PWB August 2024

Play

Trucking along with Skies of Arcadia on my phone - the Backbone is a flippin' godsend for this. I think I'm gonna have to start looking for other games (and emulators), though nothing has ever really been as successful on multiple playthroughs as SoA.

Timberborn is keeping me up at night, in a good(?) way. I've got a pretty successful, very stable colony on the go, though my constant building and rebuilding of the layout and massive, ill-advised engineering projects means I'm often scraping the bottom of the resource barrel. It's really chill, though. Might need to start over on a new map, to see how well I can apply what I've learned to a clean slate.

Want

Not to need sleep.

Bin

I think I'm done with ZZZ. I was finding the dailies a grind very quickly, but it was the appearance of a character I was quite keen on getting out of the gacha, and the evaporation of all my saved up resources in my fruitless attempts to pull her, that struck home just how little I care to get into this again. I also wasn't really engaging with the plot, found at least half of the levels kinda tedious (that maze navigation nonsense can get in the sea), and had stuck to the same three characters for 95% of my playtime without feeling like the broader roster was necessary.

Garwoofoo

Play

I'm very much enjoying Cyberpunk 2077 after being a bit lukewarm on it for the first couple of hours. While at heart it's just another open-world GTA clone, with a mixture of shooting and driving and a map full of icons, it's just so polished - I guess three years of patches and updates paid off in the end - and the characters so well-depicted that it's impossible not to get sucked into its fiction. The graphics and animations are genuinely exceptional and the whole thing makes (nearest competitor) Starfield's boxy rooms and stilted potato people look frankly embarrassing. I seem to have reached the "point of no return" a bit quicker than I expected but I've still got most of Phantom Liberty to do and a ton of side quests so I'll be playing it for a fair while yet I think.

Anno 1800, again, still the greatest city-builder ever made and a natural fit on PC despite a surprisingly decent console conversion. It's had tons and tons of DLC now and it's quite overwhelming how much there is in there. I'm really looking forward to Anno 117 next year and hopefully with that being a day-and-date console release, it'll actually get properly supported on all platforms this time.

Want

Planet Coaster 2 looks quite good fun, I really liked the first one of those. I've realised that my GeForce Now cheap deal should allow me to check out Cities Skylines 2 as well which is still some way off a console release. So it's a good time to be a fan of management/building games.

I hope Star Wars Outlaws is good, I like a good Star Wars game and I'm not averse to Ubi-style open world shenanigans but there's a lot of potential for it to go wrong as well.

Bin

Having a really difficult time with my mum at the moment. I won't say I want it to be over because it's only going to end one way but it's really a desperately sad way to go.

Watching far right thugs smash up various UK cities this weekend and thinking, well, Farage got what he wanted didn't he.

Ninchilla

Play
Sea of Thieves, ever and on. I keep hopping between other things around it, but nothing is really sticking.

Want
+1 for Star Wars: Outlaws. I can't help it; it just seems to have the OT vibes right. I really ought to try and finish something before I buy more stuff, though…

Bin
As I say, there are quite a lot of things I've bounced off, and I don't think it's worth listing them all here.

Agree on the far right, though I will admit it's been a little bit fun watching the Tr*mp campaign spiral trying to find something to hit Kamala Harris with that remotely sticks. Fingers crossed she batters him in November, though polls are still depressingly close…

Watching far right thugs smash up various UK cities this weekend and thinking, well, Farage got what he wanted didn't he.

I passed a news stand yesterday, and the Express had a headline along the lines of "WE CAN'T LET VIOLENT THUGS WIN". Irony is dead.

Alastor

Play

The only thing I'm 100% playing with absolute regularity right now is Final Fantasy XIV because the new raids dropped and they are a blast but beating them with randos is not a very pleasant experience, I used to have a static but I just can't commit to that kind of schedule these days. Has some of the funniest ways to wipe the raid I've seen in the game yet though, she will choose a party member and either slam them from above or punt them into the air like a football, if they land on a cracked floor tile it shatters on impact and they fall to their doom, if they spectacularly misjudge the distance they are getting punted they will land on the tile the party is on and drop everyone through the floor.

Beyond that..still trying to find a good commute work game that can even hope to compete with Advance Wars. Trying a bit of Sonic Adventure which I like but it is a real janky piece of shit as a game imo, but it just so happens to have the one of the best characters of all time, Amy Rose.

Also getting used to playing the PS2 Resident Evil 4 on what is essentially a Vita with my Odin Mini 2, it's kinda nuts. There's also the android version of Streets of Rage 4 which seems like a flawless version of an amazing game. Also back to kinda' gothic horror JRPG Shadow Hearts.

Bin the fucking weather already, when is it Winter? This is absolutely killing me and not just because of the heat.

martTM

Aug 06

PLAY
Enter the Dungeon - Don't ask me why I've been sucked back into playing this, but I have. I finished it on PS4 with every character bar the Robot, but now I'm on Switch so it's basically back to square one. I also suck at it now, but I'm getting better.
Sea of Thieves - Going to try grinding out losses on Hourglass purely because I want the curses but don't like PvP. Only 300 losses to get Lv100 in one faction, woooooooooooo. I like the new season, but fuck trying to actually use the Burning Blade when you're just a sloop (sinking the AI one is easy, sinking a player-controlled one ain't and as for steering it… well).
Mortal Kombat 1 - Actually playing the story mode, which is quite good. Fuck paying £50 for the upcoming DLC expansion though, I'll save my Microsoft points up.

WANT
Nothing really, I'm in a lull of interest. Probably that MvC Fighting Collection when it arrives? Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom too, I guess. And the spare time to play Darkest Dungeon 2 on my partner's Switch when she's not looking.

BIN
I mean… come on. Come on.

Alastor

Aug 07

Playing it today and It's crazy how good Grand Theft Auto 3 still is tbh, if anything the look back at pre GTA4 style is really interesting now, I thought the limitations would bother me more but they haven't. The game still 'got it'.

The fact that the stories back then were more of a pastiche of works they were going for then actual attempts at a serious narrative makes it feel more like you watching this play out as opposed to how in 5 I felt like I was being drawn in.

big mean bunny

Aug 08

Totally, been on it the last two nights. Feel like they have nailed the flow of the islands too. Just unlocked the 3rd one which I remember even less about than I did the 2nd. But it's nice how that ebb and flow stops you from ever feeling bored or too comfortable.

Also used a guide to grab about 10 of them, but have made it to 72 hidden packages now which will certainly be more than I had originally when I played this. And most of that is just thru the idea of "there is probably something hidden down here." - which again feels like something they were probably the majority blueprint for along with something like Banjo, where it's fun to be looking about and thinking of the places, or spotting something up high and then dedicating a couple of minutes to trying to figure out how to get there. Which is one of the things I feel I am probably actually better at than I was then.

Brian Bloodaxe

Aug 08

play

Pikmin 4. It's so good. I'm trying to only play a little at a time so that it lasts. I think I'll replay Pikmin 3 when I'm done with 4. Or maybe I'll finally play Pikmin 2…

@martTM please tell whoever make the decisions that we need a new Animal Crossing game set in the Pikmin universe. Castaways making friends, doing science and harvesting Pikmin and junk all to a real time calendar might just be the best thing ever.

Alastor

Aug 08

I think I might use a guide to get all packages in GTA3 this time, would be cool to finally have done that! Also I seem to be breezing through the game, I'm on the first island still but I felt as a kid that Luigi, Joey and Toni all had like 10 missions each lol. That's what happens when you played this game forthe first time and it was the first time we got to explore a GTA game like this for the first time ever.

Speaking of Toni Cipriani, it's Michael Madsen yo! It's nowhere near as sick a performance as say, Ray Liotta in Vice City, but it's still cool as shit.

cavalcade

Aug 09

Play
Diablo IV again. I do share Garwoofoo's existential terror that the entire thing is pointless, repetitive and devoid of purpose, but it sure feels good to wallop enemies over and over again. I've also found it runs really well on the Steam Deck, which I think is a good environment for it. Quick wallop before bed and away you go.

Apex, Season 22. I played with my eldest son the other night. We won 2 games and came second in another. He berated me for some of my util use and poor rotation decisions. I felt like those 6 year olds forced to go to beauty pageants in the US by an overbearing mother, but in reverse. We then played Valorant and won every game we played and I got lectured on poor positioning and rotates. Kids, eh.

Sagrada and 8 Minute Empire. I really like the boardgame version of these and I've been enjoying the Steam versions. Quite nice for a quick relaxing game before being shouted at by a 20 year old.

Want
I do keep staring at the new ROG Ally and wondering if I need it (I don't need it).
I want nothing more than the new Teenage Engineering Bardcore synth. Worth a watch on Youtube if you haven't seen it.

Bin
I have been dabbling with dating apps. If you're in a loving, committed relationship hold your partner close, because it's dark and full of terrors out there.

Also enjoying the riots in Belfast from the mouthbreathers. Here it's also laced with quite a lot of other stuff, so we had to shut the office today just in case, y'know. Boom.

big mean bunny

Aug 11

Couple of updates

Signed up for Antstream Arcade. I played on this last month at the Nottingham Video Game Expo and was really impressed. So yesterday I signed up and really enjoying it so far, even if there is a tremendous amount of stuff I will never play, mostly played Premier Manager 98 on it so far! After spotting it was on there. Seems to run really well even on the games you have much faster scrolling and inputs.

Kotor - feel like I started this playthrough ages ago but finally at "the bit" it's famous for. I have reached the stage today where I couldn't stop playing it though, I wanted a fresh run of this prior to playing the 2nd game, as only actually played that through once.

Alastor

Aug 12

Couldn't resist and started Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. First thing I did after getting control was get into a car and Billie Jean came on the radio, yeah I'm thinking this is another banger!

This game feels like it goes so much harder than GTA3 already. GTA3 had elements of a story but this one really sets up a whole cast almost right away (most of whom all voiced by someone you have heard before, like Ray Liotta) and plot, Sonny Forelli feels like a bigger presence than Catalina did in 3.

And just like 3, driving around the city is nice, and Vice City definitely feels less grimy than Liberty City did…on the surface.

martTM

Aug 12

I tried playing Vice City on Switch. Did some stuff, got to an early mission where I was in a car with some other streetwise guy, turned a corner into a narrow alley… and the car flipped over for no reason, caught fire and exploded. Never went back.

Alastor

Aug 12

I remember some missions being right bastards (the one with the toy plane springs to mind…) but I thought that about 3 and I was dead wrong. I just hope they're more interesting no matter their difficulty, thankfully something that seems to be true already as I have had a mission to start a riot, smash the cars of some jurors and chase a guy down the street with a chainsaw.

Smellavision

Aug 13

Bin
I have been dabbling with dating apps.

I started dating again at the end of last year, and wow, some strange tales, but as of today, the woman I’ve been seeing has moved in with me.

At 54, and a widower, I’ve got no qualms about moving forward. Life. May as well enjoy it.

big mean bunny

Aug 13

Ah congratulations then Smell. Pleased to read that.

We are off to Wales for a few days tomorrow and just taking my DS now. I played about an hour of professor Layton and loved it, but realised I had the 2nd in the series so have ordered the first and will start that tomorrow evening when back at the Caravan.

martTM

I started dating again at the end of last year, and wow, some strange tales, but as of today, the woman I’ve been seeing has moved in with me.

At 54, and a widower, I’ve got no qualms about moving forward. Life. May as well enjoy it.

That's great news, Smell. Indeed, life's too short to not try and grasp what you can when you can, so good on you for taking the chance. I just turned 47 last month and while there's still shit that needs dealing with (child support, my fucking UK flat which might finally vanish next year), I'm only just starting to live as opposed to existing. It's quite the revelation.

Prole

At 54, and a widower, I’ve got no qualms about moving forward. Life. May as well enjoy it.

Indeed, life's too short to not try and grasp what you can when you can, so good on you for taking the chance.

+1 for all of this. Yes. Good work all around.

Smellavision

I mean it’s not all great, the only gaming I’m getting in is Magic The Gathering 🤓

martTM

I'm taking that as a euphemism for bondage play, so good job.

feltmonkey

Nice work Smella, and cav for surely adding to the dark terrors on the dating scene. My only dating advice is to find someone who seemingly can't be arsed to trade you in for a better model no matter how patently useless you happen to be. 👍

I haven't done one of these for a while as I didn't have time for any gaming of any kind due to work. I've finished the job I was working on now and have decided to take a month off, as that last job amounted to three months with only two days off in the entire span, and the last two weeks was 14 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Play
The Case of the Golden Idol - This is brilliant. It's very similar to Return of the Obra Dinn in that you are analysing a static tableau and trying to figure out what has happened and who is involved. It isn't as good as Lucas Pope's classic, but then I personally would place Obra Dinn in my top ten favorite games of all time. It's a great co-op game, as you can work with a partner on the couch to figure out the mysteries together. It's also on Game Pass, so there's no excuse not to give it a go.

I've also been playing a couple of games that examine the horror of the fusion of machine and living creature in a cold, dystopian, uncaring world. Two games that give you the power fantasy of using your cyber-enhanced body to plough destructively through your enemies, while leaving you with a sense that in order to become this powerful you may have lost your humanity, your soul.

The first of these games is Robocop: Rogue City. This is a brutal and brilliant FPS with quite an old-fashioned feel. Not in a high-speed boomer-shooter way, but in that it reminds me a bit of something like Escape From Butcher Bay or, strangely, a Deus Ex game. There is a real feeling of weight to the combat, as Robo lumbers from bloody set-piece to bloody set-piece painting the walls with the blood of hapless punks. The movement is slow and methodical - Gears of War is positively balletic in comparison - and the weapons devastating, so much so that even the starting pistol feels like something you get two hours from the end of most shooters. There's no real concession to such concepts as cover or moving about under fire. You stand there and gun down poor people as their bullets and grenades chip away at your health, before simply regenerating yourself back up with the generous self-healing function. It fits the character of Robocop really well, a brilliant translation of a character to a game just by how they handle. Inbetween shooting areas, there are little hubs where you do side missions. You talk to citizens, follow breadcrumb trails, and try to help. The ratio of shooting sections to these sidequest hubs is quite nicely balanced, and you don't quite have time to get bored or frustrated with either before moving on to the other. My main criticism of the game is that it's all really, really bleak. There's a sense that there is no path back to sanity for Detroit, that misery, violence, and an endless night is all there is.

Which leads me onto the other cybernetic horror game I've been playing - Kirby - Planet Robobot. I'm sure you'd all guessed where I was going with that. I'm nothing if not pre-diddly-ictable. The game's story is a bit complex for my tiny brain to follow, but it seems Kirby's homeland has been invaded by robots. Or perhaps robobots. Or even Robobobots, who knows? Kirby, by far Nintendo's most powerful character, must defeat them by jumping on platforms, stealing abilities, and donning overpowered mech suits that destroy everything in their path. Actually there's far more to it than that, as this is possibly the most inventive, imaginative, and downright fun 2D platformer I think I've ever played. The structure of many small individual levels that can be accessed from a world map is hardly new, but it works really well. The levels are somehow always just the right length. The silly ideas keep things fresh. For example in many levels there are two planes -foreground and background - and you can travel between them or even interact with one from the other, such as remote controlling a robot (or robobot, or…) who mimicks your actions on the background plane, from the foreground, so that you are trying to dodge snooker balls (for some reason) with two characters at once. It's great, and for some reason seems largely forgotten. It doesn't even seem to come up that often in discussions of the best games on the 3DS. It should do, because it's fantantastic.

Want
There are actually a bunch of games coming out in the second half of this year that I'm looking forward to. The Indiana Jones game looks amazing, and I have faith that Star Wars Outlaws will be good too.

Bin
Not really a bin as such, but I finished the cyberpunk cat game Stray. It's pretty good. Purrrfectly fine. It's so story-heavy it's almost a walking simulator, but I like those kind of games. Making the cat curl up and go to sleep for a bit always warmed my cold bitter heart. I made a point of acting like a cat by deliberately tripping everyone up, pushing everything off shelves that I could, and sharpening my claws on their stuff. If you are playing a cat you have to strike a perfect balance between being utterly cute and a complete arsehole, of course.

big mean bunny

I really want to try that Robocop game. I have had my eye on it for ages and spotted it was 29.99 now on the store currently. I also found Robocop the movie is on the normal prime subscription so had planned to watch that again this summer. I don't imagine I have seen it since about 1997 which is odd to think of how long ago that actually is.

Alastor

Aug 15

I fucking love Kirby: Planet Robobot, I thought the central gimmick would be a bit much but it's a fantastic interpretation of Kirby's succ power

Alastor

Aug 17

Played a bit of Persona 3: Reload after getting it in the Steam Sale, VERY swish as I expected. I don't know if I can commit to a full playthrough right now though but I had to jump on that sale while I could.

Took the opportunity to start Warhammer 40k: Space Marine to see if I can sneak in a completed run before the sequel drops. It's the first game in ages I've had to stop myself playing because it's so fun. It's not like it's the best third person shooter ever or anything but it commits to that power fantasy of playing the titular Space Marine pretty well, Ork heads pop pretty satisfyingly and the game swarms you with enemies so often that you pop a lot of heads and it feels like the gaming equivalent of having a roll of bubble wrap and just popping everything in a row. I'm not super keen on the melee into execution spam mechanic and the chainsword is super cool but it doesn't feel quite as satisfying as the Lancer in Gears of War.

Speaking of which, if you liked Gears a lot, you might like this? It's not quite as meaty and there's no cover system but part of me felt like I was playing a Gears game during this. (I know, 40K precedes it by a lot and is much, much cooler)

martTM

Aug 18

Despite wanting to make a go of the business, Netflix is notoriously shit at promoting the games on its service for mobile. Yesterday, I discovered that two games we featured in Directs for Switch are available on mobile as well through Netflix - Paper Trail and Arranger: A Role-Puzzling Adventure. Giving them both a go, since they're effectively there for nothing if you're a Netflix member. The first is already breaking my brain to the point that I might give up, so that's good.

cavalcade

Aug 18

I canned Netflix this month as the cheeky fucks won't let me watch in NI and Wales without endless geolocation warnings. So fuck them.

martTM

Aug 18

What kind of warnings? Is it because you're using an account set up in England, then you moved? When we moved, we swapped the account to Germany and didn't have any issues until the password sharing got tougher - my partner's parents were also using the account, and it was getting confused where the 'home' was. We cut them off, all fixed.

Garwoofoo

Play
The Case of the Golden Idol - This is brilliant. It's very similar to Return of the Obra Dinn in that you are analysing a static tableau and trying to figure out what has happened and who is involved. It isn't as good as Lucas Pope's classic, but then I personally would place Obra Dinn in my top ten favorite games of all time. It's a great co-op game, as you can work with a partner on the couch to figure out the mysteries together. It's also on Game Pass, so there's no excuse not to give it a go.

Thanks for the recommendation felt, not just for the game itself but also for the couch co-op suggestion. The boy and I are working our way through this and it's absolutely brilliant, just incredibly clever and compelling, hilariously bad MS Paint graphics and all, and it's great to have someone to bounce your ideas off (and reduce the temptation to just guess wildly, which I suppose you can do but would ruin it a bit).

I haven't played Obra Dinn, I didn't really know what it was, but if it's like this then I obviously need to check it out.

feltmonkey

That's great! Ilweran and I are working through the two DLC cases now. They are also very good, shorter, but with slightly more complex individual cases. Obra Dinn is very much the same style of game, with 3D environments, a fantastic soundtrack, and the difficulty ramped up. It works just as well in co-op. In fact, co-op might be needed for it because it gets pretty difficult.

@martTM The Case of the Golden Idol is on Netflix games as well, I just noticed.

martTM

Yep, that's how I managed to do the DLC cases without spending an extra tenner.

Good lord, Gar, play Obra Dinn for god's sake.

cavalcade