PWB September - Come Celebrate 2020's 157th Month Inside!

It's already the 3rd of the month, and I'm the one doing this post. This is odd. Are you all dead? Did you all migrate to yet another iteration of The Society, and just leave me here?!

Play

I finally bought a Switch, so that's getting quite a lot of love. Mario Odyssey is wonderful (apart from the motion elements in the controls apparently being mandatory, which is only slightly irritating). Mario Kart is Mario Kart (and I haven't played 8 before), and I do like me some Mario Kart.

I also already love Golf Story and Demon's Tilt, and having those, Dead Cells, Darkest Dungeon, Into the Breach, Isaac, Gungeon and the rest available while I sit on the sofa and others watch tv is fantastic. The option to then bugger off and carry on on the tv upstairs is even better. It's my little indie/Ninty jukebox, and I love it already.

(I know you all already know all this, but it's new to me and I'm enjoying it, so leave me alone.)

Oh, and I haven't left the 3DS alone just yet either (it still has it's own great exclusives, and suits some games perfectly thanks to the design), and have finally started Luigi's Mansion. Lovely little game, which I'm obviously only about twenty years late to the party on.

With the PS4 now clear to just be the AAA/graphics machine, I'm still playing Wreckfest on that, and also trying to decide what to start between Doom Eternal, Ghost of Tsushima and Control (amongst others).

Want

ScourgeBringer and Hades both look fun, and I still want a console port of Curse of the Dead Gods (which will hopefully arrive around the time it leaves Early Access, as with Hades).

I'm still likely to get a PS5 fairly early on too, assuming I can play all my PS4 backlog on it.

Bin

I actually have a gaming one, rather than just a 'points at everything'-type response, this month, so…yay?

But yeah, I can't be bothered with Gravity Rush 2 at all. It's not that it's bad, exactly, but I don't really care about what's happening, and find the combat to be mainly rubbish, and the side-quests tedious. I like other things about it, not least just flying around, but that's not enough.

Play

Literally nothing. One of my RPG players has been off to Germany for the last three weeks, so not even any dice rolling – just a lot of prep, which has included learning the Belter creole from the Expanse TV series so I can confound my players. I installed The Sims 4 last night to try out its Sim editor as a possible way to make character portraits for NPCs and I've been making a bunch of maps in Dungeondraft.

I have, perhaps (probably) stupidly, installed and started mucking around with Unity thanks to Tom Francis' tutorials - getting a thing moving around has been alarmingly simple, though I sense The Wall approaching quickly.

Want

Time, please.

Bin

My inability to go to bed at a reasonable hour. If I'm still up at 11pm, I get a second wind and won't sleep until nearly 1am, which is great for getting RPG prep done, but not so good for work the next day…

Mario Odyssey is wonderful (apart from the motion elements in the controls apparently being mandatory, which is only slightly irritating).

I'm fairly certain they're not - though the tutorial may over-emphasise them in the beginning. There are some moves that you can't do without them (and others that are just easier with) but you can definitely complete the game just using buttons.

I'm fairly certain they're not - though the tutorial may over-emphasise them in the beginning. There are some moves that you can't do without them (and others that are just easier with) but you can definitely complete the game just using buttons.

Yeah, I think there's only two moves I've seen so far that I can't do without them, and both are largely optional/replaceable (if useful). There's only been one bit where I seemingly had to use motion, but that cropped up while I was in handheld mode, annoyingly, and made me think that I might end up largely playing Odyssey in docked mode, with the Pro controller, just in case.

Play
No videogames, Okami is calling me though, and I still want to play either Persona or Trails.

Instead of Videogames
I have been reading the 2000AD series Brink which is basically Dan Abnett's take on The Expanse.

I have been enjoying having Formula 1 back on the TV. Even if it hasn't been the most interesting season so far, it's great to see the young drivers barging through the ranks.

D&D has been going well. My teenage group finished their second story arc with what I thought would be a fun boss fight. Apparently is was the most epic and emotional fight every and half the players couldn't sleep that night because of all the adrenaline flowing for the two hour fight.

The adult D&D group is a little more sedate although we did have their first PC death last night.

I have managed to get in one session of Coriolis, which was good but brief. More thoughts to come.

Want
The new season of The Mandalorian.

Maybe the new Paper Mario.

I just bought Eyes of the Stone Thief for 13th Age, so I'm looking forward to that.

Bin
2020?

With the PS4 now clear to just be the AAA/graphics machine, I'm still playing Wreckfest on that, and also trying to decide what to start between Doom Eternal, Ghost of Tsushima and Control (amongst others).

I'd save Control until you get your PS5. It's a great game, but it runs pretty bad on a base PS4.

Play
Game Pass expired, meaning I lost Elder Scrolls Online. So I've started Skyrim again for the 19th time. Took me an hour to decide on all my mods.

Animal Crossing. I need to get started on my Autumn bugs and fishies.

Overwatch. I'd forgotten all about this, but my friend-group decided it was to be the next online game of choice, so I'm back in. They've added so many new heroes and maps, but it's still great fun. Unless you lose. Then it's the worst thing in the world.

Want
PS5. I'm ready now. My PS4 is chugging.

January to arrive, and with it my first child. I'm going to indoctrinate her young – I need a Mario Kart buddy in the house.

Whoa, congrats Mr Party Hat! Kid gonna' grow up with your top tier funnies, lucky.

Play

Trails of Cold Steel - So far it's been really formulaic but I see what it's trying to do, they're doing what the series does best and building up the world and using the field trips as an excuse for you to see parts of it personally. I do wonder though how much I'd care if I started the series on this game though. This translates to a very light Persona/Fire Emblem 3 structure of 'run around school/explore dungeon before you go to RPG Town #234 and do another dungeon.

Gameplay wise, the combat is super fun if not slightly broken. They've faithfully ported over the 'strategy RPG' feel of the older games but made everything run a lot smoother and faster, battles have been pretty simple so far but I've never felt that I don't want to fight anything and boss fights have actually made me have to think about what to do, which is good.

It's very anime too, it's so good it has TWO Anime openings, and the main character in the first hour has a girl fall on top of him through a trap door and is promptly slapped for it, then later on he cuts a gate lock by drawing his Katana faster than the eye can see. And yet so far I'm surprised at how much I'm into these characters, they're tropey for sure but they've also surprised me, Alisa stopped being Tsundere over Rean almost as soon as the prologue ended and I've just done a bit where she laments over how she tried to escape herm other's influence…and ended up right under thumb again. Jusis stopped being a stuck up toff very quickly and his and Machias' arc of understanding each other hasn't taken 5000 hours to get going!

Puyo Puyo Champisonship - YOU READ THIS RIGHT. PUYO AS IN PUYO POP.
There's a Puyo minigame in Ao no Kiseki that is so addictive it made me buy this game, I played it online and it's still active! I got destroyed by someone with a 10 puyo chain and I had a lot of fun. I'm going to play more in future, just need to read up tutorials on setting up combos, ealing with being blocked off and how to block them off etc..

Want

Mario 64, Marios Sunshin, Mario Odyssey, Mario 3D World :p

I wanna' try an Ys game, maybe the one on Vita…

With the PS4 now clear to just be the AAA/graphics machine, I'm still playing Wreckfest on that, and also trying to decide what to start between Doom Eternal, Ghost of Tsushima and Control (amongst others).

I'd save Control until you get your PS5. It's a great game, but it runs pretty bad on a base PS4.

Irritatingly, I got the main game and season pass outside of the 'Ultimate Edition', so I'd have to pay again to play it on PS5. Or, I suppose I (probably, hopefully) wouldn't, thanks to backwards-compatibility, but that's still horseshit.

Want
PS5. I'm ready now. My PS4 is chugging.

This. Going back to play on it last night after a few nights on the Switch (which doesn't sound like it's trying to take off) was very odd.

January to arrive, and with it my first child. I'm going to indoctrinate her young – I need a Mario Kart buddy in the house.

Congrats MPH. :D

Congrats, MPH!

Play
AC IV multiplayer. Creeping close to 55, but I really need to stop buying cosmetic shit if I'm going to unlock all the abilities and stuff I'll need for the final trophy.

D&D. It's only fortnightly, but that's better than nothing. My kenku ranger made a deal with some hags a couple of sessions ago to get them some dragon eyes in exchange for as-yet-unspecified "gifts", which has the rest of the party more than a little worried. So now we're off to kill a dragon. No problem.

Want
More D&D. I've had the itch to DM something for a while - specifically Curse of Strahd - but I don't have the players locally; the game I play in is online, and I'd like to do Strahd in meatspace if at all possible, so it'd gonna have to sit on the wishlist for a while yet. I'd also like to have a crack at the Dishonored RPG, which I've written a couple of little adventures for.

Bin
DIY and gardening. It feels like our house has been half a building site for six months.

Congrats MPH! There's a plumber who lives near me with a massive van with your initials on the side so I get a little MPH in my life on a daily basis. So I can feel warm and cosy at how fertile you are when I see it today.

I get the same feeling every time I look at my speedometer. So, so fertile.

And thanks guys!

I assume the Soc will get to choose the name, as is tradition?

As long as it's not from the D&D thread, or one of Alastor's Japanese oddities, I'm game.

Congrats MPH!

Boba Fett is a classic name choice. And gender neutral.

I expect Alastor will have 17 children by tomorrow.

Congratulations MPH. There is no better family unit than a Mr Party Hat, a Mrs Party Hat and a Little Party Hat.

Play

Tell Me Why. More episodic narrative brilliance from the Life is Strange team.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: a replay, on Switch - I'd love a new game but it's been nearly 15 years since I played this so most of it feels pretty new.

Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout. Both my wife and son love this, a bit more than I do perhaps but it still draws me back for a quick game every now and then. They're doing a great job with the cosmetics, there's always something new in the shop to aim for, and if this gets similar attention in terms of game types and variations I'm sure this will be a gaming staple for years to come.

A bunch of stuff on GamePass, trying stuff out, but haven't really settled on anything to get stuck into yet. Crusader Kings 3 gives me a headache. Spiritfarer is twee and looks like it's going to turn into yet another crafting game. The Turing Test is a second-rate Portal clone. Hypnospace Outlaw is clever but ugly, like me. Flight Simulator takes a week to load.

Want

Still weighing up next-gen purchasing decisions. Erring towards the PS5 again now, simply because the Xbox Series X doesn't actually appear to offer very much that's new. At least the PS5 has a new Ratchet & Clank game I guess.

Bin

Half-arsed Nintendo ports. Fuck's sake guys, make some effort with your Mario games.

The holy trinity of Covid-19, Brexit and Trump. Which will kill us all first? Stake your bets now. (It's Trump)

My children are Class VII of Thors Military Academy in Trails of Cold Steel.

Bin

Half-arsed Nintendo ports. Fuck's sake guys, make some effort with your Mario games.

What's up with the ports? I'm thinking of getting 3D World+ and I'd like to revisit Mario Sunshine. Should I avoid them?

Well, they're pretty bare bones. Mario 64 still runs in 4:3, Sunshine's still 30 fps, they've only bothered with Galaxy 1 and not 2, etc. There are a few texture upgrades here and there but really they're just the old games running on a new system (and without the analogue triggers for Sunshine, or the pointer precision for Galaxy, or the touchscreen for World, you could argue they're never going to be the best versions).

Maybe that's enough for people, but compared to the effort literally everyone else puts into re-releases of their beloved classics, this is very much a "get it out the door and have done with it" job. Plus it's only available for a few months, for some bizarre reason.

3D World probably comes out of this the best - its touchscreen usage was fairly infrequent, it's got actual new stuff and it looks like they've sped it up quite a bit as well - but it's a mediocre Mario game, so depends what you want really.

Additional bin: 6am power cuts that trigger the house alarm.

congratulations to MPH

Play
Aside from FFXIV, which is now the only "big" game I'm playing, I've just reviewed Eastern Exorcist and am dipping in and out of Apex Legends .

Congrats to MPH!

Still playing Far Cry 5. Want more time to play games. Bin the usual feckless cowards, liars, charlatans and hypocrites.

Bin -Trails of Cold Steel

Game gets ridiculously OTT in the very last hour of the game, it's hilarious.

Spoiler - click to showA whole fucking squadron of mechs (and yet another Anguis), so that's part of the Kiseki lore now I guess. All the Crossbell stuff I knew already but obviously Crow was a surprise, Falcom do it every time and it still gets me! Also that mech combat was really fun actually. If we remake Xenogears I'd say we got a good framework for mech battles right there….

Play - Trails of Cold Steel II

Yeeeeah, the ending to the first game was a massive cliffhanger, why wait? Not that I was going to.

I couldn't believe the audacity of Trails of Cold Steel to drag out all that glacial worldbuilding (mostly told, not shown) and then cram what felt like all the actual story into the last hour.

Spoiler - click to show For my money the Crow stuff is a complete horseshit twist that the game 100% did not earn. It makes no sense based on anything we actually see, and I'm not even sure the events line up. But whatever, JRPGs don't need to make sense.

That last sentence right there is why they get away with this shit though.

If it's got a satisfying tactical battle system to make the 40-80 hrs fun, I wouldn't mind too much about the poor story.

There's only so much that can cover such a long time though from an RPG. If I'm investing the same amount of time it'd take me to read a book or watch a TV series, I want something to keep me invested.

That said, I guess this contradicts any game that doesn't have a story but has engaging mechanics; say, the new Tony Hawk, which I'll be playing for a long time, or any kind of fighting game. I reckon it only applies when something's noticeably bad… if it's not there in the first place, you can't judge it.

That said, I guess this contradicts any game that doesn't have a story but has engaging mechanics; say, the new Tony Hawk… or any kind of fighting game.

The difference with those, to an extent, is that the sense of progress comes from your own mastery of the mechanics. JRPGs generally don't have that kind of gameplay; if the story or characters aren't holding your interest, even the best battle system will feel like a chore eventually.

I won't deny it's slow as fuck but I think they show quite a lot, that's basically what every field trip was about. I thought every area felt pretty distinct too, which further served to show how the different parts of Erebonia can be from one another, like how the Nords live completely different lives to the people who live in the more industrial area of Roer.

Spoiler - click to showI can't really say the Crow twist was completely earned, but I think timeline wise it all works out at least. At the very least the overarching noble vs reformist shit was well done imo. To that end, it didn't matter who pulled the trigger for me.

As for some stuff we don't see, I think I might be thinking a bit differently here, because every thing they they tell us about Crossbell's politics and events in Cold Steel they personally show you in Zero/Ao no Kiseki. I dunno' if you're even including that stuff, Aniki, or you were strictly talking about the Erebonian Empire exclusive issues?

I know not everyone will care but I really do think the world building of this series really is quite impressive. There's scenes before every field trip where they are planning their train route and they go really into depth on how long the journey will take, what transfers they need and what line to take. It might just be 'fluff' but I like it because it feels like the developers have a real sense of geography of the empire and didn't just pull names of towns out their arse and say 'you're going here now'. I think I could place more regions of Zemuria on a map than I could with towns on a map of the UK.

The structure is extremely formulaic, and even though I see why they did it I'm not sure I prefer the Persona style school setting/structure to previous games. I can see how that would wear people down when they realise how it's all going to play out. Also the Old Schoolhouse stuff is probably the most anticlimatic way to do dungeons ever, it's like Persona 3's Tartarus except not as good.

A bunch of stuff on GamePass, trying stuff out, but haven't really settled on anything to get stuck into yet. Crusader Kings 3 gives me a headache. Spiritfarer is twee and looks like it's going to turn into yet another crafting game. The Turing Test is a second-rate Portal clone. Hypnospace Outlaw is clever but ugly, like me. Flight Simulator takes a week to load.

I ended up sticking with Spiritfarer. And it's quite nice, if a bit tonally confused. So it looks a bit Studio Ghibli, lots of nice hand-drawn animation, and you play a little girl who's got a big boat and lots of animal friends and you have to make the animal friends happy. She's got a cute cat that follows her around and you can hug the cat and also hug the animals. You can build gardens and plant carrots and cook the carrots and then feed them to your animal friends. Lovely.

And then it turns out the animal friends are all dead. And they're floating about on this big boat in the afterlife trying to deal with unresolved trauma relating to things like suicide and depression. And you resolve those problems for them and drop them off at, basically, the gate to the underworld, and then you never see them again. There's some swearing. One of the animals definitely smokes too much. It's got a raccoon shopkeeper and everyone fucking hates the raccoon shopkeeper and keeps accusing him of being a rip-off merchant (which he absolutely is). It's an odd game. But I kind of like it.

It's got a raccoon shopkeeper and everyone fucking hates the raccoon shopkeeper and keeps accusing him of being a rip-off merchant (which he absolutely is).

Goddamn pigeonholing.

That sounds awesome.

Bin - Trails of Cold Steel II

This game has like 3 false endings, I think it ended at least 15 hours after I thought it would. So despite my initial thoughts it did indeed end up being astronomically long. Again.

It's a game that seems to take many complaints people had with the first and improved them, the Persona like structure is totally gone and replaced with are more organic flow, there's less focus on world builing and more on the events of the Erebonan Civil War. You still basically end up doing sidequests and monster hunts, but I guess you'll feel at least you're working towards something now. (but I think the structure in the first was fine T_T)

My main issue with the story here was

Spoiler - click to show Despite me being fine with the twist in the first that Crow was the leader of the terrorists that shot the Chancellor. I thought the whole friendship thing they had in this felt incredibly forced. He didn't even join the gang until like a few chapters in. So his big death scene was a huge miss for me.

Thankfully, I was still invested in the Civil War plot and I think you can say this runs along despite every other tangent. I fucking SCREAMED when I saw

Spoiler - click to showWe were gonna' get to play a part with Lloyd and Rixia from the Crossbell games in a little section actually set in said state. And of course now despite everything I have to live with the knowledge that my favourite region of Zemuria is now part of the Empire, genuinely sad stuff imo.

I might actually beat Cold Steel III before Oct 27th after all!!!

I missed this last month, so I guess I should catch up while I'm actually using my laptop for five minutes…

PLAY
La-Mulana 2 - Wanted this for ages, since I helped publish the Vita version of the original, so I grabbed it when it was on sale for Switch recently. It's La-Mulana! It's not as hard as the first one though, so that's something. But it's still obtuse as fuck with its puzzles, so I doubt I'll be finishing it any time soon.
Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition - Went back to this on Switch as I can play it with my other half while we wait for Age of Calamity. Great fun, janky as hell, but I love it.
Tony Hawk 1+2 - Barely touched it, but I love it. So good, so solid, such a great remake.
Sea of Thieves - Still. Each update brings something new to do, which is keeping me hooked. I'm only a fraction away from hitting Pirate Legend (55 GH /48 OoS /48 MA) but I still need to do the Tall Tales too. What a great game. Really looking forward to experiencing it on my new…

WANT
Xbox Series X - Yeah, I know, that means cav was right, dammit. But end-of-year bonuses coinciding with the launch of this mean it's almost a certainty I'll get one. Only thing that'll stop me is if I go to Saturn (basically German Dixons) on the day I get paid and they've sold out… I'm not putting down a pre-order, so it'll be a walk-in-and-buy thing. If they don't have one, I guess that's a sign I should wait.
Super Mario 3D All-Stars - Can't disagree with Gar's opinion on this more if I tried. Really excited for this, wanted to replay Sunshine and Galaxy again for a while, so Friday should really hurry up.

BIN
Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Okay, maybe it's not a total bin… it's my project at work, so I have to play it. But considering that I played all the other AC games daily for two years straight each time, the fact I've fallen off the wagon of this one so quickly is quite disappointing to me. Oh well.
Health - I finally sorted myself out a doctor over my time off at the end of August, so that's good. It's also started me down the road of endless referrals though, since that's how German health services work; GPs just say 'Okay, if X is wrong with you, you need to go see THIS doctor' and then you go elsewhere. In the last month, I've seen a GP, Orthapaedic and Neurologist practitioner, and I have a full-blown MRI on Thursday. That's good, because it means I'll have a strong case for claiming disability benefit (which will help massively). But since the process started, I've starting hurting even more and now it's all a bit demoralising. Oh well. Life is what it is.

Yep, I’ve gone back to Hyrule Warriors as well, it’s as brilliant as ever and I’ve completed about 1% of it so there’s plenty of fun there still to be had.

Like you say it’s a bit technically, it definitely suffers from “quick port” syndrome and the way it runs 1080p in handheld mode is ridiculous. Hyped for the sequel and hopefully given the attention it’s getting they will have put a bit more care into the technical side of things this time around.

Play - Trails of Cold Steel III

Time skip! (about a year and a half) Rean is now an Instructor in a different branch of Thors Military Academy. The old Class VII all obviously graduated and moved on with the tracks they were all set on and so Class VII are new characters (besides Altina and her robot, Claimh Solais) with Rean as the teacher, not the student. Admittedly, Rean is still Rean and so he's still doing exactly the same odd jobs for people as before, though I'm not that far in.

The new cast feel great so far, the best is obviously Juna Crawford, the bubblegum pink haired girl who is VERY proud of her being a Crossbellan (as well she should, it's my favourite setting in the series) and as such, frequently puts her foot in her mouth snapping at every Erebonian she meets (since they occupied Crossbell and stripped it of its autonomy as a state. Cunts) and then apologising because she knows deep down it's not the fault of any one individual she's met so far. She wields two tonfa that can fire bullets so you know, that's fucking cool too.

….anyway, enough about Juna. So far story picks up after a timeskip like I said. The Civil War saga of CSI and CSII is over, and we're kinda dealing with the fallout of that and what's gonna' happen now that the empire is seemingly more powerful and ambitious than its ever been I guess. Also the fact that Rean is the national hero of Erebonia…and is teaching students from areas he's personally helped theempire to occupy. (it's not come up as much as it should, but maybe later…?)

Gameplay wise, it's not exactly gone up to date with the animations of modern games, but they've completely changed the UI. It's kinda hard to read some of it atm, hard to get used to. But they've once again updated the battle system with more systems to make it a fun experience as it's always been.

The fact that Rean is a teacher now, means we're probably going back to CSI style structure of School-Field Trip-Dungeon-School though, I mightb e wrong, I hope it's not exactly that. But we'll see. :^)

You're a machine Alastor!

I had a lot of time on my hands, luckily. It's crazy tothink that when the new on comes out in October, I'm still one game behind Japan who will have had Hajimari no Kiseki for months and have done before we even got Cold Steel IV.

More Plays, from Game Pass.

My Time at Portia is a janky but incredibly likeable life sim. It's got the Chain of Stuff mechanic nailed. Need to build a bridge? You'll need metal sheeting, which needs a machine cutter, which needs iron bars, which needs iron ore, which needs a pickaxe, which needs wood, which needs…

Hotshot Racing is a gorgeous Daytona homage. The handling feels a bit too drifty (if there is such a thing), but otherwise it's spot on.

With all the f1 over the last three months I really want a nice driving game.

More Plays, from Game Pass.

My Time at Portia is a janky but incredibly likeable life sim. It's got the Chain of Stuff mechanic nailed. Need to build a bridge? You'll need metal sheeting, which needs a machine cutter, which needs iron bars, which needs iron ore, which needs a pickaxe, which needs wood, which needs…

> Hotshot Racing is a gorgeous Daytona homage. The handling feels a bit too drifty (if there is such a thing), but otherwise it's spot on.

It's an homage to all 90s racers really. There's a bit if everything in there but the handling model is definitely OutRun 2

I heard that it was Rubberbanding: The Game as far as the AI goes, but I'm still keen to play it.

I heard that it was Rubberbanding: The Game as far as the AI goes, but I'm still keen to play it.

It is, and they're really aggressive to boot, it's at its worst on the lowest difficulty, on Hard the balance of the AI is at its best, on Expert you're basically racing with the pack anyway so you don't notice the rubber banding, though the aggression is still there. I think the rubber banding is made more apparent by it's slipstream mechanic which gives the following car a huge speed advantage and fills up their boost meter. So it's a bit like slipstreaming and then popping open DRS in F1

My Time at Portia is a janky but incredibly likeable life sim. It's got the Chain of Stuff mechanic nailed. Need to build a bridge? You'll need metal sheeting, which needs a machine cutter, which needs iron bars, which needs iron ore, which needs a pickaxe, which needs wood, which needs…

I highly recommend Forager (also on GamePass) if you’re enjoying this sort of stuff. It’s a very focused, almost minimalist take on the crafting genre and the kind of thing you can lose hours to without even blinking.

Yeah the rubberbanding is crap on Normal mode. There's no point even using your boost.

Thanks Gar, I'll have a look at Forager.

This might be the first game I've seen all year that's been an immediate Want for me: I hadn't even heard of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim before today, but man – that looks like 100% my kinda game. Tactical turn-based battles, a crazy sci-fi story and high-school drama? Sign me the fuck up!

Yeah. Looks good.

I want it because Vanillaware. I loved Odin Sphere, Muramasa and Dragon's Crown. Throw in sci-fi elements and this was always on my shopping list. Now I know for sure.

Additional PLAY: I bought Ori 2 and Hades on Switch yesterday, so will be playing both of those soon.

Why would you not just play Ori 2 on GamePass? It's a beautiful game, 4K/HDR really do it justice.

Journey to the Savage Planet is worth a play. I think it was Cav who called it Metroid meets Banjo, which is pretty accurate. Lots of scanning alien environments, finding new gear that unlocks old bits of the map, and collecting a whole load of Stuff from goggly eyed aliens.

And excited to pick up Mario 3D All Stars, as barebones as it is. It's been 18 years (Jesus Christ) since I played, and disliked, Sunshine. So I'm going back in with an open mind – hopefully I find something to like this time around.