PWB June: Burnham or Streeting? There's only one way to find out...

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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.

Shovel Knight is one of the best game collections out there, not surprised to hear Mina is brilliant

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.

I'll add it to the list on the strength of Mina.

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.

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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.

Bin

Weather could do with making up its mind.

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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.

Loving Forza 6 but part of me feels I would prefer the Motorsport side of Forza, with more dedicated tracks

Addtional Want, for the first time ever: a PS5, I think?

It really sucked when I realised I had to buy a PS5 to be honest

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.

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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.

Anyway,

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?

Found a copy of Doom on the GBA in town and after three levels I can comfortably say this is the fastest something has made my eyes sore in a while.

I still want to beat it, but maybe a level a day, or two since they're so short but let's not push our luck. As for the game, it's definitely Doom but it's by far the worst version I've played, you can barely make out the shapes of the enemies you're shooting at a distance but it's vaguely got the 'run fast, shotgun demons' feel, but that's pretty much it. It has music and the sound effects and all that too, but levels have been noticeably cut down a bit which felt like an attack on my muscle memory

It gets worse the further in you get as the cat runs out of space for new textures. You would be better playing the PSone Dooms on one of your other handhelds.

Yeah I've tried playing more and even a little bit is painful for me so I really might have to drop this, as amusing as it is to count the individual pixels on the walls it gets harder to do so when your eyelids pool up with blood. 😬

Fair play for the attempt I suppose, the port that is not me trying to play it. The PS1 version of Doom was the one that changed the atmosphere from 'rip and tear' to a more atmospheric affair right? Sounds cool.

New Want:

Code Veronica Remake - I love Code Veronica, and I hope this is more like Resident Evil 2 Remake than Resident Evil 3, but for now I'm just happy it exists, not sure what that stuff with the old lady was supposed to be though?

Final Fantasy VII: Revelation - I sighed hard when they said it was the most expansive open world they've done or whatever it was Matt Mercer said, but I can't deny I'm excited from the footage we got, which almost felt like a mini FF7 direct. The 'Weapons' emerging from the planet have always been the best part of the OG game for me and they seemed to have done them justice, holy shit just seeing Ruby Weapon made me hyped as fuck. They also showed a Job System which is quite frankly, insane for a combat system that is already pretty damn fun, Vincent looked every bit as cool as I'd hoped for and Cid looked like Cid(:shrug:)

If they open world isn't another Chadley Quest Simulator, then fine, but weall know it'll have something like that right? Just please tone that shit down.

I was damn near ready to start a Platinum Trophy run on FF7 OG on the PS5 and then I thought…maybe I should play the Remakes again once more?

That SGF stream was a real fuckin slog, but I did like the look of genALPHA, Guild Wars 3 and even the new Stellar Blade had me intrigued.

That's a pretty low hit rate for a 2h presentation, though.

They started way too strong with Code Veronica, showed us a bunch of soulslikes (has to be the most boring genre of all time at this point, surely?) and then we got Tifa in Street Fighter 6, I don't play SF6 but I can't deny that's exciting and the FF7 Revelation stuff saved the show for me. I am super disappointed that Virtua Fighter 6's runtime was taken up showing off some shitty story mode that everyone's going to pretend to want now

I thought the first half an hour of that was great. Banger after banger, culminating in Fumito Ueda's new game. I'm not sure why they make it 2 hours long (I mean, money obvs) because there's an inevitable lull in the middle. And I don't really care about FF7 after Rebirth soured me a little. But on the whole I really enjoyed the show.

I reckon Nintendo and Microsoft's could have some crackers too. Could be a good year overall.

The amount of remakes going on at the moment is ridiculous (I mean who really needed a worse-looking version of Rayman) but I'll be keeping an eye on the Code Veronica remake, it was always one of my favourites of the series and maybe the one that's aged the worst so a proper ground-up remake is well overdue.

Nobody who isn't already on board with 150 hours of FF7 Remake under their belt gives a hundredth of a shit about this third installment, and the people who do weren't waiting for a trailer to make their mind up. I don't believe anyone has been on the fence about it until now.

Ending the show with it was a real damp squib. I suspect Keighley wanted to play it real fuckin safe after last year, but I feel like both genALPHA and Veronica would have made much more interesting finales.

Maybe I've always incorrectly categorised Code Veronica as 'the Claire game' and not 'The Redfield’s game' but I never liked that Chris steals the spotlight in the second half of CV so part of me hopes she at least gets to close the new game out, but I know not everyone thinks she's the best character in the series so whatever. (Pretty damn popular I think though, despite her GLARING absence in Requiem)

Other than that, I hope we don't lose out on stuff like this in the remake with the new OTS camera

Sonic Crossworlds is absolutely wonderful. It doesn’t even feel like a home console game, it’s like something plucked from an early noughties arcade.

The Crossworlds mechanic is genius, the handling is great, and it’s visually beautiful. It’s a shame the characters are terrible; I can’t even fathom how much I’d love this if it had a roster like Smash Bros instead of… *squints at screen… Zazz and Espio.

But what a treat. It would be silly to compare it to Mario Kart World because they’re entirely different. But if I WAS being that silly, this is clearly better.

I played the beta and the items were way too chaotic for me

I'm waiting for it to be a reasonable price on PC - its held its value amazingly well.

Anyone else on Puzzmo? I'd been kinda missing the NYT puzzle games since cancelling my subscription (on account of them being a bunch of shitheel fascism apologists), but this is filling that gap nicely.

(Also: add me!)

Recent buzz about it coming to Steam has led me to try Muramasa: Rebirth on the Vita and for some reason I didn't bounce off it this time, maybe it was trying Chaos difficulty that helped but so far I'm actually really enjoying it, I wish the inputs for some of the moves were different and less awkward but it's not stopped me doing what I want to do. It's Vanillaware so expect absolutely gorgeous visuals and combat similar to Dragon's Crown…although I bounced off that too after a while, should have tried the Amazon lady first I think…

Vanillaware are something of a cult favourite developer but the only game I've really clicked with from them has been 13 Sentinels, which admittedly was a hell of an experience. I own Unicorn Overlord too but I dunno' when I'll get round to that and I actually kind of want to beat the games they're somewhat based off mechanically in Tactics Ogre, the weird RTS type ones not the Final Fantasy Tactics ones which I've already beaten.

You should just play Unicorn Overlord. It's very good.

I believe you (and the world), hopefully in 2026

Oh my, tried out the other Vanillaware games I have on Vita and Dragon's Crown seems fun as I remember as long as the Amazoness gets a fun moveset, I can see where the addictive 'loot and gear' aspect comes into it, but Odin Sphere Leifthrasir is the real stand out here, maybe even better than Muramasa…but regardless of what you prefer, between the two you got a real double whammy of action RPG (adjacent, whatever) on the handheld there, I'm definitely going to try beat both.

I played some Forza 6 - am I going mad or is nobody really calling them out for basically having released the same game 6 times? Not in a "ho ho, that Gears game is a bit like the last one" way, but genuinely the same fucking game. Same structure, UI, look, feel etc. Just a balooning of install size to 150Gb. It's still chock full of English wankers (even though you're supposedly in Japan) and even Japan isn't that interesting. Tokyo by day feels more like Maidstone. The streets are deserted, so it really is like a post-apocalyptic Kent. The cars drive OK, but there's no boost button, so what's the point? So dull. Jeez.

Back to CrossWorlds it is….

This is why I'm glad I never got into Forza 5, I know it would have made Forza 6 less impactful

I played some Forza 6 - am I going mad or is nobody really calling them out for basically having released the same game 6 times? Not in a "ho ho, that Gears game is a bit like the last one" way, but genuinely the same fucking game. Same structure, UI, look, feel etc. Just a balooning of install size to 150Gb. It's still chock full of English wankers (even though you're supposedly in Japan) and even Japan isn't that interesting. Tokyo by day feels more like Maidstone. The streets are deserted, so it really is like a post-apocalyptic Kent. The cars drive OK, but there's no boost button, so what's the point? So dull. Jeez.

Back to CrossWorlds it is….

A low point for me was on an early "Welcome to Japan" mission thing where the guide says "and this is the world-famous Shibuya Scramble" and my reaction was "what, where?" and it turned out to just be a bit of road I drove over in the blink of an eye at 85mph. The whole of Tokyo looks the same, and some nice scenery outside the city can't save it.

I have a strange relationship with the Forza Horizon games anyway. I've always disliked the festival conceit, the bland, tediously-upbeat characters, and the odd, frictionless, consequence-free world. I like the driving model, the variety of things to do, and the spectacle of the set-piece races, and I do find the collectathon aspect compelling. This one has gone far too frictionless, though. You can drive through any and every tree. Not only does your car suffer no ill-effects, but nobody tells you to stop fucking doing that you prick. In fact the game rewards you for razing whole forests, dishing out combos as if you were doing amazing stunts rather than murdering wildlife.

The difficulty settings are so granular that you can adjust it so that every race results in a close victory for yourself, so you do that, and then every race is the same. If you put it up a few notches so you're not winning every time then you never win any races, as there is no variety in how the races play out, how the AI behaves, or how fast the cars are. Personally I have played enough of these games that my skill level is what it is and what it always will be. I'm not going to improve by playing the tougher difficulty, I'm just going to finish third every time. Every single time. It's extremely weird.

Finally, you should be able to kill the DJs. I don't think this point needs explaining.

It's probably the best stultifyingly boring and banal game ever made.

I was literally in Japan last summer and nothing about Forza Horizon 6 reminds me of Japan. The fact it's full of twatty American influencers doesn't help. The main NPC in this has the same name as my wife and the fact it keeps barking my name makes it like Nagging Simulator 2026.

The only advantage it has is it's not like the previous game where I kept seeing my mate driving around for months after he'd died of testicular cancer.

It's Jordan isn't it? 'Have you heard of drifting m8?', fuck off.

I'm still playing Forza 6 but getting a wristband just peppers the map with an increasingly intimidating amount of Stuff, and there's only so many times you can drive off a ramp in slow motion under a plane. Still really enjoy driving around in some of the cars I have though.

The difficulty settings are so granular that you can adjust it so that every race results in a close victory for yourself, so you do that, and then every race is the same. If you put it up a few notches so you're not winning every time then you never win any races, as there is no variety in how the races play out, how the AI behaves, or how fast the cars are. Personally I have played enough of these games that my skill level is what it is and what it always will be. I'm not going to improve by playing the tougher difficulty, I'm just going to finish third every time. Every single time. It's extremely weird.

Personally I've just about McFucking had it with the AI drivers, who on my difficulty config are either a way for me to cheat bends by using them as a corner cushion (I don't want to do it but I have to turn a corner and they all over them when I do), or they'll hit me out of nowhere until I go back in time and fuck them over with my clairvoyance.

Off Road stuff is fantastic I think

Well, that took a bleak turn.

I meant Gar's post. But, I guess it could apply to Alastor.