PWB June

Play

Mini Ninjas (PS3) I've been wanting to replay this for years and Little Miss Bloodaxe was wanting to play a Ninjago game. So I grabbed this for pennies from Amazon and it is still great. Not exactly challenging and pretty linear but it's a lovely world to explore again.

My Whitehack campaign is still going well. The Yoon Suin setting just keeps on throwing out wonderful content for me to use. Last week's session had them exploring a mountain monastery which had been flattened by an avalanche. Inside they found the friendliest mushroom people you are ever likely to meet and some self-mummified monks who sent snakes and zombies after them, after blinding and deafening them.

13th Age hit a bit of a block two weeks ago when all of my players forgot how their abilities worked. But then I attacked them with forty kobolds who were a mix of archers, mages and rocket pack wearing potion bombers and everything was fine again.

Want

Someone to do all the housework for a couple weeks please. I need a break. We are flying over to France for the latter half of the summer holidays but that is still a long way away.

Bin

I looked at Twitter this morning. I would like to Bin everything everyone was talking about please. maybe I should follow some more comedians.

Play

Disgaea 5 Complete (Switch): had this ready to go for ages, waiting for the right point to start it and knowing it would be an absolute timesink once I did. I'm only a few hours in and I can already feel the old fascination starting to return. It's Disgaea all right - the same zany characters, the same ridiculous story, the same amazing music and the same mind-bending complexity - but this feels like a good'un: the plot's building up nicely, the systems (new and old) are being introduced at a sensible pace so I'm not overwhelmed and it's had some actual streamlining in places meaning there are more ways to power-level than simply grinding. It's also perfectly at home on the Switch, it's hard to imagine playing these games on anything other than a portable.

Xenoblade Chronicles 3D (3DS): still plugging away at this; it seems to change focus every few hours so it's gone from a very open-ended MMO-type RPG to a very plot-heavy JRPG and now it's doubling down on the combat with a lengthy section that's featured a number of very tough fights in a row. I like the game, but I'm starting to wonder just how far I've got to go now. Hours and hours, probably.

Want

Pokemon Let's Go: must start a thread on this, really.

Whatever comes out of E3? Very interested in some more Super Smash Bros news, I'm pretty much a day one on Assassin's Creed: Odyssey without even knowing anything about it, but I'm hoping for some genuine surprises too.

Yoku's Island Express looks pretty lovely on the Switch, I have to say.

Bin

Kirby Star Allies (Switch): well I haven't actually played this myself but I've been watching the boy play it while we've been on holiday and it's really just a big noncomittal shrug of a game. He's enjoyed it well enough but it honestly looks completely unremarkable and in no way worthy of its fifty quid price tag, especially given there are much better 2D platform games available on the Switch for a third of the price. Anyway, he completed it in three days and nearly 100%'d it with a week so he's unlikely to return to it and I'm not likely to ever pick it up.

Final Fantasy XIV (PS4): really enjoyed revisiting this but as ever it's slightly incompatible with having limited time to play and a game that requires long queues for content and which can't be paused is only ever going to be an occasional indulgence. I've completed Heavensward and that feels like a good point to pause; no doubt I'll be back in a year or so to work through Stormblood at my own pace.

Play

Sea of Thieves. Still. Less recently than I had been, but we spent a good could of hours ferrying goods around last night, and I still just really like being in that world.

Horizon Zero Dawn - I've gone back, determined to finish The Frozen Wilds. I mostly remember what all the buttons do, too, which is nice.

God of War: Chains of Olympus. Slowly working my way through, with occasional two-day breaks when I get frustrated at not being able to button-may my way through a boss, then one-shotting it when I come back with a clear head.

Want

God of War. Hoping it'll see a decent discount when the Days of Play sale comes around, though it feels like the internet is largely over this already.

Bin

Job and house hunting, both of which are more urgent than they used to be, and both of which suck.

PLAY
God Of War - No, not that one… the FIRST one. Totally didn't realise the GoW collection (featuring 1 and 2) was available on Vita, so I grabbed it. GoW holds up surprisingly well, outside of the not-so-good CGI cutscenes. Trophies are doable too, so that's nice.

Burnout Paradise PS4 - Going back to clean up for the Platinum, but will save the last unlock for when that 'Get a trophy a day' event happens next week.

Danganronpa V3 - New Vita has revived my play on the format, so I need to go back to this. Should take up all my time.

WANT
Yoku's Island Express - Waiting for a friend of mine who works at Team17 to send me the PS4 code he promised me for this. Not here yet. Bah.

Pokémon Let's Go Eevee - No doubt.

BIN
Tearaway Unfolded - Finally got the Platinum, deleted immediately.

Crazy Taxi Tycoon - Finally got to a point where I could max out all the drivers straight from a fresh restart, so that's done with.

Family life - How much does a divorce cost these days anyway?

Play

Almost literally nothing, at the moment. I flew my Alliance Chieftain between a couple of stations earlier today at our two-year-old's insistence, but that's as much action as Elite Dangerous has seen in months.

Though on a similar note, he made me play through Journey end-to-end last weekend as well.

I desperately need to find the time to do the new story missions for Sea of Thieves, but most of my time in evenings lately is spent writing upcoming mysteries for my Monster of the Week campaign.

Want

I'd love to have the headspace to dedicate to the 13th Age campaign that's been gnawing at the back of my brain since I got the rulebook a couple of days ago. I'm not sure how keen my players would be to go back to a more maths-intensive system, though - at least one has told me how much he prefers the lighter touch of the PbtA system to D&D's rules.

Hopefully at some point we'll switch back to D&D though, so I can play this Kenku bard that's burning a hole in my Dropbox.

Bin

Two migranes in the last three days can get to fuck.

13th Age is a lot easier to use than 5e but there is stuff to learn. I'm not sure it's a huge difference for players, but it's super simple to run in comparison to 5e.

BIN
Family life - How much does a divorce cost these days anyway?

As I understand it, half.

BIN
Family life - How much does a divorce cost these days anyway?

As I understand it, half.

Excellent, half of fuck all is very affordable.

13th Age is a lot easier to use than 5e but there is stuff to learn. I'm not sure it's a huge difference for players, but it's super simple to run in comparison to 5e.

Yeah, it seems closer to 4e in a lot of ways, but streamlined in ways that make sense and with more of an indie sensibility with regards to players being more in control of the stories that are told. I like the look of it a lot, although I'm a while away from A. having the confidence to run something in it, and B. having the time to write something to run in it.

As I said before, though - Monster of the Week is still going. I'm only three sessions in; I think we're a third to halfway through the second mystery, and I have two more ready and almost-ready to dive into.

Play

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary - It has:

Street Fighter 1 (first time ever playing it and I can't think of a bigger gap in quality for two games than this and SF2, it's hilariously bad)
5 iterations of Street Fighter 2 (back in the day of no updates like SFV vanilla to Arcade Edition) WHATEVER it has SF2 Turbo, all that matters.
Street Fighter Alpha 2 and 3 (which is my jam)
All 3 Street Fighter 3 iterations. (I don't give a fuck about SF3 though)

Only SF2 Turbo, Alpha 3 and SF3 Third Strike are playable online.

Like I said, I tried a bit of SF3, the game everyone loves but I don't really care about the game tbh. I much prefer the style of Alpha 3, but it's SF2 Turo online where I've been getting my fun. It's an old game and yet it's still played today, why? Because it's really really fun, the classic zoing of Ryu, the uphill battle of getting up close against projectiles with Zangief, it's all here. Unlikel ater SF games, you don't really do 5 hit super art cancel combos, rounds can be done in a few throws, this game is all about fundamental understanding and this combined with short bursts of how fast the rounds are, makes it fun for me.

[b]Stormblood[b] - New patch came out and honestly, the new primal is fucking amazing. Music is top notch as always and I'm upto Kefka in the Savage difficulty raid.

Hyrule Warriors - All the stuff I didn't get to experience on the WiiU is great. I've been playing this on handheld mode which I'm told is pretty bad perfomance wise, but I didn't see anything wrong about it. As good as this game is, it's really just reminding me how fucking awesome the Switch is as a Console.

Monster Hunter World - They released another monster, after surprising us with the news, we got 'Lunastra' not long after (like less than a week?). If Gar is reading this, she's nothing like Teo, she's MUCH harder, more intense and has a different moveset. She canset the ground on fire and her version of the Super Nova is like a recurring damage type fireblast. Also if she pairs up with Teo, they do their Super Novas at the same fucking time! Istead of Turf War the game calls it 'Bonding', awww. :3

Monster Hunter Generations - ….but I fought a Gammoth in this, which is a fucking massive wooly mammoth. It was easy, but pretty cool. Tonight I think I fight soapy boi.

Want

To go to Japan, this was one of my NY resolutions (as was going to the Gym, which I did and still do o/). Saving up for it, I'm definitely going to do it. I was even considering not buying food at work until I realised that was dumb. No one can stop me. >:(

Bin

My back is weak as fuck, it hurts quite bad at work sometimes.

Want

To go to Japan, this was one of my NY resolutions (as was going to the Gym, which I did and still do o/). Saving up for it, I'm definitely going to do it. I was even considering not buying food at work until I realised that was dumb. No one can stop me. >:(

I got back from Japan on Friday. If you can find cheap enough flights and hotels (or even capsules…) the food and drink is surprisingly cheap, even in Tokyo. Some of the sushi conveyor belts are 80p per plate, if you do your research, and it's good quality stuff. And you'll find god-tier ramen for six quid per bowl.

They do a foreigners-only "JR Pass" that costs about 450 quid and gets you unlimited access to the bullet trains for two weeks, if you're wanting to travel around.

Oh, and don't go to the Pokemon Centre. It's in the middle of nowhere and surprisingly shit.

Additional Want: Mario Tennis Aces. This wasn't on my radar at all but there's just been a three-day limited demo/online tournament of this over the past weekend and it turns out it's actually loads of fun. Tennis games are often over-simplified but this is pleasingly strategic - you have a Street Fighter-style energy meter that's built up by doing charge shots and can then be expended in a number of different ways or saved up for a power shot. There are dodges, trick shots, the usual range of Mario characters to unlock and the whole thing was hugely enjoyable.

The demo was restricted to a simple match against the CPU and basic online play, but the full game has a range of control options, a full single-player story mode and more. I think I'm in.

Additional PLAY:

Yoku's Island Express - Will do a proper thread for this when I have time, but it's glorious. Trust me, Gar, you'll want this.

MPH can I come to you for advice on certain things if I need to in the coming months? T_T (Can't believe I heard MPH say 'god tier ramen'!!!

I too want Mario Tennis, the only thing I didn't like was how easy to return shots the slow motion/focus type ability was, I assume people who use it in rallies will be left defenseless against someone who's saved it later on? Either way mlike Mario Kart, seems like a damn good multiplayer game.

Yep, I'm available for advice regarding food, trains, cities, and how to frantically point at large spiders in your ryokan.

Additional Wants: both West of Loathing and Wizard of Legend are looking pretty good on the Switch. I'll add those to the list together with Yoku's Island Express.

It took me a while to warm to the Switch but I'm loving it at the moment. Disgaea 5 in particular is taking up all my time - it's easily the best in the series.

X-COM IS STILL REALLY FUCING GOOD WOW

Just got Hyrule Warriors today. Couch co-op is great and adventure mode is nice for a quick fix (regular missions take 15-25 min, adventure mode is 3-5 min). Easily beats Dynasty Warriors.

X-COM IS STILL REALLY FUCING GOOD WOW

It's actually really pissing me off now, it's stacking overwhelmingly one sided odds against me now, and my strategy is starting to feel less relevant because at the end of the day if I miss a 75%+ shot the aliens can trun the entire thing around, And there are aliens that can just straight up mind control you through walls, like, what am I even supposed to do?

XCOM isn't like Fire Emblem - it expects you to lose people, especially in the early game when your equipment's all rubbish. Getting through a mission with all your soldiers is an achievement, not the expected outcome.

I beat the first game but I don't remember it getting this overwhelming this fast, but I'm sure the timers so far have made it a loth arder since can't just tank the whole way now.

Yeah, they've tried to make it so you can't just move/overwatch you way through every level, though I think they went a bit too far with it. On PC the are mods that extend or disable the timers, and War of the Chosen adjusts things as well (as far as I remember).

Play Yakuza 0. For about two hours. What a load of old wank.

If it's anything like Kiwami I can buy this reaction 100%.

More plays actually. I got into the Geforce NOW beta, which is a bloody marvel. For those who don't know, it's a game-streaming service where you play games you already own (on Steam, Battle net etc) on hugely powerful PCs in a data centre somewhere in Europe.

There's the odd hiccup but they're few and far between. The lag is basically non-existent, and for the most part it genuinely does feel like you're playing the games locally. Despite me playing on a work-issued, four-year-old MacBook Air.

The first thing I booted up was Portal 2, because I haven't played it since the first time and I remember it being utterly wonderful. It's still utterly wonderful.

I've also paid for a month of WoW (that's how good the Geforce streaming is, I'm confident enough to subscribe to a separate service and rely on both working). I left some time around Cataclysm, so I'm just wandering around Pandaria at the moment. Flying mounts really buggered this game up, there's no sense of scale any more, and all exploration goes out the window. Although maybe when Pandaria first launched you were grounded? I'm looking forward to Draenor, apparently that rule is still enforced.

Also playing Stardew Valley again. Definitely the best 'veg being pulled out of the ground' sound effect in all of gaming.

Play Hollow Knight on Switch. What a load of old wank.

Okay not really, I'm just awful at it. Or rather, not awful, I just can't figure out where to go. I've killed the first boss and just sort of got lost. All of the guides say pick something up off his corpse and trade it with a mage to get a shooty attack… but there was nothing on his corpse, and there's no mage, and now I'm bored.

Having found an hour this evening to for up the PS4, but no idea what to play, I opened my extensive "Backlog" folder with the intent of picking something to focus on that I might actually finish this year. The cursor was on Night in the Woods. I started this months ago, but it's a tough one to play with an audience - at least for me; it feels like a weirdly personal experience - so it feel by the wayside until tonight.

I love this beautiful, melancholy thing. I couldn't really remember what was going on when I dragged Mae downstairs, and immediately got into an argument with her mother, all of which felt oddly thematically appropriate. I just want the option to apologise to everyone on Mae's behalf. Especially to Mae.

Playing and have beat Kingdom Hearts for what is like the millionth time, since I got caught up in the KH3 hype and preordered KH3 and bought all the KH collections available on PSN. I thought I didn't give a shit about Kingdom Hearts anymore, who could even stay interested in something for such an obscene amount of time (that time being the minute they beat Kingdom Hearts 2, if anyone wants to check the date).

Not to mention not only have we not had KHIII for ages, we've had endless sidegames that were spread out on just about a different console for each (GBA for COM, PSP for Birthby Sleep, 3DS for Dream Drop Distance, PS4 for Fragmentary Passage XD) and they were fortunately/unfortunately depending on you look at it, not really skippable (thinking of getting into the story with KHIII first? Good luck :^) ). I'm fully intending to play through them all before KH3 drops though, they're kinda BS but kinda fun in some ways.

What the fuck even is Kingdom Hearts at this point.

Made it to Draenor and it's so much better than Pandaria. And I honestly think most of that is being forced to use ground mounts. It adds so much to the worldbuilding and sense of scale.

I had to google what was going on in the story – despite promising myself I'd go into this one and actually follow things from the beginning I was immediately lost. "We have to push back the iron horde!" Who? "Into the Dark Portal!" Doesn't that send me to Outland? Oh this is called Shadowmoon Valley but it looks different, have we gone back in time? Is it an alternate dimension?

You'd think at some point, this would have been established, if only in passing. It may well have been in the pre-launch patch content, but if you're coming to this fresh you just get a pop-up saying "go to the Dark Portal".

But I suppose story isn't really the point. It's still stunningly beautiful, it's still addictive, I still have the best beard on the server. 14 years in and it can still knock my socks off.

Play: Splatoon 2. Splatoon was one of the few big Wii U games that completely passed me by but I've given it a go on the Switch (it's currently in the sale) and it's actually fantastic. I'd never really describe myself as a fan of multiplayer games but this, with its quickfire matches, straightforward match-ups and complete lack of voice chat, is perfect. Currently having lots of fun mowing people down with a giant paint roller while cackling to myself.

Splatoon 2 is great because even if you're on a crap streak, you can just hang back and paint your half of the map in relative peace. You stay away from the frantic killzones, but are just as valuable to the team. And it's incredibly therapeutic.

Play

Mostly just Burnout Paradise this month, chasing trophies for the Days of Play contest that ended today. There were a lot more there that I was able to get than I thought, and even accidentally unlocked a couple of others along the way. Also, it's just great fun.

Still occasionally venturing into the Sea of Thieves, too - I reckon we can find the rest of the solo Thrones, even if we never manage the multi-crew ones. We'll see.

Want

Loads; I'm tempted to preorder both Hitman 2 and Anthem, and I still feel the siren call of God of War (wrong mythology?).

Bin

Job- and house-hunting. Right in the bin. To the bottom, with the sludge, the lot of it.

Everyone I know is telling me the Splatoon 2 expansion is the dog's testicles. I have it, need to play it.

Right now though, I'm playing Hitman. Nothing else. And I'm going to play each episode to death before moving onto the next. I reckon that'll last me a good few months.

Aw man, now I'm worried MPH is going to sign off on FFXIV when he hits Heavensward. D:

I'm flaky with MMOs, I'm not even subbed to FF14 at the mo. I just keep coming back to them all from time to time. I was on LOTRO again six months ago.

It's ESO's turn once I get bored of WoW again.

I've picked up Destiny 2 again, and managed to polish off the Warmind campaign missions. I was never really one for playing with people, but it's weird how much my enjoyment has been affected by the rest of the clan I'm in dropping off. Running through the daily Activities to get my Clan XP for the week would give me an excuse to drop in.

But I got a fancy new ornament for my hat and an exotic hand cannon that I love, which I'm quite pleased with.

I keep wondering if I should try and get back to Destiny 2, but I don't have the expansions, I haven't heard good enough stuff about them to convince me to make the jump, and there hasn't been a significant discount on them (yet - maybe when Forsaken drops they'll give them a decent sale).

It's a shame, because I still think the core gameplay there is fun, for the most part, but I just don't feel like I have anything to do; I'd probably rather get back into The Division.

The expansions for Destiny have been pretty disappointing, to be honest. Curse of Osiris was very thin on stuff to do, and its much-touted "Infinite Garden" dynamic level generation centrepiece was much less interesting than it had the potential to be. Warmind is similarly slight, mission-wise, but it's been a little more varied and introduces some new Public Event types that are interesting (albeit incredibly difficult - I'm still 30-odd Light levels below the 370 it recommends).

I've also tried The Division in the last few months, but its expansion content is much less solo-able than Destiny's, and the daily missions is still just a dull slog through the same dozen levels that have been looping since the game launched. On top of which, changes to the gear system mean that not only is my stuff underpowered, upgrading it is an almost-impenetrable labyrinth of processes.

Yeah, there is that; it seems like there are a thousand different gear sets, meaning getting even multiple pieces of one (never mind at the right power level) is an RNG nightmare.

play Fortni… Nah, deleted it again.
Witcher 3 finally making some in roads into enjoying this. I’m not even halfway through the bit I’ve already played but I’m more engaged by it. I think at the time I was looking to rattle through games which isn’t really possible with the Witcher 3; our baby was still relatively new and I wanted to continue to be involved in big games like this but was a) very tired and b) assumed there wasn’t much the game could teach me about how it worked. Going back fresh I’m learning how the spreadsheet mini game functions and just taking in the world a bit more.
I’m generally not great at open world games with complex systems, the effort required tends to wear me down eventually. Metal Gear 5’s FOB tutorial was the breaking point with that game and I barely made it through 2 hours of No Man’s Sky… So we’ll see how long this lasts. I really want to get through it but fear I’m too dumb and easily distracted to finish it.
Any tips or things to watch for from folks who’ve played it would be most welcome. I seem to remember reading something about there being a more responsive control option but haven’t gone to look for that info again.

want Would quite like to play through Valkyria Chronicles again seeing 4 looking so… Similar.

bin Fortnite again. The points between thinking ‘wow, this is fun’ and ‘wow, this is pointless’ have shortened but my willpower is so low that I can’t have it available on the machine and not play it. Games with friends are still really good fun but hours of solo matches are an incredible waste of time. I thought it was less addictive this time because I didn’t have the battle pass to grind out but still played it too much for a short period. Stupid Fortnite.

Additional PLAY:

D/Generation: The Original - The HD remake was a fucking shambles, but I loved D/Generation on the Amiga. Somehow, Wales Interactive have managed to port that to the Switch, so of course I got it. Need to check, but it feels like a really shabby port that runs terribly, juddering all over the place. Not great. Ah well.

EDIT: Yeah, it's a bit of a mess. Original was fairly smooth (not perfect) but this feels like it's running at two-third speed. They've also added some UI that's totally unfitting of the style - it's purely a graphical problem, so wouldn't have taken long to create something better that suited. Especially the font they chose. Seriously, why don't people take these things seriously? It's minimal work and effort to choose a nice font and make nice assets for the eShop… the ones they've put up are shocking. Such a pity.