Mina the Hollower
Wouldn't have gone anywhere near this, but a 5-star Donlan review on Eurogamer piqued my interest. Turns out it's absolutely bloody brilliant. There's been a lot of chat about the difficulty, which I think is a shame, as it's largely irrelevant thanks to a huge number of modifiers, and gets in the way of real discussion.
Difficulty wise, I've gone for:
75% damage taken
Enemies at 90% speed
More checkpoints
Only lose half bones on death
And it's pretty much perfect. But you can get so granular with the modifiers, that every skill level is catered for.
As for the game itself, it's just fantastic. The burrowing mechanic feels great, the world is intriguing, and it all flows so well. I feel spoiled that I've got so much of it left to explore. My only tiny negative is the lack of a CRT filter, although I suppose when you're going for a Gameboy Colour aesthetic, CRT filters don't make much sense.
Want
My to-play pile is so big, I can't decide whether I want not-E3 to be crap or not. At least if it's crap, I'll have time to play everything else.
I've never played Shovel Knight, despite it being literally everywhere for about a decade. I only recently discovered it was a game in its own right; I thought it was just a running joke that popped up in lots of different games.
Treasure Trove specifically, although I'm not sure you can get it standalone anymore anyway, but that has the extra campaigns and they're do good you might even prefer them to the main game
Play
Still having a lot of fun with Overwatch, though there's not much to say about it. They've been running a big 10-Year Anniversary event, which has included game modes that replicate the original launch versions of Overwatch and Overwatch 2. I'd forgotten how much they'd changed (Entire teams of Torbjorns! Doomfist was damage!?). It's even made me appreciate (some of) the changes they made to Orisa, which I honestly thought I'd never forgive.
Slowly getting on with 007: First Light, too. It's very good, but I have no idea how far through I am. Presumably not very - I've only just got past the mission that was (partly) shown in the gameplay reveal demo.
Finally, I briefly dipped back into Destiny 2, following the news that it's coming to the end of development. It's still got best-in-class gun shootin', but what passes for the story is completely unintelligible, and I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing, or where to start. There's a "Quests" tab in the menu, but it's honestly very little help.
Want
Looking forward to Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2. The first one is silly, arcadey fun, and I'm glad we'll finally be able to add a fourth player to the squad.
Thick as Thieves jumped right up my wishlist when they announced it was going co-op only, though that's tempered a little by the fact that it only supports 2 players. Still, if the console version follows the PC launch and only costs a fiver, I won't complain overmuch.
Bin
Why hasn't it happened yet? Honestly didn't think it would take this long. Not that the aftermath is likely to be an improvement, I suppose.
Given that I finished the last 40 minutes of it at lunchtime today, it feels a bit sneaky to put 007 First Light in "Play", but given that I haven't even touched the TacSim yet I guess I still have some stuff to do. I have Some Thoughts about it, but that might be better suited to another thread.
I might go back to Forza Horizon 6 again, now that Bond has rolled credits, but I suspect the shine might have faded (especially since I didn't really pay for it). Perhaps it's time to look back at the Switch 2 library.
Want
Curious about Beasts of Reincarnation, but not much at the moment. Maybe this year's not-E3 will inspire me.
007 First Light - I'm only a few levels in but so far this is marvellous. It's maybe more like Hitman than I was expecting - it's kind of like a scrappy version of those games, where you can start off with all the same sort of planning and the best of intentions but rather than reloading when it all goes wrong you just have to go with it and either fight or bluff your way out of the situation. Production values are through the roof, the voice acting is superb and the representation of Bond is spot on, with just the right amount of insouciance and swagger without ever quite tipping over into punchable. It's a big, expensive, generous game and I'm really glad that it seems to have been a big hit for IOI who increasingly can do no wrong in my eyes.
Final Fantasy XIV - still loving this, I'm about to finish the original A Realm Reborn section (one dungeon to go) so I'll post some more detailed thoughts in the Games Completed thread shortly.
Forza Horizon 6 - I like it to dip into every couple of days but just like all the other games in the series I find it a bit repetitive. There's still no real sense of progression so it's just log in, drive around for a bit, log out again. I get why people love these games but the formula feels a bit stale to me these days.
Want
I think that's enough to be getting on with for now. Like others here, I have a Backlog.
Bin
UK politics is a complete mess at the moment. Seriously starting to think we're going to have to go through a period of Nazis to get back to the good stuff again.
Tried the demo for Onimusha: Way of the Sword and it was a fun game, but the demo was way too easy and I hope it at least has some semblance of enemy aggression in the full game. I know Onimusha was never a Souls game and that's good, I wasn't expecting that but I'm a little sad it's another 'everything is destroyed by this huge parry window' type of game, you have a parry and a lenient last minute dodge and both basically turn the demo boss into breakfast.
I bought the first two games on the double pack deal sale on Steam though, so can't wait to revisit those, especially 2 which is my favourite in the series. I think a 3 Remaster will happen soon if the likeness of Jean Reno isn't too big a hurdle to overcome, if not there's a decomp/recomp (I forget which is which) of it out there and those things are fantastic ways to play old games now, having given us ultimate versions of Lylat Wars and Mario Kart 64 and the like
Also, Musashi saying 'piss off' feels so absurdly out of place lol
Why is the new God of War generating any excitement at all - it looks near identical to the other two. With a gender swap. Narrow FOV, corridor levels, QTE heavy combat, looks very pretty. Utterly meh.
UK politics is a complete mess at the moment. Seriously starting to think we're going to have to go through a period of Nazis to get back to the good stuff again.
Yeah, as I said in the off Topic thread - I think I've reached this point now. The people going all in an Reform will be the most fucked by them. I'll do brilliantly out of it. At some point you have to shrug your shoulders, give people a dose of Orban, and then check back in ten years and see how they're getting on. For sure, as I've said many times it's a bit like the Sheriff of Nottingham in Shrek (some of you may die but it's a price I'm willing to pay) but fuck it. If I read one of these fuckers writing THE LEFT ARE THE REAL FASCISTS on a social media post again, I will literally scream.
Play
I can't remember playing much recently. I really need to crack on with Esoteric Ebb and Dispatch. I'm going into London next week for the Valorant Champions, which should be entertaining. Though we arranged everything, then realised we could've gone to multiple eSports events in Paris as they're moving the World Cup there. However, that is laced with dirty Saudi blood money, so maybe it's for the best.
Want
I have to say the new ROG Ally with the OLED screen is probably going to have to be bought. It's going to be bundled with the new XREAL glasses, so people think it'll be about 2k dollars. I can't even use the XREAL glasses as I don't wear contact lenses much any more…. I still feel a strong pull to get it….
Bin
We had three days of summer in Ireland, now the long range forecasts suggest 2 solid months of rain. I'm Welsh, so I do appreciate rain as a norm, but bloody hell the West coast of Ireland is depressing sometimes.
Massive 20 percent redundancies where my partner works (she missed this round of cuts, but there will be more). I can last a year or two more in the business I'm in, but holy fuck the jobs landscape looks bleak. AI-catastrofucking, tightening margins and a completely overblown world economy that has to be heading for a full on crash of epic proportions. And a world already a tinderbox driven by oligarchs and populist politicians. I know, by some metrics, everything is supposed to be getting better, but wouldn't it be nice to see that from time to time?
