I've played all 3. Just it's free on Gamepass now and there's no games out so looking for something else to play.
I've played all 3. Just it's free on Gamepass now and there's no games out so looking for something else to play.
Horizon Zero Dawn is quite good. Early days but I'm enjoying sneaking around and blowing robots up. Or the overpowered 'hide in bushes and stealth kill everything' move. Not big on the story. I'll be interested to hear what the Zero Dawn was but the tribal wank can go quietly. I was tempted to run through Detroit again but I don't fancy it just to experience another ending. This now canon.
I should've went militant.
The "tribal wank" feels less and less important as you progress through the story. But even that gets a little better as you understand the different factions more IMO.
Don't rush it though, it's a lovely game to take your time with. And do the DLC before you finish the main story.
The one thing missing from HZD I thought was a little more bioware style cause & effect to your actions. You get the choice to react to how some people treat you for instance but it has quite little bearing on the world around you.
Well, I've just spoken to a metal door so I'm guessing that's what they'll focus on next. HAIL DOOR.
HZD is excellent. Anyone played Returnal yet? ACG rated it. I am too busy buzzing my tits off with the Ghostbusters Planet Coaster DLC whilst also lamenting the lack of any decent Warhammer games ported to console.
Started the first bit of DA:I DLC. Frostback basin looks lovely (as most of the regions in this do) and the uptick in gear quality is ludicrous.
Started It Takes Two last night. Did the first two ‘bosses’
Wasn’t expecting to suck a hoovers eyeballs out with its own hose!
Turns out the fight with Corypheus at the end of the DA:I main story is pretty lol if you've done Jaws of Hakkon and The Descent first. I absolutely rinsed him.
The two DLCs were both good too. Frostback Basin in JoH is gorgeous and I loved the Deep Roads / Dwarf stuff in The Descent and that ending could impact future games if they decide to use it (they don't always, as with the Awakening DLC for example.)
Just need to do Trespasser now.
Deffo! It’s really well done and good fun. Seems each ‘level’ has its own gimmick too, which keeps it fresh.
Hah yeah that happened to me too. But then again, that tends to always be the case in RPGs with extra content, doesn't it? They need to put the difficulty of the final boss at a level that you can conceivably beat them with just having breezed through the main story - which always seems a little shit, in that "the most powerful being threatening the world" never really is, instead they add a bunch of other Weapon-style challenges (in DA:I it's the dragons, which are all quite fun challenges if you do them at appropriate levels).
There's also really not that much companion banter in them anyway so I probably should've done main story then start the DLCs.
I've been watching Game Grumps playthrough of Detroit: Become Human, inspired by Shinners, and man I hate those games where it's all QTEs and "press this combination of buttons to turn a door handle" or whatever.
It was worse in Fahrenheit. Simon Says overlayed over the action. I do like the conceit that you're effectively moving a puppet (I mean, that's all games are) but I don't need the mundane shit. I watched the Super Best Friends' playthrough. Episode 0 when they hammer out the bingo cards is great.
At least Fahrenheit had the decent to be proper mental. There can't be many games with such a big mismatch of opening scene (that tense OH FUCK HAVE I JUST DONE A MURDER??? scene in the bogs) to ending with that fucking boss battle.
I finished Fahrenheit but I think that was more the insanity of the story and it being unlike anything else I'd played at that point which pulled me through rather than actually thinking it was good.
With the snooker on I got back into Snooker 19 and despite being dumped out of the Riga Masters, Chinese Shootout and Dudley Deathmatch tournaments I took Harvey Chandler to an unlikely world title, beating the beta tester from Leicester in the final.
As fun as it is you can tell it was done on the cheap by the lifeless character models and more notably the AI kicking in when you snooker an opponent
Yep. It was one of a kind. They still kind of are from a control standpoint. Nobody's cloning Quantic Dream but the Telltale format became a template for that kind of narrative adventure game.
EDIT: That snooker AI is daft. You can see Robotson self-destructing when he starts potting the cue ball under no resistance.
Last edited by Shindig; 06-05-2021 at 08:25 AM.
The beauty of it is that when you've got the table and need about five snookers to catch up you know one decent one is likely to give you the lead, they go absolutely batshit sometimes.
That second one where he just clean misses the edge of the pack and it goes right into the pocket is the sort of thing I'd do.
Is it still fun in spite of all that, @wullie ? I'd quite like a good snooker game but I feel like the AI melting down would only be funny for so long.
Yeah I do really like it. The opposition AI is actually good otherwise, it's only when they get snookered you've got a fair chance that their heads will explode.
I bought it a while ago when it was on sale and also experienced the AI going full mental with a relatively easy snooker.
It was beautiful.
I'm watching Many a True Nerd's (first?) Resi Village video and similar to Resi 7 Ethan is ridiculously durable.
So did you do Trespasser as well?
Just finished it and I really loved it. The Solas stuff is done really well and I like that it ties the whole story together, and that last rush through the Qunari forces with the Anchor turned into both a liability and a really powerful weapon is really cool as well. Loved it, Inquisition has gone up in my estimation and it makes me both more hyped for Dragon Age 4 but also more worried they'll fuck it up.
Not sure what to go onto next. Thinking either Star Wars Squadrons or maybe Pendragon, because obviously those are very similar games to be debating between...
Oh, also regarding Trespasser (I'll spoiler in case anybody who's not played it plans to before DA4):
Toggle Spoiler
Yeah played it as well, and agree - it tied off the whole thing very nicely.
All in all, I think I spend a little too much time in Inquisition walking around exploring the regions before in that "I've done all of the main story except the final boss thing now, so gotta spend about 40 hours picking off side-quests and objectives and chasing artefacts".
So when I was doing Jaws of Hakkon I was starting to feel a little bored by it all. But then Trespasser really kind of made it all feel quite worth it again.
Toggle Spoiler
I found the Jaws of Hakkon to be really enjoyable as it does at least ramp the difficulty up a fair bit. The Descent was interesting, story wise and the more linear nature of the quest was a good change from the more MMO style maps. Trespasser was excellent though and really makes Inquisition shineSo when I was doing Jaws of Hakkon I was starting to feel a little bored by it all.
Toggle Spoiler
Maybe. He was the one giving it Billy big bollocks about the Qun and duty and all that shite. Treacherous swine.
I agree with you on the Descent and it not having the MMO-ey style map, that works in Trespasser as well. The open areas were well designed in a lot of ways I just wish so many of the side quests didn't feel like admin. And that it doesn't only let you find certain things once you've essentially pressed a button somewhere. Given how much time I spent mashing V / the 'find' button it was annoying to find shards places I'd already been but couldn't see them because I hadn't done the skull things yet.
In other news I've been enjoying the runs on Pendragon I've done so far. The strategy of the fights is fairly simple controls-wise and in terms of options but ends up being surprisingly nuanced, and I always enjoy Inkle's writing so that side of it's a winner for me too.
I've probably got another couple of runs in me but I don't feel like Pendragon has enough variety for me to want to keep going to unlock all the runs and I'm not sure if there's any real reward for doing so.
Also did the first couple of missions of Squadrons and it seems fun enough. It's very pretty and it offers a very different experience to playing the Rogue Squadron games just because of the perspective but I like how you can see all your HUD stuff as part of the cockpit rather than it just being an overlay. Looking forward to it hopefully letting me try more different ships.
Giving up on Pendragon. I've got my fiver's worth, or whatever I paid, but it's too fussy about when you unlock characters for me to want to push through and get all of them.
That SuperHot is on sale at the minute. I now have SuperHot. It crashed 10 minutes in.
Hope you get it working, it's a fun game and trickier than it sounds like it should be.
It runs fine and I don't think my temps were getting high. Unity just decided to peace out after 3 levels.
That's Resi Village finished.
Basically split into 5 parts. First part is strongest, 3rd part also good. 2nd part is fucking laughable, other 2 serviceable. Not scary or tense in the slightest and feels like a VR experience, just not in VR. Looks fucking pretty though and the plot is probably the most insane one from Resi so far. Good pacing too.
Solid 7/10.
Project Cars is finally finished. Or it would be if I wasn't DQ'ed at Le Mans for track limits. I always wish they could take into account actual lap time instead of 'OMG, YOU WENT WIDE LAPPING TRAFFIC!'. I'm not doing another 2 hours of that. Frig it.
Star Wars Squadrons is starting to give me some more interesting missions after the more tutorial-y first two and I'm really enjoying it. Only just got my third ship to play with so I'm looking forward to more of those but I love the presentation of it and in missions where more stuff is going on it's satisfying once you've got the hang of manoeuvring the ship and doing tighter, turns, etc. it's really quite satisfying.
I've also been playing Rain on Your Parade as RPS talked about it and it's on Game Pass. It's silly but fun.
I like Jim Sterling, but his latest video must be the most self-indulgent, entitled and whingey things he's ever done.
Dressing as a Woman and losing 3% of your subscribers and focusing on that rather than the 97% who stayed is pathetic and if you don't like Youtube get off it, they don't owe you a living and if every Tom, Dick and Harry on there wasn't infringing copyright there wouldn't be a need for the system you hate so much.
What's he done? A very quick google didn't give me an obvious answer and I couldn't be arsed wading into the muck.
Probably isn't fair of me to summarise his perspective.
Alright well if watching a 30 minute video is the next best option then it turns out I don't care enough.
I don't think Jim has liked what he does for a very long time.
Oh, wow. It really is 30 minutes of "Why ... aren't you watching?"
It's really odd given he seems to have lost only 27,000 subscribers. Which is actually a much higher proportion of people being ok with his change than I'd have expected, but somehow GAMERS.
It does however offer a very interesting insight into the wider discussion and a perspective from the inside that I personally don't believe is that consistent with reality. Far from the UK trying to kill trans people I don't think we've ever had a minority of people as small with such a loud voice and depth of support.
He's an interesting character to listen to, whatever he's talking about, which is why I subscribe, but much more of this stuff (I genuinely don't care what he dresses or looks like and neither seemingly to 97% of his subscribers) and the tirade against capitalism (which is a bit too Gary Neville for my liking - he makes a handsome living from the content he produces off the back of what these apparently very bad people do) and I'll get closer to switching off.
I've played through Gears Of War 4 recently, and started Gears (Of War) 5 pretty much straight off the back of it. Nothing groundbreaking, but something about these games speaks to me. I never finished 3, so I'll probably run through that, at some point.
I'm also slowly starting Control. This is the second time I've tried, and I've gone further this time, which wasn't difficult. Still early on, and I hear it picks up as it goes on, but I'm not sure I'll end up getting that far.
Control was just engaging enough to pull me through to finish the main story but no more. If some misfortune had befallen my save game and the option was not see the end or start again I'd definitely have been moving onto something else.
That's Squadrons done. After a slow start I ended up liking it a lot and I'd really like more single player content from it.
Not sure what to go onto next. I might give Ghost of a Tale a go.
Dying Light 2 looking good: