What Was The Last Game You Played?

[well fan for life]

Finish Hollow Knight there. A nigh on flawless game, despite some of the bosses making me want to crush my controller into dust. 

Now to continue to be clowned by Team Cherry 3 years after they announced Silksong. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Metro: Last Light (PS4, 2017 - originally PS3, 2013)

I lied recently when reviewing Metro 2033. I said I'd not played any games based on books. I didn't actually check, because if I had I would have remembered Spec Ops: The Line. A frankly masterful piece of story-telling and characterisation, based on a work by a writer I've never cared for. The sort of intelligent video game which just doesn't really exist. Also with Mogwai on the soundtrack. Fantastic.

Last Light is, functionally, exactly the same as 2033. Every aspect of gameplay is the same. 2033 works so this is fine, but when you play both games back to back like I have it's really stark how stale the game feels as a result. I don't necessarily think anything should have been changed, but given the premise of the story there could have been one or two additions to freshen things up. The game starts with you, Artyom, living in D6, the secret military stash of weapons, food and equipment he found in 2033. Surely there's something in there?

In lieu of saying anything else too detailed about the game, I'm going to describe two comparable setpieces from both games, and let you decide what that says about Last Light.
In 2033 there's a level where you're above ground, moving through the ruins of Moscow after being split up from the guy you were travelling with and trying to get back to him. There's a building you have to go into which you can approach from different directions - I didn't find this part until my second playthrough. You go into a ground floor room and as you look for resources or a door to go through you'll turn around and see a Lurker, roaring and snarling at you. When I saw this I immediately shot it. I then discovered three small, pink, hairless baby Lurkers behind it. In a game with a subtle moral choice mechanic, where characters frequently tell you to be thoughtful and not to act rashly, I killed a mother protecting her children without even thinking about it. If you do stop to look at the situation, there's some ammo and health on the ground in front of her which you can't get to without making her attack.

In Last Light there's a mini-boss fight in a large open area. At this point you've teamed up with one of the mystical Dark Ones you were trying to kill in 2033, a small child who follows you about the centre of Moscow telling you what's going on. At the start of the fight he says "she's protecting her children." A huge armoured creature called the Bear then appears, and fights by charging at you. If you dodge her when this happens some Lurkers will jump on her and expose her back, which glows red. You then empty a clip at this spot, and the process repeats. This happens four times before the fight ends, and she charges through a wall at the side of the area which opens a path for you to go continue through. When you go through you find the Bear lying on the ground, making pained sounds, with three Lurkers on top swiping at her. You can shoot the Lurkers.

Last Light has a lot of DLC levels which let you play as some different factions from the Metro universe. These are quite fun, though there's a big variance in terms of length. Some you'll finish in ten minutes, some could take hours if you did them legitimately. It's something different and I like DLC in this style, offering something that really fleshes out the game world. It's a shame this is really the only part of the game that has that sense of imagination or interest about it.

I don't really have anything else to say. I'm not even going to mention the inexplicably detailed female breast animations or the final mission which resembled the end of Modern Warfare 3 where you get tanked up with the most powerful weapons and armour possible and just shoot waves of enemies. I suppose by this point I'm not angry, I'm just disappointed.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Horizon Chase Turbo (PS4, 2018)

The first racing game I remember playing is the original Super Mario Kart for the SNES. The second racing game I remember playing was the original V-Rally for the Game Boy Color, which was similar in style to classic arcade racing with your car in the middle of the screen and the course coming up ahead of you, and a constant horizon line separating the course from the background. This effectively describes Horizon Chase Turbo, only since it's on PS4 there's a bit more content and a bit more refinement of the formula from the 80s and 90s.

Structurally it's a pretty standard arcade racing game. You have a range of cars to choose from and unlock as you play through the different game modes, with the cars having different stats affecting how they drive. For the most part there isn't really any choice to make, you pick the best handling car you have and you win every race easily. There's enough variety in the cars and enough obvious inspiration from real life models as well as pop-culture to have something for everyone though, so if you want to drive a Lamborghini or Mr. Bean's Mini, you can.

For what's effectively an indie game with a pretty limited premise for its genre, the variety of tracks is outstanding. In the main World Tour game mode there are twelve real world locations with nine or ten tracks in each. Every track is unique and every track feels unique. Some are fast, some are challenging, some are awkward and annoying but there is no feeling of repetition. That's even before you get to the design of the backgrounds and scenery which is even better. The locations the tracks are set in are varied enough that there's a wide range of possibilities even within locations, so the art and design always keeps you engaged. Throw in the final fact that there are some tracks which are copies of real racing circuits, and for the completely sad like me you're never going to get tired of racing on a new track. The same can be said for the game's soundtrack, which only occasionally gets irritating. 

Game modes are where things falter slightly. World Tour is the main focus and it works well. You progress through each location with tracks getting slightly more complex as you go. In each location there's an upgrade race which you can win to apply boosts to specific aspects of your cars, so races get faster as you go too. That works great. Then you have Tournament mode, which has groups of four races together with points awarded at the end of each. This sounds like a nice twist but the AI always finishes in the same order, so the only chance you have of winning is to finish first in almost every race with a very slim margin for error. The other game mode is Endurance, which is a massive tournament of 12, 36 or 109 races in standard tournament fashion but without the constant AI finishes, so a much higher margin for error. I feel like there was more potential than "Races," "Races but with points" and "Lots of races but with points," and by the time you get to the end of Endurance you'll be a bit fed up of all those lovely tracks and cars.

I should point out here one thing against the game. World Tour mode made the game crash. A lot. Probably at least 25% of my World Tour races finished with the game crashing. It only happened in that game mode though, nowhere else.

Any racing game lives and dies by its gameplay and Horizon Chase Turbo excels here too. Although corners can come up suddenly there's a slight steering assistance which means you only really need to lift off the throttle to avoid hitting other cars or obstacles at the side of the road as long as you still steer into the corner. It's accessible enough for pretty much everyone, but still engaging enough to be a challenge once cars are fully upgraded. You can also use nitro for the occasional boost if you need to make an overtake easier, so tactics can come into play too if you're really struggling to win a race. I think the only aspect of gameplay which I didn't like was the ability to get an acceleration boost if you time your engine revving properly. Races begin from a standing start and if you time it right you get a nice speed boost... right into the back of the car in front of you, which slows you down. If that's the biggest gameplay complaint I have after at least 25 hours, the game's done something right. 

Actually that isn't, I've remembered another. Races aren't what you could call 'scripted' but they're not really natural either. If you go through a race normally without hitting anything and successfully overtaking every car first time you'll almost always be in a position to win the race by the end. If you get a really lucky start though and end up, say, top five after the first couple of corners you'll find the AI are more likely to overtake or hit the back of you, as if there's a set point for when you should have overtaken each car. This doesn't guarantee you a win each time but once you notice it races can feel less skill-dependent than racing games really should be, and that's a shame.

I decided to play this now after DLC was recently released. The game is made by a Brazilian developer and if there's one thing you can guarantee about Brazilian motor racing fans, it's a reverence of Ayrton Senna. 'Senna Forever' is a fitting name for the DLC then and I'll quickly sum up how good this is. £4.99 and you get 11 new tracks, 30 new cars, a refined tournament mode with three difficulty levels and a 5-stage recreation of Senna's F1 career making use of all that content. And part of the money raised goes towards his charitable foundation which provides education for poor Brazilian children. 

The DLC is successful too for a similar reason to the base game. It's just so... charming. The pop culture references and such with the normal cars are nice, but driving facsimiles of 80s and 90s Formula 1 cars, teams and drivers is just another level. I got to drive Michael Schumacher's first F1 car! I used his helmet and everything! While buying books and pencils for some poor children! Why can't all games be like this?

I can't be certain of the time I put into Horizon Chase Turbo, but with base game and DLC, call it at least 30 hours. I didn't get sick of it. I enjoyed almost every aspect of it. I think even people who've never played a racing game in their life could play this, enjoy it and be good at it. Is there anything else I need to say?

[Miguel Sanchez]

Dirt Rally (PS4, 2016)

Here's how I started my review of Dirt 4 last year:

Dirt 4 is not the fourth game in the Dirt series. It's the eleventh full release in a series that started with Colin McRae Rally in 1998. After the various different game modes besides rally driving that featured in Dirt 3 the series spun off into the dedicated Dirt Rally game of 2016, which aimed to be a more serious sim than the more accessible regular Dirt series.

"More serious sim." Well, from what I remember of Dirt 4 I suppose that's accurate. There are three game modes: Rally, Rallycross and Hillclimb. It's all proper stages and circuits rather than the colourful festival feel of the regular Dirt series. There are lots of different rally stages across six locations. The other modes suffer though, with three Rallycross locations and 'only' the Pikes Peak Hillclimb course. It seems like the amount of rally locations was increased since the game's launch, but it feels slightly unbalanced. I suppose it is called Dirt Rally, not Dirt Offroad Racing Multi-Discipline Game.

As someone who's not really played the Dirt games in the right order I found myself in a strange spot playing Dirt Rally. I played Dirt 4 last year and have been playing Dirt Rally 2 on and off for about two years. Dirt Rally is, as you'd imagine, right in the middle of those graphically and mechanically. Graphically it's nothing special, although the level of detail in the damage models is impressive. Nothing else really looks authentic though. It's not an ugly game, it just doesn't look very remarkable. Time of day and weather don't make much of a difference, it all just looks okay. I've probably been spoiled with all the time I've spent with Gran Turismo Sport and Dirt Rally 2, but the lack of anything standing out really stood out.

I only played the game with a pad, not a wheel, so I can't comment fully on how realistic the driving model is. I did find it quite easy on a pad. Really easy. The only thing I ever struggled with were the Group B cars, and that's to be expected. There are several different classes of rally and rallycross car and the differences between each are noticeable. You will have to adapt your driving style between each to be at your best, but even then they're all still easy to pick up. The Rallycross Supercars were really weird at first, feeling really large and heavy but I eventually got the hang of them. This is all using default setups, so I imagine it's accessible for people with less experience of racing games than me. 

I think the best experience I had with Dirt Rally was the hillclimb mode. If you're going to do hillclimb you might as well have the most famous course in the world and learning Pikes Peak was great fun. In the championship mode it was split up into sections to start with before being stretched out to the full course. By this point I had learned where I was going and on dirt or tarmac it was a real thrill getting everything right. Even by the end of my time with the game, I'd be driving towards a bend which I knew was flat out at ~130mph only to still hesitate because I can only see road and sky. Beating the AI on the highest setting here was as satisfying as any circuit racing I've done in other games, which is about the best thing I can say for it.

It's going to say a lot that a time trial in a closed setting is the best and most satisfying experience I had with this game. The AI's rally times are wildly inconsistent. AI times seem massively dependent on the location with no real logic to how fast they'll go compared to you. On Swedish stages they seem to be on rails, yet in Germany they're so slow I think the drivers take the day off and put their grannies in the car. The rallycross AI has the same problems I remember from Dirt 4 in that they pay no attention to where you are on the track. I've watched real rallycross racing and it's very much a contact sport, but a fifty-fifty chance of being punted by three cars who aren't stopping every time you go into the first corner isn't fun or realistic. 

The biggest problem with Dirt Rally is something I've never really been able to figure out about its sequel either - the sense of progression. My experience of racing games started with Gran Turismo and its very structured, gradual career modes. You start off with cheap, slow cars. You win races and you buy faster ones. In Arcade mode you can drive a select choice of some of the faster ones which makes you want to unlock more of them in your career. Modern racing games don't follow this pattern. They can't, with the way media is now. You need to give the player everything or they won't be interested. As a result you end up with the worst of both worlds. You can go straight into a custom championship on any course and in any car you want. 

But then the game steers you towards the Championships where you start in smaller courses like I mentioned then work your way up as you win or place well and do longer courses, unlocking longer championships against tougher AI. You can buy your cars and hire your engineers and the more you run with a car the more it gets upgraded, adding power or losing weight. There's very little sense of achievement in this however. In many classes it's almost impossible to win with a fresh car with no upgrades, even on easier difficulties. Having to upgrade the car to be able to compete doesn't give you a sense of progress, it just feels unfair. You're effectively being made to wait for something you can do elsewhere in the game whenever you like. 

From what I remember of Dirt 4 it felt like a bit of a mess after Dirt 3. The decision to separate the 'real' offroad stuff into its own dedicated series seems to have been a good choice. Being able to see the development and refinement of the series is really interesting, and I think I've had a greater appreciation of that from doing it in the wrong order. It's still accessible enough for just about anyone, with enough challenge hidden in there to really feel like a test if you spend long enough with it. Just stay away from Sweden, the snowbanks are stupid.

[Chris_the_rover]

Dirt Rally (PS4, 2016)
Here's how I started my review of Dirt 4 last year:
Dirt 4 is not the fourth game in the Dirt series. It's the eleventh full release in a series that started with Colin McRae Rally in 1998. After the various different game modes besides rally driving that featured in Dirt 3 the series spun off into the dedicated Dirt Rally game of 2016, which aimed to be a more serious sim than the more accessible regular Dirt series.
"More serious sim." Well, from what I remember of Dirt 4 I suppose that's accurate. There are three game modes: Rally, Rallycross and Hillclimb. It's all proper stages and circuits rather than the colourful festival feel of the regular Dirt series. There are lots of different rally stages across six locations. The other modes suffer though, with three Rallycross locations and 'only' the Pikes Peak Hillclimb course. It seems like the amount of rally locations was increased since the game's launch, but it feels slightly unbalanced. I suppose it is called Dirt Rally, not Dirt Offroad Racing Multi-Discipline Game.
As someone who's not really played the Dirt games in the right order I found myself in a strange spot playing Dirt Rally. I played Dirt 4 last year and have been playing Dirt Rally 2 on and off for about two years. Dirt Rally is, as you'd imagine, right in the middle of those graphically and mechanically. Graphically it's nothing special, although the level of detail in the damage models is impressive. Nothing else really looks authentic though. It's not an ugly game, it just doesn't look very remarkable. Time of day and weather don't make much of a difference, it all just looks okay. I've probably been spoiled with all the time I've spent with Gran Turismo Sport and Dirt Rally 2, but the lack of anything standing out really stood out.
I only played the game with a pad, not a wheel, so I can't comment fully on how realistic the driving model is. I did find it quite easy on a pad. Really easy. The only thing I ever struggled with were the Group B cars, and that's to be expected. There are several different classes of rally and rallycross car and the differences between each are noticeable. You will have to adapt your driving style between each to be at your best, but even then they're all still easy to pick up. The Rallycross Supercars were really weird at first, feeling really large and heavy but I eventually got the hang of them. This is all using default setups, so I imagine it's accessible for people with less experience of racing games than me. 
I think the best experience I had with Dirt Rally was the hillclimb mode. If you're going to do hillclimb you might as well have the most famous course in the world and learning Pikes Peak was great fun. In the championship mode it was split up into sections to start with before being stretched out to the full course. By this point I had learned where I was going and on dirt or tarmac it was a real thrill getting everything right. Even by the end of my time with the game, I'd be driving towards a bend which I knew was flat out at ~130mph only to still hesitate because I can only see road and sky. Beating the AI on the highest setting here was as satisfying as any circuit racing I've done in other games, which is about the best thing I can say for it.
It's going to say a lot that a time trial in a closed setting is the best and most satisfying experience I had with this game. The AI's rally times are wildly inconsistent. AI times seem massively dependent on the location with no real logic to how fast they'll go compared to you. On Swedish stages they seem to be on rails, yet in Germany they're so slow I think the drivers take the day off and put their grannies in the car. The rallycross AI has the same problems I remember from Dirt 4 in that they pay no attention to where you are on the track. I've watched real rallycross racing and it's very much a contact sport, but a fifty-fifty chance of being punted by three cars who aren't stopping every time you go into the first corner isn't fun or realistic. 
The biggest problem with Dirt Rally is something I've never really been able to figure out about its sequel either - the sense of progression. My experience of racing games started with Gran Turismo and its very structured, gradual career modes. You start off with cheap, slow cars. You win races and you buy faster ones. In Arcade mode you can drive a select choice of some of the faster ones which makes you want to unlock more of them in your career. Modern racing games don't follow this pattern. They can't, with the way media is now. You need to give the player everything or they won't be interested. As a result you end up with the worst of both worlds. You can go straight into a custom championship on any course and in any car you want. 
But then the game steers you towards the Championships where you start in smaller courses like I mentioned then work your way up as you win or place well and do longer courses, unlocking longer championships against tougher AI. You can buy your cars and hire your engineers and the more you run with a car the more it gets upgraded, adding power or losing weight. There's very little sense of achievement in this however. In many classes it's almost impossible to win with a fresh car with no upgrades, even on easier difficulties. Having to upgrade the car to be able to compete doesn't give you a sense of progress, it just feels unfair. You're effectively being made to wait for something you can do elsewhere in the game whenever you like. 
From what I remember of Dirt 4 it felt like a bit of a mess after Dirt 3. The decision to separate the 'real' offroad stuff into its own dedicated series seems to have been a good choice. Being able to see the development and refinement of the series is really interesting, and I think I've had a greater appreciation of that from doing it in the wrong order. It's still accessible enough for just about anyone, with enough challenge hidden in there to really feel like a test if you spend long enough with it. Just stay away from Sweden, the snowbanks are stupid.

I'm sure of the Dirt 5 is one of the PS [emoji809]️ January games

[Miguel Sanchez]

2 hours ago, Chris_the_rover said:

I'm sure of the Dirt 5 is one of the PS ️ January games

It is!

I had planned to play it this month until I realised half its trophies are DLC, and the cheapest the season pass has ever been is £14. And the game is very, very boring.

[well fan for life]

On 15/12/2021 at 00:03, Clown Job said:

Not technically a game but I played that Matrix demo for the Unreal Engine 5 on PS5

It was really impressive 

Reckon a while down the road when this technology is widely available the PS5 will really flourish. I like mine but I would definitely say there's a lot of things aren't massive improvements on what was available on PS4.

In other news, I've played through a fair amount of It Takes Two over Christmas. It is exceptionally fun.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Aaru's Awakening (PS4, 2015)

Aaru's Awakening is a 2D platformer. You jump, double jump and fire an orb which you can then teleport yourself to. You play as Aaru, a creature awoken by Dawn for the purposes of upsetting the order and balance of the world, defeating his brothers Day, Dusk and Night.

I love this game. It's short. There are twenty levels and gold, silver and bronze target times for you to beat. Playing each level until I golded them took me five hours, at most. The levels get a bit longer and more complex the further into the game you go, but checkpoints are frequent and there are only one or two sequences which can get frustrating. The gameplay is consistent and just the right mix of challenging and rewarding. 

The biggest problem with level design is the amount of occasions where you have to jump or teleport into an area you can't really see. There's no way of getting through areas like this without trial and error which doesn't feel right to me. The checkpoints make it easy to do this without losing too much time, and it allows you to revisit levels and set better and more satisfying times, but when you see a level for the first time it can feel a leap of faith is your only way forward. Considering the precise nature of platforming as a genre and certain parts of this game especially, this really happens too often. 

The best part of this game is the aesthetic. Everything about it is perfect. The game's story is told in narrated cutscenes before and after boss fights. Every part of art in the game is hand-drawn. The characters, environments and multi-layer backgrounds are all exquisitely complex and detailed. The backgrounds especially are remarkable, I could have shown you dozens of pictures of them and not really done justice to how intricate they are. The range of rich colours alone is amazing, seeing the way they come together is consistently wonderful. 

The game is split into four sections - Dawn, Day, Dusk and Night. Each section has four levels and a final boss fight. Each area has its own colour palette, so although there's not much of it the content feels rich and varied. As I mentioned, the game's story bookends these boss fights with a child-like voice narrating the legend of the four brothers and how they were kept in balance, and how Dawn tried to upset this only for Aaru to start questioning his orders. This allows the game to take on a psuedo-mythical quality which makes everything feel important and significant. To the best of my knowledge it's not based on any real legends, but it's all so neatly contained and simply detailed that it all feels as it it's something you've been familiar with your whole life. The minimalist soundtrack complements this perfectly too, sitting nicely in the background the whole time yet also feeling more substantial if you actually sit and listen to it.

I have one criticism. The game loves a crash on the PS4 Pro. I finished the final boss fight four times. Every time I finished it in a gold time it crashed, so I had to do it three times to unlock all the trophies. I did it one last time deliberately setting a slow time and it worked, also registering my initial time. No idea what's going on there but this is literally the only bad thing I have to say about it. 

If you can't play this it's honestly worth looking up playthroughs online just so you can see the artwork. There are few games I'd ever describe as perfect but this one is just short enough I might be able to. There's no time or content wasted, and what's there is some of the best you'll ever see. 

[Rodhull]

Playing through Life is Strange: True Colors. The series can get really twee and wanky at times but I do still enjoy these pick your own adventure type story games that the LIS series and Tellgame games were. Especially with Telltale going dormant for a while there's nowhere near as many of them released.

It's very much the same as any of these kinds of games and doubt it'll convert anyone that doesn't already like this sort of thing but i'm enjoying it and at least don't have to wait months on end between episodes this time.

[Sigma]

Cuphead (2017, PS4)

A game that has a nice mix of genres that make up a stellar passion project. The art is heavily inspired by 30's/40's cartoons, which makes this game stand out as a unique experience that looks and plays beautifully throughout the duration of the playthrough.

The majority of this game are boss fights that challenge the player with interesting attack patterns that keep the game fresh. Each boss feels entirely different from the other, and they ooze with personally. Every boss has different phases, which prevents the fights from getting too stale and mundane. You will also go through levels that play like typical Platformers such as Mario, Mega Man, and Donkey Kong. I enjoyed these a lot, since they felt like a nice breather from the chaotic boss fights.

Cuphead also has local multiplayer, so unfortunately you can both only play on the same console. Still, at least they took the time to make 2 player possible, and they didn't just make it a single player experience.

The game has a colorful and detailed world map where you can talk to NPCs that can give you mini tasks that can reward you with a little extra currency. Speaking of currency, you can spend it on upgrades at shops that can make the difficulty more manageable.

Now that I have mentioned difficulty, I think it is time to bring our attention to the elephant in the room........The Difficulty!

The difficulty throughout this game is infamous for being incredibly hard. Personally, I was expecting something far more frustrating and ball-breaking compared to what I really experienced. I do think the game is still hard, but that is only when you compare it to the the majority of modern games. As someone who has beaten a lot of tough NES titles like Ghost N Goblins, Adventure Island 1, and Castlevania 3, I think this games is way more forgiving. It feels like a much easier ride when you have went through the painful experience of beating those classics from the NES era. Gaming journalists overblown how hard this game was when it was released back in 2017 regarding it as the Dark Souls of Platformers, which I find halirous and ludicrous at the same time. Yes, you will have a hard time with the game, but there are plenty of upgrades and no bullshit deaths that make it more of a manageable kind of hard.

I will end by saying I had an absolute blast of a time with this game. The art will win a lot of people over, and it one of the games strongest points besides the gameplay. I should also mention that the music is fantastic, which is always very important, since it makes dying constantly on a fight not nearly as bad since the melodies are so damn good. I got the game for £12 on the PS Store, which is an absolute bargain for such a masterpiece. It was around £18 originally, and I think it will still be discounted, so it will be totally worth getting the game right away before the price goes back up.

Rating: A solid 9/10

[Mr. Brightside]

Completed Demon's Souls last night, by far the easiest Soulsborne gaming experience so far. However it was really excellent and should be the blueprint for how every remaster or remake is made.
The game looks beautiful, it runs excellently and loading times are very quick. Combat felt very smooth and refined and seems quite balanced between all different types (magic, faith, dex, strength etc). Some of the quality of life upgrades they made were vital as well, like being able to send things straight to your storage if you can't carry it.
For anyone wanting to get into the Soulslike games, I would highly recommend this as the gateway game.

[Gianfranco]

I’ve made it to Resident Evil 6 on my run through but I’m starting to hit a brick wall. I’ve tried the first scene 3 or 4 times but I keep dying in the crowd of zombies because I can’t see where the f**k I’m meant to be going. I’ve rage quit each time it’s happened.

[54_and_counting]

On 13/01/2022 at 18:26, Gianfranco said:

I’ve made it to Resident Evil 6 on my run through but I’m starting to hit a brick wall. I’ve tried the first scene 3 or 4 times but I keep dying in the crowd of zombies because I can’t see where the f**k I’m meant to be going. I’ve rage quit each time it’s happened.

You could easily patch resi 6 and not miss a beat, just read up on it with wiki, it got dugs abuse for being shite lol

[Mr. Brightside]

Just Platinumed Bloodborne. What a fucking game. I think it might be my favourite FromSoftware game (although I do love DS3 and Sekiro (apart from the boss I'm currently stuck on)) and very probably one of my favourite games of all time.

I had previously played it after beating most of the first Dark Souls but not fully completing it and at that time my love, grasp and knowledge of the FromSoft games was minimal and as such gave up on it pretty quick.
However after completing Dark Souls 3 during original lockdown and then being mentally broken by Genichiro Ashina (whilst really enjoying Sekiro) I recently hopped back aboard the Souls train by playing Demon's Souls. I loved that enough that I thought I should give Bloodborne a proper go.
I am so glad I did, it is simply an incredible game, from a combat point of view, to maze-like interconnected level design, character design (both player/hunter and bosses) and lastly the world itself is beautiful in its sorta neo-Gothic dilapidatedness. I had heard stories of how the bosses in Bloodborne were considered some of the hardest and whilst that is true I didn't find it bad at all, a lot of them I beat in one go and the most attempts I took to kill one was I think 5 (fucking Micolash spamming A Call Beyond constantly, the p***k) so I found them challenging but ultimately fair, which is the point in Souls games.

Personally the combat is Souls at its best, whilst I am usually a big sword and shield user, the shield (mostly) being irrelevant in Bloodborne is very refreshing, because the visceral system is glorious, there was simply nothing better than parrying and the visceral-ing Maria to absolutely batter her.
The story itself seemed more easy to follow than previous Souls games, and it leads to some heart-wrenching moments where you do truly question who the monster is here.

11/10, with DS3 being 10.5/10 and Sekiro being 10/10.

I'm now going to play DS1 and 2 remastered and after that, I will finally beat Genichiro.

Edited January 19, 2022 by Mr. Brightside

[Mallo_Madrid]

11 hours ago, Mr. Brightside said:

Just Platinumed Bloodborne. What a fucking game. I think it might be my favourite FromSoftware game (although I do love DS3 and Sekiro (apart from the boss I'm currently stuck on)) and very probably one of my favourite games of all time.

I had previously played it after beating most of the first Dark Souls but not fully completing it and at that time my love, grasp and knowledge of the FromSoft games was minimal and as such gave up on it pretty quick.
However after completing Dark Souls 3 during original lockdown and then being mentally broken by Genichiro Ashina (whilst really enjoying Sekiro) I recently hopped back aboard the Souls train by playing Demon's Souls. I loved that enough that I thought I should give Bloodborne a proper go.
I am so glad I did, it is simply an incredible game, from a combat point of view, to maze-like interconnected level design, character design (both player/hunter and bosses) and lastly the world itself is beautiful in its sorta neo-Gothic dilapidatedness. I had heard stories of how the bosses in Bloodborne were considered some of the hardest and whilst that is true I didn't find it bad at all, a lot of them I beat in one go and the most attempts I took to kill one was I think 5 (fucking Micolash spamming A Call Beyond constantly, the p***k) so I found them challenging but ultimately fair, which is the point in Souls games.

Personally the combat is Souls at its best, whilst I am usually a big sword and shield user, the shield (mostly) being irrelevant in Bloodborne is very refreshing, because the visceral system is glorious, there was simply nothing better than parrying and the visceral-ing Maria to absolutely batter her.
The story itself seemed more easy to follow than previous Souls games, and it leads to some heart-wrenching moments where you do truly question who the monster is here.

11/10, with DS3 being 10.5/10 and Sekiro being 10/10.

I'm now going to play DS1 and 2 remastered and after that, I will finally beat Genichiro.

 

I really enjoyed Bloodborne as well, it doesn't get the love the rest of the FromSoftware games get but it was the game that go me into this genre which I'm fairly new to. I get my arse consistently handed to me on a plate in them all though.

I was highly enjoying Sekiro as well but could not get past Genichiro Ashina either. Eventually gave up with there being no summoning help at all. I'll go back one day.

Demon Souls remake was more my level - very enjoyable and visually stunning. I've been through a few NG+ on that.

I cannot wait for Elder Ring to come out next month - FromSoftware look to have cracked the open world game by the sounds of it. 

Edited January 19, 2022 by Mallo_Madrid

[NotThePars]

Bloodborne has the biggest VIBES in a FromSoft game. That Lovecraftian menace in what is the best representation of a night out in some Anglo shithole like Middlesborough ever portrayed in media.

[Miguel Sanchez]

The Persistence (PS4, 2018)

The Persistence is a rougelike first person shooter where you play as Zimri, the only person left alive on the Persistence spaceship where something bad has happened, you need to figure out what, and get away. The randomly generated ship layout is filled with mutants trying to stop you, but there's just as many weapons for you to kill them with. 

I honestly didn't really know or care what the story was as I was playing the game. Every time you die a clone of you gets created which is how the rougelike element works but I forget why or how that's a thing. I think people died and the ship saved their DNA profiles. The ship's computer takes on the voice of one of the crew, Serena. Whatever happened, the ship's stuck next to a black hole and you need to get away. As I think about it now the gameplay really is the only thing I can remember about this game.

The gameplay being the overwhelming focus isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the game still has some problems. When you first start and jump into the teleporter to go to Deck 1 you'll find some mutants in some of the rooms. You'll be encouraged by the ship's computer to sneak around and try to suck out their stem cells with your Replicator gun to kill them. If you don't time this right the mutants will spot you, attack you, and kill you. You have a shield which you're supposed to press when you get attacked but you don't time it right. You die. You then start again, you go through some rooms, you find another mutant, you die. It took me several hours before I had managed to collect enough resources to upgrade my stats and actually get through more than one room without dying.

This starting gameplay loop is quite off-putting, and it's not helped by the ship being randomly generated each time you respawn, meaning you constantly need to find your bearings. I spent most of those first few hours wondering if I was doing something wrong but once it clicks, it just clicks. The difficulty curve is... well, not really a curve. By the time you get to Deck 3 you've almost certainly have got the hang of the game.  Your health, stealth, melee damage will all be fully upgraded. You'll have found decent loot to make a suit with a weapon or defence bonus, things like that. Then you reach Deck 4 and even though it's the same enemies, the difficulty somehow shoots up again. Considering each time you die you lose all of your weapons and anything you've collected on that run it's very frustrating to be swamped and taken out when you're fully tooled up for a run at the endgame.

Although sneaking around is best when you start out and even more effective later on, when you figure out how the weapons work and upgrade them you can have some real fun. There are lots of weapons and most of them seem to be there to show off the fact it's a VR game. The Valkyrie harpoon gun fires a bolt which pins anything in front of it into the nearest wall. The Gravity Bomb creates a black hole that sucks every enemy into it. There are a few melee weapons which are one hit kills and somehow even more satisfying for it. At the same time there are a bunch of handguns which have the same effect as the guy in a film who's run out of bullets and throws their gun at the bad guy, and a bunch of "experimental weapons" which do things like teleport you to a safe place. I think there are 22 weapons in total and you only really need less than a quarter of that.

Weapon selection isn't helped by this originally being a VR game, with non-VR compatibility added later. I don't have VR. I'm sure it's great. Can't wait to try certain parts of the internet with it. Many video games are probably fun too, although The Persistence seems like it's somewhat gimmicky in its implementation. You can collect as many weapons as you can find in a run. To pick the one you want to use you press R1 and then pick it. They all show up at once. With VR you look at the one you want and it's presumably a lot easier than trying to find and focus on the one you want with a controller. This makes the otherwise interesting combat a panicked mess. You can be swamped by a bunch of guys and need to change your weapon immediately, only to get stuck trying to pick one that's actually good. Then you're back in the room and attacked and probably dead, starting again. 

From what I remember this and opening doors by focusing your reticule on a particular part in the middle are the only moments where the VR focus is actually used, and as a non-VR player it just feels gratuitous. You can't expect the doors to open automatically because walking up to them makes a small window on them open you can see what's in the room which is very useful for planning your attack, but there has to be a better option than then looking at the right part of the screen to actually do the action.

I liked this. Graphically it wasn't remarkable, but it did look and feel like a futuristic spaceship that had succumbed to something horrible that turned its entire crew into an assortment of angry mutants. There's a good range of weapons and a good range of strategy required for dealing with the mutants. The roguelike setup to the levels can be confusing to start but then almost everything about the game feels confusing at the start. There's a good amount of tension even once you're acclimatised to your surroundings, with the fear partly you not wanting to die and lose your progress, partly genuine fear from the atmosphere of the spaceship. Despite my complaints about struggling at the start it won't take you long to reach the end, and ultimately the game takes up just the right amount of space and time. I've certainly spent longer on worse. 

[Chris_the_rover]

Took a notion and downloaded Subnautica I previously put 25 hours into it but restarted it

[MSU]

Dyson Sphere Program has a new update out which will probably see me investing another 200 hours into it. Very more-ish interplanetary factory building fun, for fans of Factorio and Satisfactory.

[NotThePars]

Replaying the Gears series and those games still play well and have much better stories than the caricature of them suggests.

It’s class how miserable and nihilistic it is. It’s also class how every head pops like a watermelon.