Currently Playing

[Alan]

Hollow Knight
Ive been chipping away at this for a while now and finally finished it. Its a beautiful game with great music and audio but I don't get the blind fan fervour for it. Other than presentation its a competent metroidvania with some major annoyances. For one, and this is old man gripe, it doesn't respect my ever so swiftly dwindling time and seems to go our of its way to waste it. Theres one part where to advance you basically have to walk through a wall (path to Kingdoms Edge) and if it showed on the map that there was a path that would be fine but it doesn't and other than blind luck I'm not sure how you would find it. There's other fairly long paths you can take and at the end of it you are rewarded with nothing but a minor lore paragraph and the lore is not good enough for that to be worth the time! Mainline places being gated by geo (money) and whatever the mana is called are also irritating because you just have to go waste 5mins hitting basic enemies to farm which is quite tiresome. Its good, its beautiful but if its just by gameplay so many other vanias kick its arse.

[DjchunKfunK]

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Believe the hype, this game is very, very good. I wasn't 100% sold on the combat to start with as I was struggling with parrying but once I moved to dodging and also turned the difficulty down I was having a lot more fun. My old ass reflexes are not good enough nowadays. The story is really starting to hit now I'm in chapter 2 and the world design, art and music and brilliant.

[Mantis]

It's been high on my hype list for a long time. Really looking forward to digging into it once I've got a bit of time. Looks very much like how I imagined a modern day Final Fantasy done right should be.

[Sly Boots]

I'm not sure what it is exactly, but in the gameplay I've seen, the combat just doesn't grab me at all - even beyond the parry timing, which having read what people are saying about it I know 100% I would struggle with massively. Maybe it feels better when playing than when watching someone else do it.

[Lenny Solidus]

I've been watching Lirik play the game the last few days and am quite undecided on it still. As flashy as the combat looks it's all a bit stilted in nature when you are not involved with what are unquestionably beautifully produced cut scenes and dramatic character moments, that music though. It's already available at a decent enough price for the curious and will no doubt drop considerably in months to come.

The Trombone style encounter.

[Animalmother]

You given up on Stalker 2 then?

[Sly Boots]

You given up on Stalker 2 then?

Hasn't everyone?

[Lenny Solidus]

You given up on Stalker 2 then?

Unfortunately so.

As I reached the ten hours mark I found myself typically spending more and more time installing and testing mods than making any real progression in the game and what progression I had made was a classic blueprint type mix of frustration disappointment and technical shortcomings. The very things that were meant to pull me into the game the engagement's consistently grim atmosphere and the constant desire to be challenged by X, Y and Z every few steps slowly without pause surely wore me down to the point I would hover over the games exe and just think to myself why am I doing this to myself? I'm not enjoying it one bit. Of course, it's not the type of game to allow any true reprieve and the amount of bugs I'd encounter made it all feel like I was running an early test version and all that after endless updates the game had received and mounting mods I had hand-picked to counter set issues I had.

I do think that choosing UE5 was a bad move the amount of visual noise on screen I feel really hampered rather than enhanced the game overall making every area look the same and nowhere near as distinct or as memorable as the originals. The fact anyone put in 40-100 hours into the game very much blows my mind, I was already struggling to continue within the very first birthing hours.

In the end it very much became a purchase I recognised only as wanting to support the devs for enduring rather than for actually delivering because what I ended up with was not really what I wanted.

[Animalmother]

You definitely made the right decision there, drop out early before you invested too much time (and stress). I don't regret finishing it, but had I know the effort and frustration involved I wouldn't have even installed.

[elgaucho]

Been playing a couple of games a lot lately (aside from coop Darktide) - thought they warranted a mention here

Expedition 33
It's on Gamepass, and it was getting hyped, so I jumped into it. I fully expected to hate it, but the world building in this is just fantastic.

I usually also can't stand the combat model, but, while I'm not absolutely enthusiastic about it, it's playable, and there's definite depth in the combat mechanics if you want to get into it.

But this is a game to play for an experience, and to get lost in it. And it does that incredibly well.





No Rest For The Wicked
New patch for this early access beauty just dropped, so I've started a second play through, after spending about 35 hours on what I assume to be just the prologue / act 1 part of the game.

Made by the developers of the Ori series, this game is absolutely amazing. I love everything about it. Artwork that's only been given more polish, a new soundtrack that fits the game series well, and combat that's.... well.... vicious!

This is not a cleave your way through hundreds of mobs game. This is a game where every fight can cost you your life. And every weapon feels soooo different. Fist Weapons have just been introduced, and while it has an allure.... so far it's bloody hard to play! Every sword plays differently and has different skills. Straight Swords, Curved Swords, Blood Rusted Swords, single daggers, double daggers, maces, wands, staves.... the list goes on - you could do a playthrough with each weapon, and I'm not sure you'd get tired of it! There's nuance and finesse to learning each weapon and using it in combat.

And telegraphs, especially on boss fights, are really well done. You feel you CAN win the fight, but impatience often precedes death. There are annoyances - camera angles and ranged attackers can pair badly, and when you're up in a 1vx, you're gonna feel the disadvantage!

A future patch will be bringing coop to this beauty, but I cannot stress enough how very very good this is already.

If you like a challenge, if you love map exploration and finding secrets and shortcuts and ending up in secret places... you're gonna love this! Just beware the difficulty!

[DjchunKfunK]

I'm not sure what it is exactly, but in the gameplay I've seen, the combat just doesn't grab me at all - even beyond the parry timing, which having read what people are saying about it I know 100% I would struggle with massively. Maybe it feels better when playing than when watching someone else do it.

It's a turn-based JRPG made by a French company. The parrying and dodging give the combat a different feel and the world building, story and music are really good.

[Animalmother]

It's a turn-based JRPG made by a French company. The parrying and dodging give the combat a different feel...

Ufff, that made me lose all interest in playing it.

Atomfall
I was playing this for a while after it was released but gradually got a pain in my nuts with it. The constant option to "Follow new lead?" was getting out of hand. I must of had about 30 active leads at one point. I finally got the device that reroutes power, so much more of the game has opened up. Have upgraded all my weapons. No actual mods, just improves the quality level (which is a tad disappointing). I'll keep at for the foreseeable future.

Have come across a few of the little Easter eggs scattered across the map. Found a Dr Who one and 3 skeletons sitting a bathtub which was almost certainly Last of the Summer Wine.

[DjchunKfunK]

Finished Clair Obscur, it's a really good game. Really liked the world they created and the story was good and well told. Music and combat remained really good throughout. The level design started to be a bit lacking late on with fairly long dungeons that were all combat, this is where the lower budget starts to show I think. If you have any interest in JRPGs or turn-based RPGs than you should give it a look. One of the best games I've played this year.

[Mantis]

Slowly working my way through the Oblivion remaster and there's no doubt in my mind this is the superior game to Skyrim, old mid-2000s mechanical janks and all. The scope for exploring like a proper sandbox RPG and totally breaking the game just makes it so much more freeing to play around with than the trimmed back features that Skyrim went with.

I also made a start on the Warhammer 40k Rogue Trader cRPG and can tell from the first 10 minutes alone that I'm probably going to really enjoy playing through that. I've parked it now though as I can't be jumping back and forth between two huge RPGs like that.

[Sly Boots]

Rogue Trader is great, with some absolutely busted builds you can put together, in particular for Argenta.