Switch Sports Resort is pretty good, especially after the lacklustre last couple of entries. You get nine sports - tennis, bowling, golf, archery, volleyball, basketball, table tennis, boxing and, erm, thumb wrestling - plus prop planes, skateboards and power cruisers allowing you to explore the island and look for hidden secrets.
It feels like a big, generous package and there's much more in the way of single-player stuff to do in this than there has been before, with lots of unlocks and a full "Island Crown" mode leading you up through twenty different ranks in each of the sports. Plus full split-screen multiplayer and online, of course.
It's just nice to have one of these back on a system I own (haven't played one really since Wii Sports Resort) and we're having a lot of fun with it.
Want so just bought a Legion Go 2
How many PC handhelds is too many…?
Anyone want to buy a Claw A1M? Great price. Don't look in the Handheld gaming thread…
Can confirm that Resident Evil: Requiem on the Switch 2 is great after playing it for a bit more, although I can't aim as well as I could on PS5, this probably means nothing if you play in docked mode with a pad like the Pro Controller. I'm trying to play in handheld mode as much as possible since I played this a million times on the TV with the PS5 and I want to see how much it has to compromise, to that I say the graphics aren't quite as nice but I think you'd be mad to complain about how it looks here and also it seemed to drop frames in one bit so far. (And I can play it bed if I want, wee)
Also that is still a really good game, especially the first third
I played a bit of Gears of War: E-Day and it's really very dull. I haven't played any of these since the first one on the Xbox 360 - there have been, what, seven or eight of them since and yet somehow it's exactly the same.
Basically all you do is push forward and shoot stuff. In every single area I seemed to reach the exit only to find it was "padlocked" for at least a minute while one of the tedious dudebros finished off some sort of exposition in the background. Quite often the game would prevent me from running, or shooting, or doing anything other than walking forward slowly, while it talked to itself at length. All of this while repeatedly stressing how urgent everything is and how we need to save people as quickly as possible.
Anyway I've uninstalled it now. Rubbish.
I think, to be fair to Gears 1, it absolutely brought us that bleached bloomy look that nearly every military shooter uses, and did revolutionise the snap to cover mechanics that are pretty much ubiquitous across all third person shooters these days. The co-op was quite novel back then. It even had a somewhat interesting plot to begin with, in an overblown sense, with buckets of nonsense (and great memes). It even spawned an entire competitive scene, which is absolutely ridiculous (a lot of rolling) but still quite fun. I have a lot of warm nostalgia for Gears 1. And then…. not so much.
As you say, I went back to Gears 5 recently and there really is a sense that gaming has moved on. I find myself bored within about 20 minutes. I installed EDay, and it wouldn't even launch on the two PCs I tried it on, so I just gave up. As a series I'm not sure it ever had anywhere to go - the stiff movement and mechanics mean it can only ever really be a forward pushing shooting gallery. And The Division 1 and 2 (and about 180 other games) have fleshed out what could be done with those mechanics into something slightly more interesting. So yeah, I think it might be time for everyone to let the franchise quietly head off into the night.
Did anyone else play the X Com-type Gears thing they made a few years back? I have vague memories of the tutorial but not much beyond it, but it seemed like a strong fit for the big meaty dudes slamming into cover.
Yeah, Gears Tactics. It was pretty good in the mechanics of the tactical play, but lagged behind the deeper stuff in XCom 2.
There's also a similar board game that was really good (though quite expensive now and hard to find). Sort of Gears Space Hulk. I have a copy I painted and it's dragged out from time to time.
I want to play Castlevania: Lords of Shadow again, I know this is a really hipster thing to say maybe but I never hated this game like most of the internet seems to, I remember liking the light/dark combat mechanic it had for some reason and I never saw it as a reboot. Anyway, those who have played it probably know where I'm going with this, Patrick Stewart passed away today and he plays a delightfully hammy role in this game as both an in game character who narrates the game, he even gets the Bloody Tears name drop in the narration!
I'm not sure when but this is one of those times I'm thankful I have a Series S as I can only get it there now. Speaking of the Series S, there's been a new breakthrough in the emulation scene and OG Xbox emulation is almost 'solved', I tried Dead or Alive 2 Ultimate on my Odin 3 and it ran at 60fps, incredible. Sad to say that all the games I'd use this for I can get on the Series S and in some cases already have, still pretty cool to have Panzer Dragoon Orta on a frigging handheld though!
