Video Games – What Are You Playing?

Topic

From Playstation to Xbox, through smartphone, Steam and Switch – what’s pushing your buttons?

Replies

Oh yeah, I’m backing this.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Bruce

I am all over this like a tramp on chips.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

I love these reward tiers:

Pledge £1,500 or more

BestDayEverMaster

Dominik will meet you outside season two filming location Kempton Steam Museum wearing some form of red jacket. You and Dominik will smoke a cigarette together outside, as the crew would do during filming, have a tour around the museum, and then head for a drink in a nearby pub. Later, you will head to Kempton Park Racecourse, where Dominik will put a £10 bet for you on the horse with the rudest name running that day.

Pledge £5,000 or more

The PeaceMaster

Feel the hand of history on your shoulders by becoming the person to lead peace talks between Dominik and Dave Perry as they reunite for the first time in 25 years. You will accompany Dominik to the Revolver Tattoo Rooms in Torquay where you will both be tattooed by Dave in his studio. Afterwards, you’ll kick back and play some ’90s videogames with Dominik and Dave, before heading to a nearby pub to toast this historic pop cultural moment.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Bruce

I notice one of the three Best Day Ever rewards was gone. You didnt splash the cash did you Dave?!

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Ha, much as I’d love to, no.

Was a bit tempted by the limerick one though.

Fully funded in 24 hours. Great stuff.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Bruce

I got a preowned copy of Star Wars Fallen Order for a fiver last week. It’s been pretty good so far. Took me a while to get used to the combat. I went in thinking I’d be able to just hack and slash my way through it but it’s clear the combat is designed to be more block/parry/dodge based. After adjusting to that I made better progress. Only downer is the graphical performance. It runs fine in terms of game play speed but textures take quite a long time to load up. There are banners on the walls in the area I’m in that take a good 10 seconds to go from fuzzy blocks of colour to flags with actual designs on them and it’s a bit distracting when you’re exploring. Not game breaking but a definite annoyance.

3 users thanked author for this post.

Ben, Dave, Martin Smith

For £5 it’s a bargain.  Has its flaws and is probably better in terms of a SW product than game.  It’s best pay-offs are towards the end with some very effective sequences.

Also, play Titanfall 2 by the same studio.

Do you think there are enough well known giant monsters (Godzilla, Kong, etc) to make a Monster Fighting Game?

— Ed Boon (@noobde) April 4, 2021

Getting rather cheesed off with how frequently the PS5 Media Remote, loses connection, fails to re-pair with the PS5, then decides to work, then cuts out and is…. Well, it’s an unreliable piece of shit and a waste of money.

Kind of amazing given how the PS3 remote still works fine over a decade later without any faffing around.

Huh, I haven’t had that problem with my PS5 media remote at all, it’s used every day and has been totally reliable. Is it possible you got a dud?

Agreed on the PS3 remote though, mine is still going strong and is quicker/more responsive than any of the later ones. Wish that was compatible with the later consoles.

[Ben]

Heh, given I’m on my second PS5, possibly but it doesn’t really matter much now as I’ve sussed out the controls via the pad.  Just strange that a now much older predecessor system works so much better.  Less fiddly too.

The amount of force you have to apply to the tiny ‘push’ button for the batteries is insane.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 8 months ago by Ben.

Yakuza: Like A Dragon – Chapter 12

And the game gets seriously insane.

Heavy Story spoilers:

Holy hell, the number of characters that turn up here from earlier games is nuts. Majima. Saejima. Daigo. Kiryu! Watasi too.  You get the full story of what Arakawa’s been up to, then it ends on another, out-of-the-blue cliffhanger.  So very Yakuza.

Gameplay number spoilers:

The game does some low, low moves here.  Sure, it gives you access to the Sotenbori Battle Arena, hints you ought to use it but, in no way from this alone, could I intuit what it was actually hinting at.  I instead used the Internet and knew there was a pair of Lv 50 bosses on the cards, got the gang powered up to Lv 60 by doing the arena, in order to get 20m yen to upgrade the workshop to its max level.  But the actual level? It throws you Lv 30-35 enemies at you to start with, weaves in a bullshit stealth game, then whacks the enemies up to Lv48-49, then does the two Lv 50 bosses! There’s no way to really prepare for that with purely in-game info.  And even with a 10-level advantage, it was still a difficult fight.

Story is as good as ever, combat remains good, but it could be better.  Now on Chapter 13.

So good news, they haven’t abandoned the game:

I hope they’ll add more mobs and stages…

2 users thanked author for this post.

Dave, Ben

Weird, I know the spoiler code worked on internet, guess it doesn’t on mobile?

Ben wrote:

Weird, I know the spoiler code worked on internet, guess it doesn’t on mobile?

For your last post? I’m seeing it tagged on my mobile.

Thanks, for some weird reason the tagging wasn’t displaying on my mobile.

Couldn’t be bothered with the Witcher3; I saw a piece from Den of Geek in my FB Newsfeed about GTA5 so fired that up again. I’m using a pal’s hardcopy and probably need to return that to her this coming weekend so might have to snap up the digital copy of the game since it’s on sale now for about $25. I look at the other sale items and nothing else grabs me (apart from maybe Hitman2).

Why GTA 5 Is Still Rockstar’s Masterpiece

Man, we’d better get GTA6 soon – it’s kind of wild/weird that a whole console gaming generation went by without a new GTA game.

You’re getting GTAV for PS5 and XBX instead

Changing tack, it appears that, in pursuit of exclusives, Epic spent $700m, over 2019-20, but is likely to eat an at least $300m loss.

Sounds a lot but Fornite brought in $1.8bn and Epic’s company valuation is +$17bn, so they can probably keep taking this level of loss.

Does make me wonder how much cash MS are pumping into GamePass.

I know that’s coming, but GTA6 will follow – it has to!

There’s not much love for GTA4, but I didn’t find it that much of an outlier from the games around it – obviously 5 took the franchise to the next level, but I do miss the Liberty City map, and the three overlapping stories that were facilitated by the two expansion packs. Shame it was never ported to the PS4.

Ben wrote:

Changing tack, it appears that, in pursuit of exclusives, Epic spent $700m, over 2019-20, but is likely to eat an at least $300m loss.

Good, I hope they keep losing more and more with their exclusive bullshit.

Details of the latest PS5 update (@Ben, there’s a bit of a change about what you can keep on external storage that you’ll appreciate):

PS5 April Update brings new storage options and social features

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

Just saw the news, really like the sound of it.

Looks like I’ll be getting another external hard drive next month.

OK, for Yakuza: Like A Dragon, ensure you play Yakuza 0-6 first.

Seriously? Yes.  It will take you some time but, eventually, you’ll understand why.

Have reached the endgame of Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon

Plot spoilers:

Damn, that fight with Kiryu was quite the duel.  As was the second time around with Ishioda, who wasn’t quite as irritating due to the party being better.  Even so, both fights required careful attention despite my having a high level party due to spending too much time on weapons development.  Back in Kamurcho, another series regular turns up, which works well.

Chapter 14, even more so than its preceding chapter, really makes the case for playing the earlier games, along with opening scenes of the finale.

Gameplay:

At this point, the name of the game is taking advantage of enemy weaknesses, once you find an enemy registers as so to a certain attack – you switch to that as far as possible.  You can win without doing this but it’ll take longer.

Picked up Ghost Of Tsushima after a price drop recently, and booted it up for a first play tonight. After a couple of hours, first impressions are pretty good: it looks beautiful (and runs great on PS5), the story is engaging, and the fight mechanics are fairly intuitive and easy to grasp at this early stage. Barely scratched the surface, but I like what I’ve seen so far.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Martin Smith, Ben

Wait until you unlock and use your first stance change Dave!

I got it for Christmas and yet somehow still haven’t got around to it, despite being really keen for it.

Currently playing Yakuza Kiwami, which is a lot of fun. Just got to the slot car racing stuff, which I can see being a big diversion.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

You’ve played Yakuza Zero first, right? As Kiwami works far, far better if you have.

No, I always figure prequels work better experienced in the order released, rather than chronologically, so started with the first game. I don’t feel particularly lost with any of the plot.

In most cases that’s true, but in this one it’s not.

Since you’ve started Kiwami one example of the benefit is: The relationship between Kiryu and Nishi has more resonance if you play Zero.

I recommend you do.  It was deliberately designed as a starting point, in the ways the first game couldn’t have been.

Ben wrote:

Since you’ve started Kiwami one example of the benefit is: The relationship between Kiryu and Nishi has more resonance if you play Zero. I recommend you do.

Their relationship seems pretty weighty already. I’m 15 hours or so into the game, I don’t think I’m going to put it aside to play a different game that I don’t (currently) own.

I wasn’t intending that you stop playing Kiwami.  Plus, with that timespan you’ll be a fair way in too.

Still, don’t forget about Zero – it’s worth your time, and you’ll still get those enhancements to the main story, albeit in different order.

Yeah, I intend to go through the whole series (assuming I like Kiwami enough, which so far I do). 5 sequels, a prequel, a JRPG successor and a side game is a little daunting though.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

Don’t be daunted, this isn’t a Mass Effect or Trails of Cold Steel series. Each story stands – and concludes – well enough on its own, but you get more benefit from playing in order.

If by side game you mean Judgment, it certainly has some gameplay system similarities, but it is entirely separate to the Yakuza series.  Very, very good though – I suggest holding off until the PS5 version, I think it’s out in the next couple of weeks, becomes cheap.

This writer is really reading too much into the game.

Joe Mathews: The symbolism of the game ‘Among Us’ hits too close to home (kcrw.com)

“Among Us” also reminds me of the California recall debate. Is Gavin Newsom an impostor, out for himself instead of representing the state? Are the Trumpy Republicans behind the recall posing as loyal California crewmates? Who should Californians vote off the ship? And leading Democrats sound like fear-mongering players in “Among Us” when they claim that losing the governorship to a Republican for just one year (until the 2022 elections) will mean losing power in California — a state where they hold every other statewide office and huge legislative supermajorities

Among US is essentially a variation on Mafia (or Werewolf) which is a common party game and even inspired a new game just a few years ago that was all the rage for adults, young and old: Secret Hitler.

Ironically, KCRW is an NPR station and NPR did a positive review of the came last year in the height of the pandemic:

‘Among Us,’ It’s Every Little Space Sausage For Themselves : NPR

Honestly, it kind of took the pandemic to make a game like Among Us work. It took Twitch streamers (first Korean, then Brazilian and Mexican long before it caught fire in the U.S.) screaming and plotting their way through games watched by tens of thousands of stuck-at-home kids (and parents). It took a wild night where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez went on Twitter and asked if anyone wanted to play, then brought along Rep. Ilhan Omar and used the stream (watched by 439,000 people) to get out the vote. A game that, almost by definition, requires staring your opponents and fellows in the eye to decide who among them is lying seems a poor fit for small screens and fast fingers. And yet, there’s something undeniably fun in the free-for-all of accusation and defense that happens in the chat. There’s something weirdly engaging about the mechanics of the thing — the required tasks, the suspicious stalking, the little bits of help that exist for crewmates (like watching cams or tracking players on the map).

Ben wrote:

If by side game you mean Judgment, it certainly has some gameplay system similarities, but it is entirely separate to the Yakuza series.

Oh, I remember reading that it was a spin-off. I’m interested in giving it a go either way.

Martin Smith wrote:

Ben wrote:

If by side game you mean Judgment, it certainly has some gameplay system similarities, but it is entirely separate to the Yakuza series.

Oh, I remember reading that it was a spin-off. I’m interested in giving it a go either way.

Spotted that PSN has Yakuza Zero on sale for £3.99, plus Kiwami 2 for a few quid more.

 

Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon

Yeah, that ‘7’ needs to be there, this really isn’t the starting point they’re selling it as, that’s Yakuza Zero.

After around 115 hours, I still have the post-game content to get to plus numerous minigames if I’m inclined to.  Of those? Dragon Kart is pretty good, Can Quest can go screw itself and the management company game can go to the lowest and hottest depths of hell.

The main game? Very, very good.  I really hope this both gets a sequel and they don’t change the battle system back.  It really separates out Ichiban’s story from that of Kiryu and it does so very effectively.

Flaws? Yeah, it has a few.  First and biggest is the enemies and the party always moving around, including while you are navigating menus.  This can have a severe impact on area of attack options, as you set it up in the belief it will hit in a certain area and then, by the time, it executes the targeted enemy has moved and you’re stuffed.  Similarly, when other enemies can block your attack on a targeted enemy is hazy and inconsistent, which can frustrate, along with some area attacks behaving inconsistently.  The use of environmental weaponry is random but you can’t anticipate the route your character will take to an enemy – or where the enemy will be.  This hazy randomness is the system’s biggest flaw.

Benefits? The combination of skills, items, attack, guard, items, tag out and poundmates (oh ye gods, those are insane in the best way) is very good.  So good that it overcomes all the random haze factors on the battles.  Those factors can irritate but you’ll still come back to it because overall it is fun enough despite that.

The level and job rank combination takes a bit of time to get your head around and can be confusing at first.  But, by the end of the game, as I decided I was going to arm them all with all the Character Skills that can be used outside of a specific job, it was really showing its best aspects.  Weapon upgrades can seem a bit lacking at the start but get better as it goes on.  The idea of 6 damage types with most enemies being more susceptible to 1-3 of those works.  One thing that doesn’t is a small number of enemies that have a built-in counter everything ability that feels cheap, it would be better if it worked by attack type instead, as one of the billboard enemies does later – physical hits are countered, projectiles are not.

One thing that I thought the game didn’t need was some of the more unfair moves it pulls later in the game where you enter an area to fight enemies of one level but that then sharply increases without warning in a way you cannot prepare for.  Along with the way the game buffs up bosses so you cannot assume an easy ride due to level superiority alone, this was why my endgame party waltzed into the final location at Lv 92, with a 30+ level advantage over everyone!  It was also hugely fun having my gang storm the place like a bunch of vengeful gods.

Story? Few games execute their stories so well or with the level of sheer conviction that the Yakuza series does and this is no exception.  It’s excellent.

The bonding system and party stories? Works well.  The substories are pretty good, except for the times when you need to whack a certain enemy and the game just does not spawn it.

The character stats don’t work, as the game makes the gains tiny, pushing you towards its very pricey random questions academy.  Did that at the end to get access to Ichiban’s final two job types – it wasn’t good.

Crafting the upgrades? This works, although getting some of the materials is luck-based.

Graphically, it’s astonishing at night on the PS5, the lighting effects are uncanny.  The battle animations are excellent.

Soundtrack? Pretty damn good, especially for the finale.

And now? Well, there’s the post-game stuff, but might let that wait. There is two jobs I can buy as DLC and it’s £3.99, not cool that it is done, but would be fun to get and develop with the post-game content.

A sequel? I’d certainly buy one.  This is a rather brilliant passing of the torch entry and Ichiban is a damn good lead character.

 

Racing/driving games seem to have really fallen out of favour, but Dirt4 on PS4 was on sale for $10 so I snapped it up – like the odd FIFA I enjoy having something I don’t have to pay too much attention to, something that once I’m familiar enough I can play while listening to a podcast – so far it’s pretty good.

Are there any other good ones I should keep an eye out for? Project Gotham 4 was the last main one I got into, but my all time fave is San Fransisco Rush (and sequel Rush USA) on the N64.

For future racing RedOut remains an overlooked gem.

Get them cheap and both the remasters of Burnout Paradise and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit still have it.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Andrew

Returnal looks like it’ll be a good PS5 showcase, much like Demon’s Souls and Miles Morales were.

And then there’s this:

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

[Ben]

Returned to Trails of Cold Steel II.  It started well, with a load of bonding with selected team mates sequences…. And then it became complete arse.

The problem? Fake boss fights.  You know the kind, where you are put into a fight that you have zero chance of success at – not one where you have a slim chance, zero chance.  They are a waste of time, just doing a cutscene would be so much better.  Because the game had played the card so often, I had it sussed out fast and ceased to care about it.  Plus the cutscenes that followed.  Just get me past past this total crap. I don’t care about any of it, the game broke its own magic, screw it all.  The only worse card it has is doing the full boss fight you have to win and, after giving the boss a battering, said boss goes: “Hah, enough playing!” Fuck. Off.

It did a Knight fight where I just disengaged completely, lo and behold, as expected, there’s no game over screen, just a cutscene.  I know there’s a school of thought out there that says engaging the player in everything builds greater immersion.  There’s some truth to that but not for boss battles where the chance of victory is zero and, no matter how “git gud” you get, remains zero.

After that total disaster? It recovered well enough, culminating in a damn fun boss fight where Rean gets to hand an arrogant feckwit his arse, then along comes a rather epic cutscene that ends up involving 20-25 characters.  Yes, really.

And now? Now I haz airship.  Yeah, it’s back to being rather good – with the ability to reform the party on the fly, which, among other things allows me to get characters powered up and roughly on the same level.  Will take some time though, but that’s OK.  Oh and did  mention there’s a host of upgradeable stuff? No? Well, there is.

Getting the world map for use with the airship also shows just how well put together the game world is and how much planning goes into the games, as the second one builds very well on the first one.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 7 months ago by Ben.

Found about this yesterday… it looks A M A Z I N G:

2 users thanked author for this post.

Bruce, Dave

That looks like fun! I loved the old Asterix arcade game.

Oh, will have to check that vid out.

Dave wrote:

That looks like fun! I loved the old Asterix arcade game.

Yup, it looks like a nice remake of that old arcade beat’em up… quite a few good beat’em ups recently, actually… kind of a BEU renaissance…

Watched the vid, looks superb.

So Returnal is out tomorrow, I’ve watched three excellent reviews – SkillUp, Yong, ACG and overall? It’s not for me nor will it ever be.  The tragedy here is that it could have been if not for some very deliberate design choices.

A while back I nabbed Housemarque’s PS4 games.  Started with Resogun.  This is a staggeringly accessible,. amazing looking shooter even over a decade later!  You can do a couple of levels, exit, games saves, you then come back to it in a bit and do some more.  I haven’t done the final level, even on Easy, but have them all open, which is what I wanted.   Alienation? An OK twin stick shooter but didn’t feel the hook to continue.  Matterfall? A very complicated control scheme that I lack the dexterity for.  Those that can crack it? Probably have a good time.  And then there is Nex Machina, a game where, in order to unlock levels, in total contrast to Resogun, you have to play the entire game in one sitting!  You can’t do World 1, then World 2, save and come back to try World 3.  You have to get to Worlds 4 and then 5 as one playthrough.  I have World 4 access, I do not have, nor will I get, World 5.  This single design decision destroyed Nex Machina, for me, as a game.

And Housemarque have made the same decision for Returnal, with the same effect for me.  Even if, like with their earlier games, I got it with 80% off, that lack of save still hurts it severely, as the runs for Returnal can be 30-45 minutes at a time!

Sure, you can say to do all of Nex Machina is probably 50mins to an hour, but what of the nature of that timespan? Of the intensity of it and the focus needed?  For all that I love the future racer RedOut, I can only play it 15-20mins at a time because my eyes and head will not take any more.  The graphics, the speed, the focus – it’s a short hit game.  Similarly a FPS like Doom 2016 or the new Wolfenstein games or Titanfall 2, their official campaign play time may be short, but it’ll feel far longer.  Titanfall 2 is in the range of 5-6 hours but feels far more.  Whereas turn-based JRPGs like Trails of Cold Steel or Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon, I can play for far longer far more easily.

It’s worth noting that just about all of Housemarque’s PS4 games are frequently on sale. I got the quartet for probably £16-18 total.  For trying their stuff out, as a set of gambles, that’s OK.  A PS5 game that has £70 price tag? Looks rather different, even if it falls to £10-15.

If I look at other rougelike games like Everspace or Dead Cells, those do have mid-run save ability.  Everspace saves when you start a new level, but its levels are small too.  Dead Cells? Haven’t yet tried it.  What both of these do is show that Returnal could have a save mid-run system without it hurting the game at all.  If anything, it would boost it.  I know for myself that ability to save mid-run made Everspace so much better for me, so much more accessible and playable.

Being charitable? While being far more ambitious in aiming for AAA gaming – in graphics and audio and everything else, Housemarque have shown they haven’t gotten out of the mindset of making niche, specialist audience games.  That’s why Returnal is the way it is, but that only goes so far, as they have made more open, more accessible games, with Resogun as the proof.

I look at Returnal and part of me says I’d enjoy it, that I’d love its aesthetics and its design, but I also know I’d likely be looking to play it in 15-20 minute bursts and that is apparently not possible.  That’s a tragedy.

 

Genshin Impact PS5 version

If you have not played this at all, then it’s worth playing for the opening bit.  Up to say Adventure Rank 15.  After that, if you stubbornly go all the way to Adventure Rank 25, the rot sets in.

Why play it? An OK battle system, story with a really great sense of world design in aesthetics and audio for free.  That’s the best part of it.

The worst? From 25 on, it heads deep into heavy grind territory.  Arbitrary level locks, resource limit locks, upgrade locks, all of which sends the difficulty soaring.  It’s like one team started on it, built the opening acts then left and handed it over to a bunch of super-bastards, who thought worthy is derived from difficulty because this is the only way to explain what it has become.

Its added a new mountain area but with environmental freezing effect.  Well, lots of games have done that, right? Yes but not in the way this one has in that you have very few options to protect against it.  No warm armour, no potions, just relying on heat sources that are very, very few!  There is a quest that apparently gives you cold resist food, but it’s locked behind a boss fight that you have to do while fighting that freezing effect.  It’s as if someone looked at the game and decided to wreck it completely.

But even before then, the damage was done with it whacking up the points needed to advance while not offering much in the way to get them quickly.  You want to get the next story chapter? Get to Adventure Rank 35, oh you’re 30? To get to 31 you’ll need 6000 points, the odd quest might give you a couple of hundred – and that’s just to get to 31.  It’ll be more for 32, 33, 34 and 35.

It’s a beautifully awful car wreck of a game, with each upgrade only wrecking it further.  They even brought out an option to reduce the World Level, which sets how strong enemies are – perfect, I could really use that as I find World Level 3 a bit too tricky, oh wait, you have to be on World Level 5 to use it? Why would anyone do that?

I could see myself giving it another go when they add the third kingdom, but they’ll probably do something dumb like having all the enemies in it being Level 75.

 

My son bought Biped today and I had a couple of goes on it with him. It’s a fun all-ages action-puzzle game with an emphasis on co-operative play and a charming, cartoonish graphics style, as well as a fairly unique control mechanic. I enjoyed it.

The latest Ratchet and Clank gameplay video from the 29 April State of Play is an amazing watch.  Game looks worth £60-65.

I love that on 4 May, the team behind BioMutant released this video:

I finished Yakuza Kiwami tonight. Overall, I really liked it. I was a little worried, based on the demo (I think for 2) I played, that it’d be a bit of a mindless brawler, but happily, while it is a button masher, there’s a considerable depth to it and the various fighting styles.

That said, the Dragon style that it has you build up from nothing from the start of the story I found to be a total of waste of time. It’s upgraded through winning at the Coliseum to get pictures that a guy will trade for training and through the Majima Everywhere system, where Kiryu gets stalked by frenemy Majima. I got to rank SS of Majima Everywhere (it goes E-A, S, SS, SSS, obvs) and did half of the training (getting fed up with the grind of the coliseum) and still found Dragon utterly useless compared to the other styles. It has next to no flow, hard to get heat attacks in it and it wouldn’t ever let me activate the “heat attacks to stop bosses from healing thing”, which made some of the later bosses tougher than they should have been.

Majima Everywhere itself is a bit too chaotic for its own good too. At one point, I was just trying to get two streets over and got accosted by Majima 6 times. 6! A twenty second journey took 10 minutes. On top of that, some Dragon skill unlocks are dependent very specific things – fight a certain costumed version of Majima after reaching rank x – which you just have to hope happen. I had some from like rank C that still didn’t happen by the time I finished the game.

That aside though, it’s really enjoyable. Good combat, decent story, really fun characters and I love all the side stuff you can do – karaoke, Pocket Circuit, darts (really good darts system). Shogi and MahJong are appreciated even though I understood next to nothing of them. MesuKing – a RPS based collectible card games about scantily clad women dressed as bugs battling – is a bit too creepy though. As is the hostess club stuff (especially as the hostess are played by real porn actresses, for some reason. I didn’t bother with them any more than the story demanded, I assume it doesn’t get too Hot Coffee).

Oh and I liked the ending except Haruka and Kiryu leaving the stray dog – which she gave a collar! – behind on the street so he can, as she says, “have a chance of finding his mother”. What?! That’s not how dogs work! That dog’s gonna be dead in days.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

Judgment is getting a sequel!

The Pathless

Should games be art?  This game gives an answer that is both yes and no.  Yes, when artistic execution works with gameplay to provide moments of stunning audio and visuals, with immersion to match; no, when those elements oppose each other.  An example of the latter is a skewed perspective in a boss battle that interferes with your sense of movement and ability relative to your enemy, or visual clutter that gets in the way of what you need to see – it may look fantastic, but if you lose where your character is in middle of all of it, then that’s not so good.

There are few better examples of it all going badly wrong than the final boss fight, though the second boss also had its moments where it just wasn’t clear as to what I needed to do progress and the experience put me off playing the game for a long time:

The final boss sequence starts with a section where you have to ascend to the island where he is.  Should be good but ends up being frustrating as both the camera and the auto-aim can’t keep up with the speed you acquire to keep the sequence going.  Still, you put up with that, get to place, take the wind chute up.  Then your eagle gets corrupted and you have to leg it to a tower while avoiding its eagle.  The problem is the game removes all – and I do mean all – your abilitiyes.  Before you get the eagle at the start, you can run and you can jump, but here, after losing it you can do neither! It makes no sense, it is blatant game artifice and it makes the section really bad.  In addition to that, it’s very dark, you can only see by using the sight, which makes for an awkward control scheme.  Worst of all, for the final bit you cannot make the distance to the final rock cover.  What you’re supposed to do – and I had to use a video walkthrough – you’re to keep running forward because, even though you will get hit and thrown back, you won’t be all the way back to your previous position.  The problem is the game does a terrible job of conveying the distance, so it can easily seem like you’re in an endless, impossible loop.  After that, it’s boss fight time and here art conflicts with gameplay, especially with the eagle attacks, where it’s not clear what you shouold do or what the effect of failure is.  Still, you get through that bullshit and there’s this aimless running around sequence, where you have to spot this tiny light and run toward it, for about four times.  Then, it’s final boss fight time and this, after all that, was cool.  This was an excellent sequence of graphical splendour and, most of the time, I still kept track of my character.  The final bit of it was utterly superb and, well, if only it had been more that and not the crap preceding it.  As it is? Despite the excellence of it, the final sequence cannot outweight the sheer awfulness of the road to it.

Other flaws – the final boss is awful, but the other bosses are also weak.  The chase sequences work pretty well and are an epic audio-visual display with good gameplay.  It’s the arena sections that are over-long and just not that good.  Similarly the stealth sequences when you get caight by the storm become boring fast.  Not only does the storm tend to literally warp around the map, so does your enemy in these sequences.

So, that’s the bad – what of the good? The world design is superb, with some stunning verticality and vistas – you can do some amazing flights in this game.  The puzzles – very much a love or loathe affair.  In my case, if I could work out the organising principles and logic, I could crack the puzzle.  I did do some of the major ones without having to look up anything.  On others the visual communication just isn’t there and it can frustrate.  Having the storm turn up mid-puzzle doesn’t help either.  When you pull off a puzzle, it’s very satisfying.

Does the lack of a map work? Mostly, yes.  The traversal system is one of the game trump cards along with the world design.  And, having completed the game, with it putting me back with all four spirits freed, I now get to explore and try and do the other puzzles, without that storm turning up!  This is very attractive, as exploring the game and trying to crack the puzzles is the main pull for me – even though I’m far from being a puzzle fan!  You need 3 puzzle pieces for the first zone then 6 for the three afterwards, but each zone has 10 other puzzles on top of the ones you need to progress.  There’s a substantive post-game here.

Soundtrack – there’s been loads of praise for this and it is well deserved.  It is from the composer that also did Journey and it delivers moments that are simply awesome.

Do I recommend this?  Not for the price of £30-40, no.  But when it’s on sale? Say £20-55? Grab it.  It is a unique gameplay experience.  It tries to do something different, it doesn’t always succeed at that, but it tries.  That in itself deserves recognition.  It is not without its frustrations, but also delivers many moments of satisfaction.

Length? Well, if you really wanted to blitz it and you’re good at puzzles, say 5-6 hours tops, but then there is that post-game too.  If you tried to do a zone then get all the puzzles before moving on? Could take you a while.  But game length isn’t everything and not every game needs to be 50 or 100 hours, this one certainly doesn’t.

This Resident Evil 8 mod turns Lady Dimitrescu into Mr. X

https://www.gamesradar.com/this-resident-evil-8-mod-turns-lady-dimitrescu-into-mr-x/

Ok, hands up anyone who didn’t expect the God of War sequel to be delayed until at least next year.

https://gamerant.com/god-of-war-ragnarok-release-date-delayed-2022/

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

I started playing Kingdom Hearts 3 tonight.

After nearly an hour of pre-title sequences, music videos, recaps and logos, Sora and co finally set off on their new journey only for the game to throw up the title card:

Kingdom Hearts II.9

Not a clue why. Never change Kingdom Hearts.

I was a little disappointed initially, as the first world is Hercules again, which the series has done to death with Olympus Colosseum. But instead of a battle arena it’s a proper world this time. The move to ultra HD graphics or whatever means the game looks absolutely gorgeous (tho Sora’s stuck in a weird halfway house between photorealism and PS2 stylism).

Sora can now summon spectral versions of Disneyland rides as ostentatious showpiece attacks which… well, makes as much sense as anything else in this game. Lot of fun though.

Still only on Olympus, so loads to see and discover. The only other world I know is in it is Toy Story, so looking forward to a lot of surprises.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

KH3 is a nce looking game, there’s stuff I don’t like about it but it does have a great design aesthetic most of the time.

Warframe is a strange, strange game.

It throws lots of numbers around but they don’t work in the way you’d expect from other games.  It has a non linear difficulty curve, meaning you can easily end up taking on a mission you have no chance on.  It explains its core systems badly.  The result is a game that can easily frustrate greatly, as it did for me a couple of days back.

Then I went and powered up two mods, boosting health by 160% and shields 320% – not cheap but it was worthwhile.  The game became a lot more fun, though that non-linear curve did return with a vengeance but in more manageable fashion.  I had a crappy time doing it solo, but I took out the Venus boss, headed for the Junction boss.  Now the Jackal, the boss I just beat was a Level 10 enemy, so logically, you would expect the Junction boss to be stronger.  Nope, the Junction boss was Level 8 and had his arse handed to him easily.  Just a bizarre experience.

Did a handful of Mercury missions – which has some nice design. Started to think I might be getting the hang of this – then it asks me to scan stuff but it explains it so badly.  There’s a lack of screen prompts to press – multiple guides and videos could not show what I needed to do.  Part of it is, with the radial menu selected, you click to aim your weapon – this activates your scanner.  All they had to do was put a prompt to that effec, but no.  If you ever wanted to suddenly appreciate UbiSoft’s tendency to tell you everything while playing, this is the game for you.  But when I finally got it working, after a great deal of frustration, and I find the thing I need to scan, then it does a pop-up explaining what to do.  Just nuts.

Unlocked some new weapons, one of which has far better aim, and I’m starting to see what the gameplay loop is on this, but where it gets really weird? The trophies.  I got the Bo melee weapon up to max rank, I look at the trophy info – 19.8% players got it. Huh? Seriously?  It’s easy to get, you run up to someone, you hit them with it but, what I suspect happens is players start on the game, have the up and down experience I have and conclude they’re better off sticking to a game that’s actually user-friendly, say Destiny 2.

It has some really neat design, some great social hubs, enemy design is good and tearing throgh a load with a melee weapon, with a companion bot assisting you being a ninja whirlwind of death – that’s the core hook here.  Mercury introduces Crossfire Extermination and other variants, where two of your enemies are really going at it.  You walk in and they don’t immmediately team up against you, while you kill both of them.  That mission was a blast.

One thing it does have in common with Destiny 2 is you’ll see the same places time and again, you’ll recognise the combination of pieces to make up a level but you don’t mind about that because it is that good in graphics and aesthetics.  It’s not quite equal to Destiny 2 because that game has insanely good world design but it’s not far behind either, especially the PS5 version.  Also, like with Destiny 2, it’s easy to play with others, how that all works is confusing, but once you’re in a level with 2-3 other players, it is fun.

Best thing I did today though? Remapped Sprint to L1 away from L3 – so much better.

 

Ben wrote:

KH3 is a nce looking game, there’s stuff I don’t like about it but it does have a great design aesthetic most of the time.

I was impressed at the start of the Olympus level that it manages to recreate the 2d animation style of Hercules within the 3D game world it makes (in Hades’ fire effects mainly). It had me thinking that hopefully a future KH game (whether that be IV or another side-game) attempts to change it up by having each world be a faithful recreation of their original animation style, ala Cuphead’s recreation of 1930s animation.

Bit further into Kingdom Hearts 3 now and it’s a lot of fun. I’m on the fourth world, “The Kingdom of Corona”. Turns out it’s not Earth 2020 but the world of Tangled. It looks great visually, not far off the film at all and I think they’ve got the film’s voice actors back as Flynn and Rapunzel. Or certainly good sound-a-likes. That isn’t always a recipe for success. The previous world was Toy Story, which also looked pretty good, but despite having, I think Jim Hanks as Woody and decent Tim Allen impersonator as Buzz, the cut scenes all felt a bit stilted and lifeless in the delivery of dialogue, whereas the Tangled ones are pretty zippy and well-timed.

Another character that suffers from having a replacement voice is Scrooge McDuck. Admittedly they were left with no choice, given the previous guy died, but the replacement is dreadful. I’m fairly sure the modern DuckTales had started before this game was finished, they should have thrown money at David Tennant to play Scrooge here, even if it is a the older version rather than his.

As well as looking really good, the other thing that’s impressed me is the size of the worlds. I’m so used to KH games having worlds made up fairly tiny areas connected by loading screens (or transitions at least) but this one has big, free-roaming areas. I suppose it’s not that impressive/unusual by general modern gaming standards, but it feels really advanced in the context of this series, which has mostly been handheld ports since the last numbered sequel on the PS2. The flipside is that I’m finding it very easy to get lost (especially getting turned around after a battle). There’s a mini-map but I’m finding it oddly unhelpful and strangely there’s no option to view the entire map full screen.

I have a copy of Biomutant in the post, hopefully get it on Saturday

Installed the new PS5 update for The Last Of Us II last night – runs very nicely at 60fps.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

I’m playing Battlechasers… it’s a nice little old-school turn-based RPG, with very nice visuals, despite its age (I bought it some years ago and forgot about it). I don’t really know anything about the comicbook except it had art by MAD! and therefore was never finished… I hope this game is =P

I have the Normandy in No Man’s Sky!

Now, the road to getting it, for which you have seven days left to grab it is, frankly, a total mess.  If you trust the game to tell you what you need to do and the order to do it, you will not complete this in time.  There are a few random, luck-based quests that are utterly abominable and should not be in this expedition quest line.  So, check out speed run videos, use the internet and you have a better chance of success.

My tips:

• Look ahead at the other pieces and claim as you go, for it is not strictly linear.
• The first rendezvous point is confusing and hard to understand how it works.  You can fly to them, you don’t have to go by foot – you’re looking for a portal.  This trick is particularly good for the very crappily designed Rendezvous 3 – after doing that one you’ll be thinking the next two are much harder, but they’re not.
• The interstellar rescue mission in Phase 2 is rubbish.  Go to the Nexus and pick up a multiplayer mission, you’ll need to be able to kill 8 corrupted sentinels at the end and remember to use the data decryption in mid-air, off planet, or it won’t work.  The game will not tell you this.  Doing it this way will stop you going through the navigation data like I did, which you need later.
• The find 10 uncharted systems bit in Phase 4 is utter bollocks and is very much luck-based – as the map does not indicate dioscovered / undiscovered systems.
• Getting the Myth Beacon in Phase 5 requires 80 quicksilver, the game gives you 45! Try doing more readings at ruin sites, probably be easier than the Nexus missions I went and coasted on, with the other players doing the work.

Is it worth it? If you’re a Mass Effect fan, then yes, the finale is very, very smart.  The line “the call was given, the call was answered” is very Shepherd.  And then heading over to my main save and adding the Normandy to my fleet is very satisfying.  But the road to it is frustrating and unclear and I can see a lot of players wanting to try this, being entirely new to the game, thus they trust it and get screwed over.  Making it time limited isn’t very cool either.  I think Hello Games have seriously misjudged it.

In narrative terms, much of the gameplay asks do not work.  If you are doing a rendezvous you don’t tell people to manually search for it and you wouldn’t do one on a world of hostile sentinels.  Similarly, if you have the interstellar rescue selected the crash site spawned should always have a pilot, not be RNG luck based, while using finite resources for each roll around.  Save scumming? Very much required, especially on getting those 10 uncharted systems, which’ll get harder and harder to do the more people complete this.

Oh and switch off multiplayer, it makes the game more stable but not completely stable. Over the last 1.5 days I had four game crashes – which is more than a little high.

OK, I’m done: Do not buy Biomutant.

I’ve given this a game a good chance but it does too many stupid, stupid things.  Like giving you the ability to summon transport – and then blocking your ability in various location for no good goddamn reason.  The result? You end up warping back way out of your way in order to force it to summon spawn because in the location you are in? You have to remember where you parked it!  And the map does not show that either.  Total bollocks.  As is that you can only upgrade your tranports when you are using them, not that the game tells you this.

But tonight, having enjoyed it despite that, having had some mostly fun fights, I tried one of its World Eater boss fights.

Game destroying idiotic rubbish.  Instead of allowing me to weave around it and shoot the fuck out of it with a modded electric rifle, they render it immune to bullets.  They do not make it obvious as to what else you are to do.  The answer? Grab a mine and drive towards it, while avoiding it’s large area of effect attacks and then, when in the right position, which you won’t be able to tell because the camera is shit, you manually detonate it.  Yeah, you have to manually detonate a mine.  The whole point of a mine is it does not require manual detonation, except here, in this dumb shit game that just can’t stop fucking itself over.  Deeming this boss fight representative of the others means I am very unlikely to care about trying to finish this game.  I’ve better – and more enjoyable – things to do.

I should be allowed to just to blow the fuck out of that thing, not have to deal with an infinite arbitrarily pulled-out-of-the-developer’s-arse health bar.

Will I get my money’s worth? Yes.  Probably be better now I’ve decided the world can burn , fuck the bosses, fuck the tree of life, fuck it all. Tempting to turn and go full evil, kill everyone and leave the world a charnal world where the bosses die due to food poisoning because they are too many bloated corpses.  Probably more fun than it’s boss fights.

The best part of this? World exploration is kind of fun but it’s not enough to save it.  I’ll keep because the world is fun to run around, it looks good and the combat had started getting better – save for the visually cluttered, what-the-fuck is going on Super Wung Fu (aka Rage mode) that was more concerned with looking cool than playing good – and, let’s be honest, who’s going to buy it from me at a decent price now? No one.

When this game ends up on sale for a cheap, cheap price? It’ll still have the same shit boss fights.  If you’re willing to live with playing that kind of shit then go for it, don’t say you weren’t warned.  I could not anticipate such a goddamn awful boss experience.  It was so transparent in its utter bullshit.

New State of Play 20 min video of Horizon II: The Forbidden West on PS5.

No release date given but it looks amazing.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Oh, I should check that out. Thanks.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

[Ben]

And tonight it was the turn of Far Cry 6 to get various vids up.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Ben.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Andrew

So, Biomutant… What the hell happened here?  The game has improved rather massively.  Do I think it is worth £50-60? No. £37.85? Not really, though I do now feel I have got my money’s worth out of it.  If you saw it on sale going cheap, say £20-25? Subject to some very major provisos, possibly worth it.

The provisos are:

• Use the internet to get some very useful tips, or you’ll have a much harder time. e.g. the Porky Puff boss fight that so infuriated me – there’s a far easier way of doing that but why anyone would spot it without being tipped off I don’t know.
• Leave the main quest until the end, do side content and get your character built up.  The more you do this, the better it gets – of course, in order to get to the good stuff, you have to put up with a lot of crap stuff.
• Put up with the fact that the game explains its system badly, inconsistently and is generally confusing.  Why can you not upgrade your mounts in the same way as other gear? Because the game says so.

But…. But, if you do all this – I did as I was stuck with the game and figured I wasn’t going to get a good price selling it so might as try and boost my character – to the degree that your character gets to say Level 20-25?  Then, you might see changes that say yes, this game can be fun.  It does, however, depend on how you build the character.  If you put all your points into amping up your melee attack and health, it’ll probably still suck.  But if you do a lot of points into agility like I did? Plus health and mellee attack? That changes the game rather massively because with amped up ability, the dodge becomes far, far better.  To the degree that it useful and you can be dodging around enemies, shooting and slashing and it feels fun.  Also, agility speeds up your walk / run speed!

That pathetic hit at the start, with the slow speed? That is reflective of your character’s ability, but it takes a long time to change and is, arguably, still lacking now in audio terms, but it sounds better, the sword moves faster and hits much harder – this is at endgame, with a Level 50 character.  But with about 200+ agility points?  It is insane – you can be cartwheel dodging while reloading your rifle, then run around shooting everyone up and anyone that gets too close? That’s why there’s a melee weapon.  Granted, this is on easy, but it has become a very fun game.

The crafting system has been agreed as, even by critics, to be a lot of fun and it is.  Upgrading the weapons and gear feels fun and ludicrous at the same time, a sawblade add-on to improve the armour-piercing abilty of your sword? OK, yeah, why not.

Psi and bio powers? Fiddly to use, easier to just shoot everyone.  Better by far to put biopoints into resistances, get them to 100% and you don’t need any special outfits except for the hypoxia zones. Once you have that level of freedom, again, the game becomes far better as you’re no longer having to go around those environments in compromised, weak armour – and they do look very good to run around in.  The other success in the world design is that you have biomes and various zones within them that makes for a far more interesting combination.

Be under no illusions, the game still has severe limitations and it sometimes explains how to do things terribly, along wioth some bad bugs – like an anchor line not displaying that stops me getting back into my balloon, or not spawning your transport of choice despite you doing everything right.  The single voice narration / translation doesn’t work, you don’t feel invested in the story but running around a gorgeously designed, massive open world? Yeah, that really works.  It works to such a degree that I don’t mind that its quests are pretty much all fetch quests because the world is that good and it does a good impression of the Skyrim effect, where you find stuff on the way from A to B.

There are a couple of things that has been criticised though that I disagree with.  First, that the world is too empty – I get where this is coming from, but in a narrative sense, it works better that there isn’t vast amounts of enemies all over the place – it adds to the sense of this being a post-apocalypse.  The other is that halfway through the tribes story there is an offer of surrender. This has been mocked and seen as the developers knowing this quest was a rubbish case of quantity over quality.  I can see that logic, but in games like Tomb Raider or Uncharted, it always felt odd that, as the game, enemies didn’t start running away from Drake or Lara, as they had become death incarnate.  Here, you do get that reputation and there is a response to it.  Yes, it’s simplistic but it works well. Also, that questline was rubbish.

The light / dark morality system and linking it to powers available? Doesn’t work and goes contrary to the narrative of that you shgould save the world.

It’s still a mixed bag, it has some minor bugs still – like the monster you need to kill to get a key to a place not spawning or a quest you have done repeats but doesn’t spawn the enemy you’re to take out, some of its systems are clunky, but, if you get to its endgame, there is some very cool stuff here – depending on how you set up your character.  On that front it is weird in that you can find spots to reviuse your mutations, you can change appearance but you cannot respec abilities – which is weirdly inconsistent. The problem here is I got lucky, as it’s not that clear as to the effects of each ability – I just hated the crap dodge, so figured dumping a load of points into agility would make it better.

I also think the game was marketed badly.  It was sold as this big AAA rivalling open world epic when it was being made by 20 people and was never going to be that.  This is rather a quirky, mid-tier synthesis game that while looking good enough to rival major titles, is not on the same level as them. A lower price point too?  Probably would have helped.

I finished Kingdom Hearts III and have thoughts. Potentially spoilerly ones, but I’m not going to tag everything.

Overall, it’s a good game, but not a great one. Gameplay-wise, it’s pretty solid and has one of the more intuitive control schemes of the series (which have varied a lot across the many games). It’s easy to have a clear idea of what you’re doing, you can set it so time slows down while you go through on-screen menus for selecting items and the array of special commands you get spice things up well. These range from your keyblade temporarily powering up if you get in enough hits with it quickly enough (the Frozen one becomes a pair of gauntlets, for instance), team up attacks with your party members, more powerful magic attacks if you use a lot of corresponding ones in a short time (so cast fire a lot and it’ll give you a fira attack to use) and – strangest of all – killing certain enemies will activate spectral versions of Disney theme park rides, like a carousel or the swaying pirate ship thing, which you can use to attack enemies. Weird, but fun. Heartlinks – this game’s name for summons – are also the best the series has had. Some a bit useless – Stitch’s is weirdly tricky – but it’s generally a bit less fussy than in previous games.

The minor issues I have in gameplay terms are that using healing magic completely drains all your MP forcing it to recharge, which is a bit of a pain in a battle where you’re having to heal a lot. And then also, once again, block is on the same button as dodge (you just have to leave the control stick in a neutral position for blocking) which given the hectic nature of combat means it’s actually kinda hard to block. Or I found that at least.

In presentation terms, the game is also successful. It feels like they’ve pulled back a bit from the highly detailed graphics style of the Birth By Sleep Fragmentary Passage mini-story – Sora doesn’t look quite so freaky in that and there’s a slightly plainer feel a lot of the time. The overscan issues (which forced me to work out how to manually disable it on my TV) are also not present, which is interesting. The amount of alt character models for Sora is fun – from his Mafex action figure design in Toy Story to a weird monster design for Monsters Inc – and shows the advances since Kingdom Hearts II. The general level of detail in graphics also really shows that actually. The Pixar levels look better than the original films (which are admittedly 25-20 years old) while the photorealism of the Pirates of the Caribbean level is impressive. Comparing that to the POTC level in KH2 is like night and day. I’m surprised Sora recognised Jack. Unfortunately, the voice acting is a bit inconsistent. Some of the Disney characters have their original VAs back and sound fine – Tate Donovan as Hercules for instance. Some have decent soundalikes and also sound fine (Rapunzel, who I couldn’t tell wasn’t Mandy Moore, though it has been a while since I watched it). But some have decent soundalikes that don’t act particularly well – Jim Hanks as Woody and whoever is doing Buzz Lightyear – and some of the replacement voices just don’t feel right at all. There’s a new voice for Scrooge McDuck (as the original guy died at age 90-odd a few years ago) and he sounds dreadful. I’d have thrown money at David Tennant to do it, even if it is “classic” Scrooge. The PotC replacements are all pretty terrible, while the main villain Master Xehanort suffers from the death of his original VA Leonard Nimoy (who was wonderfully gravely and grandiose as him in previous games). I found his replacement rather weak voiced and like they were trying to hide a European accent and it turned out to be Rutger Hauer of all people. An odd choice.

The most notable thing about the game though is how the relationship between its three main elements – Disney, Final Fantasy and its original characters and stories – has changed. When I first played the original Kingdom Hearts, I remember not caring much about the story at all, partially due to its impenetrability, and just wanting to get on with the Disney stuff. In this game though, it feels like the Disney elements are more of an obligation than a driving part of it. The game’s main story basically treads water for the majority of its run time as you got around half a dozen or so Disney worlds and get dripfed a few teases of the villains’ plan. The story only really kicks into gear when you finally finish with all that. It’s like Kingdom Hearts has outgrown its Disney origins but is unable to abandon it (understandably). It does shed the Final Fantasy ties though, as this game has absolutely no appearances from any FF characters at all, not even returning ones. I think that’s probably for the best, as they’d only be clutter really, but it is surprising.

But it is a problem how divorced the main point of the game is from the Disney elements. Of the Disney properties featured, only one – the returning Hercules – really feels in any way pertinent to the plot, and that’s just with Hercules helping Sora get his confidence back as a hero. Most of the others are pretty tenuously tied into the plot, if at all and that’s a problem. The first game had the villains from its Disney tie-ins as the main villains of the game, but the best you get here is a couple of glimpses of Maleficent and Pete wandering around on the periphery doing build up for wherever the story is going next.

The choice of Disney things feels a bit coporately mandated too. Previous games have had a varied mix of old and new favourites – KH II bounced from Mulan to Tron for instance. But whether it’s because the supply of unused Disney properties is running thin or Disney strong-armed Squenix, this game focuses more on just the most recent releases up to when development started. So you get Hercules (regulated to the “pre-game” Kingdom Hearts II.9), then the perennial Toy Story, Monsters Inc (for Monsters University), Tangled, Frozen, the latest Pirates of the Caribbean and finally Big Hero 6. And, I don’t know, it just feels a bit uninspired, not helped by the Frozen and PotC sections being absolute slogs. Where’s the Black Cauldron already? Or Basil the Great Mouse Detective? Emperor’s New Groove? Or Robin Hood for god’s sake? Honestly, how has Kingdom Hearts still not used Disney’s Robin Hood for a level?

Anyway, despite those oddities, it is a fun game and the story – for all that continues to be utterly convoluted (I spent some time online looking up explanations for stuff in the end cut-scenes immediately after) – is satisfying, drawing a conclusion to the main plot of the previous however many games (10? 11?) while also building up stuff for future games. It’s a little concerning how much of that is based on Japanese-only mobile games and doesn’t incorporate much of anything from Disney, but let’s see how it goes in Kingdom Hearts 4/whatever’s next (there’s been a rhythm-action game on the Switch already, but I’ll probably give that a miss).

No Man’s Sky is getting another visual update that looks rather good.

I was already feeling the pull back to the game, having returned to get the Normandy.  Especially as Frigates can now be dismissed from your fleet.

Now? Will likely be booting it up again once the update out while waiting for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

Edit – I did not expect the update to be out right now!

Since the PS5 went and ate the entire 15GB update when I wasn’t looking, booted it up.

Visually, it is pretty damn smart. It is a major change, especially for playing on the new consoles.

They have also altered one of their best sounding but worst to play quests – that for the organic ship.  It was this dumb set-up of you having to manually find the coordinates, but they would only display in first person view and were incredibly unstable. It was awful. Now? Now they’ve done what they should have done, set it as a fixed location, with you tracking down the exact spot once you’re in the general area. That works – I have the first part, might have a chance of actually being able to access the one bit of content I wanted to, but couldn’t.

Ben wrote:

while waiting for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

I’m looking forward to this too. Great to have a cutting edge game I can play with the kids.

Seems Sony’s delay of God of War: Ragnarok, along with their confirming that it will be on PS4 as well, has set off a whole lot of chatter around whether undermines Sony’s position a year ago, made to set them apart from MS’ making all games cross generational, of wanting to focus on PS5.

It’s pretty much accepted the shortage of supply to meet demand is the major factor in this, but after the last six months, I’m not convinced the sell to buy a PS5 is still to buy PS5 exclusive games, but far more to just play PS5 games, whether it be fully exclusive or an upgraded PS4 game because the PS5 versions of those have been so good.  Technically, all these started as PS4 games:

• Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
• Fenyx: Immortals Rising
• No Man’s Sky
• God of War
• Destiny 2
• Watch Dogs: Legion
• Warframe
• Yakuza 7: Like A Dragon

But the PS5 version for each is distinctly different to the Ps4 and it’s not just graphics.  It’s the feel, the haptic feedback; the incredibly fast load times, then also the graphics.  The recent upgrade for NMS is amazing, as was the PS5 only GoW upgrade.  Playing D2 is very, very different on Ps5, it’s far more than just looking better and that in turn changes what is meant by a generation of consoles.

Sure, Horizon: Forbidden West and God of War: Ragnarok and Gran Turismo 7 are all going to be PS4 and PS5, but the last six months tells me the difference between the two versions will be pretty damn massive.  Enough to sell the Ps5.  Combine that with the continuation of the “buy PS4 copy, get free upgrade to PS5 version” and it’ll probably be a pretty effective strategy.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Two freebies, fortunately, as both didn’t go well.

I should love Star Wars Squadrons but I just can’t.  This is a very specific game made for a very specific audience and I’m not it.  It also makes an excellent case for why I enjoyed the Rogue Squadron games too.

The decision to lock the view as first-person only does not kill the game, but it does a lot of damage to it.  It’s the addition of the complicated controls – which by all accounts work better on anything other than a standard console controller, but that’s what I’m stuck with – that hits it again.  And a hazy sense of distance and momentum finishes it off.  The controller set-up is left is throttle, right is look around and steer.  The immediate problem? This is the reverse of most console stick controls.  So, switch it to Southpaw set-up, does it help? Only a little and not enough.

Visuals and sound are perfect.  It looks and sounds great.  Even flying around an Imperial or Rebel fleet very, very badly at the start still looks vert cool.

So, why doesn’t it work? Because the sensor that is supposed to be my map of the battle means next to nothing in a three dimensional space.  The resupply mechanic? Requires that you somehow stop your craft in a small, small area.

Target acquisition, even with all assists turned on, is still too manual and inconsistent.  The lacking indicators of speed and your position relative to all else renders any dogfight an exercise in frustration, with the AI able to always be in the perfect camera blindspot.

There are some nice ideas here, like the power management of being to change focus to shields, lasers or engines but because I have to spend so much time trying to work where I am and where the enemies are, it becomes a pointless distraction.

What this game badly needed was two things: Third-person view and an arcade setting, where it gives far more guidance.  I tried the practice modes, to see if it’d get better, if the controls would make more sense.  It didn’t.  It made trying to shoot up a Star Destroyer highly frustrating, though frequently bouncing off its hull was funny.  What I would have liked to have done is easily target turrets and shield generators, but it just didn’t do that easily.  I’d want to shoot some turret, hit L2, no targeting happened.  There should have been both an auto-level and auto-speed options, those would have helped, but the first person view gives such a bad sense of movement, either or both of those likely wouldn’t be enough to save it.

I might watch someone else’s playthrough on YouTube to see how the story plays out because that will be more fun than trying to play this.

Subnautica has this incredible reputation, but it’s one that, for me, it did not live up to at all.  I know there is an audience for games that tell you very, very little about what to do and, more importantly, how.  But this audience is not me, I need something to work with and this game gives me nothing.  Even its Creative mode fails completely due to base building mechanics that render No Man’s Sky and Fallout 4 the height of sophistication.  You cannot easily place things together, there is no obvious door part that renders building the base pointless and the game doesn’t want to explain how it works either.  This was the biggest disappointment, that’s its base build mechanics were so very limited, even in a Creative mode.  Also, it suffers from first person view.

 

Last month I started streaming on twitch. Every Sunday and Thursday evening. I mean, it was only natural I got around to it, I play computer games almost all the time anyway.

https://www.twitch.tv/semtexolle/

Don’t know if anyone here is in to that kind of thing, but I would really appreciate it if you could throw me a follow (it costs you nothing), as it would help me get going with becoming an affiliate at the twitch platform (I have fulfilled all requirements apart from amount of followers, I have 16 out of 50).

For now, I stream Skyrim SE (with mods), Borderlands 2 (multiplayer) and BioShock Remastered. More games will follow in due time, and I’m aiming for variety content.

I also have a youtube channel set up where I export my streams in full. If and when it takes off and I reach affiliate status with twitch, I’ll start editing videos and upload summarys rather than full streams.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8XLB4cg9vYyK7hqhjNJP6w/

There’s also a discord server specifically for my stream if you want to keep up and or engage with it: https://discord.gg/WGkD53dkzh

1 user thanked author for this post.

Andrew

The Xbox 360 ports of Doom 1 and 2 are backwards compatible on Xbox One but I discovered that there are newer Xbox One ports available too. Given that they were only a few quid each I bought them to see what, if any, differences there were. Over both games I could find the following changes: both games seem to fit the standard widescreen layout of modern TVs (I think the 360 versions were formatted 4:3 with black bars down the side). A subtle, but major, gameplay difference is the aiming reticle changes from yellow to red when a bad guy in is your line of fire. While it doesn’t make much difference when you are face-to-face with enemies it helps with the fact that the game auto-aims vertically when a badguy is in front but above or below you. Having the reticle light up red lets you know when a high flying Cacodemon or Pinky at a bottom of a pit are prime for taking down. Other than that Doom 1 is unchanged. Doom 2 has no further changes to the base game but the Xbox One version is missing the extra episode No Rest For The Living. A bit annoying as there are some good levels in that. To make up for it the Xbox One version includes the The Master Levels expansion – a set of 20 extra levels. I’ve never played these before. I found them quite challenging in places and it was a blast to play some new content and get caught out by some of the traps set in them. More than made the price of admission worth it.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Dave

I had misread the PS5 release date for the Intergrade version of FF7R, plus the Yuffie DLC.

Had thought it was due October.  But 10.06.21 in American is 10 June.

The bad news is the Yuffie DLC will likely be £14-15.

Got stuck back into TLoU2 today as part of a concerted effort to finally finish it, as I’m definitely getting near the end at this point.

It really does reward playing in big chunks – once I got back up to speed I’ve found it very engrossing again, story-wise.

However, I do feel like the game is so long overall that greater variation in the gameplay would be welcome. It definitely starts to feel a bit mechanical and repetitive after a while.

Looks great with the recent PS5 update though. Amazing visuals, maybe the best I’ve ever seen in a game. Such detail.

But do you feel guilty and ground down by it to just the right degree, as you agonize over each kill? Or are you just numb to it all and you just don’t care?

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

I made a youtube playlist of some really silly Skyrim Memes I did. They’re all on the same “Nazeem is dead, let’s dance” theme.

Reviews are out for Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and they’re very positive – it sounds like it delivers. Looking forward to it!

1 user thanked author for this post.

Ben

My copy of Ratchet & Clank is in the post.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

For those after the free PS5 upgrade for FF7R – the game will not auto-prompt for it in the usual way.

Instead, head into PSN, click on  the game icon and access it there.

The exclusive Yuffie DLC is £15.99

My copy of Ratchet & Clank has arrived – there’s 37GB of update data to download.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Wow. These day-one patches are getting ridiculous.

Looking forward to hearing about it anyway. I should be getting my copy in a couple of weeks (providing my hints weren’t too subtle).

The PS5 has had a data banquet today. 90GB this morning for FF7 Intergrade and now 37GB for Ratchet & Clark: Rift Apart.

But it went through both far faster than I expected.  Allow 15-20mins for the update and you’ll be set.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart

This will be a non-spoiler post, as I’m a couple of hours and three levels in, so pretty much all the stuff used in the promotional videos and reviews.

Just about everyone will be tempted to go: “Sure, it looks pretty, but I’ve played this game before”, to which my response is: “It is jaw-droppingly pretty, but no, you have not played this before.”  Going by graphics gives you very little by which to assess this game because so much of it is about the feel.  The way haptic feedback is cleverly integrated into the game, the effect of 60FPS for how responsive your character is, the ease with which the game switches its camera for melee combat to ranged and back better, the most intelligent auto-aim I’ve ever experienced, so much of this is built into the player experience and cannot be easily conveyed by any post or review.

Accessibility options are superb.  There’s things here that I don’t need, like you can set the face buttons are directional controls – someone is going to love that.  They have five difficulty settings, with the easiest being that you are immortal – which I’m using and loving.  But it doesn’t stop there, camera, aiming, grinding, traversal, someone spent a lot of time working out to enable as many people as possible to enjoy this game.  The Git Gud crowd will be howling about some of this but screw that lot, this is superb work that deserves recognition and commendation.

The usual suspects will likely be aghast at the addition of Rivet, a female?  Again, screw that lot.

Which is another thing, the sheer extent of personality in this game is astonishing.  Not just the main characters but NPCs, enemies, the worlds, it all feels incredibly vibrant and alive in a way no other game I’ve played has.

This game, so far, is as close to perfection as anything I’ve played.  The depiction, the pacing, the feel – it’s all stunning.  Small imperfections – they haven’t cracked the way to display a large enemy without sometimes interfering with your own sense of positioning relative to it.  And it’s accurate to say Rivet and Ratchet could be rendered more distinct and different from the other, but I can also see why Insomniac went the route they did.

Back to the good stuff and we come to the SSD effect.  This is very much in evidence, in both micro and macro ways, from the rifts you use to the entire world changes, which again, have to be experienced to really see what is so great about it.  One boss fight had so much in it that previously it would have probably been a quarter of the overall sequence done here.

Which gets me to end of this post: This game delivered numerous moments of gaming that I have not experienced previously.  It’s smartly paced, cleverly designed, ludicruously good looking and perhaps the fastest loading going.  In time this will be surpassed, it is the way of games, but Insomniac have laid down one hell of a marker to everyone else that says: Beat this! This will sell PS5s, there’s no question of that.  Gaming technology, combined with creativity and skilll, has delivered an interactive animated experience that matches – or even surpasses – Disney and Pixar.  There is some very smartly done narrative sequences in this game that will instantly win over most people to it.

2 users thanked author for this post.

Dave

Wow! That sounds great. This has got me more hyped for the game than any other review so far.

[Ben]

The next couple of levels sadly couldn’t sustain the brilliance of the opening trio, but the sixth got things mostly back on track, albeit with a couple of weird momentary glitches.  It’s little things that stand out like a lack of signposting help when the game has done so well in other respects, a very easy fix but which stands out by its absence.

The problems I had was a boss fight where the camera was too drawn in, with too many enemies, it made for too chaotic a combination.  The same boss also demonstrated the need for a lock on, but there doesn’t seem to be one.  After this, there was an open world level that mostly worked well, except it did a protect X from enemy fire bit and it was very easy to lose track of where Kit was relative to Ratchet amid the chaos.  There was also some timed dash sequences that didn’t work for me either.  Finally, there was a “use the fog to do stealth kills” but as soon as I shot one enemy, they all knew where I was – screw it, break out the bombs.  All four of these experiences felt like they had been done by a different team, one stuck in 2017.  It still looked lovely, excellent sound, but it felt like the game was throwing pointless older style of challenges that the opening levels suggested the game had moved on from.

The second Glitch and Clank levels were polar opposites – the Glitch level was very disorientating and it was hard to see what I needed.  It needed more assist, not less.  In contrast the Clank level had a clearer, more easily understood structure and logic.  The dual dimensions and mag jumping of level 6 were well executed.  Arguaby better than Titanfall 2‘s Cause and Effect level.

Second time around I might enjoy both of those lacking moments more, but even despite those moments, overall the levels were well constructed – one bit with the dash boots looked stunning. On one firefght I was also using local rifts to outflank enemies which was very fun to do.

The upgrade loop for weapons, with them having a max level encourages you to power up other weapons, with the powered-up ones as a good back-up.  I’m suspecting I lack the dexterity to get the full benefit of the half / full squeeze fire, but the full auto on the blaze pistol is damn cool.

Hopefully, it now stays on track.

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Ben.

And, two levels later and a big plot reveal cutscene, it decided against staying on track, instead deploying booster rockets to head into orbit!

Yep, these two levels match and even exceed the opening trio!  There are stupidly elaborate, yet incredibly detailed sequences here that make you wonder how they ever thought them up.  There has been nothing like this previously, not to this scale or detail – one of the biggest things you adjust surprisingly fast to is it loading these hugely detailed worlds faster than you’ve ever seen but it feels entirely natural that it does so.

It’s hard to tell how much of it I’ve seen at the 5-6 hours mark.  Perhaps half the main campaign, perhaps more.  There’s  slew of optional sidequests I haven’t yet done too.

Spent a couple of hours, perhaps a little more, doing side stuff, which the game was really good at.  A level like Savali that, first time around, had some very minor flaws in its missions, turns out to be far more fun for freeform activity.  The quests might be simple but they’re also built around the idea of encouraging to max boost around the level, which in turn allows the game to really show off – like it wasn’t already doing so.

In this way, I did some sidequests, found some gold bolts, some new armour pieces.  Even a defend quest on Blizar Prime went far better – in part, due to my having far better weaponry and I’ve gotten better at playing the game.  Also, pulled off a few pocket dimensions – those wins were particularly unexpected.

The detail remains insane from the electric stunning effect and the target’s response to being stunned to putting your foes, literally, on ice.  I’ve got 12 weapons, there remain far more to get and to upgrade – Insomniac have always had a reputation for creative weaponry and they are demonstrating that to an excellent degree here.  Each weapon, when upgraded, behaves very differently and in a way that makes the upgrading feel worth it.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

Did another level, this one advancing the campaign, completed it then went and cleaned it up as much as possible in terms of the collectables.

It was an example of how to sustain quality and excellence at the highest level – OK, so I didn’t care that much for the sea shanty minigame, the colour shading was a little too subtle at times –  but it was kind of fun – the rest of the level was pretty damn smart from start to finish.  Speedle sections remain a delight and experimenting with the weapons ius so damn good. On one occasion I had a load of enemies electrified and, while they stunned, switched to ricochet to finish them off.  The other thing about that?  This is a darker level, the ricochet pod and the blasts it fires, each emit their light source, which the rest of the environment, including the targets, respond to!  You get used to this staggringly level of care and attention, you don’t question and easily forget that it just wasn’t possible previously.

I’ve yet to use the crowd controls weapons, but will get to those in time, if only to upgrade them further.

I’ve played two whole Uncharteds now and I just do not understand the people who insist that Nathan Fillion is the best (and in some people’s minds, only) choice to play Nathan Drake in a movie. Absolutely do not see it.

So, just over 17 hours later, I’m done with Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart.

If you have a PS5, should you play this game? Yes, absolutely.  Should you play it now when it’ll cost you around £60 to do so? Far more of an individual decision.

There are times for me that the hours of gameplay metric isn’t always the best, sole indicator to go by, quantity doesn’t always mean quality.  Is this game a quality experience? Very, very much so.  You’ll pay around £15 for a cinema ticket, but for a two hours movie, many feel that their £7.5o hour rate is worth it.  If we take my 17 hours of play, divide £62.85, we get just under £3.70 per hour.  Do I consider that a worthy cost? Yes.

One of the biggest challenges the game makes is to the very nature of gaming.  This game offers the ability to massively reduce the possibilities where the player can fail and the penalties that lead to death.  For some, just the existence of those optional settings will be an affront.  Why?  Because from the very start games have been linked to failure, yet, as the last year has demonstrated gaming is becoming more and more a medium of entertainment.  What does this mean for games?  Well, to borrow some Dara O’Briain material, what other entertainment medium locks people out of accessing content that they have likely paid for?  You do not read a book and, after chapter one, get a Q&A that, if you fail it, tells you that you will not be able to read the rest of it! No other medium of entertainment does this and, short of invoking tradition, there is no reason for games to either.

There will always be a market for the hard-as-nails games – and the Souls-like subgenres, but should that be all gaming is?  Let’s be honest here – the Mario games are lauded as being superb games, I can recognise the skils and design that went into them, but I have not, nor will I ever, complete one of them.  The requirements for completing one isn’t within my grasp, I might get a fair way in but that’s about.  Fortunately, the Mario games aren’t great on story so I don’t feel that sense of missing out.  Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart does have such a story.  Might I have completed it – or enjoyed it as much – without the assists? I suspect not.  It didn’t always crop up, but there were times when fights got a bit too chaotic, the camera in that bit too close and I’d end up reversing into a wall because of everything else the game was trying to show me.  Or, it’s a big boss fight with a screen filling enemy that requires a skewed perspective.  No one has really solved how to do this without trade-offs of one kind or another, it would be unreasonable to expect it here – but did have far greater assist defang this effect? Oh yes, to a very large degree.

But, it might be said, if you can’t die, you won’t want to play well! Wrong, you’ll still want to play well.  When you get hit in this game, it disrupts the flow of combat you had going.  The lack of health penalty does not reduce the desire and interest in wanting to keep that flow going as much as possible and the sheer audio-visual spectacle also acts as encouragment.  Yes, you could play it badly and live but you really won’t want to.  You will want to play as well as you can, flipping from weapon to weapon, combining effects and mixing in the odd dodge and melee strike as needed.

If anything it is those times where, having supplied an array of assistance measures, the game sometimes does  not supply tiny bits of help, that stand out.  You might be told to turn a screw but need a reminder of where, in this complex arena that you spent a good minutes taking apart a small army in very creative ways, it is.  And it doesn’t tell you or give you an indicator.  This applies across the board – due to the game generally being so accomplished in just about every other respect, its little imperfections, when they crop up, will for a short time stand out that bit more.  Then you consider everything else its succeeding on and you cut Insomniac Games some slack.

One serious recommendation – play this with saved data auto-sync enabled.  I only had it happen once in 17 hours, but once is all you need if it does a hard crash that requires PS5 restart / rbuild, because in all likelihood it’ll hit your saved data too! I didn’t lose much, but seeing a message come up saying “your saved data was restored due to corruption” was a bit scary.  Had a handful of lesser crashes that only required a game restart.  It’ll keep getting patched so likely to get more stable, not less.

Will we see another game like this within the year? With a good many titles being confirmed for both PS4 and PS5 I really don’t know.  I think it’s more likely that this game’s successors will arrive next year.  For all that a PS5 upgrade of a PS4 game can supply an awful lot of what renders a game PS5 – graphics, sound, haptic feedback additions – this game works as a very strong demonstration of what the SSD effect is and how it cannot be replicated by a simple upgrade.  If a developer sought to take full advantage of it then, in all likelihood, they end up with a game that can’t be ran on a PS4, which this is.  There’s a limited number of true PS5 games,but in terms of what could not be adjusted to run on a PS4?  This is way ahead of everything else.

Audio, visuals, feel – all are streets ahead.  Sound is very subtle at times but always effective.  After 17 hours it might be thought I had seen all the game had to offer, but I haven’t. There’s entire weapons I haven’t seen the effects of, or only briefly like the minions one, which the number of you can have on screen and attacking your enemies has to be seen to be believed.  It is both brilliant and hilarious to see.  The integration of sound and visuals show when you zap an enemy and you hear them responding to your electric ray.  In a comedy fashion, of course. It’d be very easy to render a far nastier version of this but much would be lost by doing so.  Freeze rays; electrcs,grenades, shotguns, missiles, projectiles – all have their effects and enemies respond to them all in different ways.

The consistent sense I had across this game – despite those rare moments of imperfection that slipped through or a button press didn’t register – was that of care and attention.  Masses of it.  How else to describe a ricochet weapon that has its own light sources coming off of the laser it throws out? You might be thinking that it cannot possibly do all this, to which your PS5’s answer is: Wrong, watch this!

Which gets us back to the start can a game you complete in 10-15 hours be worth £60? I wasn’t going to buy this right now, I was going to wait for the inevitable price depreciation.  But once they started putting out the gameplay videos I was won over because it looked that good, good enough to justify £60.  There were times when it irritated sure but overall? That is a very small fraction of the whole.  And that whole is one of the best gaming experiences I’ve had and one I’m inclined to come back to.  To try to finish off upgrading weapons, to try and get all the weapons, as there appear to be more to unlock.  That’s pretty rare for me, as most times a game willl have certain sections I just don’t want to play ever again.  This one?  Even those pieces that irked first time around were considerably easier second time.  This is a game that not only wants to enable as many people as possible to complete it, but for them to want to re-play it – and it succeeds at that.

I wanted to keep playing it, to see what came next.  I wanted to get the collectables – and did, there’s a good amount but not too many.  I wanted to keep getting and improving those so very creative weapons.  I wanted to see the next planet, the next level.  There’s still a lot to be said for a well-executed, linear, perfectly paced narrative experience.  It is something Sony’s game studios have gotten very, very good at.   This makes that case again, but this time for how it can be with a new level of technology.  And if I were Sony? I’d be putting in an order with Insomniac for DLC quests for this right now.

SkillUp’s review made the point that with this game Sony and Insomniac haveput out something that can match Disney and Pixar in terms of animation and visual quality,  what does it nean for gaming now it is at that level?  Plus, for the last few years gaming has taken on a more mature edge, the big games have been more adult narratives – Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, The Witcher, all great games but suitable for a kid? Not really.  This is.  Back to SkillUp – if Disney and Lucasfilm Ltd decided tomorrow they wanted a Star Wars game in the style of their animated content, the gaming industry can turn around and say they have the tools to deliver a game indistinguishable from a  cartoon, except you are controlling a character or characters – tell me that wouldn’t sell. (And at some point we are getting The Complete Lego Star Wars).

I have had a fantastic four days with this game.  Two final tips: One, always get the RYNO. Two, don’t skip the credits, it has a great villain’s song.

1 user thanked author for this post.

Dave

I finally finished The Last Of Us 2 tonight. I thought it was a brilliant game that did some quite daring and ambitious things with its story, even if it didn’t quite hit the perfect heights of the first one.

I was impressed by how willing they were to shift our perspectives on the characters without losing that heart that was such a big part of the first game.

It’s not perfect and it’s too long for what it was (I think the story reaches a natural endpoint a few hours before the game does, and the gameplay itself becomes quite repetitive by the end) but it was still a really great experience. They don’t make many games of this quality.

I’m glad I wasn’t spoiled on it in advance though (even with the leaks before release I managed to remain unspoiled on all of it up to now). That would have really ruined my experience of some of the twists and turns.

Anyone see the Guardians of the Galaxy reveal last night? From Eidos Montreal, a third person action game where you directly control Star Lord with the others as AI team-mates. Dan Abnett is involved (or was just on the promo thing to talk about creating the modern GotG, it wasn’t clear). Seems to be based more on the recent comics than directly on the movies, but then the recent comics are largely inspired by the movie, so…

Looks like it could be alright. Definitely feels like a legally-not-movie-licensed-but-we’ll-make-it-as-close-as-we-can-get deal though.