PWB August

Play
I'm still plugging away at Destiny 2, thanks to… Stockholm Syndrome, I guess? There's a reasonably big event going on at the moment (DLC not required), where you can re-play a bunch of story missions with tweaks to the difficulty and other changes, which are really too difficult for a ham-fisted goon like myself to realistically solo. There are also about a million other sub-challenges to do as well, to the point that it's almost overwhelming.

And I'm enjoying my time with No Man's Sky NEXT more than I have basically since the game came out. I'm tackling it with a bit more patience than I did the first time out, accepting that I'm not going to make it to the centre anytime soon and just playing around with the systems for a while.

Want
Oh God, so much. Forsaken continues to tempt, I've hovered over the Two Point Hospital buy button more times than I can count, and Octopath Traveller keeps gnawing at the back of my mind. Gar's posts have got me eyeing up Yakuza 0 (and Kiwami) but on the plus side I already own those.

On the non-digital front I'm writing up a simple one-shot to try and get our RPG group into a 13th Age campaign, but (as mentioned below) I'm not sure our group is ready for something that requires this much more commitment than MotW. I've considered playing it online in an attempt to get people on board - our usual venue has been a meeting room at the company most of the others work at, and after a long day sometimes people just want to go home.

Bin
I'm kind of ready for our Monster of the Week campaign to take a break - scheduling issues and the resulting party fluctuations have taken the wind out of my sails for it. We only play every two weeks, so this current mystery feels like it's been going forever.

Bad API documentation can take a hike.

I'm holidaying in France just now and it's too hot to go anywhere so I've been doing a fair bit of reading and a bit of gaming too.

Play
Chrono Cross
I'm playing this with an emulator on my Nexus 7. It's great, gorgeous and pixelly, but a bit slow. It's probably ten years since I last played it and I only vaguely remember the intricacies of its twisty many-worlds plot.

Read
Coriolis
Free League's SF Arabian Nights RPG. I am very keen to get this one too the table, although who knows when that will happen.

Lamentations of the Flame Princess
An alternative Basic D&D with a lot of excellent adventures. When I first read the rules I dismissed them as being nothing more than a Basic D&D rewrite with a couple of tweaks. Reading through it in detail though, it has a far more interesting magic system than most D&D variants and the rules for things like encumbrance, sea faring or early firearms are solid and not too fiddly. I'm going to keep this one in mind for some one-shots I've got planned.

Bin
Balder's Gate Enhanced Edition
I was trying to play this on my tablet before I decided to revisit Chrono Cross. It seemed to be basically unplayable those thanks to all the actions being small icons with no clear indication of when you have actually selected anything combined with really unresponsive buttons. Maybe it would work fine on a newer or bigger tablet but I abandoned it pretty quick.

Play

Monster Hunter World - The Final Fantasy XIV crossover event has started, and it is really really well done. To the point that only FFXIV players will truly appreciate how clever the whole thing is. The quest beins with you fighting a drone level enemy, the Kula Ya-Ku, a weird beirdy raptor type enemy that steals eggs and bashes them open by fucking dunking them, it also does this on your skull with big ass rocks!

Well, due to a typical crossover contrivance we meet up with the FFXIV version of Moogles (my favourite version of the series regular) who tells us he camefrom Eorzea which is where XIV takes place through a rift or something like that? Anyway, we head out and get 'Duty Commenced' just like a XIV instance and run into a Cactuar and already I'm convinced this is the best thing ever but then the Chocobo theme starts (the Moogle thinks the monster is a 'weird chocobo) and then you find Kula clutching none other than shard of Aetheryte which is what we use to teleport in XIV.

After fighting him he looks deep into the light and grows bigger, then returns to bludgeoning us to death, after a while he looks into the light again and get bigger still, at this point his Aetheryte is so big it can stun you in one hit. Well, fter a while he stares into the light, again, and gets EVEN bigger to the point that an Anjanath interrupted the fight and Kula Ya-Ku was BIGGER. Well, you beat him then get reports of another FF monster sighting in Elder's Recess, you get there and it's a fucking Behemoth. This fight is pure MMO mixed with Monster Hunter:

-Requires 4 players
-Attack names and numbers display in FFXIV font

• Mechanics require you to place harmful objects outside and helpful ones inside, it's a fucking raid fight
  -He can get aggro

Then what do you get from all this? The A Realm Reborn full Dragoon set and the Gae Bolg lance (Insect Glaive), the DRG set has AMAZING skills and the Gae Bolg looks sweet as fuck, It's the best crossover I've ever seen.

Persona 4 - Started to play my PSP again, and I was only 5hrs in, I'm really enjoying it again and still sorta' blown away that I'm playing it on a Vita.

Final Fantasy XIV-

[b]Want[b]

Octopath Traveller - Looks great, but not til' after Japan, maybe even after Fan Fest if I can go.

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate - soon, lads. :o

Bin

No idea

Play

Much like aniki, I'm wandering around in Destiny 2 more often than I really intend to, but my attempted return to No Man's Sky is more than a little frustrating; I've forgotten how almost everything works, and what little I can recall, they've changed.

Not that I think anyone could have missed the fact, but I'm playing a 12-hour charity D&D game at the weekend, which is streaming from 10am on Twitch to raise money for Cancer Research UK.

Want

I'd really like to get back into Sea of Thieves. Cursed Sails just launched, and I've spent maybe 45 minutes with it so far. I've poked about the new brigantine ship type and done the very first section of the "campaign", but have yet to lay eyes on a skeleton ship.

Bin

As usual, nothing much. Many games have fallen to the wayside, but I don't think there's anything - for now - that I'm not intending to go back to at some point.

Play

Lego City Undercover on Switch. I bought this on Wii U ages ago and never really got into it, despite loving Lego Lord of the Rings. Haven't advanced very far yet but the cutscenes, which I'd forgotten, have already elicited a few chuckles.

Xenoblade 2. I had forgotten all about this, but managed to pick everything up again fairly quickly – including the overly complicated battle system. I frequently love this game. The wide open areas, the beautiful visuals, the JRPG-daftness of it all. And I frequently hate it. Overly complicated battles, enemies with HUGE health pools (single low-level bunnies can take upwards of two minutes to kill), the sub-1970s sexism. I think, overall, I'm enjoying it. I think.

World of Warcraft. The Horde have gone Full Evil, and everyone is in a flap. But that's fine by me, being a goody-two-shoes Alliance and all. Excited to attack Lordaeron, and for the expansion to launch proper. (Still playing this on GeForce Now, and it's still brilliant.)

No Man's Sky. No idea what I'm doing, and it seems to hate me, or rather be utterly indifferent that I exist. Which I suppose is a pretty accurate vibe for a game about the vastness of space. Enjoying it very much though. Just wish I could speed up the scanning and mining a little – a future upgrade, perhaps?

play

I've been messing about with raspberry pi. Have Retro Pie installed and managed to get Megadrive and NES running well. It's an old Pi 1 B that a mate at work gave me which I think is why the SNES is running so poorly but haven't gone down the config altering path yet, marginally improved performance using a different emulator but it's still slow.
Mainly I've been trying out all the Megadrive games I coveted as a kid and am sort of surprised to find out how terrible the majority of them are. I was a loyal subscriber to Megatech and pretty much didn't buy anything without their say so. I eneded up with a relatively respectable collection of games which got me from Christmas to Birthday to pocket money splurge but there would still be outliers that I wanted to play. I remember desperately wanting to play Bart Vs the Space Mutants despite Megatech giving it a sort of thumbs down.
I keep thinking about how crazy it would be for 9 year old me to be able to have access to all of these titles without shelling out £40 a time. It's also unbelievable how some of them were even released in the first place. I had a go of No Escape last night, the tie in to the Ray Liotta movie of the same name and… holy shit!
Anyway, it's been fun. Can't work out if I'll keep plugging away at this, get a Pi 3 and go for more emulators or try something else with the Pi. Weirdly doing this has made the SNES mini more appealing just because it seems like there's less manual intervention to get games running well.

want

Dead Cells, I think. It looks cool and fun. Swithering over buying it or waiting for a sale.

bin

Never say never but think I'm fully done with Fortnite.

No Man's Sky. … Just wish I could speed up the scanning and mining a little – a future upgrade, perhaps?

You can definitely upgrade the mining laser, but I can't remember if it speeds things up or just makes it more efficient and lets you mine more difficult things.

Previously, as you upgrade the laser it would harvest more resources at a time, so it would be quicker but you would also need more storage space in your bag.

Weirdly doing this has made the SNES mini more appealing just because it seems like there's less manual intervention to get games running well.

Hacking a SNES Mini takes about five minutes… you'll spend more time hunting down the ROMs and box art for the games you want to play than that. Not sure if Gar has done his, but I gave him the software, instructions and a bunch of games - it's definitely worth it, assuming you're actually going to use it.

re, the SNES Mini, maybe do this right now? :)

https://twitter.com/jelly_deals/status/1025368279483916288?s=09

Hacking a SNES Mini takes about five minutes… you'll spend more time hunting down the ROMs and box art for the games you want to play than that. Not sure if Gar has done his, but I gave him the software, instructions and a bunch of games - it's definitely worth it, assuming you're actually going to use it.

Well this is the thing. I pretty much did all the learning about the Pi on behalf of a mate who has a mini SNES and a mini NES then went and bought one of those prebuilt retro pie consoles (because he has too much spare money).
Before he fired another £70 into his new found retro habit I was trying to convince him that he could get all this on his existing boxes. Offered to build him a pi box for cost price but he went with the retro pie site because they offer a 1 year guarantee. He's notoriously risk averse.
Been happy messing around, poking at these old games but I'm not sold on how much time I'll spend playing through any of them. The general pattern seems to be scroll through list, play game until I understand what's going on or I die, quit, next. The longest I've spent on a game so far was Bimini Run because I had no idea how to play it.

Play - Final Fantasy 14. Hexcells Infinite. Assassins Creed Origins.

Want - A PS4 and a TV and the Spider-man game. To publish the beta of the game I'm working on nowadays (ITS REAL GOOD FUN and if any of yall are working in reviews and PR you should totally PM me!)

Bin - A recent fuckup at an RPG group that left an unsatisfying end to a game that otherwise ruled an enormous amount. It was a one shot that I thought could go over two sessions. Turns out half the group can't make it next time. Looking for replacements.

If you're on an EU server on XIV we can join a linkshell even if you're not on Phoenix, in case ou have any questions and/or wanna' ask for a Tank or Healer.

Bin - Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. Its relentless & shameless pursuit for money has completely put me off. Everything (and I mean everything) is designed to encourage you to buy the in game currency.

It boggles the mind. It's not like Nintendo are short a few quid and it really feels like they are destroying the Animal Crossing brand with this inane money grabbing focus.

The most recent fishing tournament was the trigger for me. That beaver pushing his golden rod rental at every interaction. Rental for a single event is about £3.50!

I'm sure people heard about the addition of fortune cookies back in April, which are basically random loot boxes. Priced at 50 leaf tickets each which is approx £2.50. If you want to complete a set from the loot boxes and manage to get a different item each time with no duplicates, you'd be looking at £30 or more.

Just feels like they've cheapened the whole experience and turned the joy of Animal Crossing into a horrid cash grab.

Play

Hand of Fate 2. I absolutely loved the original, which I got free with Games For Gold back when I still used the Xbox One, and this sequel is more of the same but improved across the board. It's such an odd game - a roguelike dungeon crawler played out across a hand of cards dealt by an enigmatic dealer who taunts you throughout, with each card playing out as a kind of choose-your-own-adventure text story. Occasionally you'll get thrown into a 3D battle which takes its lead from the Batman Arkham style of hit-and-react combat. A lot of the skill comes from deciding which cards to shuffle into the deck each round, as completing some of the cards rewards you with either items, or further cards continuing those mini-stories, so you're constantly trying to balance using "good" cards which will increase your odds of success, against uncompleted cards which will open up more stuff further down the line. This sequel has much better storytelling, with each main mission having a very definite plot and theme, and improved tactical combat. I'm playing on Switch, and it's an absolutely perfect portable game - some of the loading times are long and the frame rate in battle is a little low, but that may actually be the case with the other versions too, I'm not sure.

Splatoon 2. The boy has mostly taken over on this one, he's hooked and it's really such a good game, with huge variety and a range of really fun modes to play. It's so refreshing to have a multiplayer game that's bright, colourful, welcoming and (thanks to no voice chat) pretty much totally free of the kind of hostility you normally get with this genre.

Want

I've cooled a bit on Shenmue 1/2 since playing and loving Yakuza, which gave me more or less what I loved about these games in the first place, but I'm sure I'll pick them up out of curiousity.

That Spider-Man game looks pretty good.

Not fussed by Octopath Traveler, though - there are still too many of the original 16-bit JRPGs I need to play, and with the writing generally seeming pretty poor, it's only really the graphics that this has got going for it. I'd rather go back to an old Final Fantasy or even Bravely Default than drop full price on this.

Super Smash Bros Ultimate can't come soon enough.

Bin

I'm still dipping into Yakuza Zero from time to time, and there's a lot of fun stuff left to do, but the Platinum is essentially unobtainable, requiring complete mastery of every single one of the seemingly endless mini-games (including Mahjong and Shogi, both of which would require more time to learn than I have time left on this earth, it would seem) as well as another complete runthrough of the story mode on the highest difficulty. So I'm pottering about, finishing off substories and playing through the very fun cabaret club management game, but at some point I'm just going to call it quits I think.

Bin - Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. Its relentless & shameless pursuit for money has completely put me off. Everything (and I mean everything) is designed to encourage you to buy the in game currency.

It boggles the mind. It's not like Nintendo are short a few quid and it really feels like they are destroying the Animal Crossing brand with this inane money grabbing focus.

The most recent fishing tournament was the trigger for me. That beaver pushing his golden rod rental at every interaction. Rental for a single event is about £3.50!

I'm sure people heard about the addition of fortune cookies back in April, which are basically random loot boxes. Priced at 50 leaf tickets each which is approx £2.50. If you want to complete a set from the loot boxes and manage to get a different item each time with no duplicates, you'd be looking at £30 or more.

Just feels like they've cheapened the whole experience and turned the joy of Animal Crossing into a horrid cash grab.

This sounds utterly awful. Animal Crossing seems like one of those brands you would want to be absolutely precious about not fucking up. Sorry to hear it's so naff :(

I'm still playing Pocket Camp, mainly because I've cut myself off from the obsessive parts that require me to complete every set of furniture, event and so on. But then, is that really the Animal Crossing way? Considering the idea is to experience everything and get as much as possible, I don't think so. Minx is absolutely right that the 'game' has started veering massively into exploitation territory, to the detriment of the brand itself… I doubt I'll stop playing, but I'm definitely missing big chunks of it by not spending real cash.

PLAY
Dead Cells - Got it pre-ordered, comes out tomorrow (well, midnight tonight). Been looking forward to this for ages, I hope it lives up to my expectations.
Batman - The Telltale games specifically. Finished the first season over the weekend, so got the second ahead of me. Never really thought just how flimsy the gameplay in these things is, there's really not much in them at all. But hey, it's something to do that's sitting on my hard drive.
South Park: The Fractured But Whole - Had this in my pile of shame and now I have a) time to play it and b) no kids around to hear me playing it, I figure I should. I quite enjoyed Stick of Truth, so hopefully this one will keep me busy.

WANT
Various things - Got Guacamelee 2, the final season of The Walking Dead, Death's Gambit and Donut County all pre-ordered, which pop at a rate of one a week for the next month. Plenty to be getting on with then.
BAFTA voting to commence - Being in the pool of prelim voters means there's a chance to get codes for everything that gets nominated. I've stopped buying anything that's likely to be put forward, because I don't want to pay out and then discover I could get it for free. Not sure when it all kicks off… October? September? Either way, things like Red Dead 2, Spider-Man and a bunch of other things aren't getting bought until I know I absolutely can't get them that way.

BIN
Marriage - That's done then, three and a bit weeks alone so far. So, that sucks a fair bit. No intention of doing that again… better off on my own.

I'm not sure Pocket Camp will harm the Animal Crossing brand, however exploitative it is: it's all about expanding awareness of the games. Those who like the original games will be holding out for the eventual "proper" Switch release; the mobile game will be reaching a different audience. Some will like it for what it is, while those who get burned out on its money-grabbing tendencies may well jump at the chance of a fully-featured version without microtransactions further down the line. Same goes for Fire Emblem Heroes, which is apparently raking in the money at the moment but will undoubtedly also increase sales of a "real" version whenever it arrives.

Anyway, additional Want: Overcooked 2. Didn't realise it was out this week. Absolutely loved the first one and it's one of the few games we all play as a family. Will be getting this without a second though.

BIN
Marriage - That's done then, three and a bit weeks alone so far. So, that sucks a fair bit. No intention of doing that again… better off on my own.

That sucks indeed. Sorry to hear that Mart.

Anyway, additional Want: Overcooked 2. Didn't realise it was out this week. Absolutely loved the first one and it's one of the few games we all play as a family. Will be getting this without a second though.

See, that's the one I just can't get my head around. I played the first one to death and did everything… I'm not sure what a sequel's going to offer that I haven't already seen, aside from the obvious 'new chef skins' and 'Oh, here's a new level with a slightly different mechanic to get in the way'. Maybe that's just me being cynical though. :)

Even if Overcooked 2 was just more of the same, I'd be perfectly happy. Preordered it the day it was available.

Yes, more of the same is exactly what we're after. Did you play it in single-player, Mart? If so then that would explain why you're not keen for more; but as a local multiplayer game it's just such a marvellous playground I'd be happy with DLC, an expansion, a sequel, anything really.

as a local multiplayer game it's just such a marvellous playground I'd be happy with DLC, an expansion, a sequel, anything really.

*looks around, sees absence of children or anyone else to play with… *

Hmmm.

(Not even going to comment on the fact that, yes, I finished the first one with my wife…)

Well, the second one has online multiplayer…

Yeah! We should all get together and play as aHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Classic Soc. :)

thatsthejoke.jpg

We recently had the biggest fighting game tournament of the year (and it was fucking amazing btw, especially Tekken) so I'm making a real effort now to get back into Tekken and Street Fighter V after having that fire lit up under my ass.

Tekken has been my favourite fighting game series for a while, but getting decent at it is quite a commitment, and then I got sucked into FFXIV hard and blah blah, excuses. But it's really offputting at times to see how much you've played and still not gotten better, fighting games are hard, people.

To this end I think I might change character, I really really like Kazumi (woman who literally fires Tigers at you) but maybe a fresh approach will stop me giving up so easily? So I went back to the first character I mained in (the best fighting game of all time) Tekken Tag Tournament 2, Alisa the kawaii desu deathbot. So far it's fun, just basically opening a metaphorical map of a new character and exploring new things is fun in and of itself.

Street Fighter V dropped 2 characters on us the day after the Grand Finals of that game, we expected one and got two. We got 'G' the guy dressed as Abraham Lincoln who wants to be President of the World, I dunno what type of character he is but he looks fun, they also gave us a super fast return of Sagat too and he looks as deadly as ever. I mained Karin last I played, a characterfrom SF alpha 3 that I've wanted since SF4 but if I follow through on my 'fresh' approach I think I might try out Klin, the Russian Ice Lady. <– Mr Party Hat naming system. ( 'Indian Bloke' hahahahahahahahahaha)

Oh and they announced Tekken 7 isg etting Negan from Walking Dead as a playable character, so errr, yeah, that's happening. We now have Akuma from Street Fighter, Geese from King of Fighters, octis from Final Fantasy 15 and soon Negan and his trusty bat. O_o

Fighting Games are great and while it was SUPER short, the mini Tekken Tag Tournament 2 games I had with Gar and Wev years ago were fun as hell.

Expanded PLAY:

Dead Cells - Well, this is lovely. Crazy good combat that's fast and fluid, looks great, loads of replay value, great stuff. It's also NOT a Metroidvania and anyone who says otherwise either hasn't played it or doesn't understand what a Metroidvania game is. So nerrrrr. :)

Play: Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. Time to tackle this one, which I played a bit of on the original PS2 release but quickly bounced off. It's a weird outlier in the FF series, with a very unusual MMO-style semi-automated combat system and a storyline that eschews the usual FF road trip in favour of a political saga that (together with the game's irritating adolescent protagonist) means the whole thing unfortunately reminds me a bit of The Phantom Menace. It's quite a functional remaster too - PS2 games are at that awkward stage where they're not quite retro enough to be charming, so the whole thing simply looks old and the little boxy areas don't do it any favours. So first impressions aren't great. But then the first few hours of any Final Fantasy game are typically a little dry, so I'm going to stick with it for a while and see how it holds up. It's certainly got its fans, and I haven't yet found a Final Fantasy game I haven't enjoyed to some extent.

Play(ed): Unravel 2. Played with the same friend who I played through that one about prison guys who aren't brothers but it's made by the guys who made the game about brothers…

A Way Out!

Anyway, Unravel 2 is a nice game. Because of (my) time commitments we tend to try and blast through these games in one sitting. Doing this on a Monday night was possibly not the smartest idea. Same goes for A Way Out – I didn't feel it so much with Unravel 2 but we missed a lot of small time wasting activities in A Way Out because we were trying to make it to the end.

Unravel 2 is a great couch co-op title, looks beautiful and is fun to play. It's pretty short but not insultingly so. There are some good puzzles which are satisfying to resolve together or through one person taking the lead when they've got the solution. It also has a mechanic where you can join the yarn buddies together into one if there's a tough platforming section or one person needs a comfort break.

Play

Hand of Fate 2. I absolutely loved the original, which I got free with Games For Gold back when I still used the Xbox One,

I only started this yesterday having had it parked on my Xbox since whenever that was, it is really good and I love the interaction style of the dealer.

I started playing this whilst waiting on Battleborn updating which I also finally started.

Dead Cells update: it's hard-going. I can only really play it for an hour or so at a time, because the feeling of constant death, restarting and making little to no progress past where I died before is wearing me down. That might be my current state of mind (fragile) playing into it though, so I'll persist. Currently at two dead ends: the Concierge, a massive boss that seems easy at first but then gets more attacks as the fight goes on, and the Toxic Sewer which I can get to the end of but then get killed by the 'elite' enemy you have to beat. I'll get there though.

So Mart, I know you'll have played all of them so what's the best recent Metroidvania-ish game to get? I enjoyed the demo of Yoku's Island Express but have a feeling it might be a bit short and easy, so I'm leaning towards Hollow Knight. I'm not wild about hipster 8-bit graphics or roguelike elements. I just want something that's as good as Ori and the Blind Forest.

Want
Okami on Switch. It's only 16 quid, and apparently runs flawlessly in handheld. But I can't buy it for a third time can I? Can I?

It'd be a fourth Okami for me and I'm still considering it, at that price.

Want
Okami on Switch. It's only 16 quid, and apparently runs flawlessly in handheld. But I can't buy it for a third time can I? Can I?

Want
A Switch.

It'd be a fourth Okami for me and I'm still considering it, at that price.

It'd be my sixth (PS2 JP, PS2 EU, Wii, PS3, PS4). Hmm. Tempting, but I dunno. Would I play it? I bought the PS4 one, noticed that the trophies were linked to the PS3 version - meaning I already had the Platinum - and then never started it up…

So Mart, I know you'll have played all of them so what's the best recent Metroidvania-ish game to get? I enjoyed the demo of Yoku's Island Express but have a feeling it might be a bit short and easy, so I'm leaning towards Hollow Knight. I'm not wild about hipster 8-bit graphics or roguelike elements. I just want something that's as good as Ori and the Blind Forest.

Not Chasm, sadly. Dead Cells is great, but incredibly debilitating and not really a Metroidvania (and you don't like roguelike stuff). Hollow Knight didn't really click with me, but I didn't play much of it… need to give it another go because everyone says it's amazing, though I only have it on PC so my time there is limited. Guacamelee 2's coming in two weeks, if you can wait, because that's bound to be good. Yoku's is absolutely brilliant and not as easy as you'd think if unless all you're doing to do is plough through it, rather than exploring. Salt & Sanctuary is lovely and satisfying, but bloody hardcore and only really worth it if you're looking for a deeply depressing, Dark Souls-like experience.

Did you finish Metroid: Samus Returns then? Can I have it back or, better, can you trade it in for me and buy me PSN credit please? :P

I bought the PS4 one, noticed that the trophies were linked to the PS3 version - meaning I already had the Platinum - and then never started it up…

Yeah, that's why I never got far on PS4, but having it portable is a bonus and I'm curious to see whether the touchscreen drawing is better than the Wii's motion control.

As an aside, it's quite interesting/worrying to me how much my effort to play games is now dictated by trophies. Given the choice, I will always buy a game on PS4 because of the trophies - they drive me to make progress, to keep playing, to give myself mental pats on the back every so often. Conversely, I find myself having to really force myself to play games on other platforms. My Switch is rammed with titles I've bought but then barely even touched, if at all, and only the biggest games (like Super Mario Odyssey) can keep my attention for any real length of time. It's almost as though not having that encouragement puts me off. I didn't even finish BotW, and I'm a massive Zelda fanboy… to me, that's just bizarre.

Quite possibly, we could be talking deeper seated issues here: so, a lack of any positive stimulus or recognition in real life could have forced me down this road, meaning I have to take solace in those tiny little pings of acknowledgement that, yes, I'm a good boy, well done. I dunno. Hard to tell without forking out for some prick in a suit to ask me about my mother. :)

Hmmm, I know what you mean, but I'm generally happy enough if games have their own internal checklists of stuff to do. Yakuza Zero's got a completion list, which contains a lot more to do than is covered by the trophies, and Disgaea 5 on the Switch has the trophy list from the PS4 version maintained by an NPC in the game so you can see how you're doing (and there's even a cheeky little pop-up, which looks exactly like a PS4 trophy notification, when you get one, so effectively it's exactly the same).

I still find trophies effective as motivation but so many these days are either impossibly difficult or ludicrously grindy that I rarely make it all the way to Platinum. I do what I want to do, then move on.

I still find trophies effective as motivation but so many these days are either impossibly difficult or ludicrously grindy that I rarely make it all the way to Platinum. I do what I want to do, then move on.

Oh, don't get me wrong - I don't go for every Platinum and very well know my limits. Games that have stupidly hard requirements or want people to grind out for ages can get stuffed - I draw the line. But even for more conventional stuff, it's telling that I need some kind of gratification. I own multiple examples of the same game on different platforms (off the top of my head: Snake Pass, Darkest Dungeon, Owlboy to name just three) but just can't get into them on non-PS4/Vita platforms. Darkest Dungeon on Switch is great! But the Vita version, despite being visually smaller and more fiddly to control, is just as portable and has trophies. It's ridiculous. My brain's broken.

Well, they say that admitting that you have a problem is the first step to fixing it…

My enjoyment of the switch is its lack of achievements.

My enjoyment of the switch is its lack of achievements.

Ditto. Well not just that, but the complete lack of extraneous infrastructure.

You turn it on, pick one of the games from the big colourful buttons, play the game. It's so refreshing.

You turn it on, pick one of the games from the big colourful buttons, play the game. It's so refreshing.

Hey, I had that when I was a kid! :D

Additional want: more D&D.

I'd have thought that playing for 12 hours straight on Saturday would have been as much as I could take, but I just want more, even after another 4-hour session on Tuesday. I'd actually thought I was about done with D&D, but maybe I was just getting bored of my Cleric.

Additional want: more D&D.

I'd have thought that playing for 12 hours straight on Saturday would have been as much as I could take, but I just want more, even after another 4-hour session on Tuesday. I'd actually thought I was about done with D&D, but maybe I was just getting bored of my Cleric.

I haven't been able to run my game in almost a month and it's almost two weeks until we will be back to it. I really miss it.

But I've had a lot of time while on holiday to plan my games and so I'm all ready for the next few months of my Monday game, I've got a short 5e adventure that I want to run for my son and his friends (after we finish with 13th Age) and I've got a few one-offs ready to go for a new monthlyish game.

I'm reading an adventure just now about edible garden gnomes. It's amazing.

(after we finish with 13th Age)

I might DM you some questions about this - I'm trying to set up a game and I'm still a little fuzzy about how sone of it works in practice.

Maybe Okami Switch won't review all that well… oh.

Maybe Okami Switch won't review all that well… oh.

Never any doubt. :)