bomb climbing because, again, it was an irritating mess.

In some ways, that’s the greatest insult that can be delivered to a game. It offers a skip feature and you use it because those bits are so bad you don’t want to play them.

It’s a strangely ambivalent game. In that its drawing on Arkham, but its stealth options are often limited, as if its holding back from designing its environments to really let you go nuts on stealth. Like Arkham you can technically use gadgets in battle but there tends to be too much going on to really do so, like Arkham.

Its puzzles and poor visual communication really hurt it badly. Talking of visuals, even with HDR black level set to minimum there were still times when it was too dark to really see easily.  If the detect feature was better that might have helped the puzzles, as it is I found it hugely unreliable and variable.

Where it works well is its general story, world design and appearance. It all looks right. As a celebration of Batman’s various incarnations and integration of them it is superb. There’s lots of really neat touches. It is done so well you will likely forgive the various flaws.

I’ve finished the story, will I go back to replay the levels to find the bits I missed? I don’t know because they hid it so well I’d need a guide but I don’t like playing games that way. Some of the side content I do like, so might finish that. Do have some suits and vehicles to unlock.

Combat is OK to good, until a brute turns up, then it goes bad, as they are awful. Boring design, boring to fight, just terrible. There is neat use of Dualsense haptics. As there is of the speaker outside of combat.

Overall, it’s a good but strange game. Its difficulty is uneven, I didn’t like the final boss fights at all. Its side content can be very underhanded, like in the AR trial times. Its ace card is it feels like Batman and Gotham, most of the time combat is fun, as is driving around Gotham.

I finished Live A Live last night, which took me longer than I expected. It’s a HD-2D remake of a mid-90s JRPG by Square which was released only on the Super Famicom. It’s a staple of the SNES fan translation canon though, as it was translated by the early 00s. Given it didn’t leave Japan, I was a bit surprised it got a modern remake and English translation.

It purports to be a short story anthology with 7 tales set in different time periods – Prehistory, Imperial China, Twilight of Edo (Shogunate Japan), the Old West, Present Day, Near Future and Far Future. Although the base controls and combat system are the same between them, each has been designed by a different team and has a different focus. Far Future has only optional combat (until its final boss) and is instead sort of a survival horror thing, very Alien influenced, whereas Present Day is pretty much all combat, as you take a guy through duels against various martial art masters to steal their moves (it’s a bit like a Megaman boss rush mode but you’re playing as a Blue Mage).

Combat’s pretty cool. It’s turn based but with a time-based system (so kind of the Active Battle System in contemporary FFs,) but grid-based, so you have to think about attack distances, patterns etc, as well as charging time and elements.

As you might expect, there’s more to the game than just those seven stories as it adds an 8th when you finish them, which highlights a linking theme that’s run across them. You then get a final chapter where you build a party from the 7 protagonists and take on the 8th. That all ran a lot longer than I was expecting to be honest, which did temper my enjoyment a bit (I was hoping to get it done before a certain day). The bigger issue with it is that the linking theme and narrative just doesn’t entirely make sense. I don’t think it really adds anything to any of the stories as they were and it requires you to kind of ignore bits of them for it to hang together./

Still, over all this is really enjoyable. It looks gorgeous, it plays well and it just feels like something different in a genre than can be quite formulaic.

I started playing Cuphead this weekend, as it had a sale to go with the announcement of the 8 Bit sidequel at SGF. Absolutely gorgeous presentationally. It is as hard as you’ve heard. It’s taking me about an hour for each level (most of which are just a boss fight) and at several points I’ve thought “maybe I should just put it down to the lower difficulty for this one and come back when I’ve got some better upgrades?”. I haven’t though and the sense of accomplishment on finally beating a level is immense. That said, I do think its difficulty is not entirely fair. There’s a boss fight against a Dragon Quest esque slime for instance, who will leap across the stage and you have to avoid that, shoot him and duck under the lunging punch style attacks he’ll occasionally throw in. What makes it unfair is that the length of its jumps is entirely irregular and impossible to gauge. I can appreciate them wanting to avoid a predictable pattern but the benefit of a pattern that you can learn to read and/or predict (as other bosses have) is that you can beat it through determination and not just with a dollop of good fortune. I beat a blimp woman who turns into astrological signs and then a crescent moon, last night, and I still couldn’t tell you how you’re supposed to be able to dodge the the laser beams from the UFOs beyond just getting lucky.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Dave

Yeah, Cuphead is both beautifully done and hard as nails. I played for a long time and mostly only succeeded in clearing levels after memorising pretty much every pattern.

That said, you do feel a sense of achievement for beating them. I think the boss I got stuck on was the rollercoaster one, I don’t think I ever got past that.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Martin Smith, Ben

Astro Bot

This is a weird game. I’d like to say you should go and play it without any reservations or caveats, as in some respects it does deserve that. But there are those certain creative decisions and structural inconsistencies that mean I can’t.

It’s easy to see why it won at The Game Awards in 2024. Team Asobi could have simply stopped at crafting a game with excellent audio-visual presentation and superb, unique use of the Dualsense. Instead they sought to make each of the 20 or so main and 6 boss encounters distinct. And succeeded. There is a low level repetition in the game, it’ll keep throwing new things at you.

Now about those other aspects. This gets sold as an easy game which I disagree with. It can be easy, if you quickly see what to do and can execute it easily, but if you can’t then it’s rather harder. And it is no error, one hit kills you. Unless an end galaxy boss, then you get to take three hits.

While limited compared to other PS Studios games, the accessibility support that is here is good. Visual cue on audio puzzles, tilt assist so it’s all done by left stick. I wouldn’t have progressed without them. Its checkpointing is where it gets weirdly inconsistent. One end boss had a midway checkpoint, the others did not, but would have benefitted from it, if only as a switch-on option. Some levels have bosses which you do have to do with no damage, but one of these had two midway checkpoints, and I needed those. Same level had aiming but no aim assist.

So what’s the big deal with all that? If it was from anywhere else maybe it wouldn’t be but PS has made accessibility a big part of its games. There were times where for a good sections, just one more checkpoint would have taken the edge off just enough. And there are times where they spotted and judged that they had to add checkpoints, but it is a minority.

Ah but difficulty is all part of games right? But to what level? This one has no variance to it. Everyone’s experience of this will be different but for me the difficulty, the no-damage structure got in the way of my being able to fully enjoy it a lot. As the game went on the difficulty leeched more and more of the charm away for me. The overall experience was still strong enough that I wanted to continue, I wanted to see the rest of the game, get to the end. There are levels I will absolutely will want to replay as they are that good while some others I’m either never going back to or only partially.

So should you play it? Yes. For the most part the first two galaxies aren’t too bad, bar the odd section or boss. It starts to ramp up more in galaxy three. It plays like no other game you will have played or likely ever will play. That’s the unique experience which you should play it for. Even if it isn’t as cuddly as its reputation suggests.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

I ended up bailing on Cuphead. I got to the second area and spent several hours just getting my ass kicked by the sweet castle gang, the Egyptian genie thing and the roller-coaster clown. I eventually threw away my gamer pride and dropped to “simple” difficulty for the roller-coaster guy. It’s well named because while it’s simpler, I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily easier. On the roller-coaster guy, it removes the roller-coaster cars that come in across the screen that you have to dodge from the second section. This does make the balloon animal section simpler and maybe a bit easier, and it removes the final section (which I only got to once) entirely, but the third section with the horseshoe vomiting horses is extended to fill and it’s not like it makes any changes to number of hits to kill (in fact, they’re probably higher because of the adjusted section lengths), numbers of other enemies etc. I managed to beat him at that difficulty, but it still took a dozen or more goes. And then the game immediately goes “well, you didn’t really beat it”. I tried the sweet castle gang on simple too, hoping it’d get rid of the little jelly bean dudes that run out of the castle as you fight the random set of three of the four underlings before the queen(?), as they were what was screwing me up. But no, it leaves them and just nerfs some of the sub-bosses ancillary dangers. I spent another hour or two on that and still couldn’t beat it. So, sod that. Might try it in co-op some time, see if I can get any further that way.

 

With that aside, I decided to finally start Fire Emblem: Three Houses. It’s been out 7 years(!) now, there’s already been another one and a new one is on the horizon, so I figured it was time (and I’ve had my copy in my backlog about a year). I knew a fair amount about this before starting – I’m very familiar with Fire Emblem, I know there’s a school element and I’ve used Byleth in Smash Bros. Still, I was really surprised by how Byleth is in this game (at least in the couple of hours I’ve played). That is almost completely a blank slate. I’ve played plenty of JRPGs with a main character that’s designed to be a self-insert for the player, but even by that measure this is strange.

You have an option of a male or female version and can name them whatever you want. This means all spoken dialogue avoids using the character’s name and has to go with genderless euphemisms “your child”, “professor” etc. Fine, I guess. But Byleth’s dialogue, such as it exists, is all completely unvoiced and is reported in your choices rather than given as proper dialogue most of the time. Byleth also just has the weirdest, blankest expression on their face all the time and is constantly doing this inane gesture when you select your dialogue options. And it’s just so weird and immersion breaking. Maybe there’s some story explanation coming for it, but given how long this game looks like it’s going to be (I’m over 2 hours in and just at the first proper battle) that’s requiring a lot of patience on the player’s behalf.

What makes it weirder is that it’s not like this is the first time Fire Emblem has done customisable player characters. Fates had a plethora of customisation options, including three different full voice options for each gender of its main player character, Corrin, who still had dialogue, personality etc. Admittedly all the cut-scenes in that were 2D stills and thinking about it, I’m not sure the dialogue was fully voiced rather than just sound bites and barks, but still, doing two full voices for Byleth (one male, one female) doesn’t seem particularly onerous in the grand scheme of things (and they have voiced combat barks etc for them). And even if it is, their vacant stare still feels like a conscious choice and very odd one at that.

It’s just really surprising to start a game that has a big narrative with social interaction elements and find that the main character is a gormless puppet, especially when they’re meant to be a teacher (which is a whole other area of weirdness, the way Byleth and their father are press-ganged into this military academy church place). I really didn’t get that impression from Smash Bros.

Still, the social bits I’ve done are fun, the characters are an interesting bunch and the main combat seems solid as ever. I really like that you get the standard FE grid view of the combat map but can zoom in further than that and get a full 3D terrain with more units spread about. When I first read a review of a Fire Emblem game way back, they said that the individual characters were all representative of units of soldiers, ala Advance Wars. That’s never actually been explicit in the games, until now and it’s a cool addition.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Dave

Sounds like we bailed at the same point in Cuphead. There comes a point where it’s just not that fun any more.

A shame because I’d have liked to see the rest of the game just for the cool concepts and animations. I guess I could always watch a playthrough but it’s not really my thing.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Martin Smith

So it looks like the “physical copy” of GTA VI is just going to be a download code.

https://www.ign.com/articles/grand-theft-auto-6-physical-copies-wont-include-a-disc-will-just-be-a-code-in-a-box

This is not only a disappointment for GTA specifically but feels like it risks normalising this kind of behaviour across the industry. Shame.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Todd

I guess Rockstar sees the sea of used GTA 5 copies in every CEX in the country and thinks “we should be getting that money”. It is scummy. My most hated thing about the Switch is the proliferation of those awful code-in-a-box games (replaced for Switch 2 with game key cards, which can at least be resold). Doing this is pretty much what killed off the physical PC game market.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Todd, Dave

The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales

This was excellent. Sure, it had some gameplay bumps along the way, but that was a vast minority of my 29.5 hours. Some of that was aimless wandering around forgetting how to get to certain areas too, your exploration might be more efficient.

I saw an awful lot of the game, more than I expected to.  This is a game that, mostly, wants you to get to the end, which I did and you should too. Got all the cats and the sidequests as well.  Things I didn’t do were some trials, don’t like those; some shrines, too much faffing around; some power upgrades, for the same reason. All of that’s optional. Had 18 of 20 hearts by the end.

SE’s 2D-HD style really works well here. Each world area feels distinct and looks it. Some might find it a bit too limited, four beast tribes, four ages, a technically similar map across them, yet those very reasons are why it worked well for me.

Save for the odd unclear boss fight or bad timed section, this is not a game out to overwhelm the player, at least not on Easy. No, this is a game that wants to be played and enjoyed. One that encourages and rewards exploration.

Gear and inventory is limited, but the combinations of weapons and accessories allows for a lot of flexibility. The game is at its best when supporting and enabling it.  Very infrequently does it narrow options.

Still, you can have all the above and it means nothing without a story to match. And this definitely has one.  Of many twists and turns, mysteries and surprises. Most importantly, it concludes really well. I haven’t said much of the details because those are best found by playing it.

Overall this Legend of Zelda mixed with light Metroidvania mash-up is a huge amount of fun. While entirely apart from there’s stylistic pieces of Final Fantasy scattered in here, no bad thing. Voice acting is good, which is combined with a great soundtrack.

It’s a familiar refrain that there’s nothing new to play. Or that games are no longer complete experiences  Well, this is both, go play it!

1 user thanked author for this post.

Martin Smith

Dave wrote:

So it looks like the “physical copy” of GTA VI is just going to be a download code.

https://www.ign.com/articles/grand-theft-auto-6-physical-copies-wont-include-a-disc-will-just-be-a-code-in-a-box

This is not only a disappointment for GTA specifically but feels like it risks normalising this kind of behaviour across the industry. Shame.

They’ve since advised that a physical disc will be released a few months down the line.

I’ve held off getting a PS5 until a killer app was exclusive to it (a new GTA the ideal candidate) – I hadn’t however looked into what a PS5 still costs. Yowza – $1,400 here which is huge compared to even an adjusted for inflation PS4 on release. The game being priced what it is doesn’t annoy me – for the hours of engagement over likely many years (if GTAV is any indication), it’s good value. And it’s still cheaper than the first games I got on SNES (SFII) and N64 (Mario Kart) adjusted for inflation.

Andrew wrote:

They’ve since advised that a physical disc will be released a few months down the line.

I think that’s kinda worse. Because unless that’s branded differently (GOTY edition etc) it’s just going to cause confusion between existing stock of unresellable codes-in-a-box and disc versions. And even if it is separately branded (and presumably priced), it’s just going to feel like a rip-off to everyone who got duped into buying the CIAB.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Todd, Ben

Apparently the story about a disc copy being on the way was based on a misunderstood comment from customer service that referred to a physical edition being available in a few months (because the physical edition referred to is just a code in a box).

It’s since been denied that a disc copy is going to be released.

https://kotaku.com/there-remains-no-disc-based-version-of-grand-theft-auto-vi-despite-promising-email-from-rockstar-2000711186

2 users thanked author for this post.

Todd, Ben

So, get this – scalpers are already flogging GTA VI preorders.

And, and they are getting sales!

For a game with practically infinite digital supply.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Todd

Ben wrote:

So, get this – scalpers are already flogging GTA VI preorders.

And, and they are getting sales!

For a game with practically infinite digital supply.

… Wha? How?!

1 user thanked author for this post.

Todd

People really are that stupid.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Todd

January 2028 will mark the end of physical disc production for new PlayStation games.

https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/physical-disc-production-ending-in-january-2028-for-new-games-releasing-on-playstation-consoles/

1 user thanked author for this post.

Todd

Starting to feel like this might be the generation to get off the hamster wheel.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Todd

Dave wrote:

January 2028 will mark the end of physical disc production for new PlayStation games.

https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/physical-disc-production-ending-in-january-2028-for-new-games-releasing-on-playstation-consoles/

That’s not going to go down well, though I wonder if they’ll get more ire for announcing they’re shutting down the PS3 and Vita stores.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Dave, Todd

Dave wrote:

January 2028 will mark the end of physical disc production for new PlayStation games.

https://blog.playstation.com/2026/07/01/physical-disc-production-ending-in-january-2028-for-new-games-releasing-on-playstation-consoles/

I wonder if this means that down the road, they will remove the disc completely from all models?

Basically, systems would be hard drives with internet connections and input devices. Wait, isn’t that basically what a computer is? If the natural conclusion is to remove the disc element, why would you need a system at that point?

Todd wrote:

I wonder if this means that down the road, they will remove the disc completely from all models?

It’s already going that way. The standard PS5 Pro doesn’t have a disc drive.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Todd

Both of these are good.

I found this great. He threw in an Angry Console Gamer bit in the title, and Johnny can’t be happy about this, but as a rant video goes? This is one of the most polite ones you will ever see. He just can’t do it and its better for it.

Whole lot of good points in it too.

This is much wider than just PS. Watch Steve’s vid to understand how and why this has a bigger effect when disability is added in.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Todd

Dave wrote:

Todd wrote:

I wonder if this means that down the road, they will remove the disc completely from all models?

It’s already going that way. The standard PS5 Pro doesn’t have a disc drive.

So, dare I ask (and I am serious): What’s the point of a PS when you have a computer? Is it exclusive games? Higher processing speeds? Why should someone spend stupid money on a game box when they already have a computer at home?

I guess this is going to fuck over the game resale market, too?

Is this one of those emperor-has-no-clothes things?

One flaw in that question, however expensive consoles become, PCs will remain even more so.  The whole PC gaming outlook assumes a consumer willingness to spend and level of technical knowledge and practical skills most people don’t have.

The attraction of consoles remains a pre-built, mostly ready-to-play, minimal set-up required.

The second hand market? Dies in Jan 2028.

It’s estimated that physical sales rack up $1.5bn, not insignificant, but it’s also 15% of game sales. 85% are now digital.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Martin Smith, Dave, Todd

Ben wrote:

The second hand market? Dies in Jan 2028.

So does letting your friend borrow one of your games and vice versa.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Dave

Todd wrote:

So, dare I ask (and I am serious): What’s the point of a PS when you have a computer? Is it exclusive games? Higher processing speeds? Why should someone spend stupid money on a game box when they already have a computer at home?

What Ben said basically. PC gaming has historically required more of an element of keeping on top of technical aspects to ensure you can play the latest games (specs, hardware upgrades etc.) whereas console gaming is an easy setup that doesn’t require extra spending on hardware after the initial outlay and you know that all games for a given console can run on it correctly.

For me there’s also an extra dimension of PlayStations having always acted as my home media hub – all our streaming services, apps etc run through it. That’s less important in the age of Smart TVs but the PS5 also has a great 4k Blu-Ray disc drive that I use regularly for movies, as I still own a lot of physical media.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Todd, Martin Smith

Todd wrote:

What’s the point of a PS when you have a computer?

Adding to what Ben and Dave had said, the big plus of consoles has always been the (relative) plug and play element of them. I was an Atari ST and then PC gamer as a kid in the 90s and going from that to getting a SNES in 96 (and then an N64 not long after) was a revelation. You can just put the games in and they work! You don’t have to fiddle with settings and worry about compatibility etc. That division has shrunk over the years – PC compatibility is less of an issue, consoles have got fiddlier with updates and installations etc. But it is still there.

There is also the element of price. While console prices have gone up (even as this generation has aged) PC component prices are worse and even Valve can’t make a reasonably priced standard machine with the Steam Box (Steam Machine? I forget the name) having a massive price tag for relatively mediocre specs. The volume of and standardisation of console manufacture ameliorates those costs a bit (traditionally anyway).

3 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Todd, Dave

Steam Machine prices are brutal.

And yeah, PS are overlooking what a major part of the value lay in bundling a BR drive with PS3-4, then UHD one with PS5, plus boost on DVD and BRs, is. I’ve never needed to buy a dedicated player.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Dave, Todd

Xbox testing disc-to-digital feature that digitizes a physical game collection

Microsoft will likely soon follow Sony and stop the production of physical discs for Xbox games. But instead of leaving physical discs behind entirely, sources familiar with Microsoft’s plans tell me the company has quietly been working on a disc-to-digital feature that will allow Xbox owners to digitize their existing physical game collections.

Featured Videos From The Verge

Snap’s Specs look good on nobody | The Vergecast

Xbox employees recently started testing this new feature, after references to “enable Disc2Digital” appeared in the Xbox PC app code in May. I’m told that Microsoft’s disc-to-digital feature will work on Xbox One and Xbox Series X discs only, and not those for the Xbox 360 or original Xbox console.

Getting a digital copy of a game works simply by inserting a compatible disc and installing and playing the game. This will require a Microsoft account on an Xbox console and will grant a digital entitlement for physical games. This digital entitlement is tied to the specific disc, and it will move from account to account if you swap the physical game with a friend or log in to a different Xbox profile and try to play a disc-based game.

The digital entitlement for a physical Xbox game is similar to buying the title from Microsoft’s digital store. If the game is available on Xbox Cloud Gaming and you have a Game Pass subscription, you’ll be able to stream it. If it’s an Xbox Play Anywhere title, you’ll also be able to access it on PCs and handhelds.

The Xbox disc-to-digital feature will also work with discs that come bundled with a console and multi-disc titles, providing access to everything the disc usually offers, including downloadable content.

Yeah, that’s an interesting one that I like the sound of.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Todd

Todd wrote:

This digital entitlement is tied to the specific disc, and it will move from account to account if you swap the physical game with a friend

Surely they’re not able to track individual discs though? Two copies of the same game should be identical.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Martin Smith wrote:

Surely they’re not able to track individual discs though? Two copies of the same game should be identical.

https://www.trueachievements.com/news/xbox-disc-2-digital-update

From the above article:

Well, thankfully, it doesn’t work like that [the console physically marking discs]. While it’s not applicable to every physical Xbox game (we’ll circle back on that detail shortly), compatible Xbox discs feature a unique identifier that can reportedly be picked up by Xbox consoles. Once scanned and claimed for your account, the license to play the digital version of that game will be yours, but it’s a conditional license.

To maintain access, your Xbox account will need to be the last one to have used or claimed that physical disc. So long as you were the last to use it, you won’t need to insert the disc to play the game. However, if someone else uses that disc on their Xbox console, or attempts to claim it for their digital account, they’ll take ownership of the game’s digital license, and your access to the digital version of the game will be revoked.

4 users thanked author for this post.

Martin Smith, Dave, Ben, Todd

Alan Wake II

So ends the likely most confusing, counter-intuitive game I’ll probably ever play. Which makes it sound rather awful, which isn’t the case. This simply reflects that it’s a game I found difficult to understand. I might get the theory of some of its gameplay concepts but the application of them in practice? Often made no sense to me.

So why play it? Why persist with it? Well, first of all I, mostly, couldn’t die. In the debate of difficulty versus accessibility, Remedy have chosen accessibility, they want everyone to be able to see all of their work here, no matter what.  Even me, who doesn’t understand their game and is rubbish at its combat.

And that work is clever. Graphically, the game is superb. The soundtrack is great. There’s an interesting story, with an intriguing cast of characters, all brought to life with voice acting to match.

Unfortunately, I think the game gets in its own way too much.  The difficulty of accessing the map, the lack of a compass resulted in a lot of aimless wandering. I liked Saga’s mind palace but what went where often felt weirdly lacking in logic. Still, it was practically ordered compared to Wake’s writer’s room. I never cracked the light puzzles either. I could see they wanted a sense of confusion but went too far with it. Oh and I loathed the final chase sequence.

That said the fact is your sense of orientation in a 3d space or understanding of the game will likely be better than mine, so it’ll work far better for you. But even with all of this, it was still a uniquely intriguing game. We say we want new things, new games, this is one of them. It has a creative vision unlike anything else. Oh and that soundtrack by the Old Gods of Asgard….

I rarely go for horror games, but this one wormed its way into my head and I had to see how it played out. Will I return to Alan Wake Remastered? Unlikely, as by the end I really didn’t like Wake. But Saga? Another game with her could be great.

If you have this as a PS+ copy, as I did, you have to give it a go. And next for me? Well, I hear there’s this game called Control….

Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Claws of Awaji

Having abandoned this due to the combination of difficulty spike and engineered inaccessibility that is the Nowaki fight, I went back to give another shot as the final update has been added. It remains complete arse. Nowaki didn’t know she’d be ambushed but has a magical escape route leading to an already prepared death arena. It’s easily the worst part of the Awaji expansion.

Thing is, after this garbage boss fight, the game returns to form. Straight-forward quests, fun action. It even does a disguise section where the enemies do not magically see through it as happens often elsewhere. Still found the final boss to be cheap crap, but the post-game for Awaji was far, far better and it ended well.

Assassin’s Creed Shadows: Black Tide

This is a sad way for the game to end. Black Tide is awful from start to finish. It has no redeeming features whatsoever. Oh, but it picks the Templar plot? Yes, but in the worst way possible. A pair of new enemies packing the most blatant plot armour going.

Nor is it just that. The first quest has you supposedly following blood trails. They’re either very hard to see or invisible. For the last part I nabbed a YT guide because whatever I was supposed to see I couldn’t. It felt like UbiSoft were trying to win over the anti-yellow paint crowd.

The first “boss” fight was entirely on the boss vaulting over Yasuke to hit him from behind, and freezes him in place to do so! If you get past this rubbish, you then get an unwinnable double boss fight. In the sequence that followed I felt it was still messing with the controls, not registering certain inputs.

That final quest had a load of platforming that wasn’t good. The boss fight here was a boss with far too much health but the fight felt empty. Not least as it’s followed by another double boss, with the one you just sliced up good suddenly having all her health back.

But worse is to come, the game switches you back to Yasuke, slings you into a boss fight where you cannot change your gear, and it has underhanded either removed or changed your gear! That felt immensely cheap. Resorted to special moving the boss to death.

And then the whole sad, sorry mess ended. If you’re playing Shadows, stop at Awaji – that ends well in so many ways Black Tide fails at.

Intellectually I already knew that there’s a difference between receiving a disc copy in the post versus code-in-a-box. And, in the absence of the former, I’ll try the latter in 2028 if the price is right.

But with AC Black Flag Resynced on the way, it really emphasises that difference of both anticipation and experience more emotionally. Of putting a disc in versus doing redeem code in PSN.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

I went to Leicester on the weekend and returned to the Retro Computer Museum, where I donated a load of my recently retired dad’s old programming manuals/guides/books and various accumulated magazine cover CDs etc. If you’re within travelling distance of Leicester you should definitely check out the RCM. It has a load of consoles and micro computers from the 70s through to 00s set up in their main room, most with everdrives full of ROMs so there’s a large selection of games to play. They’re almost all running on CRTs as well, so they look good and you can use light guns for the PS1 and NES. There’s another room set up with 6 desktops running an endless LAN game of Quake (I’m not sure which Quake) and some other PCs in there (I think I saw one playing the Oregon Trail).

Beyond that is the arcade section, which is mostly emulation boxes, although really well made ones. One of the (very chatty) members of staff was showing the workings of their light gun machine to me and it’s essentially just a laptop in an arcade cabinet, hooked up to a flat screen TV. But the TV can be taken out and rotated through 90 degrees for games that originally had that aspect ratio (like Centipede, for which there is a trackball on the control panel). The light guns are those new Sinden ones which are essentially just webcams in light gun shells. There’s a lot of technical fussiness going on in getting it all running smoothly, but when it does, it goes well. It does feel a little bit of a shame that they’re not interested in original hardware for the arcade machines (in contrast to most of the good barcades I’ve been to, which do have original cabinets running the games they were built for on original screens), but conversely I can see the appeal of having a wide choice available for visitors. I always get choice paralysis on those though and when you’ve got literally 100s of games on one machine, I think there does need to be some manner of curation in how that’s presented, like a “we recommend” section in the ROM list.

The arcade section also has some 90s VR machines, the type you’d have seen on Tomorrow’s World or Bad Influence. I got to have a go one last time, which was running Dactyl Terror, the epitome of 90s VR: blocky polygonal graphics, checkerboard platforms floating in space with weird architecture on and you have to shoot poorly realised pterodactyls. It’s not good, but it’s definitely something worth experiencing.

The other big draw of the RCM though is the library upstairs. When I went last time it wasn’t open to the public. It is now, but they do little tours rather than letting you free roam. That’s because it is just a dozen rows of shelving chock full of the near complete libraries of games for every platform imaginable. Plus loads of magazines, books, some odd bits of hardware (Commodore 64 laptops, for instance) and a Sinclair C5 hanging around. There are display cabinets in the foyer with some particular rarities that have been donated by various people from the games industry as well: a prototype Amiga CD thing, one guy’s various awards and IIRC the handheld system that Rare made speculatively to pitch to Nintendo before finding out the Game Boy was in development.

If you like games and computers, you’ll definitely be able to fill a few hours well there.

I also stopped into Leicester city centre and Super Game Shack, which was having a 15% off sale, meaning I was finally able to pick up a copy of Pokemon Gold for a nice price.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Todd