Currently Playing

[Lenny Solidus]

Kingdoms of Amalur Re-Reckoning - Fatesworn

If you are ever craving to revisit the likes of Fable but at the same time year for something a little more updated, you simply cannot go wrong with this. I utterly love spending time on this game, adore it even. It takes me right back to those early times playing WoW as a solo player unsure what area I will run into next or what form of new type of adversary will I have to take on small medium or large. It's such a well put together beautiful vibrant looking game with an amazing often haunting soundtrack. The combat still holds up perfectly well especially all of those wonderfully animated finishers. So much wonderful loot and ways to upgrade everything to fit your own unique style of play. Having a new completely adjustable camera and fov is a god send too.

The fact the game is still getting new content kind of blows my mind...

March 20, 2023 - THQ Nordic released Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-Reckoning on PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One some years after the game’s original release. Since then, the team behind the game has continued to pour content into the title so fans can enjoy the game to this day. The company has officially released a fresh update which gives players the opportunity to explore hidden locations and more.

• Revisit pivotal locations all across Amalur and explore secret hideouts
• Uncover lore of your former self and your special relation with Alyn Shir
• Embark on a scavenger hunt that pits you against the lowest of the low

Source: GoG

THQ Nordic are set to do a live event in August so who knows what the future holds for the ip, all I know is I can't wait to find out.

[Alan]

Advance Wars Rewhatever
I wish they'd pixel remastered it because its pretty soulless. The anime stuff is all nicely done but the game just feels like an AW copy. Actually went back to Days Of Ruin instead which is fantastic.

Doom Eternal
Dunno why its took me so long to start it but THISISSOMUCHFUCKINGFUN!

CoD: Modern Warfare 2 again
It was a free MP week and I cant deny I had a lot of fun running the party playlists. If it was £25 or less I'd probably have pulled the trigger (hawhaw) but I cant justify over 40. Also the progression unlock BS still bugs the fuck out of me.

Dead Cells: Castlevania
Ergh... its fine. Just fine, nothing more than just fine. There's clear reverence but overall pretty underwhelming.

Caldarious Blaze
Why do they keep trying to make shmups sexy?

Eve Online
I'm back in. After nearly a decade of staying away or occasionally dipping my toes in and pulling them out before the beasties nibbled them I'm back in. What a phenomenal game. Its its 20th anniversary next week and it still looks as good as any modern game and depth and vastness has never been rivalled. It is sad seeing all the guys I used to fly with being permanently offline because I'm so nostalgic for the times we had but I'm in a decent bit at the moment. In a quiet alliance that's aligned with one of the major powers so I have a lot of leeway to do my own thing or jump in their fleets without much commitment. I used to hate big fleet fights and I still do when its the massive ones that trigger huge tidi (when the server slows the game to 10% speed to avoid crashing the servers) but the big but not too big fleets (100-200man) I quite enjoy now, they're almost relaxing. I was in a massive 5000+ vs 5000+ fight a few weeks back when our war with the Chinese** was climaxing and it was a damn nightmare. Click fire on a target and literally go make a coffee and when you come back maybe your artillery will have fully cycled. Maybe.

**China used to have its own server but they've since been merged and the Chinese corps are a massive powerblock. They started moving into our space, building stations and such which are quite difficult to combat because they have to be destroyed in the owners prime time and they can field massive numbers in that time slot. We finally pushed out the last major foothold, a Keepstar, the largest of the stations, a week ago which I believe was the 10th attempt to kill it. My contribution is clearly tiny but the drama and the Yub Nub of it all when we took it down was something.

[Alan]

Very slowly working through Doom Eternal on nightmare and its so damn rewarding. I keep hitting a wall and thinking "nope, need to drop the difficulty" and then manage to punch the damn wall down and it feels so good. I'm only at the end of the Cultist Base so I really doubt I'll be able to finish it on nightmare but damn its so good. Every time I die I go "aaarrghhh that was so goooood!" smiling my face off. Its not an irritating difficulty like in a Souls game where they just go "fuck you" and you instadie in a dumb, clunky or near unavoidable way. It always feels fair and possible if you just do the death ballet right. My main gripe is theres almost too much to keep track of and find myself never using the flamethrower just sticking to chainsaw and glory kills saving the nades for the oh so satisfying cacodemon kills.

What a damn great engine too. My shitey ancient PC, everything set to max (except HDR, ray tracing and motion blur) and it rarely dips under 120fps at 1440 and it looks fantastic!

Oh also not really sold on the space fortress, its pointless shite tbh. Just get me to the next level!


Idol Showdown
Its a free game on steam that is a fighting game that based on Japanese streaming girls or something I think? Its a fan made thing and its really damn impressive for what it is. The training alone is better than most big budget fighting games. I'm not going to put much time into it but for what it is, very good! Kind of like a low rez Skullgirls in feel.

[Animalmother]

Control
I played this game not long after it first came out but just stopped for some reason not long into it. Reinstalled today and I think I know why I gave up last time. The terrible checkpoint system that dumps you back at the last area you took control of and if that's miles from where you died, tough shit. I'll stick with it a bit longer but I've a feeling it's just not for me.

[Snowy]

Picked up the last of the Warhammer Total War series last weekend. I have always loved the Warhammer world, and having it brought to life has been a real pleasure.

I have played both of the previous titles and wanted the opportunity to play the Grand Campaign where, rather than the story-based campaigns you get the entire map from all three games combined (immense) as well as all the factions, and away you go.

I do use a few mods to improve life, both from a gameplay element (the camera mod to improve the view in battles, letting you zoom right into the action) and a difficulty perspective (extra skill points on levelling up characters in-game), as well as tweaks to the cash I have available so I am not constantly trying to balance the books. The TW series for me is all about the stories that I tell myself while playing and having massive battles.

Really enjoying it as the forces of chaos god Slaanesh, and carving myself a nice little slice of the map. It takes sooooo fucking long just to play a single round, but man I lose hours to it.

[Lenny Solidus]

Outriders

So after taking a lengthy break from the game after the frequent cooperative sessions together (Snowy, Raid, El Gaucho and I) came to an eventual end I decided that A) I was missing the rush I enjoyed getting from playing the game and the insane amount of tinkering and loot available for my build. As far as third person looter shooter games go for me this has no equal and going from having to play the game at a locked 40fps cap due to the crazy amount of stuff that occurs on screen on my previous PC to a solid 69-79fps cap finally being able to enjoy all of that visual craziness happening with no hardware impact on the newer *well new to me* Skylake and 16gb ddr4 hardware, it is just bliss only adding to all the combined elements that make Outriders shine at its brightest.

Spoiler

I still maintain that it is a beautiful looking game, the amount of work that has gone into the maps and environments for a game that distracts you from all of it constantly is highly admirable and the rare downtimes you get urge you to properly take them in and fully appreciate it.

Hitting 200 hours but not yet owning the games stupidly overpriced first and probably only DLC Worldslayer it still takes me very much by surprise that I have many side quests left to do, and more recently I kept getting randomly invited into the expeditions with a rank 200 dude while my build still sits at 30 who carried me through the big finale expedition with the craziest most op looking motherfucking build you could possibly imagine. Firing a literal laser across the battlefield that decimates huge ads while I stand there with the words holy mother of joseph sat firmly on my tongue doing my absolute best not to get one shot. At the end I had done a respectable enough 95 million damage for my build - Mr Op at my side however had dealt 3 BILLION + damage. Or was it 30B? I don't recall - it was a bloody lot.

Anyways, before I took my leave feeling all weak and emancipated he randomly began running around the map shooting mundane objects you wouldn't really look at twice and doing so begun a succession of odd chimes to kick in, then making me take note of a large door I spotted that symbols above the door had lit up sadly I had to leave before he could complete the mystery. I had no idea there were even such secrets in the game.

Doing expeditions solo is a tough but oh so very rewarding experience making you squeeze every last ounce of firepower and anomaly power that you can to make it through every new section putting your reflexes build control and wits to the ultimate test. It still feels somewhat ironic how quickly I blew off Outriders after the demo for it initially released, dismissing it completely as a jank fest not worthy of my own or anyone elses time. I never bought it, it took my son to actually buy it for me to even play it and look now here I am still loving it long after he finished off both the campaign all expeds and the dlc. As it stands today it is my most played game of the past year or two which makes it even more dulling that developers People Can Fly not only failed to make a profit on the game but have now all but abandoned it and the ip itself already starting work on something else completely new.

The core essence that is Outriders and its insanely visceral absolutely fun filled unbelievably well crafted combat loops and build freedom that truly are remarkable - its such a damn shame that the game was allowed to release with so many obstacles not yet overcome. Ones that made a brand new ip that had more players on launch day than a new Battlefield game go from having so many possibilities to being dead and forgotten with less just 200 players as I type this on Steam, thank goodness for crossplay. Sure it might be over for many but its games such as Outriders that I fire up at least once sometimes even twice a day that now remind me why I still enjoy gaming and as long as the servers remain up I will continue to tinker in it and enjoy it, who knows I may even one day buy that DLC if its drops down a smidge and not have to rely on literal random op powerhouses to survive that next incoming wave.

Oh Outriders. Oh what could have been.

- Addition:

After all that complaining surrounding the games DLC I realised there was actually a far cheaper direct Upgrade version you could buy for a little over £10. Almost a year one month shy of it coming out I have now started my ascension journey. Time to burn and learn, Pyro all the way.

[ManBearSquid]

Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 2

I recently replayed the main game (first time playing it on PC) and then the first DLC. The main campaign is superb fun, and the game is so well optimised. I did mostly enjoy TAG Part 1 but some of the difficulty spikes were nuts and it has some overly long arenas. Part 2 has been some more of the same and I've given it a break for now.

All in, I preferred the main campaign and TAG part 1 so far.

Far Cry 6

This is a strange one. There are things that I really like but the game routinely pulls me out of the immersion and it therefore becomes a mixture of fun and frustration. In the beginning, combat felt pretty poor (playing Doom Eternal hasn't helped that!) as it was so sluggish and inaccurate.

I also got pulled into some Stranger Thing's crossover mission with no real clue that it was leading up to that until I had passed a point of no return. It was shite.

During a session after that, I was taking on a convoy and having fun chasing it down only to have the escorting military jeep destroy the engine of my vehicle before I could succeed. Its route involved a small town and I found myself a decent vantage point behind a sign on a garage roof where I planned to snipe the buggers as they drove towards me. The major flaw here was that the game wouldn't render the vehicles properly (it really wasn't a crazy distance by any means) so only the jeep showed up - or so I thought - and the guard exited the vehicle. As soon as I started blasting, the convoy materialised and fucked off down a different road. What an absolute pisser.

I do have some fun here and there with the game but I don't see me finishing it. For now, it remains on my playlist. Just.
Elden Ring

I've parked this game multiple times now. I do enjoy it enough when I'm into it but I definitely prefer the more refined experience of the souls/bloodbourne/sekiro games. I last left it at the Fire Giant and then the area that leads to the haligtree. I'll come back to it soon enough.

Xcom 2: WOTC

I've yet to finish a campaign of the expansion ever since I bought it a year or so after its release. I finished the vanilla game back in 2016 on my old laptop that struggled to run it very well. I've been really enjoying this playthrough and have been plugging away at it from time to time.

My downfall last time was that it was set to iron man mode and I didn't play it for 6+ months; this did not end well when I finally returned. Decided to ditch that run.

Sniper Elite 3

Haven't played it in over a month or so now but I do like it enough. I played Sniper Elite 4 last year and really enjoyed it, I also think that it is better than this one in terms of mission design. I have the DLC levels but I'm not so sure that I'll play those - we'll see.

Recently Gave Up On

Dying Light: The Following

I played the original game last year and really enjoyed my time with it. I waited a year to try this out as I didn't want to over do it, but when I finally did return and start this it just didn't really grab me in the same way. It was fun enough, and there were some cool things, but I simply enjoyed the main game more.

Assassin's Creed Unity

The draw distance and general pop-in was so distractingly poor that I binned this in less than an hour.

Days Gone

I really enjoyed most of my time with this game, it just sort of petered out for me in the end. I didn't much care for the character's themselves so wasn't hooked enough to carry on for the story, and I played around 45 hours and could see that there was still loads to go. Fun game, I had just had enough.

[Animalmother]

Days Gone is great but I agree it was over long and petered out by the end. Do hope there's another one though.

Boltgun
An old school Doom style shooter set in the 40k universe. Supposedly a companion game to Space Marine from a few years ago.
You play a brick shithouse in blue armour and obliterate heretic scum with a ridiculously overpowered hand cannon. It's great I've only played a few levels and it's pretty basic but very enjoyable. Ammo and health are in abundance so your free to let fly with the gunishment with wild abandon. Music is excellent as well.

[Mantis]

I finished Horizon Forbidden West the other day. Incredibly pretty game but very bloated, even more so than the first one, this time they've added an absolute ton of random side activities and minigames, many of which aren't particularly good. I liked the story in the first game so stuck with this one to see where it went, it was okay but lost a lot of the mystery the first one had. I can't stand the combat so played on storymode because playing through the first game on normal difficulty was the most painfully tedious slog imaginable.

Aloy does become slightly more likable in this one, though not by much. She's still the worst protagonist I think I've ever had to tolerate for 40 hours.

Onto the newly released Street Fighter 6 next. Not sure why I bought into the hype with this one because I inevitably get very tired of fighting games as soon as I take them online and realise that I just can't beat any of the absolutely rabid fanbase these games cater to. I'm going to try and really learn this one though because I think has a really good looking aesthetic and Street Fighter typically isn't as crazy to learn as some of the Arc Systemworks games that I've tried to dip into in the past.

[ManBearSquid]

Modern Warfare 2019

Having reached my limit with Far Cry 6, I still wanted something shooty that I could dip into when the notion takes me. I think that recently a large issue I've had with gaming has been my choices to try various open world games (which I regularly tire of before completion). Something more linear has been very welcome.

Fairly sure that I'm on the last level and I've thoroughly enjoyed it: the spectacle, the gameplay, atmosphere, engagement, all of it. This is the first Call of Duty that I've played since MW3 and playing through this one has been the closest to the feeling of being absorbed by the set-pieces and chaos since the original 2003 game and its 2007 leap into modern day settings. There are some pretty harrowing scenes within it all.

Thankfully, I didn't have to download the full 175gb of the game as I only wanted the campaign which came in at 101gb. This was something that put me off trying it in the past when space was more of an issue.

[Alan]

Street Fighter 6
I am that rabid fanbase (though I'm not very good -_-). I'm 12 hours into it already which is, for me these days, a huge huge chunk of time. Loving it! Its so fun and so quick to get into matches that the time just melts away. I am petrified of Manon and JP, slightly less so of Blanka. Just having a great time with it. Not sure about modern controls yet, I haven't ran into anyone abusing them in any way so far so I remain neutral.

Big caveat ahead though. Everything I love about it is exactly what SF5 launched with and got so much flack for. Everything beyond that is quite shit. The single player thing plays like an early PS2 game and while I appreciate the utter daftness of it its still shit. Worse still its shit that doesn't respect your time for example some things happen at night and to change from day to night you have to go to a specific door (could be your flat, could be a magic door) which can lead you to having to go to the other side of the map and back just to change from day to night or vice versa. There is fast travel but not very many points around the map. I had a mission where I was given 3 photos of posters to find and matching up landmarks I found the correct locations but strangely no posters. I swapped from night into day and it just gave me waypoints on the posters, I didnt have to find them by matching up landmarks and also the posters go to bed at night I guess, go figure. The main game is very pretty but the single player is dog ugly like a cheap high rez 360 game. Currently playing the SP on steamdeck while I watch/listen to something else mostly to unlock the costumes. Honestly, SF5's awful story mode was better.

The battle hub works as intended but I dont understand why anyone would want to run around in a fake arcade when you can just matchmake from the menus. Classic games in the arcade are neat but I have better ways to play them. The avatar battles could be fun, especially with the utter spawn of satan creations their character creator lets you make. It'll be interesting to see if a scene rises up around that but I imagine there will be a few OP builds you can make that will dominate. Oh yeah how that works is you pick a base moveset for your avatar (say... all of Chun Li's normal moves) then you learn special moves from each character on the single player world map and can install them on your avatar in any way you want. You could have Chuns normals, a dragon punch, a sonic boom and a spinning piledriver, so long as the motions dont overlap.

Ive not played arcade mode yet so I dunno if they did proper endings there or just the storyboard style from 5.

Theres so much content in here but 50% is trash. I dont regret a penny spent on it but if I wanted more than to sit down and press "find ranked match" I would probably be pissed.

[Mantis]

I've only done one character on Arcade mode so far but it is just the storyboard style plot. From the one I did, there didn't really appear to be a story at all.

I quite like the battle hub idea, but then I spent a good chunk of last night running around it with a mate watching random cabs, fighting each other and letting randoms join our queue so we could swap in and out every battle. It's a neat little community aspect.

Then I took myself online properly and did my ranked placement matches and haven't beaten a single real player since. -_-

[Alan]

If I was to give any advice it would be forget big combos and just concentrate on leaning one small combo that starts with a low, one overhead (hits crouch block), one anti air and find a couple of strong normals and win via footsies. Oh and crossups will get you far, especially on the lower tiers (a jumping attack that if landed far enough back will have to be blocked the opposite direction).

Ryu as the basic everyman;
forward+MK is a great fast poke
Jumping MK crosses up
Low MK, fireball is a fantastic basic combo and can be combod into from a jumping attack, including the crossup. It can also link into a super buy doing a second fireball motion.
I think his good antiair is down+HP
forward+MP I think is his overhead

Go for lots of dash in then down MK fireball and when they start crouch blocking a lot through in some overheads. Most characters that arent grapplers have very similar tools. My Juri is almost to gold and its essentially all I do


Or pick Zangief with modern controls and youre good. ¬_¬

[Mantis]

I tried the modern controls briefly and absolutely hated them. It felt like you sacrificed so much finer control over your character for the sake of not having to do roll-up attacks and such, felt very clunky to me in comparison to the classic style.

I've not spent much time learning any specific character yet, but I quite like the look of Ken from having just done his character guide. Lots of abilities with plenty of mixups and no super complicated combinations to remember. I might give Ryu a go as well just for a bit of variety.

[Alan]

Yeah you do and I think you lose 20% damage.... but Zangief getting one button piledrivers kind of makes up for it.