Currently Playing

[Sly Boots]

Just bought Sovereign Syndicate, which I've had on my wishlist for a while, and I saw that the Steam store page is playing our very own resident Boring Dad's playthrough! Nice work, Sly!

Haha, cheers!

[Alan]

Doom Eternal
I'm back trying to get through this on nightmare. I stopped playing for a bit and it took me a while to get back into the ability loop but bloody loving it again. I cant remember why I stopped playing last time, probably just my wandering mind. I'm a bit stuck just after I retrieve the crucible though, mostly because of the bloody marauder! The area you fight him in isnt great for dashing about as theres a lot of stuff you can get stuck on and damn its frustrating! Armoured Manc, Doomknight, stupid slithery twonks, caco - I can reliably get his entourage dealt with its mostly just him and his stupid ghost dog! Once I fell down the well where I came from, found an encounter orb and thought "Ooh, maybe I'll get some BFG ammo from this and cheese him" - the orb then spawned another marauder in an even tighter space. FLM.

It'll feel great when I finally get him but oh the squirming about in my chair, biting my lip every time I die is getting to me.

Got him first time today! And it did feel great! They actually teach you how to do it easily a little earlier with weapon quickswap. Honestly the main thing is dont panic. Just stand there, stagger with shotty, quick switch to ballista for high damage and repeat. I barely moved once I was in the sweet spot!

Now I'm just waiting on it throwing two of the bastards at me at once



As a PS the "would you like to try out your crucible" section was SO cathartic after being stuck at that one encounter.

Games a masterpiece!

[ManBearSquid]

I stopped somewhere in the 2nd DLC, just wandered into new things. The DLCs are also nails! I wasn't enjoying the 2nd one quite as much, maybe that was why.

I believe the Ghost Dogs only activate if you try shooting the Marauder outside of his window of opportunity. Once I learned that, game changer.

[Alan]

Doom Eternal is fucking done and I'm not ashamed to admit I almost cried on the last boss FFS! (and no bloody achievement for doing it on nightmare! :p) There was so much shit going on I couldn't tell where I had already hurt him half the time. Absolutely fantastic game and I even really liked the marauder by the end. I prefer the previous game because I feel like we didnt need the story to get so fleshed out but the combat in this is better and probably the best FPS combat there is.

Also the cheat code for unlocking Doom 2 on the computer in the fortress is "FlynnTaggart". That just made me grin more than it should.**





**for those of you pretending to not be sadcases Flynn Taggart is the Doomguys name in the novels. The first two are great trash the last two not so much.

[Animalmother]

Palworld
The latest big thing that has over a million concurrent players on Steam alone, probably the same on Game Pass. Pokemon with guns seems to be the selling point. Gave it a go and quickly lost interest, just not for me it would seem. It's a typical survival game where you mine wood and stone, build a base and capture weird little creatures with poke balls. Apparently you can later arm the creatures with Uzi's and miniguns but I never got that far.

Looks like a game made for excitable streamers to scream at. Not my jam.

[Drarok]

I couldn't disagree more!

I've never played any Pokemon games, but I've played Minecraft and Valheim a fair bit, and had a blast on a private Rust (I think?) server.

Palworld is quite grindy at the start, but I've seen my friends' server and it gets pretty involved. I've got a single-player world on the go and I've made a character in their server as well. Started off with the Game Pass version to see if I liked it, and stumped for the Steam version to join multiplayer.

[Animalmother]

I couldn't disagree more!

I've never played any Pokemon games, but I've played Minecraft and Valheim a fair bit, and had a blast on a private Rust (I think?) server.

Palworld is quite grindy at the start, but I've seen my friends' server and it gets pretty involved. I've got a single-player world on the go and I've made a character in their server as well. Started off with the Game Pass version to see if I liked it, and stumped for the Steam version to join multiplayer.

Fair enough, I just couldn't get past that initial grind so I lost interest. Having to manually feed my creatures as well was a pain, for some reason they wouldn't use the multiple feed baskets I left around and often got stuck in walls. It's something I might come back to in the future once it's had a few updates. I was the same with Grounded, hated it at first but grew to love playing it.

[Alan]

Tekken 8
I fucking wish, so much, that Capcom put this much stuff in SF6. Its packed with with content and most of it seems pretty good. Tekken has just never been by jam, its fun but Ive never got deep into games that are all about juggles. I also dont know how I feel about their version of modern controls (easy mode) where you can activate and deactivate it mid match. In SF6 if you pick their easy mode you're stuck with the benefits and limitations of that for the match but in T8 you can turn it on, do an autocombo and switch back to normal mode. If you like Tekken it seems like a good ass Tekken.

A Short Hike
Yeah that was quite delightful. Its like what if the Switch Zelda games were fun to play. You walk about, you climb a mountain, you have another wander, you go to bed. Its simple but its tight.

Hollow Knight
I keep trying to like it because people keep trying to tell me its the best metroidvania but they're wrong. It looks and sounds nice but I hate the way it plays. I hate the pushback on attacks, I hate that when you die it starts you with zero mana meaning if you're going to a boss you have to go farm mana on fodder enemies first and I hate the map system.

Shotgun King
I keep coming back to this. Chess but you only have 1 king but he has a shotgun. It follows the rules of chess but you have a shotgun. They just added controller support so I must try it on deck.

[Animalmother]

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
This was already on sale and I had enough Xbox points to get another €25 off, not bad for a practically brand new game. I'm kind of regretting my purchase.

It's perfectly fine, but I think that's all it will ever be. It's oft refered to as Farcry in Pandora and thats a pretty good description. After a very long intro (10 to 15 fucking minutes...) you finally get to control your 10ft tall teenage Na'vi protagonist. A bit of farting about on a human base and you step outside which is a genuinely beautiful, your screen is suddenly flooded with colour, it's gorgeous in places. You explore a sizeable bit of forest, run along logs and stroll through bioluminescent plants. It's very pretty. Then the game starts and it's down hill from there, it's just all a bit bland. Your fellow Na'vi are a mixture of po faced wankers or annoying wankers. The humans are, funnily enough, also wankers.

I'm struggling to play for more than an hour at a time before wishing I was playing something else. I imagine once you get out into the world it becomes much more interesting and more like FC Primal (which I loved). I will keep at it as I'm sure there's a good game trying to get out.

[Rusty]

Nope, 100% this. I cancelled my Ubisoft subscription to remind me to play as much as I want until it runs out, then I'll never miss it again.,

[Snowy]

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora
This was already on sale and I had enough Xbox points to get another €25 off, not bad for a practically brand new game. I'm kind of regretting my purchase.

It's perfectly fine, but I think that's all it will ever be. It's oft refered to as Farcry in Pandora and thats a pretty good description. After a very long intro (10 to 15 fucking minutes...) you finally get to control your 10ft tall teenage Na'vi protagonist. A bit of farting about on a human base and you step outside which is a genuinely beautiful, your screen is suddenly flooded with colour, it's gorgeous in places. You explore a sizeable bit of forest, run along logs and stroll through bioluminescent plants. It's very pretty. Then the game starts and it's down hill from there, it's just all a bit bland. Your fellow Na'vi are a mixture of po faced wankers or annoying wankers. The humans are, funnily enough, also wankers.

I'm struggling to play for more than an hour at a time before wishing I was playing something else. I imagine once you get out into the world it becomes much more interesting and more like FC Primal (which I loved). I will keep at it as I'm sure there's a good game trying to get out.

I got my money's worth out of this, but I don't disagree. There is a strong whiff of FC Primal to it and the game does indeed open up, but after playing for a good while and enjoying it despite the Ubi collectathon nature of the game, I felt a switch click in my head that said "OK, I have seen all it has now" and my interest died there and then. I have dipped back in but left the game probably no more than 25-50% completed. Maybe I will go back and finish it, but unless I were to team up and co-op it with someone I doubt it now.

[Raid]

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor

Given how much of a Star Wars nut I am, and how excited I was for this, it's surprising I managed to hold off on it for this long to let them sort the various issues the PC version had (I don't have a current-gen console, so couldn't play it on anything else). It's been largely worth the wait though. I haven't touched Fallen Order since I completed it years ago, but I immediately sank back into this like a good pair of slippers. It helps that the first significant boss you come across reminds you of the importance of parrying to break an opponent's guard, as the game is far more difficult if you don't do it. I didn't learn to do that until, well, the same boss in the first game (about two thirds of the way through) where it was fundamentally necessary, and it was hard to break out of the jump/evade muscle memory by that point. It's *so* much more generous with the timing of parries than other games of this ilk, and it remains the only one I've ever gotten along with because of it. I'm playing on the second-hardest difficulty, and find I'm finishing most of the bosses in one or two attempts - they're satisfying fights, but they don't outstay their welcome. I probably spent as much time running back to boss fights in Elden Ring as I've spent playing the entirety of my ten hours in Jedi Survivor.

There's been a little too much platforming in this one. It's not the climbing sections are especially long or difficult, but they're the game's weakest content and the bits most ruined by the slightly frustrating camera. Thankfully the game is extremely generous with unlocking shortcuts, and it's rare that you ever have to repeat any platforming sections. Still, I'd much rather be swinging my lightsaber, as the combat's as fast and satisfying as ever, and the new stances feel varied enough to warrant their inclusion.

But the best thing? It has Battle Droids. I love the B1 Droids from the Clone Wars series; they're bafflingly inept, but their voice acting managed to make them charming and almost adorable. Survivor got the same voice actor in to voice the game's B1s, and just standing around listening to their often quite funny voice lines has become a simple pleasure before you one-shot them with their own deflected blaster bolts.

The story's engaging, the acting is surprisingly decent (helped by some of the best mo-cap faces I've seen in a game), and it's filled with charm. I'm loving it so far.

[Sly Boots]

How would you rate the current PC performance mate?

I also have been holding off, even at its regular sales price of £30 it feels steep for a game that potentially won't run that great.

[Raid]

It's usually flawless for me, with the odd area (usually the larger, open ones, but sometimes smaller ones with complex lighting and obvious ray-tracing) where you can see a little slowdown, but never anything I'd describe as choppy. I've had a single game crash in ten hours. For reference this is on an i5-13600K, 32gb DDR5 and an RTX 3080, and with all of the graphics the settings on their highest.

[Sly Boots]

Interesting, cheers!