Currently Playing

[Wrathbone]

I've not given it a second look since briefly checking performance. At this point I'd probably stick with the original game until they sort things out.

[Sly Boots]

https://www.pcgamer.com/a-tech-analysis ... omparison/

Interesting read

[ManBearSquid]

Quantum Break

First of all, this is not a very good PC port. The disparity between the cutscenes that are all locked to 30fps is quite jarring, both with stutters (boom boom) and graphical issues. The SSR seems broken too. Along with that, the episode streaming isn't the best so it's been easier to just tab out of the game and watch them on youtube.

Not the best start, but I've actually enjoyed my time with the game - the story of time travel is actually a good one. The combat can be fun at times, but certainly feels lacklustre in comparison to their other games. I'm not fully sold on the almost 50/50 game and TV show split, for a time I actually wished they'd just stuck with one or the other, but I can appreciate what they were trying to do.

The visual fx on display for the time fracture is rather awesome and, at times, the game is brimming with Remedy's style. It's a cool sci-fi romp marred by being a shoddy port and feeling at times a disjointed experience.

Death Stranding

Finished this relatively recently and I adored it.

In the pipeline:

I recently bought Alan Wake 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 (with PL) for decent prices on EGS.

Any advice for CP2077 builds? I don't know much about the games skills etc.

[Sly Boots]

Re CP2077, it really depends what your desired playstyle is. Personally I've had the most fun going the melee cyberware route (mantis blades, cyberwire, gorilla arms) as you can just wade into mobs of enemies and go completely ham on them. You need to make sure you've invested properly in armour though as otherwise you're too squishy.

But if you want to be more of a sneaky/sniper/hacker type the different skills trees, perks etc mean it's very viable also.

[Alan]

I found the most fun was to be stealthy but have a big katana for when it goes south and just go nuts on them.

Diablo 4 (free trial)
I have never been so bored at the start of a Diablo game. Generally the opening act is the most fun but this was embarrassingly bad.

[Animalmother]

I redid my entire skill tree to get a better option in a mission then just left it like that for CP 2077. As far as I'm aware you can respec it whenever you want without penalty. Need to respec again to make myself less squishy.

I also found a Death Stranding Easter egg in a lab..

[Animalmother]

Remnant 1 & 2 are back on Game Pass. Decided to give the first one a go as I've heard people say great things about it. I bounced off it so hard my ears are still ringing. I can't even explain why really, it just felt wrong for me. I couldn't even equip my melee weapon no matter how hard I tried and the menus were of no help. Shame.

[Lenny Solidus]

The Division: Underground DLC

After purchasing the base game at £3 it was a literal no-brainer when the Ubisoft store listed all three official DLC's at as little as £2 each, I immediately picked them all up and quite honestly the randomly assigned operations you work through in this particular dlc are extremely fun due to their close quarters nature in nothing but tunnel systems - randomly entered areas where the aggressive AI are always almost right on top of you as you push on through their ranks and boss types and no matter the difficulty you choose rewards are always bountiful.

It's all endgame based content drops oh and there are still a hell of a lot of active players too, so finding someone to pair up with isn't ever an issue, not bad for a 2016 release. Graphically the game holds up extremely well with near flawless level design texture work and mechanics, it too runs extremely well at all times compared to the hit-and-miss often technically maddening but still great nature of the follow-up.



Also, I forget who it was but to whomever recommended using the support station as a secondary after stubbornly going without for far too long trying to rely on only my gun skills to survive, that thing is great.

[Animalmother]

The Finals
An arena shooter by ex devs from Dice. It looks amazing and you can blow the shit out of most of the building like you used to be able in Battlefield games. Alas I have no idea what I'm doing and keep getting killed, one of my teammates dropped out after a minute and left us handicapped. I don't blame them as I wanted to leave after the first few minutes as well.

Too fast paced and jumpy for the likes of me so I think I'll give it a miss. I do hope it does well as it looks like it'll be a fun game if you can gel with it.

[Lenny Solidus]

Tribes III: Rivals

I can't positively stress enough just how good it feels to be able to fire up a random match on a Tribes game once again, in just two days I've had some of the most tense played matches in the 5v5 mode It feels like Ascend has almost come back again returned though as a very different take this time along with it. When you first eye up some of the smaller 5v5 maps you might think they are too overly simplistic looking, but if you know Tribes you know every little minor mound or bump can assist you as you get the air you require and the engagements as expected are just exhilarating often heart pounding as you joust with someone both on your very last but if hp. You can now retrieve some health via small glowing balls left by downed players, which is cool. Weapons and weapon leading all feel pretty similar, if a little unresponsive at times.

There is a huge caveat to all of the above praise, however. The skiing/momentum system at times but not quite all the time just feels a bit limiting and kinda jacked up in comparison with TA. There have been times when I felt as if I couldn't build up any momentum to save my life coming to a dead stop at the most unfortunate times and was getting wiped out left right and center - yet other times when I've held the enemy flag for a good amount of time as my team fought to return ours when I managed kept every ounce of my momentum speed and height awareness and was near untouchable. I completely understand that hitting a rock or a wall kills momentum, but not getting a ski land just exactly right should not eliminate every bit of your momentum, some maybe but not all.

The good and average players are already instantly evident obviously, I do feel the skill ceiling on this one might be even higher than TA before it once the larger more intricate maps are introduced and that's ok, it feels fresh and that means I want my arse kicked enough to want to adequately improve.

All in all it's a highly promising start for a game still in the early alpha stage, it gets what Tribes players love even if it doesn't exactly take us directly back to the vaunted Tribes 2 era many still yearn for. If you loved either Vengeance or Ascend I recommend giving it a go, there are niggles of course and some bugs including an annoying one where the flag holder you are chasing down isn't in the same place as the marker not sure if related to lag or not but I do believe this is about to be fixed quickly.

Tribes is back baby, I've been waiting eleven long fucking years to say exactly that. Feels good.

[Mantis]

Oh man, don't get my hopes it for this mate. I loved Ascend so much I'll be gutted if they drop the ball with this one too.

[Raid]

The only issue I had with Rivals was that I didn't seem to be able to get altitude the same way I used to in Ascend; the jetpack energy supply seems to be a bit miserly, and I couldn't see an option for an energy pack. I did try the boost pack, but it didn't seem to be working. Oh, and they don't yet have the comms menu in, so you can't stab in a quick VVS when you try to rocket jump without first realising you're on a quarter health.

Edit: Oh, didn't realise the playtest was already over! I only got to play one game. Drat. Ah well, 100% victory rate and 100% most kills in a game is a record I'm happy to hold on to.

[Alan]

Alina Of The Arena
So heres the problem. "A roguelike deckbuilding tactics game that combines elements from 'Slay the Spire' and 'Into the Breach'." You invoke probably the best deckbuilder and one of the best games ever in your blurb on steam. You copy cards from Slay and other than the fact you move around a play area each turn and can effect the placement of enemies it has sweet fuck all in common with Into The Breach. Right off the bat you're setting yourself up for failure.

Its alright though. Its a little dull but its solid. It would be a decent Deck game if the controls werent kind of bizarre but you could get used to them. There's no real reason to pick it over Slay and its not even in the conversation with Breach but its fine.


Eve: Vanguard (playtest)
So either this is going to be the most boring PvPvE extraction shooter I have ever played or its in such an early state that they should never have made this an open playtest. The map, a crashsite is so bland with only a few decent landmarks, the E's are super dumb and dont even have a death animation and the quests are boring as shit.

So you land and hit capslock, this gives you a list of 3 missions to pick from. Easy ones will net you 30,000 credits, more involved up to 90,000. The easy ones are basically walking around opening loads of crates (strewn everywhere) hoping one will drop some of the "electronic parts" you need, the more complex have you powering up 5 generators then building a beacon - all things that make noise and can attract players. When you've made cash you can build an extraction beacon and extract loot+cash or extract just cash via a banking terminal. Theres one weapon in the playtest which feels fine, you dont get much ammo but can craft more fairly easily. You can also build a deployable shield and.. something else, I forget. Thats about it really. You start with one respawn but as you kill players and E's you can harvest biomatter from them and when you have enough you can craft another clone (respawn) at a terminal.

Might it become something worth playing? Maybe, but its a long long way off. I dont understand why they didnt just make a spiritual sequel to Dust 514, other than extraction shooters being the current hotness (tenner says they arent by the time this comes out).

[Animalmother]

Ash of Gods: Redemption
Me and turn based games just don't get on, I'm pretty sure they actually hate me. I got Ash of God's for less than €2, the trailer made it look interesting so I decided to give it a go. A pretty cool animated intro with some rad music by the guy who did The Witcher and Max Payne 2. Good start.

Here is where my enjoyment ended. Your character is attacked by 3 bandits and this is the combat tutorial. You need to perform a specific attack on one guy but it won't let you, the instruction text stays on the screen and you can't continue. Hitting every button on the controller, frustrated childlike swearing and multiple restarts don't help. So that's that then

[Sly Boots]

Anthem

Saw it for a few quid on CDkeys and thought what the hell, played the intro and think I'm done with it

It's not that it's terrible - I think games this year have easily sunk to a new low - but from what I've read the gameplay never really changes beyond what it was in the opening hour so I'll just assume I've had the full Anthem experience lol.