Currently Playing

[Tommy]

Since I’m laid up with my knee at the moment, I’ve caved and bought Witcher 3 for the Switch so I can play it in bed and continue from my PC playthrough via cloud saves. It really is an incredible technological accomplishment. The graphics are of course dialled down, but it still looks fantastic, especially in close-up cutscenes, and it performs well too. I have no clue how they managed to get it to look and run like this on a Switch.

Hang on. You can effectively play a 'downgraded' version of your save on a Switch and then play on PC via the cloud?

[Wrathbone]

Yep, you can carry saves over from PC to Switch and vice versa, which is pretty great. I played almost all of Blood and Wine on the Switch and had a blast. I barely even noticed the graphics downgrade after a couple of hours.

[Sly Boots]

Jedi Fallen Order

Wow, this is actually really, really good. Not sure why I sound surprised, it was well-received. I guess I wasn't fully expecting to enjoy it as it was billed in some places as 'Star Wars Dark Souls', and I'm not really into that kind of attritional progress. But actually it's more like Jedi Knight II meets Tomb Raider, two things I enjoy very much indeed.

If you haven't played it already, and have Game Pass, definitely give this a go... the best thing I can say is it makes wrestling with EA's launcher-within-a-launcher worthwhile

[Raid]

It's the best Star Wars game I've played since the 90s I think (although I did miss KOTOR). It's a sort of weird mish-mash of genre tropes; it's got the gradually unlocking maps and backtracking of a Metroidvania, the combat style and experience retrieving on death of Dark Souls, the exploration platforming of Tomb Raider and the force powers of the Jedi Outcast titles. It all works as a combined whole though, and while it's not exactly War and Peace, I quite enjoyed the story. The production values are high throughout.

I'm looking forward to a sequel.

[Animalmother]

Didn't like it

[Sly Boots]

Didn't like it

I mean, you have to enjoy environmental puzzles and exploration, it's clear even a few hours in, but fortunately I do

[Raid]

Star Wars Squadrons

This isn't as good as the X-Wing series but not dreadful. There, review over.

Ok, ok. The biggest problem really is the flight physics. Enemies can just stop instantly mid-flight, ignoring any real inertia, and therefore throwing off your aim. Other than that, it's alright. There's just none of the refinement of the X-Wing games, it's all a little clunky. The VR implementation is fairly good, given that it lets you turn off the HUD entirely and rely on the cockpit instruments. And it's a fairly small niggle considering how niche this situation is, but control setup with a flight sim setup as complicated as mine (I think I have 10 axes and about 70 separate bindable buttons over the three controllers) is awkward though as every tooltip just refers to buttons by number (and I have absolutely no idea which control "button 22" is). As an example of how to properly do things, DCS World lets you press a button and the control menu will jump to what it's bound to allowing you to very quickly check your inputs.

[Rusty]

I've just started playing X4: Foundations again and forgot how hard it is to setup the controller. It has inbuilt configs for my X52 but I want it my way

I've ended up sticking little stickers all over my X52 to match the numbers. I can now find button 32 quite quickly

[Raid]

Doom 64

This was recently added to Gamepass as part of the Bethesda buyout. I've never played it before, never having owned the phenomenal cosmic power of the Nintendo 64, so figured I'd give it a try as I still find the original Doom quite playable. I started on the hardest difficulty setting because I'm apparently a complete masochist and have enough experience with the original to know what I'm doing.

Firstly, it looks like a strange mix of Doom and Quake, but with coloured lighting. It loses most of the bright colours of the original, replaced with the entire spectrum from ultra brown to infra brown, but then there's the odd area completely bathed in bright red or blue light. I don't think any of the sprites from the original are reused, with higher resolution redesigns of all of the enemies that look good, but with a little less cartoony charm. The level design is a little more claustrophobic from what I've seen so far, but the gameplay is basically identical to the originals.

While the sound effects are really meaty and satisfying, the soundtrack is really lacking. Almost every music track in the game is an ambient drone, which is suitable for the game but really dull in comparison to the fantastic original.

It's an interesting curiosity then, but I can't see me playing it for long.

[Wrathbone]

Mount and Blade II: Bannerlord

It's been a year since the public beta started, so I thought I'd dive back in and see what's changed. Turns out, not much.

It's not that the devs aren't doing anything - quite the opposite, as I've had it installed all this time and there are updates all the time, some of them huge. But in terms of features there's very little I can say is definitely new. There's some sort of family system in place which I don't remember, though it's barely come up so far. One or two new quest types, which seem pretty basic. I'd like to say there are lots of bug fixes (and I'm sure there are), yet somehow the load times are massively worse than a year ago.

I can't get my head around Bannerlord. As much as I enjoy it (and I very much do), it's largely the same game as Warband, with substandard graphics, noddy quest mechanics and marginally improved combat. I don't know what the hell they've been working on all this time. I also don't know who I'd recommend it to, because for people who've played Warband I'd say unless you're desperate to spend ~£30 for some minor improvements, go play Warband, and for people new to the series I'd have to seriously temper expectations. M&B is a great series that does very little to back that up with evidence.

[elgaucho]

I've slowly been working my way through Control. I'm not particularly far into it, I'm currently trying to fix the reactor. I love the presentation of this, and the visuals are quite striking with ray tracing enabled (it's my first RTX game). I'm particularly fond of the silhouetted characters you occasionally communicate with, which is just a very cool visual effect. I seem to recall this wasn't particularly well loved by critics when it was released, but looking at metacritic I wonder if I just read one negative review at launch and didn't think I'd ever get around to it, as it seems it scored quite highly.

I started playing this on my week off last week as well, especially as it's currently in the Humble Bundle.

I've unlocked all of the skills and weapons now (bar upgrades, i think!).

I was quite dubious about what I'd make of it, and while I think it lacks a little depth in the gameplay feeling, I will agree that it sets an interesting scene, and that it's sufficiently compelling to continue playing. I definitely think it's worth picking up at a bargain price while it's available! Some of the puzzles and boss challenges are fairly fun too.

[Sly Boots]

Saw that Horizon Zero Dawn was on sale for £14 so picked it up, have to agree with my learned colleague Mr Snowy (as per his Steam review) that it's great fun, and gorgeous looking. I'm not sure what I can add as most of you will either know what it is, or will have already played it on console, but suffice to say if you've not as yet played it and are in the mood for an open world, quasi-Stone Age stealth game where you hunt robot dinosaurs, it's well worth checking out.

[Alan]

Shadow Tactics Blades Of The Shogun

So the first time I played this it was on PC, I liked it a lot but lost my save and I had start again reluctance. It was on sale on PSN for 3quid a few weeks ago and thought what the heck, a good excuse to start it again and I really want to play Desp3 but wanted to finish this first. What a great game! Loved it to bits! Perfect mix of challenging and satisfying and a decent story if not terribly original. Particularly enjoyed the prison level. Its jumped fight in as one of my fav games of last gen. It also plays really well on a pad too.

Stick the knee, stab the neck!


Desp3 next!

[Snowy]

Saw that Horizon Zero Dawn was on sale for £14 so picked it up, have to agree with my learned colleague Mr Snowy (as per his Steam review) that it's great fun, and gorgeous looking. I'm not sure what I can add as most of you will either know what it is, or will have already played it on console, but suffice to say if you've not as yet played it and are in the mood for an open world, quasi-Stone Age stealth game where you hunt robot dinosaurs, it's well worth checking out.

I absolutely loved HZD. I don't really follow console-only titles so had no expectations at all when I picked the game up, and what a treat.

[Wrathbone]

I couldn't wait for the Diablo 2 remaster, so I've given Diablo 3 another attempt after gently bouncing off it several times over the years. I never disliked it so much as it never grabbed me, but for some reason I'm thoroughly enjoying it this time. I've gone for my old favourite, the Barbarian, and it's so cathartic to whirlwind through droves of monsters. Diablo 2 still clinches it for me, as I prefer the permanence of choices when leveling up over Diablo 3's ever-increasing toolbox of abilities, but damn if it isn't a great game.