Video Games

Topic

Games. A love and loathe activity, especially when you can’t nail a section or take out that one bastard boss.

So, what are you buyin’? What are you playing?

Replies

This looks like it could be a bit of fun. As much as the graphics look a bit PS3-era, it looks like a return to the simple FPS model of games like Resistance, which I know is a bit passe now but is the kind of thing I like.

Plus, all the Terminator detail looks fairly decent (although I’m assuming there’s no involvement from Arnie or they would be shouting about it).

Let’s hope it can live up to the excellent Terminator and Terminator 2 games of the 16-bit era.

Seeing the announcement vid really emphasised the Q of – why has no one done this?

[Martin Smith]

I finished Mole Mania yesterday, for which I had to resort guides a bit more than I’d have liked near the end (but I don’t feel any shame in that, as it’s bloody tricky in places). Fun game over all.

I got my dad’s old Atari ST out of his loft yesterday and have been messing around with that. We had absolutely loads of games for it, because they were almost all cracks and pirate copies (I was too young to realise this and thought all games came bundled on disks with a hand-written, often inaccurate label, and that the couple we had with their own boxes were the weird exceptions). I can’t say there’s many – or any yet – that hold attention as more than a passing curiosity, although the joystick’s buggered, so that doesn’t help get a true feel for them.

The menus on the cracked pack disks are really something though. It’s a good thing I couldn’t read much when I used to play these, because a few of them are down right vile. There’s a lot of technical wankery going on with them though, the late 80s/early 90s equivalent of early internet homepages, as people show off with fancy fonts and display effects, background music, fancy graphics. They’re more interesting than the games in some cases.

Edit: ah, wouldn’t you know it, someone’s made a database of them online. Here’s one of the less crude ones.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Martin Smith.

So, booted up the first ep of AC Odyssey: Fate of Atlantis that was available free a short time back.

And it crashed spectacularly. It has this great idea for a starting quest of you going to various tombs, it then switches back to modern day where, without any map indicators and skills worth a damn, you have to go through the tombs as Layla, looking for these symbols. Once you’re through that terrible tedium? You get a puzzle sequence of unlocking the seal of Atlantis. It was total arse. After that you get to actually progress more as Kass, which is so much better. But the game decides to do an overt combat fight of 5-on-1, with a load of new Isu enemies.

Unfortunately, they pretty much embody the worst traits of videogame enemies – they have projectile attacks, area of effect attacks, plus the usual swords – oh and they can drain adrenaline, which yo rely on for all the special moves. Worse, they have these robots too and those fuckers can teleport. The first fight was just about OK, the first encounter with the Kolossi was unpleasant. It stayed that way for a couple of more fights too.

However, those Kolossi, and their Isu creators ain’t that smart. In fact, they are very, very dumb and that’s how the episode started to recover, as I went full stealth tactics – one-on-one kills, preferably at long distance, or through walls. Full sneak attack takes out 90% of the Kolossi health, a few melee strikes finishes it off, even if a second activates, it’ll very quickly be a one-on-one fight which is far more manageable. The real trick is spotting the damn statues as they’re immune to Ikaros’ senses.

The most hilarious bit was today, as I went after an Overseer, she activated two Kolossi, I legged it out of there by jumping off the cliff and…. she followed me! I have jump immortality, I landed fine, she went splat. Couldn’t quite believe I saw it, as I was climbing back up, I just watched her do this lemming doom dive. Oh well, one down.

This sounds likes a fun little indie game.

Assemble With Care preview at Eurogamer

Not enough to convince me to use Apple Arcade (I really don’t like my phone as a gaming device) but if it moves to another platform, I might check it out.

Boom!

Some amazing shots in there. I hope they haven’t given away too much.

Looks like I have some days to book off work next February.

[Martin Smith]

This week, I’ve been playing Sushi Striker on the 3DS. It’s an odd game. The first thing to hit you is that it’s very much anime nonsense. You play as Mushashi, who lives in a world without fish. As such, sushi is created by magical beings called sushi sprites (who are like knock-off Pokemon), who can bond with sushi strikers if they eat their pledge sushi (yes, it sounds dirty every time). But an evil empire wanted all the sushi for itself, so set about conquering the entire continent and all the sushi sprites, so the common folk couldn’t get it. Mushashi has discovered she’s the daughter of a legendary, presumed dead, sushi striker (which is people who battle by eating sushi and flinging the plates) and set about to bring sushi to everyone.
As I said, nonsense. There’s lots of meaningful talk and philosophising about the power of sushi and honestly, if you told me this was adapted from a 30 episode anime, I would definitely believe you. It’s all well presented though, with nice art and some actual anime cutscenes. The thing is though, the game knows all this is crazy and so presents the option to skip story content immediately at every opportunity, which is surprisingly humble.
Crucially though, the core game is actually great. It’s an action battle puzzler thing, I guess? You go head to head against another sushi striker, with you each having three conveyor belt lanes full of sushi going past you, with a seventh shared lane in the middle. You have to drag across the sushi in front of you, linking up dishes with the same plate colours (like Yo Sushi price bands) to create stacks, which you then fling at your opponent to ultimately reduce their health to zero. So at it’s core, it’s really a fast-paced colour match game, but there are loads of complications to that, some of which really make the sushi trappings intrinsic to the gameplay.

So one complication is that you have three sushi sprites on your team as you battle, each with a individual skill that charges up as you eat. These can do anything from electrify your plates for more damage or replace all the sushi on your screen with dishes of the same colour. As well as that, you can set a favourite sushi – an individual type rather than just a plate colour – and you get stat buffs if you eat enough of that in one battle. Your sushi sprites can level up and dictate the types of sushi that appear in your lanes too.
There’s a hell of a lot going, even before you factor in the manically fast pace of the game – battles last a couple of minutes tops – and yet it’s never felt overwhelming or intimidating. Even early on, when I wasn’t entirely sure of all the wrinkles and complications, it’s still loads of fun and immensely satisfying to play.
The game was originally announced as a 3DS exclusive, but because that console was on its way out, it got a simultaneous release on the Switch. That version was the one that got reviewed most places, which didn’t do Sushi Striker any favours, as it’s really built for a dual screen and stylus rather than pure touch on a single screen. There’s too much information going too quickly for you to get by with your hand in the way. As such, it didn’t review brilliantly, but that just means the 3DS version got massively reduced really quickly. I picked this up for £8 a couple of months ago and it’s not been out that long (meanwhile the Switch versions appears to still be around ~£30+ most places).
If you’ve still got a 3DS and like an odd puzzle game, you should definitely check this out.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Martin Smith.

So, went and did the other fortresses of Elysium and killed the other Overseers, along with everyone in each fortress. It was pretty damn smart, carefully taking out the grunts. ensuring I had adrenaline for the brutes, then dealing with the Kolossi, all in a hugely intricate, very well realised three-dimensional environment with a great deal of verticality.

Then I went and started on the main story quest, which is where it all went to shit. In a nutshell? It’s all over the place, a Pollock painting is more organised. Plus, the characters you encounter?

– Adonis is a shit.
– Hermes is a shit.
– Hekate is a shit.
– Persephone is Queen of the Turds.

Nor are these interesting bastards of the Witcher 3 variety, nope they are turds that you want to simply flush away. But you got to do all these quests – and you have to do them, there’s no actual decisions involved – if UbiSoft really want to lay claim to RPG then having the ability to tell characters to go fuck themselves, which you can do with Geralt, but not with Kass, is a pretty damn essential addition.

What killed the DLC was a succession of ‘do this but don’t be seen’ super stealth quests, culminating in one where you have to carry an item through a load of enemies without detection. Carrying the item blocks you from climbing and fighting. At that point, I just went ‘fuck this, I don’t care anymore’.

Kind of irritates that I bagged the season pass, as I doubt Eps 2-3 will be better, but might be able to at least see the graphical architecture, which is my main interest. Might well find Legacy of the First Blade to be better than expected. Do have AC3 too, which for £16 is a fair enough price.

It does seem also quite off that as Bayek, you get to go into the afterlife and bash the crap out of a load of Pharaohs. This feels far more restrained, as if the game is saying: Well, you can’t fight gods Kass… Come on, if anyone could it’d be Kass.

It also emphasises that the next challenge for developers isn’t really graphical. Graphically, Elysium is superb, but the gameplay and story hasn’t kept up with the visual innovation and brilliance.

[Ben]

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Fate of Atlantis Episode 2

I have to admit, on the evidence of the Cerberos boss fight, which was feckin’ annoying, a very unwelcome difficulty spike, I suspect I am unlikely to access Episode 3. (Which itself looks to set a very bad precedent of selling paid for, gated DLC. Granted, it’s practically only £2 worth but still not good). After that? Tried a Tartaros Rift, also feckin annoying. Did a couple of locations that had two of them and came across a greater irritant, that you can get attacked by invincible enemies. Yeah, not exactly my idea of fun.

If anything the FoA DLC is demonstrating very effectively that harder isn’t better. Sure, you can say a high-level, XP’d up character needs stronger enemies but ACO has enemy scaling, so you’re never in that position.

Hades’ realm is a very well designed shitpit, but it’s still a shitpit.

Spider-Man

It’s amazing the sheer disconnect on difficulty between the story missions and the random stuff that crops up on the map. The latter tends to be much, much higher, so in effect, you’re punished for exploring and not doing the main campaign. Because doing the story missions today was far easier, both the number of enemies and types and the combination of.

At the same time, all the old flaws came back with a vengeance, enemies being obscured by the camera, inability to scope out enemies ahead of – and in – combat, supposedly human foes that have far too many superhuman abilities. It only reversed towards the end when I got a couple of upgrades that made a more decisive impact on the demon fights.

That they have one control scheme for the bulk of the game and then it changes when taking out vehicles doesn’t help either.

Graphically, it remains amazing, as does the webswinging, but the rest of it isn’t quite there. Let’s not get me started on the fuckin’ pigeon hunting mission.
Dragon Quest XI

Only done the very, very start of this but it looks amazing. Old-school game in new-school clothes.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Ben.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Fate of Atlantis Episode 2

I have to admit, on the evidence of the Cerberos boss fight, which was feckin’ annoying, a very unwelcome difficulty spike, I suspect I am unlikely to access Episode 3. (Which itself looks to set a very bad precedent of selling paid for, gated DLC. Granted, it’s practically only £2 worth but still not good). After that? Tried a Tartaros Rift, also feckin annoying. Did a couple of locations that had two of them and came across a greater irritant, that you can get attacked by invincible enemies. Yeah, not exactly my idea of fun.

If anything the FoA DLC is demonstrating very effectively that harder isn’t better. Sure, you can say a high-level, XP’d up character needs stronger enemies but ACO has enemy scaling, so you’re never in that position.

Hades’ realm is a very well designed shitpit, but it’s still a shitpit.

Spider-Man

It’s amazing the sheer disconnect on difficulty between the story missions and the random stuff that crops up on the map. The latter tends to be much, much higher, so in effect, you’re punished for exploring and not doing the main campaign. Because doing the story missions today was far easier, both the number of enemies and types and the combination of.

At the same time, all the old flaws came back with a vengeance, enemies being obscured by the camera, inability to scope out enemies ahead of – and in – combat, supposedly human foes that have far too many superhuman abilities. It only reversed towards the end when I got a couple of upgrades that made a more decisive impact on the demon fights.

That they have one control scheme for the bulk of the game and then it changes when taking out vehicles doesn’t help either.

Graphically, it remains amazing, as does the webswinging, but the rest of it isn’t quite there. Let’s not get me started on the fuckin’ pigeon hunting mission.

Dragon Quest XI

Only done the very, very start of this but it looks amazing. Old-school game in new-school clothes.

Rule #1 of this new board: Never, ever, edit your posts.
Rule #2: No identical re-posts permitted either. (Now, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing..)
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Fate of Atlantis Episode 2

I have to admit, on the evidence of the Cerberos boss fight, which was feckin’ annoying, a very unwelcome difficulty spike, I suspect I am unlikely to access Episode 3. (Which itself looks to set a very bad precedent of selling paid for, gated DLC. Granted, it’s practically only £2 worth but still not good). After that? Tried a Tartaros Rift, also feckin annoying. Did a couple of locations that had two of them and came across a greater irritant, that you can get attacked by invincible enemies. Yeah, not exactly my idea of fun.

If anything the FoA DLC is demonstrating very effectively that harder isn’t better. Sure, you can say a high-level, XP’d up character needs stronger enemies but ACO has enemy scaling, so you’re never in that position.

Hades’ realm is a very well designed shitpit, but it’s still a shitpit.

Spider-Man

It’s amazing the sheer disconnect on difficulty between the story missions and the random stuff that crops up on the map. The latter tends to be much, much higher, so in effect, you’re punished for exploring and not doing the main campaign. Because doing the story missions today was far easier, both the number of enemies and types and the combination of.

At the same time, all the old flaws came back with a vengeance, enemies being obscured by the camera, inability to scope out enemies ahead of – and in – combat, supposedly human foes that have far too many superhuman abilities. It only reversed towards the end when I got a couple of upgrades that made a more decisive impact on the demon fights.

That they have one control scheme for the bulk of the game and then it changes when taking out vehicles doesn’t help either.

Graphically, it remains amazing, as does the webswinging, but the rest of it isn’t quite there. Let’s not get me started on the fuckin’ pigeon hunting mission.

Dragon Quest XI

Only done the very, very start of this but it looks amazing. Old-school game in new-school clothes.

So. Taskmaster drone challenges in Spiderman. They’re pretty difficult aren’t they. Ive been hammering away at this one for hours and still can’t get gold. The controls are just not precise enough.

In 2014, the UK government set up tax breaks for indie game developers making games “culturally relevant” to the UK. £324 million has gone out in the scheme. £314 million of that has gone to multi-national publishers making AAA games.

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/oct/02/revealed-global-video-games-giants-avoiding-millions-in-uk-tax-sony-sega

Close to half of all the relief went to four large foreign-based companies. Scores of games that have few, if any, apparent British cultural references have been awarded large rebates.

Official figures show VGTR was also overwhelmingly more lucrative for larger-scale video game projects. Claims for more than £500,000 have taken at least 80% of the total tax relief, despite accounting for only a small fraction of claims. These were dominated by big developers.

Alex Dunnagan, a researcher at TaxWatch UK, said the new findings on Warner Media, Sony and Sega show the scheme had “become a cash cow for large, tax-dodging multinational corporations who are milking the system to extract hundreds of millions of pounds in subsidies from the British taxpayer.

“It is clear to me that much of the subsidy is unnecessary, as many of these corporations were producing hugely popular games since long before the introduction of VGTR,” Dunnagan said.

Vitally, VGTR has also been widely promoted as being of cultural value in the UK, with games under development required to pass a “cultural test”. To qualify, games can score points on whether they include British or European cultural references. But the test is lenient, and games in fictional universes with no obvious British or European cultural content, such as Batman: Arkham, can still gather enough points to legitimately pass. Having staff or offices in the UK or European Economic Area also earns points, as does simply using the English language.

On a different note, I don’t really need a second PS4 controller (a sad statement of affairs on my multiplayer gaming prospects maybe), but I just saw the new electric purple controller and somehow I really do need one.

Exclusive to Currys, weirdly.

I’ve already got three Dualshock 4s, but that does look nice.

Those and pigeon chasing and other timed crap make a case for microtransactions! I’d pay to not do them.

Have done alot in the game now, at the start of act 3.

Ha! The Terminator dlc for MK11 looks great!

Ha! That’s great. It might be enough to make me pick this up.

(Shame it’s old-Arnie and not old Arnie, but I guess they’re promoting the new movie.)

Each character has several different skins… one of them is surely gonna be classic Arnie-nator… I’m not sure there’s a T-800 skeleton skin because you kinda become one with a special ability you can equip, but there might be one as well… Other than that, apparently he plays very much like Jason in MKX…

There’s a video of all the skins up.

I looks like it’s all old Arnie but I’ll admit I started skipping through the video so I may have missed a T1 skin.

Also, mods. I clicked “report” instead of “replay” by mistake. Sorry.

So I’ve currently gone back to Red Dead Redemption 2 online, quite enjoying the 3 new frontiers careers. Ofc being online they are a little grindy but with the daily challenges I find myseld being roped in for an hour each day.

For work I also have to review FIFA 20 Volta’s mode, it’s ok as a street footballer it’s nice to see them focus on street football again, but I prefer the old FIFA street games.

Jon wrote:

Each character has several different skins… one of them is surely gonna be classic Arnie-nator

I’ve been following one or two Terminator fansites in the lead up to the new movie and they seemed to be under the impression that it was only the “Dark Fate” Terminator who would appear in MK.

The original would be fantastic, and the T-1000 maybe even better.

So, over in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, all my Adrestia is now missing is a LOLcat going:
“Oh hai! I haz flamehrowerz now.”

More fun with China in the media.

Yesterday a Hearthstone tournament winner said ‘liberate Hong Kong’ during his post-match interview. Now the game’s publisher Blizzard, part-owned by the Chinese conglomerate Tencent, has rescinded the player’s winnings and issued him a year-long ban… https://t.co/1KS6SLqoLO

— Simon Parkin (@SimonParkin) October 8, 2019

[Jon]

Bruce wrote:

There’s a video of all the skins up.

I looks like it’s all old Arnie but I’ll admit I started skipping through the video so I may have missed a T1 skin.

There’s literally 2 young arnie skins right there in the thumbnail of the video… xD
 
There’s a couple of glasses similar to the T1 movie poster ones… so if you use a young arnie skin, the old-school clothes (leather costume) and those glasses, you get pretty close to T1’s (T2’s as well, I suppose) Arnie…

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Jon.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Jon.

I’ve been playing Remnant: From The Ashes.

It’s… fine. For the first few hours I regretted purchasing it. It’s a Soulsbourne issue title that forces you to learn it’s mechanics and bosses, but it’s gun basses so it’s a lot of ranged and mid ranged combat. It’s just not very polished in a lot of ways and there is way more randomness to the boss fights then I care for. For example, every second boss teleport randomly all over the place and throws in a bunch of minions. And the camera hates it when you back yourself into a wall which often results in death. I’ve more or less finished it but it seemed needlessly frustrating in parts(probably not helped by the fact o didn’t work out how to upgrade armour until half way through). Not the good frustrating either whete you learn the game … Just, frustrating. But doable all the same.

Ben, you would hate it.

I’m eyeing up a replacement: Code Vein, Surge 2 and Iceborne are on the list, as well as Plague Tale or maybe a fighter like MK11 or Soul Calibur. Dragon Quest is a possibility too

Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey said something similar and now the NBA is in hot water.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-state-broadcaster-drops-two-nba-games-11570522782

Official details on the PlayStation 5, launching for Christmas 2020:

An Update on Next-Gen: PlayStation 5 Launches Holiday 2020

Rockstar’s Bully 2 was being made but got cancelled

For years now there’ve been rumours about a follow-up to 2006’s Bully, aka Canis Canem Edit. But rumours have been especially rampant after the release of Red Dead Redemption II, which contains several hidden references to the game.
Some people took this as evidence that an announcement for Bully 2 was imminent but, according to a source at website VideoGamesChronicle, while a sequel was in development in the early 2010s enthusiasm at Rockstar ‘fizzled out’ and it was eventually canned.
Supposedly, Rockstar co-founder, and GTA and Red Dead Redemption writer, Dan Houser and his team had finished a script for the game as early as 2008, which included the initial scenes and an outline of the rest of the plot.

Aw poop. >:o

PS5 launches Xmas 2020
Includes 4k player
Backwards compatible with PS4
Haven’t seen price anywhere yet

The backwards compatibility is a major draw.

Damn it!

https://kotaku.com/doom-eternal-delayed-to-march-1838872978

That said I’d rather it was delayed than released half baked.

I still need to finish the first one! This gives me a bit more time to do that…

Helps your wallet too. Nov is always an insane month.

[Bruce]

Ben wrote:

Helps your wallet too. Nov is always an insane month.

Messes up my wife’s xmas shopping as this was all I really wanted.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 2 months ago by Bruce.

Hmm, write to Santa instead?

At least you’ve got the PS5 locked in for next Christmas…

Not so sure about that, without knowing the price. Plus some games, but if I can import the entirety of the digital library or plug in a Ps4 format hardrive and transfer the lot at superspeed… That hard drive also needs to be a decent size, which is what’ll probably whack the cost up.

I was only joking, I’ll be waiting it out for at least a year or so after release to get a feel for whether it’s worth it (and for the price to come down).

As things stand, I’ve got shitloads of unplayed PS4 games to get to (and more on the way with the new Doom and TLoU2) – enough to keep me going for years.

It may well be that the PS4 is my last console.

(My kids, on the other hand…)

My PS4 gets used for games, BluRays, streaming – so if PS5 has stronger tech, it’d be worth buying for the other two.

I use mine as a media hub too, but to be honest I can’t imagine the PS5 giving me anything the PS4 doesn’t have already. (I don’t have a 4k TV so that element is lost on me.)

When I got the new TV, part of why I went for 4k HDR, apart from it not being that much more pricey, was with an eye to future-proofing and possible PS5 use. So the 4k bit probably isn’t being used much now, if at all.

Although, the difference HDR makes on standard PS4 games is amazing, it’s a huge jump just on its own – and they already looked great without it.

Thief robs Valve of £33,000 of computers using wheelie bin.

According to Washington news station KIRO-7, Shaputis is something of a local celebrity and after the low-tech burglary at Valve went on to steal a FedEx truck and get involved in a high-speed chase with the police.

And on a different note, this review for the new 2D Yooka-Laylee is encouraging.

Yooka-Laylee And The Impossible Lair review

I’ve been playing Deus Ex Mankind Divided on and off for the past couple of weeks. I quite like how it’s a open world hub that isn’t massive. A handful of city blocks is a refreshing change from a whole, empty state. Still plenty of computers and things to hack in to so I’ve still had plenty of fannying about time. Being taking the non-lethal route through the missions too which is making me think a bit more carefully about how I approach each situation.

Oh, the child has also been showing a bit more interest in games now. Been playing a wee bit of Mario Kart 8 with her and loaded up Peggle on the xbox too. Enjoying both so far and can actually complete a couple rounds of Peggle on her own.

Ohh I love the new Deus Ex games, I really hope they make another one… I love going ghost in them…

So, AC Odyssey…

First, I rebuilt Kass’ abilities around melee resistance, with some ranged – the result was pretty damn stunning in terms of her defence – it went through the roof! So much more effective than armour it’s insane.

Second, I’m on Ep 3 of Legacy of the First Blade and, well…. They killed Natakas! :_| For all that I can appreciate the controversy that arose around that plotline being inflicted on the player, when it’s truly optional – as it was for me – it plays very well. So, next? Next there is going to be one hell of a vengeance.

I can’t say the Immortals boss fight was all that, it relied on granting shieldbreaker immunity to one of them. What really stood out in that fight was the highly limited effect of fire and poison compared to previous fights and damage generally, Kass was shrugging it all off like no tomorrow.

Some of you may have noticed that I’ve been delving through various old bits of TV on youtube lately. This is no different. I found an old episode of Cybernet and there was one moment that caught my eye: a glimpse of an early proto N64 Zelda where Link looks a lot more like he did in the 80s, especially the cartoon.

https://youtu.be/hDzr3m1xbo0?t=338

(around 5:48 if the start point doesn’t work).

Msy be of interest to some. Though didnt the BBC do a serues of video game music shows fairly recently?

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/oct/09/bbc-radio-3-video-game-music-programme-jessica-curry

Bruce wrote:

Msy be of interest to some. Though didnt the BBC do a serues of video game music shows fairly recently?

https://www.theguardian.com/games/2019/oct/09/bbc-radio-3-video-game-music-programme-jessica-curry

Yeah, the Matthew Sweet off the Sound of Cinema did a really good special and 6Music did a documentary thing, I think.

Jessica Curry was the original host on ClassicFM’s High Score (replaced for the recent series by an Irish composer whose name I can’t spell, but was great) and she really got on my nerves there. I think it started with doing the first episode about BAFTA winning compositions and ending it on her own work, which struck me as rather conceited.

There are times when I think it’d be funny if Kassandra kept a diary, it’d have stuff like:
Today I took a trip to the Underworld and duffed up Hades
It doesn’t hurt that that sequence was well executed, especially her line: ‘I didn’t bow to your wife and I won’t bow to you’. The actual fight was… eh… Kass is currenty nigh-on unkillable, so the boss had no chance. Was quite satisfying kicking the crap out of him.

So got to the third episode, which has the City of Atlantis. Graphically, it’s a wondrous piece of design, in gameplay terms it’s not quite as good due to the complexity of navigation.

The one thing that is really standing out though is the difference between Kassandra and Layla, one is excellently rendered, engaging and fun to play as, the other is… Well, nowhere near that and the Episode 2-3 transition proves it:
Victoria, as Layla’s doctor, pulls her out so Layla kills her, then swears blind it wasn’t her, then start of the next ep when reminded that Victoria is dead does not give a crap. This is not good. Why should I want to play as this piece of crap? I’m expecting a crappy, half-arsed redemption bit on the end so Layla gets let off killing her friend. Kass’ faith in Layla? Er, yeah…. About that….
What’s baffling is the same creative team made both characters, but they are as far apart as they can be.

I’ve been playing another old adventure game lately, Call Of Cthulhu: Prisoner Of Ice, which was made by Infogrames in the mid-90s. It’s a fairly solid adventure, lots of Old One mythos stuff going on (bit wonky historically speaking though – it’s set in 1937 but the Nazis are openly firing on Royal Navy ships for no reason and there’s mention of “Allies” etc).

The really interesting thing is that there are two versions of it though (both are included in a purchase on GOG). One is listed as the UK version and is branded by Infogrames, the other is not specified (and thus presumably a US version) and branded by I-Motion, which is just an American subsidiary/front for Infogrames. The only real difference between the two is that all the voice acting has been changed between them. One is full of dreadful American accents (for members of the Royal Navy!) seemingly performed by amateurs, while the other has fairly professional sounding actors, authentic British accents for the Brits and the main character, who is American, is voiced by Doug Stone (Matt Trakker off MASK). Weirdly, it’s the UK version that is full of the bad American accents, which is surprising. This came out when British adventure games were happily casting household names like Chris Barrie, Eric Idle and Jon Pertwee while your average American talkie was using some guy on the development team who did a bit of community theatre in his spare time.

Done with Deus Ex Mankind Divided. The ending was a bit of a let down compared to the slow burn build up of plot throughout the game. The journey was worthwhile though and I’ll most likely play through again using a different playstyle (guns a blazing).

Up next is either De Blob 2 or Ori and The Blind Forest as I’ve had both sitting for ages after picking them up in sales and they look relatively child friendly (I’m on holiday just now and hoping to get a wee spot of daytime gaming in while the child is playing).

I’ve played the first 2 hours of Code Vein, past the introductory stage and beaten the first “real boss”.

It’s not as compelling as Dark Souls at this stage. The AI companion makes it easier and demonstrates some of the abilities of the game, but I can’t help but think it would be a more pure (but harder) experience without them. With that said, you do get mobbed alot won’t be AI companion is probably there for that.

Anyway, I’m on the fence. I hope the experience gets better

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: The Fate of Atlantis

OK, let’s get the worst bit out of the way first: Layla. She is awful. What’s more the game practically bends over backwards to try to tell me that, despite the crap she’s done, the sun doth shine from her arse.
True, I expected finding that healing device to be setting up a resurrection for Victoria but nope. Instead Vic’s corpse gets raided by her killer. Up until then, the game is trying to claim Laya will get to redeem herself for killing Vic. She doesn’t, nor does she give a damn about killing her friend. The voiceover in the Atlantis DLC at certain points was truly grating, especially Layla claiming to be accountable – she isn’t, it’s bollocks. The final ending for this part of the gaming was also very, very weak.
Fortunately, this is a minor aspect, but when it turns up, it eclipses all others.

This gets me to the second major weakness – the story itself. For each of the three episodes it was weak, reliant on simplistic and forced binary choices that really show up Ubisoft’s understanding of what a RPG entails. There was also some quite nasty stuff that Kass was permitted no answer to. The main game story had these same weaknesses too, but this DLC was an opportunity to learn from that and improve, it didn’t take it.

What did work exceedingly well for the set was the design and depiction of the realms. Each looked amazing, even the crap-pit that is the Underworld. The other major success was in some of the optional quests. The Phoebe and Brasidas quests being particular standouts.

Bringing back some of the characters you fought in the main game as vengeful shades was a great use of the setting. The new Isu enemies mostly worked, though I found both the Isu Commanders and Atlantean Polemachs to be the definition of overpowered, health sponge enemies in the worst way. Yes, they died, all you have to do is stab them… enough. Those fights got boring fast. Most of the boss enemies in the Underworld suffered from the same effect, though duffing up some of those again was fun. On the evidence of the Cerberos fight where she was the old version, I freely admit that without respeccing Kass I wouldn’t have finished this lot. At times the sheer defence was hilarious – Agamemnon kept setting her on fire, it did sweet feck all as she kept hitting him.

I did like that, having likely watched her duff up Hades, Poseidon decided not to mess with Kass.

As to the game’s final, final boss… urgh. It functions as an excellent example of both the standard DLC boss – bigger, harder, meaner – and the weakness of that: Not better. That last boss fight was a bore. It would have been far more satisfying to smash the crap out of Aita and Juno than a lab experiment gone wrong.

Overall, it’s a real mixed bag, but since I practically paid £6 for the lot I can’t be that cheesed off about it. I got my money’s worth, exploring and taking out the new locations in each realm, with the required change of strategy, was a lot of fun. It was only when I went back to the main quest content that it sometimes faltered badly.

For whatever the next game is? More player choice and less railroading, less ‘gotcha’ moments on how quest choices play out if you get them. Oh and that “morality” meter has to go. Origins was so much better without that.

For anyone in the UK Base have thrown down the gauntlet to their competition.
The Outer Worlds £39.85

Some other really good offers below the £40 mark too, stuff like Shenmue 3 and the Yakuza Remastered collection.

Anonymous wrote:

I’ve played the first 2 hours of Code Vein, past the introductory stage and beaten the first “real boss”.

It’s not as compelling as Dark Souls at this stage. The AI companion makes it easier and demonstrates some of the abilities of the game, but I can’t help but think it would be a more pure (but harder) experience without them. With that said, you do get mobbed alot won’t be AI companion is probably there for that.

Anyway, I’m on the fence. I hope the experience gets better

As is customary for this thread I will talk to myself.

It has gotten better. I’m probably half way through maybe. It’s not as elegantly planned in terms of boss fights and levels as FromSoft games. In fact, that applies wholesale. The player experience is not as elegantly planned but all the parts are there.

Its good in parts. I enjoyed particularly the Gilded Hunter and Queens Knight fights. The rest of the bosses are hit and miss. Some boring, some cool.

Anonymous wrote:

As is customary for this thread I will talk to myself.

Oh come on Tim, that’s not fair.

It’s not just this thread.

Tim likes to do all the talking himself, it saves time and prevents arguments.

Anonymous wrote:

Tim wrote:

I’ve played the first 2 hours of Code Vein, past the introductory stage and beaten the first “real boss”.

It’s not as compelling as Dark Souls at this stage. The AI companion makes it easier and demonstrates some of the abilities of the game, but I can’t help but think it would be a more pure (but harder) experience without them. With that said, you do get mobbed alot won’t be AI companion is probably there for that.

Anyway, I’m on the fence. I hope the experience gets better

As is customary for this thread I will talk to myself.

It has gotten better. I’m probably half way through maybe. It’s not as elegantly planned in terms of boss fights and levels as FromSoft games. In fact, that applies wholesale. The player experience is not as elegantly planned but all the parts are there.

Its good in parts. I enjoyed particularly the Gilded Hunter and Queens Knight fights. The rest of the bosses are hit and miss. Some boring, some cool.

You know what, Tim? I think you’re great and that Ben and Dave are stupid jerkfaces.

Also you are very handsome and smart.

I don’t know if anyone cares about WWE games (I don’t really, I’ve not played on since WWE ’13 or so, but my friend gets them religiously so I’m vaguely aware of them) but the latest release is an utter travesty of a game filled with some hilariously poor glitches.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-10-23-wwe-2k20-slammed-after-glitches-go-viral

There’s so much wrong going on with it, I don’t think you could even fix it. And screw 2K for releasing a game in this state.

I literally laughed out loud at those clips. I’m not sure why people are complaining

I love the fact that article ends with a link to buy 2k20 on Amazon.

Anonymous wrote:

Tim wrote:

Tim wrote:

I’ve played the first 2 hours of Code Vein, past the introductory stage and beaten the first “real boss”.

It’s not as compelling as Dark Souls at this stage. The AI companion makes it easier and demonstrates some of the abilities of the game, but I can’t help but think it would be a more pure (but harder) experience without them. With that said, you do get mobbed alot won’t be AI companion is probably there for that.

Anyway, I’m on the fence. I hope the experience gets better

As is customary for this thread I will talk to myself.

It has gotten better. I’m probably half way through maybe. It’s not as elegantly planned in terms of boss fights and levels as FromSoft games. In fact, that applies wholesale. The player experience is not as elegantly planned but all the parts are there.

Its good in parts. I enjoyed particularly the Gilded Hunter and Queens Knight fights. The rest of the bosses are hit and miss. Some boring, some cool.

You know what, Tim? I think you’re great and that Ben and Dave are stupid jerkfaces.

Also you are very handsome and smart.

Hi Tim, how are you?

Im okay, works getting me down a bit but im soldiering on.

Anyway, did i tell you i got up to Blade Bearer and Cannoneer? By most reports theyre a seriously skill check and thst appears to be the case after a couple of attempts. After being a very gentle ‘Dark Souls’ lite where you csn more or les laziky tank snd dodge most attacks to a pretty similar rhythm, these bosses come out of nowhere and feel like something more akin to a FromSoft challenge. Its late game too. Id guess probably 3/4 through so it feels like an odd difficulty spike.

Anyway, hope youre ok.

Miss you.

Tim xx

Rumor is out that a new Batman game is coming.

Arkham Legacy will be based on the Court of Owls story and the game will let you play as anyone in the Bat family.

By WB Montreal, not Rocksteady. Also no Kevin Conroy

Personally I am getting back into Arkham Origins as I am bored and I also discovered the Internet archive with over 2,000 old arcade games to play on the browser.

My copy of the Outer Worlds is in the post. Guaranteed.

Spider-Man

This was a game which is on a par for Monster Hunter World for being a game I bought, but didn’t expect to be able to complete. The two are quite distinct, MHW is simply a rock hard game with no difficulty settings and some rather brutal difficulty spikes. This one? In that respect it is all over the place in a way I don’t think any game I’ve played has ever been.

Reason for my expecting failure in terms of completion is that I’ve found some of the random fights to be bloody difficult, so if the random fights are – or more accurately, can be that way – sometimes it can work really well – then it follows that the boss fights are going to be pretty brutal right? Especially if you have to deal with a supervillain team-up boss battle, which the game throws at you twice. Wrong. Turns out the boss fights are much easier. Even the Scorpion-Rhino one where the camera can’t really keep up with the action was easier than a Spiderman-versus-10-random-thug-mix battle. A large part of this is that even a two-on-one boss fight, never mind one-on-one, is just far easier to keep track off. I had expected trouble on the Electro-Vulture fight because the preceding mission was a pain in the arse but since that fight didn’t have a helicopter lugging around a transformer with a bazooka goon with infinite ammo, yeah they went down. The Li boss fight was also very satisfying and very smart, as you duff him up Li reverts to his prior persona, then reverts back to Mr Negative. And then there was the final boss…. That worked very, very well and is a good way to move onto the story.

It is the story that really kept me playing this. Unparalleled facial animations for the cutscenes with very sharp writing made for an excellent tale. Even if you know how it plays out, even if you’ve read a spoiler or two, it makes no difference. The plot hits home right through whatever emotional shields you may think you have in place. And it does that multiple times.

The gradual powering up process for the main character works well, the abilities, each time you gain one, does change your gameplay experience. The difference is quite tangible – getting a couple of big upgrades changed those random fights from can be murder to mostly just very violent, but with the odds a bit more tipped in my favour

As to the combat – it can range from great to awful and back again within a single fight or two. Things like the ground pound are very hard to aim due to the map and screen not being able to give you sufficient three dimensional sense of your location. Similiarly, the minimap for enemies is of limited use, as is stealth unless you’re in an environment designed for it. All in all, I’d rank Arkham’s combat above this game as it does a few things to just help the player, like smart auto targeting, which this game sort of does, until it decides not to. A couple of fights I’d taken out the majority, one or two left but had to play hide ‘n’ seek.

The other weakness is multiple control schemes – having one for the game except when hitting vehicles makes no sense whatsoever and hurts those sequences, which is a shame as they can be great. The other optional stuff? Bases are pretty good. Some random crimes can be good. The research stations and Taskmaster challenges rely too much on timed content that, combined with that weakness of location in 3D terms isn’t fun. As for chasing the fuckin’ pigeons….

Also, for all I can see what they were going for by giving you a different character viewpoint, the MJ and Miles instant fail stealth sections sucked. By all means use those characters but give them better missions next time. And what was with giving MJ a taser on the final stealth mission? Which is one of the most surprising things about the game – a lot of the pre-release preview content they showed off was actually pretty late in the game, would not have expected that.

The best elements of the game is the webswinging and the recreation of New York that you get to do it in. This is a marvel of graphic design. One of the reasons you want to finish the game in Act III is to get the city back to how you know it should look. At each of the three different times of day it looks different too. Maybe it’s not the biggest game worlds, but it’s certainly one of the best.

One of the interesting innovations the game does is allowing you to skip puzzle content, recognising that not everyone either thinks in the right way to enjoy these or doesn’t like them full stop. On some of the puzzles I got further than I thought, but hit a brick wall where whatever logic it may be using was utterly opaque. Cue skip. The move-sticks-to-align-frequency ones? Always hated those fuckers. The voltage ones Quickly became incomprehensible.

The biggest weakness of the game for me is that there are times when just about every supposedly human enemy you encounter comes across as superhuman. The brute enemies are harder than the game bosses to take out! Although my limits on manual dexterity won’t apply to everyone else, maybe it’ll be easier for you.

Overall? I have to go for very good. The flaws stop it being a great game, but everything else works well enough for it recover from its various self-inflicted clangers.

That’s a great write-up Ben. Very fair. I found the Electro/Vulture boss battle really tough and the final boss pretty tricky, but other than that I think the difficulty level was just about right for me.

I haven’t dug into the DLC yet but maybe I should – I’ve had several months off from the game so maybe it’s time to jump back in.

Well, you probably were playing on Normal? I was cruising down Easy street, but the game will hand you your arse even on that setting if you don’t pay attention, especially the Sable / Demon enemies.

I will say on some of the random fights I’ve gotten good at throwing stuff!

Everything I’ve heard about the DLC says it has some pretty brutal enemies so I think it’s probably not for me.

Anonymous wrote:

Tim wrote:
I’ve played the first 2 hours of Code Vein, past the introductory stage and beaten the first “real boss”.

It’s not as compelling as Dark Souls at this stage. The AI companion makes it easier and demonstrates some of the abilities of the game, but I can’t help but think it would be a more pure (but harder) experience without them. With that said, you do get mobbed alot won’t be AI companion is probably there for that.

Anyway, I’m on the fence. I hope the experience gets better

As is customary for this thread I will talk to myself.

It has gotten better. I’m probably half way through maybe. It’s not as elegantly planned in terms of boss fights and levels as FromSoft games. In fact, that applies wholesale. The player experience is not as elegantly planned but all the parts are there.

Its good in parts. I enjoyed particularly the Gilded Hunter and Queens Knight fights. The rest of the bosses are hit and miss. Some boring, some cool.

This post has received 1 vote up.
This reply was modified 5 days, 12 hours ago by  Tim.
Very serious, never facetious.

October 21, 2019 at 12:12 pm#3330SCORE: 4 | YOU VOTED UP | REPLY | REPORT | QUOTE

DaveWallace
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Tim wrote:
As is customary for this thread I will talk to myself.

Oh come on Tim, that’s not fair.

It’s not just this thread.

This post has received 4 votes up.
October 21, 2019 at 5:14 pm#3404SCORE: 2 | YOU VOTED UP | REPLY | REPORT | QUOTE

Ben
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Tim likes to do all the talking himself, it saves time and prevents arguments.

This post has received 2 votes up.
“Every organization needs at least one person who knows what’s going on, and why it’s happening, and who’s doing it.” Terry Pratchett

October 22, 2019 at 1:46 am#3473SCORE: 1 | EDIT | REPLY | REPORT | QUOTE

Tim
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Karma: 221 pts
Tim wrote:
Tim wrote:
I’ve played the first 2 hours of Code Vein, past the introductory stage and beaten the first “real boss”.

It’s not as compelling as Dark Souls at this stage. The AI companion makes it easier and demonstrates some of the abilities of the game, but I can’t help but think it would be a more pure (but harder) experience without them. With that said, you do get mobbed alot won’t be AI companion is probably there for that.

Anyway, I’m on the fence. I hope the experience gets better

As is customary for this thread I will talk to myself.

It has gotten better. I’m probably half way through maybe. It’s not as elegantly planned in terms of boss fights and levels as FromSoft games. In fact, that applies wholesale. The player experience is not as elegantly planned but all the parts are there.

Its good in parts. I enjoyed particularly the Gilded Hunter and Queens Knight fights. The rest of the bosses are hit and miss. Some boring, some cool.

You know what, Tim? I think you’re great and that Ben and Dave are stupid jerkfaces.

Also you are very handsome and smart.

This post has received 1 vote up.
Very serious, never facetious.

October 23, 2019 at 2:36 pm#3739SCORE: 1 | VOTE UP | REPLY | REPORT | QUOTE

Martin Smith
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I don’t know if anyone cares about WWE games (I don’t really, I’ve not played on since WWE ’13 or so, but my friend gets them religiously so I’m vaguely aware of them) but the latest release is an utter travesty of a game filled with some hilariously poor glitches.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-10-23-wwe-2k20-slammed-after-glitches-go-viral

There’s so much wrong going on with it, I don’t think you could even fix it. And screw 2K for releasing a game in this state.

This post has received 1 vote up.
October 23, 2019 at 2:43 pm#3742SCORE: 0 | VOTE UP | REPLY | REPORT | QUOTE

DavidM
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I literally laughed out loud at those clips. I’m not sure why people are complaining

LLL

October 23, 2019 at 6:54 pm#3769SCORE: 3 | VOTE UP | REPLY | REPORT | QUOTE

Bruce
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I love the fact that article ends with a link to buy 2k20 on Amazon.

This post has received 3 votes up.
October 24, 2019 at 11:28 am#3859SCORE: 1 | EDIT | REPLY | REPORT | QUOTE

Tim
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Karma: 221 pts
Tim wrote:
Tim wrote:
Tim wrote:
I’ve played the first 2 hours of Code Vein, past the introductory stage and beaten the first “real boss”.

It’s not as compelling as Dark Souls at this stage. The AI companion makes it easier and demonstrates some of the abilities of the game, but I can’t help but think it would be a more pure (but harder) experience without them. With that said, you do get mobbed alot won’t be AI companion is probably there for that.

Anyway, I’m on the fence. I hope the experience gets better

As is customary for this thread I will talk to myself.

It has gotten better. I’m probably half way through maybe. It’s not as elegantly planned in terms of boss fights and levels as FromSoft games. In fact, that applies wholesale. The player experience is not as elegantly planned but all the parts are there.

Its good in parts. I enjoyed particularly the Gilded Hunter and Queens Knight fights. The rest of the bosses are hit and miss. Some boring, some cool.

You know what, Tim? I think you’re great and that Ben and Dave are stupid jerkfaces.

Also you are very handsome and smart.

Hi Tim, how are you?

Im okay, works getting me down a bit but im soldiering on.

Anyway, did i tell you i got up to Blade Bearer and Cannoneer? By most reports theyre a seriously skill check and thst appears to be the case after a couple of attempts. After being a very gentle ‘Dark Souls’ lite where you csn more or les laziky tank snd dodge most attacks to a pretty similar rhythm, these bosses come out of nowhere and feel like something more akin to a FromSoft challenge. Its late game too. Id guess probably 3/4 through so it feels like an odd difficulty spike.

Anyway, hope youre ok.

Miss you.

Tim xx

Hi Sexy

So, I finished Code Vein.

In the end I went on to beat Blade Bearer and Cannoneer after a couple of tries.

The next couple of bosses Mido, Skull King were a bit disappointing and I bear the final boss on my second try by stacking buffs.

It’s a fine experience but in the end I agree with the middling reviews. It’s solo easy to overlevel and I don’t think i ever really grinded. With a tanky AI companion like Yakumo the intensity of the fights basically falls over. I never failed to collect my lost haze, and, aside from one or two instances, there was never any danger that I wouldn’t.

With that said, it’s a fun enough romp for people that like the souls mechanics but lacks the real intense engagement you get in, for example, Sekiro.

I decided to replay Mega Man X on the SNES last night. I’ve played it loads of times before, so know it quite well and so got to the final set of stages pretty quickly. Still, it was a bit late, so 2/3 into that I noted down the password it gave me (as I had been doing after each stage) and decided to pick it up this morning…

Where I found that the passwords don’t actually track how far into the Sigma stages you are, let alone the number of lives you have, how full your sub-tanks are and even whether you’ve got the Hadouken hidden upgrade. Using the password I recorded last night, it just put me back at the start of the Sigma stages. I’ve had this game over 20 years and I didn’t know that.

Ben wrote:

My copy of the Outer Worlds is in the post. Guaranteed.

I’ll be interested to hear your thoughts since I haven’t had a solid RPG to play in a while and this one looked promising.

Turns out Crystal Dynamics learnt sweet fuck all from their first Tomb Raider, as I went back to Rise of the Tomb Raider and it has it turned into a gigantic steaming turd of utter bullcrap. What’s more the game lied out of its arse, it had a set of firefights that actually made sense, you could actually, just about see your enemies – essential for a cover based shooter and it kind of worked. It then threw all of that away with a flamethrower wanker boss, apparently if you have flamethrower you are immune to all bullets. And he’s super agile and no, you can’t get behind him easily but he can kill Glass Lara in two hits.

Having just about got past that,the game then decides to do a firefight where there are actually 10 enemies, all with armour who take about 10 bullets each, all with superhuman vision and aim and hearing, there’s no cover worth a damn, the camera ensures you will be flanked, you will be killed and it’s a difficulty spike that comes out of nowhere. You might take out 3 stealthily but the rest, you have no fuckin’ chance. Hell, you can’t even see them but they’ll see you through a fuckin’ wall, count on it.

So fuck this game, fuck Crystal Dynamics who are a bunch of goddamn fuckin’ morons. There’s no way I’m giving Shadow of the Tomb Raider any time of day either after this shite. I was enjoying the game, it was enjoyable and then these sections, blatant pandering to the ‘it’s not hard enough’ crowd who can all fuck off to the Souls genre and have their arse handed to them 24/7.

Weirdly, despite Mega Man X being one of my all time favourite games, I’m not that fussed by the original Mega Man.
.
Anyway, here’s a trailer for a new fan game that looks pretty authentic.
.

Back in the Geothermal valley having:

Walked in a horror scene of torched bad guys
Gassed a good few enemies, got a group of three and then one of four – poison arrows are fun.
Plus a spot of shooting including big, red explosive barrels
Done a puzzle to blow up a statue
Done a mad chase out
Got a rebreather! Makes the water bits far better.

The Greek Fire depot puzzle is a good example of how puzzles do and don’t work for me as the right side, with the crane and having to rope things together made no sense to me as ropes only go to posts, not anything else, thus the idea of roping barrels just doesn’t enter this structure. Whereas after doing that, the left side was easier to work out without any help.

The next section is going to be quite interesting as Lara has a good few new abilities, might end up being another massacre. I’m convinced that, after a certain point in the game, if the enemies know Lara is present they should be legging as fast as they can!

The other element I’m not sold on, but Uncharted is guilty of this same charge, is the Deathless. Feels like a retread of the Oni. It’s a common mistake, reusing an idea from the previous game – Uncharted did it a couple of times with the Yetis and Djinn in 2 and 3.

So, Death Stranding, turkey for Xmas?

Ben wrote:

So, Death Stranding, turkey for Xmas?

I’ve heard some pretty positive things as well as some negative reviews. I don’t think I’ll be picking it up any time soon either way.

Oh shit I just found out EA is finally admitting defeat and partnering back up with Steam =P
 
No but really, that’s good news, I guess I will get to play some of those games after all… like Deadspace 3… and maybe now I WILL play Mass Effect 1 & 2 since I reckon we’ll be able to buy ME3 now… good.
 
Guess Origins will end up closing at some point…

Ben wrote:

So, Death Stranding, turkey for Xmas?

That depends on how much stock you put in the IGN review and the guy that reviewed it who had never played a Kojima game before.

Otherwise, it’s sitting at an 84 on on Metacritic.

It does sound like the type of game you would hate Ben, (i.e long trudgey bits and fiddly mechanics) but I love Kojima and will be buying it.

I am disappointed its not getting universal praise like MGS5 did though.

The more accurate summary for Death Stranding is probably “mixed”, as Guardian gave it four stars out of five.

I can’t say I’m much of a Kojima fan. Parts of MGS4 were genius, like the return to Shadow Moses, but never felt the pull to check out MGS5.

MGS5 is his best game. The combat is amazing.

I was hoping Death Stranding would revisit that but it sounds like it’s more focussed on exploration and (literal) world building.

I’ve never been into MGS (don’t like stealth games) so I’ve never drunk the Kojima kool-aid. Death Stranding looks like a weird bit of box carrying nonsense, frankly.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

This is a real mixed bag of a game. Graphically it is superb, it is a very pretty game – may not seem so at first but later when you get to the Geothermal Valley, you get some quite stunning vistas. Audio is pretty damn good too. Story? Probably it’s strongest card.

Gameplay loop and difficulty spikes. Yes, this is where it falls apart as there will be times when a wall comes out of nowhere, like that fuckin’ bear at the start, gives you a huge amount of aggro and then, when you’ve somehow got past it, you easily do the next several sections of the game until it throws another wall out of nowhere in your path. It’s not good doing this because it encourages a certain justified paranoia with the game. What’s going to happen when I walk around this corner? I’m not convinced they were going for survival horror paranoia. For all the game wants to be this adventure story, its gameplay works against that.Also the camera angle it adopts too often stops you having a sense of which enemy is where which you do need because if they do get a good line of sight you’re pretty much dead.

Combat options. It sounds strange to say it but, in a way, this game gives you a few too many solutions – to the extent that it’s hard to keep track of them – you have arrows, poison arrows, bomb arrows, fire arrows, ice pick, shotgun, super-special shotgun, rifle, grenades, pistol. Plus all the stuff that, if you unlock it, allows crafting weaponry on the fly. If you can remember all of this then you may well be in the”it’s too easy” camp, as if you do recall what takes out who, it probably will be. The one weakness of this series as a cover shooter is it doesn’t always remember that it is. On the other hand, it integrates the fights with the exploration and combat far better than its predecessor.

Overall? Probably pretty similar to its predecessor but better in that it has far less QTE bollocks – couldn’t resist indulging in that on that so-called endgame boss fight- but on the whole, they are mostly gone. The instant kill death traps, complete with gory animations are also reduced. Both of those raise it above the 2013 game. For both games I probably enjoyed a good 85-90% of them, but that 10% of what-the-hell-were-they-thinking-moments really does, when you’re in one of them, utterly eclipse that greater part. So, weighing that up? Let’s go for very good.

MGS5 is his best game. The combat is amazing.

While this is true when it comes to the gameplay and technical aspects, it’s not the most satisfying (actually being unfinished is part of it, but just the approach taken to the story in general). I’d put three Metal Gear Solid games over it without a second thought, and yes Peace Walker is one of them. Those Ashley Wood cutscenes, my god!

The Phantom Pain is full of awesome Birdman-style single-take cutscenes so it’s no wonder that it’s your favourite, Tim.

I’ve started properly on The Outer Worlds.

The general opinion online is that it’s Fallout but better and I agree with this. Where Fallout is an irradiated hellhole, TOW is a far more pleasant, albeit deceptive, environment. Though, just because it looks better doesn’t mean it is better – as you quickly find out in a conversation or two.

One of the things that stands out is the attention to detail, often allied to a very sharply wicked sense of humour. From the off you get to choose how you’re going to operate but you aren’t constrained to a singular path either after making a decision – sure, that might have impacts but you could do a quest that counter impacts those in turn.

Does character creation count? Given the dialogue options I had come up of Perception or Engineering in addition to the usual Persuade, it does. I’m nowhere near started on that but even at this early stage it’s notable how character build impacts gameplay.

Companions are pretty smart too. There’s far less running into my line of fire like in, well so many other games. Stealth isn’t really that much of an option as once you take out one enemy the rest instantly know, but unlike say Mass Effect Andromeda, the enemies aren’t so incredibly mobile you lose track of them. If anything you’ll generally have a good idea of what you’re about to engage with before you do, if you decide to.

Graphically, this isn’t a powerhouse game – others will beat it in that category but in terms of graphical style? It has that in spades. It looks very, very good with no end of smart design. It also doesn’t grant its NPCs superpowers, at least not so far. I’ve gone into a house, shut the doors, looted everything not nailed down and no one “somehow” knew I’d done it, which often is the way in these games – the Oblivion cops being a case in point.

And my character? Kind of anti-corporate mixed with a good dose of kleptomania and inclined to go for shooting their way out of trouble, but does have a bit of silver tongue,

I really want to try that one… guess I’ll need to wait for a year or so…
Looks great though… Still, I wish they’d do a good Fallout, I love that universe.

They did, by reputation it was called New Vegas.

I bought the Outer Worlds too.

Its fine. It’s definitely got a Firfely sort of tone (particularly Parvati whose speech is clearly modelled off Kaylee). Initially, I was impressed by the graphics – particularly the fauna on the opening planet (those kind of giant puff-ball style flowers) and the colours, but after a while it really does feel like you’re playing a FPS from a previous generation with a new paint job.

It definitely appears to be smaller in scale than Fallout – with a couple of hub areas, with a couple of buildings/labs (i.e dungeons) and that’s it. I played for a couple of hours each on friday, saturday and sunday and I’m already on to the second planet and by all accounts around half way through the game. I’ve been doing plenty of side-quests too, which thankfully are pretty quick an easy so it’s the type of game you can boot up and smash through a quest in about 30 minutes.

The faction stuff feels pretty samey. We’ve seen it before and Outer Worlds doesn’t do anything new with it – each area has two factions that you can do quests for simultaneously and their ostensibly in conflict with each other. Each questline ends with you choosing a side over one or another, or if you’ve been particularly cunning there may be an opportunity to broker peace.

The companions are good and interesting for the most part. Nyoka’s a gun toting badass, Parvati is a sweet heart with a big hammer, Vicar Max is pious with a neer-do-well history etc. Skills and Perks are fallout-lite and the dialogue skills seem even more essential here in Obsidian’s previous games. I’ve got my persuasion/lying/intimidation up to 75 with armour and companion bonuses and im talking my way through most quests. Which is fine, but i find myself skipping the dialogue mostly anyway.

It’s a fine way to spend your hours if you like games, but it’s nothing we haven’t seen done before.

I think one factor in the reception of The Outer Worlds is to do with all the corporate bullshit it didn’t do. No multiple preorder bonuses linked to different editions, no multiple editions with or without staggered launch windows, no season pass, no microtransactions. Jim Sterling summarised it as: They made a video game, they sold a video game and it’s really good, that’s it.
It shouldn’t be a big deal but such is the blatant crap the video game industry now tries to pull, it kind of is a big deal when a game doesn’t do that. Thus I think some want to send a message that yes, more of this kind of thing is wanted.

Yeah the Obsidian team deserves support.

The budget is obvious throughout but they made a very entertaining game nevertheless. It’s maybe comparable to Kick-Ass which did a really high quality film for the Budget Vaughn was working with.

Of course, you would get all that pre-order stuff with any AAA title. That’s just the publishers demands.

Ben wrote:

They did, by reputation it was called New Vegas.

 
Yeah I meant a NEW good Fallout… and yes, New Vegas was wonderful… even if super fuckin’ buggy… xD

Ben wrote:

I think one factor in the reception of The Outer Worlds is to do with all the corporate bullshit it didn’t do. No multiple preorder bonuses linked to different editions, no multiple editions with or without staggered launch windows, no season pass, no microtransactions.

Well I mean, they did take the Epic bribe… that’s a pretty big pile of bullshit if you ask me… u_u

Except they are not that big a company and we want them to stay in business, right?

Gaming has a tendency to render the good the enemy of the perfect.

Ben wrote:

Except they are not that big a company and we want them to stay in business, right?

They’re owned by Microsoft.

Had forgotten about that but it’s not the protection you might think. The big companies have entire graveyards of developers they bought then buried.

Outer Worlds

Had some rather smart dialogue duels tonight. One saw me talk Reed around, the other I told Adelaide to go stuff herself – I’ve met people like her in real life, they are all unpleasant individuals. What was interesting was the array of the options but also how the conversation itself changed from point to point.

Oh and doesn’t anyone not like Parvati?

Ben wrote:

Except they are not that big a company and we want them to stay in business, right?

Gaming has a tendency to render the good the enemy of the perfect.

 
Besides what Martin said, it’s not like Epic is throwing a lot of cash at small devs… I mean, sure, but only at the more known ones… apparently they don’t want the clutter of Steam… So I ain’t ready to paint the EGS and their exclusivity BS as a “good” thing just yet.
 
Right now it’s just a way of snatching clients from Steam, no two ways about it.

Pretty certain no one’s saying Outer Worlds is perfect in every respect, but better than the Triple Aaaaaaa usual in most respects? Yes.
Although part of why I also bought it now is I suspect Microsoft will make it XBox exclusive, or if not this one, its sequel – if there is one, so it was: Nab it now just in case.

I’m not complaining about it, I WILL play it some day when it’s not exclusive anymore… I was commenting about how it actually got quite a bit of “bad press” when they went Epic Exclusive… for exemple I, like many other millions probably, had it on my Steam wishlist… then they decided to go exclusive and it rubbed all those people the wrong way… now it’s not even listed on Steam anymore…

I’m picking up Death Stranding today but I’ll finish Outer Worlds.

For the record, I don’t think it’s as good a game as you seem to Ben and it’s begging for a bigger budget. With that said Onsidian deserve to work with those budgets and should be supported.