Play.
Denshattack! (exclamation not my own) is superb. It's like a lost Dreamcast game in the best possible way. Part Jet Set Radio, part Tony Hawk, but also completely its own thing. You play as a runaway Japanese train grinding, boosting and tricking your way through some of the most gorgeous environments ever rendered, across numerous arcade-style levels. There are secret objectives, high scores, and a surprisingly involved narrative. And the boss battles, good lord. You start every level thinking "well I'm essentially on rails, how can they possibly… oh never mind that was mindblowingly inventive". It's just wonderful, and well worth the 14 quid entry price. Buy it so they make more please.
Avatar PS5. I bounced off this a couple times before, and I have no love for Avatar generally. But the 3rd person camera and 40fps mode patch have brought me back in, and once you get used to it, the gameplay loop is actually really satisfying. By the guys who made Star Wars Outlaws, if anyone enjoyed that.
Want.
GTA6 to have a 40fps mode. Avatar reminded me how effective they are.
40fps modes are the future, I guess the only reason they're not more common is that you need a fancy-pants 120Hz TV to be able to use them. Control recently got updated to add a 40fps/all bells and whistles mode and it's a huge improvement over either of the previous options. Star Wars Outlaws was another one that used it to good effect.
Anyway I'm not really playing anything that I haven't spoken about already, mostly Final Fantasy XIV still. I'm in the post-Heavensward, pre-Stormblood stretch now, I really like these lengthy little interludes as it's where the game does a lot of its character building and it's really fun watching the building blocks of the next expansion falling into place.
I've also been playing a bit of Vampire Crawlers which turned out to have more legs that I expected - nearly done with it now though - and I'm starting to play around with XCOM 2 a bit. So plenty to keep me busy.
Want: I'm not even sure what's coming out in the back half of 2026, GTA6 is sucking all the air out of the room already. I'm not fussed about it at all but it will inevitably sell gazillions.
Play
The kid made me download Planet Crafter on GamePass. It's one of those low-budget "dropped in a desolate landscape with nothing but your wits and an unreasonably deep crafting tree" survival games, which I've never gotten into previously (I liked No Man's Sky before it went this direction) but I've been completely sucked into it this time. There are loads of QoL things that annoy the shit out of me (not being able to stack resources in your inventory slots), but not enough to stop playing.
Want
Quite keen to get Splatoon Raiders, but not sure I can justify it right now.
Bin
The old job, as it turns out. I evaded a round of layoffs, but realised that I can never trust any of the leadership team again, so I've found another role and will be starting there at the beginning of September.
Play
Halo Infinite (multiplayer) - Seeing as they didn't feel a Halo game needed multiplayer with Campaign Evolved I went back to old classics, thankfully this is a separate download and holy shit that is a great idea IMO, they should do that with the MCC! Anyway…why did I stop playing this again? Halo multiplayer might have the best gamefeel of any online FPS for me, it's just insanely satisfying.
Sadly my stick drift was so severe I couldn't even choose the mode I wanted, of which there are tons, without great difficulty (yet in an actual match it was fine?) so that needs to be fixed but I felt like a God every time I won a 1v1 and the guns as usual feel so satisfying. Maybe Halo 3 is still better, I'll have to check that out
Metal Gear Solid - when I have time, for some reason I was hungry for the cold, gritty atmosphere of Shadow Moses
Odin Sphere - Beat the Valkyrie story, on to a new character, Hard Modeg ets quite a bit more tough than it did on Muramasa, I'll try to adjust. Still a great game.
Play
The DS. After finishing Trails in the Sky I didn’t want to immediately play another long game, and I saw a video on bsky of someone playing a bright and cheery puzzle game which looked fun. So I dug out my DS lite and have been having a blast playing Zookeeper, Meteos, Wario Ware Touched and Under The Knife (which is way harder than I remember).
The power switch went nuts pretty quickly though and the DS started turning itself on and off randomly, but then I remembered that my neighbour gave me a DS he found in a drawer last year which is still basically new, so I’m using that instead of my own 20 year old handheld.
After a week of playing fun but forgettable puzzle games I found Chrono Trigger on my R4 card and I am trying again to finish this classic jrpg. It’s fairly fast paced, it opens with the classic “Mum wakes you up to go to the town fair where you meet a pretty girl who isn’t a princess honest” set up but then two hours later you are in Fallout. It’s good fun but it is showing its age.
Want
Legend of Heroes: Trails In The Sky SC. It’s on sale again so I might just buy it for my PC. But I’d like to try playing it on…
The Retroid Pocket Nova! The reviews which keep popping up look fantastic. I going to play so much Burnout and maybe finally explore the Dreamcast library. Can’t wait.
The Retroid Pocket Nova! The reviews which keep popping up look fantastic. I going to play so much Burnout and maybe finally explore the Dreamcast library. Can’t wait.
I'm probably going to pick this up in the next wave, can't wait to hear your thoughts, and on the Dreamcast library too.
I've reached the Las Venturas missions of San Andreas in a big push to finish it, every time I look up an online list of missions it gets longer somehow so I'll just stop doing that. Those Flying Lessons made me want to jump out of the fucking window, and doing that that low altitude mission without save states might have made me bin this game completely, jesus christ. Hopefully things pick up a bit from here, but I can't deny there are some fun missions in here I'm just being bitter and impatient, they can definitely stop making me race around the country though, cheers.
Want - Brian to play Skies of Arcadia on the Nova and report back
I am happy to take recommendations for DreamCast games. I know Skies of Arkadia, Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi… Is Sonic Adventure good?
I don't know your history with Sonic games but I think it's janky as hell…but I still enjoy it, has playable Amy, who is my favourite Sonic character, as well as great Amy moments in general. I think Sonic Adventure 2 is a lot better though and less janky. (Still need to finish my last playthrough actually)
Headhunter is really janky and cheesy (and has aged like fine milk in many respects), but it's another Dreamcast game worth tracking down. It takes some big swings for the time, and has a great soundtrack.
It won't be a good if you're single-player-only, but Power Stone is worth a look. (The sequel gets a lot more praise, but I never liked how gimmicky its stages were.)
ChuChu Rocket is also more interesting as a multiplayer game, though I remember its single player puzzles being pretty good.
Time has not been kind to its voice acting and storyline, but I still think Silver is worth a look for an alternative to the turn-based JRPG headliners.
Outrigger and Slave Zero did some interesting things for control schemes given the lack of a second analogue stick on the DC pad.
Even at the time, I found Toy Commander's low poly look a bit outputting, and the difficulty spikes are no joke, but there's some interesting design going on nonetheless.
Sega Rally 2 and Metropolis Street Racer are both very good, but horrendously difficult (for my ham fisted racing skills, anyway).
I am happy to take recommendations for DreamCast games. I know Skies of Arkadia, Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi… Is Sonic Adventure good?
In general the Dreamcast suffered the same fate as the Wii U, in that most of what made it good and unique simply got ported to other systems after its demise. So it doesn't really get the respect it deserves. aniki's list is a good starting point and I would add a few personal favourites:
Space Channel 5 Part 2, if you can get it. If you're playing on original hardware you may need some sort of boot disc as it never got an EU release. Emulated it should be fine (and go for the Japanese release, it's not like it'll make much less sense anyway).
The original Soul Calibur is still unbeaten in its genre, IMHO. Six games into the series and they've never recaptured the magic of the first one.
Bangai-O is often overlooked but is an absolutely mental Treasure shoot-em-up. It came out on the DS as well but the two versions are quite different.
Shenmue II, obviously, if you liked Shenmue. I think it's by far the better game.
I'd add Rez which will always be a Dreamcast game in my mind but sadly every other version from the PS2 onwards was better (higher frame rate) so no real need to go back to the Dreamcast version for anything other than curiosity.
On Halo, I was really disappointed with the CE remaster that just hit Gamepass. I know it's never really been a shooter that suits mouse/keys but I'd been really enjoying Infinite and this seems like a massive step back (which I guess it is, timewise). The movement is really floaty and slidey, like you're playing on a skid pan, and the traversal is archaic compared to nearly any modern shooter. The actual shooting is fine, I guess, but comedy aliens also doesn't really cut it, and I found the enemy AI to be way below Infinite. Even the remaster is somewhat patchy - I'm playing with everything on Ultra, and there's texture shimmer, pop in, and some level geometry that looks more 2006 than a 2026 remaster. It's also quite a boring game - it makes you do things three or four times before letting you move on. I know you had to spread the jam thinner in 2001, but it feels archaic now.
I do wonder what a PS5 player would make of it, maybe after years of hype and not having access to an Xbox or PC. I'd imagine it would be…. "is this it?" It did make me appreciate Infinite a bit more though - all the design choices and things in that (that were panned at the time) actually make a lot of sense and really make it a fun shooter toolbox.
I am happy to take recommendations for DreamCast games. I know Skies of Arkadia, Shenmue, Jet Set Radio, Crazy Taxi… Is Sonic Adventure good?
I'd agree with the other comments. I sold my Dreamcast in the end, as the painful truth is nearly all its games were ported or done better elsewhere. There was some joy in the actual physical hardware which I really liked (especially the mental VMUs), but it's really thin on the ground for novel games you'd want to play now (rather than a better version of them).
I like Dynamite Cop - great if you like beating up people with a baguette AND Die Hard (who doesn't).
Hydro Thunder - though it came to XBLA
Fire Pro Wrestling. Obvs
F355, hard as nails. Might still be good? And MSR - the forefather of Project Gotham.
Episode 1 Racer - lol
Mr Driller? Though there are hundreds of other versions.
And of course, Seaman.
The original Soul Calibur is still unbeaten in its genre, IMHO. Six games into the series and they've never recaptured the magic of the first one.
I will not stand for this Soul Blade/Edge erasure.
The only things I can think of that haven’t already been mentioned are Marvel vs Capcom 2, Trickstyle (and I have no idea how that will have aged) and Cannon Spike, which I never actually played, but sounds cool. I did play a lot of Quake 3 Arena too.
As has already been said, so many of these games have since come out elsewhere that it’s hard to know what to recommend - my DC top 5 would probably be Ikaruga, Power Stone(s), Marvel vs Capcom 2, Jet Set Radio and Soul Calibur, and I think they’re all available elsewhere. Even the Dreamcast Resi is getting remade now.
I can't prove it but I am pretty sure the Halo Remake AI is worse than it was on Xbox Classic/MCC, I booted up the latter and in an open area I found the Elites were legitimately threatening, in the Remake they seemed to eat bullets quite a lot.
All the changes they made can be hit and miss for some people but the Halo AI is the defining feature of the original IMO, part and parcel of the 'combat sandbox'. That is still there, but like, it goes hand in hand with other changes like being able to just regenerate health and the new Assault Rifle being overpowered now that affect things subtly but quite a bit.
I guess that's why its a remake and not a remaster, not bad but definitely the worst version of Halo 1
EDIT - And I love Halo Infinite, absolute blast
Thanks for all the Dreamcast recommendations!
I have no source for this, because I read it in a print magazine about 20 years ago, but I think it's much easier to make brilliant AI than it is to make the tough-but-fun kind. The work comes from sanding the edges off, making it easier to fight against.
So if the remaster's AI is worse, they must have put some work in to nerf it.
I might be wrong, like it could just be the other stuff I said like the Assault Rifle in Remake being much stronger now (Can zoom in for accuracy but less ammo in clip) but I've heard others say this too so I dunno'
Aww, I missed the Dreamcastfest. The last good console ever released (Yeah, I know. But I sincerely believe it. PC basically took over everything after DC died and consoles really didn't have anything special to me.). Bought it on its 9/9/99 release date here in the US. Had several peripherals like the mouse+keyboard, the fishing controller, and the broadband adapter. Oh yeah, and there were 3rd party homebrew stuff, including Playstation 1 emulation (Bleem!, which was just for certain games, but a universal emulation disk that let you play more things was leaked as well), Linux, emulation of old systems, and many other things. Yes, there was piracy. How else was I going to play Japanese-only games, though?
Regardless, the highlights of the system to me were:
ChuChu Rocket
Crazy Taxi 1/2
Daytona USA
Hydro Thunder
Ikaruga
Marvel vs. Capcom 2
Metropolis Street Racer
Phantasy Star Online
Power Stone 1/2
Quake 3 Arena (mouse+keyboard best)
Rez
Sega Bass Fishing (yep, it's fun, more fun if you had its fishing controller like I did for the original system)
Sega GT
Sega Rally 2
Soulcalibur
Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike
The Typing of the Dead (get a keyboard, obviously)
Unreal Tournament (mouse+keyboard best)
2k Sports games (better than EA's dreck at the time and probably even now)
I was never a fan of the 3d Sonic games for the same reasons I disliked Mario 64 (controls and camera in 3d platforming suck and I will defend that position forever, I'm sorry). Shenmue got old quickly to me, but I can sort of see the appeal.
All in all, I enjoyed far more games on the DC than I enjoyed on the XBox, Gamecube, and PS2 put together. All hail Dreamcast.
Cheers Dok! I wonder if there's a community out there hosting PSO servers. It must be possible right?
