PWB August: I Was Promised Zombies

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Forager. Little GamePass gem that combines lots of things I hate (pixel art, crafting) and yet is so utterly charming and compulsive that I somehow can't stop playing it. It's basically "feedback loop" the game, where everything you do gives you a little burst of XP and opens up even more stuff to do. And it's impossible to dislike a game where the first splash screen you see is a big picture of the author and a note saying "I worked really hard on this, I hope you like it".

Yakuza 5. Yep, another Yakuza game! But we're back on the Yakuza 0 engine again now, so it looks a lot better than the last two, and this is the one with Too Much Content: 5 characters, 5 cities, and an incredibly daunting completion list. I don't seem to tire of these, ever.

Minecraft Dungeons. Still playing this. Not sure why, I'd assumed a run through on standard difficulty would be enough. But it keeps the loot coming, the DLC is good and sensibly priced, and it's just continually fun to play as a gentle family co-op game. Great stuff.

Want

Looking forward to Fall Guys this week.

Yakuza 7 is my first guaranteed next-gen purchase.

Is it just me or is Microsoft Flight Simulator looking a bit spectacular?

Bin

Oh… just everything. Lockdown fatigue, I guess. I've not had a day off all year and I'm desperate for a break. But it looks like my contract may be coming to an end this month, leaving me looking for work at a time when literally no-one is hiring and the contractor market is on its arse, so with that potentially looming over me I've just been pushing through and working every day. I'm really struggling with lack of time alone, too, and having to juggle work and housework and childcare is just grinding me down day by day. (My other half is insanely busy, her company has taken the opportunity of having everyone WFH to work them like absolute dogs, so a lot of the general household/childcare stuff has been falling to me. I'm busy, yes, but not like she is). I shouldn't complain, I know, a lot of people have it much worse than me, I know, but I'm just knackered and somewhat concerned about the future.

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Okami HD - I am now slightly further than I got when I played this on the PS3 and a lot further than I got when I played on the PS2. It's fantastic, it still looks amazing, helped but the HD remaster and the fact that I'm playing handheld I think. The gameplay is kinda nothing special, but also just right. The fights are brief, the dungeons and puzzles are simple and the various jobs you are given are the perfect excuse to explore. It is very Zelda, obv. There's maybe a little too much talking… I'll see if I'm still enjoying it as much after another 20 hours.

I'm in France at the in-laws just now so that's been it really. I've been reading Band of Blades which is an interesting military fantasy RPG. I'm looking forward to getting back to my D&D games and starting my Coriolis game.

Want
The new Paper Mario looks good, but I can wait for it to hit a sale.

I think I'm about to buy Minecraft Dungeons and play through it with my daughter.

Bin
My kids are supposed to be going back to school in two weeks. Full classes, no masks. It's absolutely insane. Don't know what I'm going to do.

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Still popping into Animal Crossing to do the daily chores and make sure Ursala hasn't moved out, but ready for something else, I think. I should probably make a concerted effort to get further with Slay the Spire, but having a save game on PC that's further than my Switch one is holding me back from putting too much effort into the handheld one.

I'd been grinding for a while in Skies of Arcadia, but the emulator crashed and I don't know how much progress I've lost, as I haven't been able to bring myself to go back and check.

And I'm still, somehow, playing my Chinese gachapon tower defence game Arknights. I don't think I've ever had a mobile game last this long on any of my devices, though my progress has slowed down a lot – to the point that I suspect I might be at the limits of the free-to-play option.

Want

I'm reading and re-reading the Expanse RPG book, which is not quieting the desperate urge to run a game. I have a couple of interested players but I want to do a proper Session Zero for this one, and I'm considering trying a sandbox approach. It feels more appropriate for the setting, but I have to admit it's a bit daunting. S0 should help align expectations, though – once I have an idea of the kind of characters and crew I'm prepping for, it should help crystallize the general shape of the campaign.

Bin

I mean… gestures vaguely at everything

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Okami HD […]. There's maybe a little too much talking… I'll see if I'm still enjoying it as much after another 20 hours.

The only real criticism I have of Okami is that it just doesn't know when to stop. Cutscenes last forever, and the game as a whole Just Keeps Going. That said, I've finished it twice (the PS4 version let me skip the cutscenes, which helped – but I knew the story already so that's not so helpful for new players) so it can't be that bad. I think the Switch version (and maybe others?) lets you turn off the adults-in-Peanuts voices too, which might help.

Okami HD - I am now slightly further than I got when I played this on the PS3 and a lot further than I got when I played on the PS2. It's fantastic, it still looks amazing, helped but the HD remaster and the fact that I'm playing handheld I think. The gameplay is kinda nothing special, but also just right. The fights are brief, the dungeons and puzzles are simple and the various jobs you are given are the perfect excuse to explore. It is very Zelda, obv. There's maybe a little too much talking… I'll see if I'm still enjoying it as much after another 20 hours.

You can make the dialogue a lot more bearable by turning down the Banjo-Kazooie talking noises. Although nothing can help with Issun being a creepy prick.

Still playing Animal Crossing; I don't think I've burned out on it like a lot of people, because I've only been playing for a few minutes per day. Half my island is still weeds and trees, I've still got my OG islanders, and I've still got a tonne of recipes to find. I'm enjoying playing it slowly.

And I've just bought Paper Mario, so we'll see how that goes. The last one I played was Thousand Year Door, which is apparently the best one.

I'm only really playing The Last of Us Part II, which I thought managed to hit a pretty good ending a couple of sessions ago, but it's decided to keep going. Unsure if they'll stick the eventual landing, but if other folks' play times are to be believed, I have another third of the game left to go - so it'll be a while before I find out.

There's not really much on my radar in terms of upcoming stuff; like aniki, I'm having a ferocious itch to run some RPGs (particularly Dishonored), but I can't even remember anything that's been announced, videogames-wise. Star Wars Squadrons, maybe?

Forgot to mention

Bin: Near Or Tomato, sorry Nier Automata. The biggest bait-and-switch I've seen for a long time, with the first level making the game look like a quirky but interesting Bayonetta sort of affair and then immediately ditching that for the game proper in favour of a tedious third-person plod through a hundred fetch quests and the biggest, emptiest environments I've seen for a long time. I'd imagine those who bought the game on the strength of the demo (which is, of course, that polished but entirely atypical prologue) were extremely aggrieved.

Apparently the game gets good, or so I'm told, after five playthroughs - I'm not even making this up. I'll never know.

did you not see the robot orgy and then naked guy falling out of the pile of the robots

Yep, that was about as far as I got, then I had to run all the way back through the empty city to deliver 4 cogs and 3 wingnuts to someone I'd briefly spoken to and I thought "fuck this".

I’ve been back playing Animal Crossing having burned out - but wanted to see the fireworks tonight.

I also bought Paper Mario - I’m new to Mario having only got my first Nintendo with the 3DS at the end of its life. I’m enjoying it, but feel that I’d prefer a platformer rather than this RPG lite. But, as an RPG lite it’s good fun.

Speaking of buying things, I bought a copy of Baldurs Gate, only to realise that I’d also bought a copy at some point during lockdown but hadn’t even broken the seal on it.

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Anyone else tried Hades yet? I've bounced off Supergiant's other titles a number of times (I think I own Bastion on every platform its come out on and have never made it past the first hour on any of them). However, this is interesting. It's a rouge-like, tight, with snappy combat on an isometric plane. It's sort of a snarky take on greek mythology, and has a very clean line-drawn aesthetic which I like. It's very rogue-likey the rogue-like game with rogue-like mechanics, but that's not always a bad thing and the combat has almost a bullet hell feel to it at times. Not bad at all.

Want
I think I want Dicey Dungeons. Oh and possibly Horizon Dawn on PC.

Bin
gestures generally

I will have to give Hades a try. I still need to play Transistor though (out came out just as I was losing interest in videogames).

Bastion is still one of the best games of the last 20 years BTW.

Play

All the CCGs - while on furlough I decided to try the other "big" CCGs that'd recently come to iOS, and now I seemingly rarely watch TV so much as just have it on in the background while I play Gwent, Hearthstone or Legends of Runeterra. I don't mind that, necessarily, I'm just conscious that it's not necessarily the best use of my (gaming) time.

On that basis, I sort of feel like I should drop (at least) one, but to be honest, they all have/do different things I like, so I'll probably stick to playing them all until I have some kind of minor nervous breakdown, and then drop them all once. It'll likely be worse in the short-term that way, but better in the long run…

Wreckfest - I like a racing game, but any of the big "sims" tend to bore me after a while, as they're a bit dry, and I only enjoy them while I'm using the slower cars at the beginning, and can just throw them into corners (rather than having to brake six hours before I can see them, etc). Even modern Rally games have seemingly moved in the sim direction, when they used to be my safe place when I wanted a good balance of pseudo-realistic handling and actual fun. (I love Mario Kart, Trackmania, wipEout, et al, but sometimes I do want something that looks (and behaves) a bit like a real car.)

Enter Wreckfest, a newish driving game with a realistic soft-body damage model that looks like the spiritual successor to FlatOut and Destruction Derby, and that I'd been interested in for a while. It popped up in a sale (I think it's still in) on PSN the other week, so I grabbed it…

I knew I was probably going to like Wreckfest when the first race was actually a free-for-all with everyone riding a lawnmower. I knew I [i]really[/] liked it when I tried to take a corner too quickly in one of my first races, clipped the inside, and flipped the car, rolling it in such a way that it went over the crash barrier and through an advertising hoarding (that splintered ever-so-pleasingly).

This is a game where the way I normally drive in video games (using the other drivers as braking/steering aids) is actively encouraged, but damage affects your handling, and your wheels can literally fall off. Oh, and the first "proper" lawnmower race is on a figure 8 trackand one of the other drivers is driving a Combine Harvester…

To recap, Wreckfest is silly and great, and I think other people (wev especially) should also play it.

Want

Fall Guys does look fun.

Curse of the Dead Gods and Hades to get console releases.

A PS5, probably?

Bin

Yeah…

I will have to give Hades a try. I still need to play Transistor though (out came out just as I was losing interest in videogames).

Bastion is still one of the best games of the last 20 years BTW.

I bounced off Bastion hard, but loved Transistor.

I bounced off Bastion hard,

I don't get this at all. What was it that you didn't like do you think?

I also didn't like Bastion. I lasted about fifteen minutes before the narration became too much, but I didn't like the art style, either.

Yeah, the art style bothered me – something about the contrasting colours and parallax just didn't sit right with me – and I found the narrator smug rather than funny. Don't think I finished the 360 demo before I decided it wasn't for me.

Errr…

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Final Fantasy XIV - I took two weeks off. I tried to do that restart thing with a bunch of others, but they started breaking the rules they'd set (stick to one job, only play that character on a Saturday evening, progress through the MSQ at the same pace as each other) and I found myself constantly playing catch-up and having no time for my main, so I dropped that and am back to doing the post-Stormblood content. I know I'm slow at playing through this, but meh, I still love it.

No Man's Sky - This is the co-op game Charly and I now play after we bought it for the PC (so she plays that copy and I play on PS4), we both mostly do our own thing, but then meet up on a planet and go grab whatever materials one of us needs to progress to the next stage.

Session/Skater XL - both have been "released" this month, though Session is still in Early Access (it was already in this state on PC and is now on XBox) and Skater XL is now on its "1.0" release on most formats. I think I prefer Session, it's less forgiving than Skater XL and not as immediately accessible. Both have roughly the same features and have a similar control scheme (left stick controls your left leg, right controls your right, so its an evolution of SKATE's control system), but both are severely lacking in anything beyond their game engine.

Persona 5 Royal (occasionally) - I think I'll make better progress on this once the kids aren't at home so often as its far too noisey in this tiny little house to follow any plot…

Want

Some stuff to do in Skater XL/Session!!!

Bin everything?

Aniki, Ninchilla: fair enough. I thought the art and narration was great, but if you don't like it then yeah, that'll put a downer on the whole thing.

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Zero no Kiseki - Crossbell!!!! jazz hands

We're not Bracers, Crossbell has a Bracers guild and they are in fact your rivals for the public popularity of sorts, but we are in fact a subdivision of the Crossbell Police Department.

There was a slight 'mmmmmmmm shit' moment when the main character revealed his weapon of choice were Tonfas and a teamate said something like "Oh they're not offensive, more defensive and good at protecting people" or something . Not nearly as unfortunate as the 14 year old who works for the 'Epstein Foundation'.

I've come to understand no one makes these like Falcom I think. I could probably play these games forever. cute chibi sprites run around the world and Do Things. If anyone has played the Ys games I believe it's these guys too and same deal there, great template I could play forever. It's time to admit that maybe I do like RPGs more than action games.

Tales of the Abyss
As tales games go, so far I've been jumping from character to character and so far they've all been fun to play as. I'd say the gameplay is always a selling point for this series so it's cool that I can say that. (I can not say that for…Tales of Berseria for example).

Want
Cuphead sounds like my kinda' game….

Bin
I've been getting sick a lot lately, can anyone confirm that drinking milkshake then drinking coke is a bad idea tbh

Al, I only ever understand about a third of what you say, but you seem to be enjoying it, so…

Yeah there's a whole other world of gaming that Al's involved in, that I'll never have the faintest idea about. They're always fun to read, but his posts makes me realise how out of the loop I am.

Here's the first part of Al's post, but the bolded bits are stuff I couldn't even hazard a guess as to their meaning.

Zero no Kiseki - Crossbell!!!! jazz hands

We're not Bracers, Crossbell has a Bracers guild and they are in fact your rivals for the public popularity of sorts, but we are in fact a subdivision of the Crossbell Police Department.

There was a slight 'mmmmmmmm shit' moment when the main character revealed his weapon of choice were Tonfas and a teamate said something like "Oh they're not offensive, more defensive and good at protecting people" or something . Not nearly as unfortunate as the 14 year old who works for the 'Epstein Foundation'.

I've come to understand no one makes these like Falcom I think. I could probably play these games forever. cute chibi sprites run around the world and Do Things. If anyone has played the Ys games I believe it's these guys too and same deal there, great template I could play forever. It's time to admit that maybe I do like RPGs more than action games.

I understand most of that! I feel vindicated for my life choices now.

Al/English Dictionary, First Edition (2020) (Excerpt)

Bracers – an Adventurer's Guild
Chibi – a Japanese slang word, sometimes referred to as "super-deformed" or just "SD", usually with large heads and eyes
Crossbell – a region within the world of Legend of Heroes
Falcom – Nihon Falcom, the game developer behind the Legend of Heroes and Ys series' of JRPGs
Tonfa – an Okinawan martial arts weapon that looks kinda like a police nightstick; not sure what the issue with describing them as "defensive" is, but they can fuck you up in the right hands
Zero no Kiseki – the untranslated Japanese title (零の軌跡, "Trajectory of Zero")

What Aniki said. Yeah I might have got a little excited but I'm currently on game 4 of 5 in a series I'm playing through to get a trilogy after that and I've been quite looking forward to this particular one. Also stopping every few minutes to squeeeee at this chibi models (just imagine me saying that word in a high pitched squeal, Mr Party Hat :p). There's a bit where the main character is on a bed and his legs don't reach the floor of the side .

Gonna' give you a quick geography lesson. This huge continent is Zemuria (apparently the name is slightly different in the Cold Steel trilogy? Fucking Erebonians I swear to God -_-)

Liberl is to the south, this is where Trails in the Sky 1, 2 and 3 take place!

Crossbell is to the North East of Liberl and this is where the Crossbell saga takes place (Zero no Kiseki and Ao no Kiseki)

That big ass brown area north of Liberl and West of Crossbell is the Erebonian Empire, where the 4(!!!) Trails of Cold Steel games take place.

The only other important regions AFAIK is Calvard, north east of Crossbell. Thus far no game has been set there, but we know from the people that come from there (including Bracers), the Calvard Embassy in Liberl and common knowledge that it is an eastern style place.

The huge dark part of the map…I dunno if that's ALL the Holy City of Arteria (prob not) but that city is the main HQ of the religion found throughout Zemuria.

Is Trails of Cold Steel the one that people tried to declare was a "Persona beater" on psvita?

I have no idea, maybe because I know at least one of the Cold Steel games is on Vita and pparently it's like Persona in structure…or was it Fire Emblem (Maybe that was Cold Steel 3?)

For those of us not Alastor who still play breezy games on Steam, I picked up Dicey Dungeons after seeing my son really enjoying it (he also rates Slay the Spire). And you know what, it's really good fun - a sort of combo between a deck builder and rogue-like with a lot of added dice. I'm not overly fond of the art style, but the music is fucking awesome. It reminded me a little of One Deck Dungeon (the board game) or even Too Many Bones (a very expensive board game for people with more money than sense, which I own obvs)

Yeah. It's good. The title screen music though. Ohhh yeah.

Start with Bin: Modern Warfare. Same story with any online shooter that hooks under my skin; I've had to delete it from my HD (freeing up a juicy 163GB of space). There's something about these games that I find endlessly enjoyable but then they become rote and increasingly it becomes clear that I'm wasting my life playing the same matches over and over… Not that there's anything wrong with that… I've just wrung out the experience and am probably as good at it as I'll ever get ut it's clear that the whole thing is designed around a grind.
I'll download it again in a couple of months and play for a bit but will be terrible and lost track of the meta games and will delete again forever.

Play: The Last of Us Part II. Made it to 'Seattle Day 1' and I'm really enjoying this AAA game. It's so AAA. The graphics are AAA, the animation and sound design are both AAA, the attention to detail they've put into the environments – some of which I guess you're supposed to breeze through – is so AAA. The early game has surprised me in term of how much its carried on from Left Behind in terms of that Naughty Dog downtime experience they've developed on from Nathan Drake patting the yak in Uncharted 2.
The thing is pretty grim but it's very compelling so… I guess I'm enjoying it.

Might be better in the main thread, but I'd be intrigued you hear how you're responding to the characters so far, given that I apparently Did It Wrong.

Might be better in the main thread, but I'd be intrigued you hear how you're responding to the characters so far, given that I apparently Did It Wrong.

Hands up: I watched a massive spoiler review (dunky) when it looked likely I wasn't going to play the game for a while. Anyway, despite that I'm not sure of Abby's motivations but I am really enjoying the story so far. I don't know if there's a way for me to say this without coming across as a creep, or rather this being interpreted as creepy, but I was surprised how quickly I warmed to the Ellie/Dina dynamic. Their fledgling relationship carrying over form an existing friendship is – so far – really well played. I've got a nagging feeling Ellie is going to have to shoot her in the face based on a couple of lines of Dina's dialogue but that isn't something I have prior knowledge of. It's not surprising though because it was exactly the same in the Last of Us with Joel and in Left behind with Riley.

Will have a look at the thread and pitch in there though.

New Play's

West of Dead - top-down(ish), cover-based roguelike, with voice work by Ron Perlman. Only had the one run, and it feels quite 7/10, but I suspect I'm going to enjoy it.

Ronin - an odd mashup of a platformer and a turn-based strategy game, that was clearly made by a small team, and has issues, but that I'm again really quite enjoying.

I do need to pick a "big" game to get into again at some point though…

Bin

All the CCGs - while on furlough I decided to try the other "big" CCGs that'd recently come to iOS, and now I seemingly rarely watch TV so much as just have it on in the background while I play Gwent, Hearthstone or Legends of Runeterra. I don't mind that, necessarily, I'm just conscious that it's not necessarily the best use of my (gaming) time.

On that basis, I sort of feel like I should drop (at least) one, but to be honest, they all have/do different things I like, so I'll probably stick to playing them all until I have some kind of minor nervous breakdown, and then drop them all once. It'll likely be worse in the short-term that way, but better in the long run…

Turned out I didn't even need the nervous breakdown, I just got a bit bored, as they're all so needy. Gwent I really like, and think it probably has the best art, but it seems to demand more of your time than I'd like, and LoR, which might be the best game, while being easily the most generous, just hasn't quite grabbed me. I just feel a bit distanced from it.

It's probably partially because I've been playing it longest, but comparatively Hearthstone feels like it demands less of your time and attention, and while it is also (most) plainly an awful, insidious machine for attempting to remove your money, it's also the one I'm most likely to sometimes return to, which I'm not entirely sure how to feel about…

the Ellie/Dina dynamic

Yeah, I loved that. Dina's the best.

The Avengers beta is real bad, you guys.

The controls are twitchy and imprecise, so getting around isn't fun. Fights are too frequent, and just turn into a chore because it takes Hulk multiple solid hits to take down a regular human, so you just don't feel powerful. It tosses far too many enemies at you, too; there's the usual spread of archetypes - mooks, snipers, Big Guy With Shield - which sort of suggests they want you to try and be tactical, but there are so many bad guys, the arenas are so small, and charge attacks take so long to wind up, that you guys get swarmed and it descends into button-mashing.

The voice work is mostly fine, but the writing is just bad. Thor is a particular lowlight, as they've gone for the lazy option: a pretentious, Shakespeare-in-the-park accent and stilted, overly-formal language. Did they learn nothing from Thor Ragnarok?

Oh, and if you think the character models are ugly (they are), wait until you see the environments, which uniformly look like they're made out of cheap plastic. The result is something that looks like a four-year-old smashing a bunch of Avengers action figures together in Generic Secret Base Playset #2, and has about as much strategic nuance.

That's not even getting into the dire equipment/upgrade system, which has been transplanted in from Destiny without any further thought. Or the skill trees, the cosmetics, the confusing stats, and why do I have two stamina bars? Why are there loot chests hidden inside the solid rock of cliffs?

I was never likely to pick this up, but it's real bad, you guys.

I never expected anything else, to be fair.

I thought it might be a passable action game, but it just reeks of design by numbers - it has to have this, and this, and this, and live service, and RPG skill trees, because THE MARKET.

Watched a few streams and all it did is make me want Marvel Heroes back. Or whatever the F2P Diablo style game was called. Maybe I'll buy Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 one day.

Yeah, I expected this to be bad from the first videos. I've got it to look forward to(?) tonight.
Hulk not Smash humans with one hit is just so poor.

More Play's!

Gravity Rush 2 - I started this last year, and seeing as I seem to be sticking to my 'rotating cast of games' approach at the moment, and Marit's over for the next two weeks, I've gone back to it and will be dipping in and out when I can.

(Yes, I've seen what I wrote, but I've left it like that because I know what Mart's like, and am sure it'll amuse him.)

Remnant: From the Ashes - pretty much as above, but in more normal (for 2020) circumstances I think this would be getting even more time.

It's a sort of AA sci-fi fantasy Soulslike, where the focus is gunplay rather than melee combat (though there's some of that too), and thankfully (and somewhat surprisingly) said gunplay is actually great. The setting is an alternative future where, as with Fallout, it went all apocalyptic decades ago, the vibe is a little Lovecraftian, and the enemies (the Root) are like if it turned out all of Groot's siblings were colossal dicks.

It's also designed to be seamlessly played co-op (up to 3 players, I think), and I think it's actually free on Gamepass, so if you can look past the usual slight AA shonk, and any of the above appeals, I'd recommend giving it a look. I'm certainly enjoying it.

It was also free on Epic gamestore. It's the most 7/10 game I think I've played in recent memory. Forgettable plot. Generic videogame levels. Reasonable gunplay. It's good co-op, but then everything is good co-op. I've vaguely enjoyed it, but I spent a lot of that time wondering why I wasn't playing something better.

I TOUCHY DA CRYSTAL.

I can't really disagree with any of that. There's just something about it I like.

I think it does a lot of things I generally enjoy (the Soulslike structure, the Eldritch vibe, etc) pretty well, perfectly pitched so that you can overlook and excuse the flaws/shonk and be pleasantly surprised by everything it does well.

The novelty of it being a proper 7/10 AA game, when I mainly seem to play AAA, indie games and roguelites these days, is probably working in it's favour too.

dodge rolls

I do love a dodge roll. I do sometimes wonder how my ex-cultist's hat doesn't come off though.

I finished PaperMario- although I really enjoyed playing it, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t any more of the game to play - I thought once the boss was finished, the world would open up for a more free roaming experience, I’ve clocked up about 40 hours of play, nearly double of what I out into Luigi’s Mansion.

I’d have liked to have got more bang for my buck, it was fun, colourful and enough of a challenge to let me enjoy it, but I think the eight year old me would have got more out of it!

I often find with Mario RPGs that I get to 40 hrs, get bored and don't finish them. 40 hours and done sounds good.

More Game Pass trawling.

Two Points Hospital is brilliant, a proper spiritual successor to Theme Hospital. And the console conversion is so good! I think it's the first top-down management sim I've played that works just as well without a mouse.

The hospital radio is excellent too; special mention to a fake Wotsits they keep advertising called Cheesy Gubbins.

Rage 2 is a technically brilliant open-world shooter that somehow manages to be both ugly and boring.

Microsoft Flight Simulator - an almost inconceivably impressive thing, that runs far better on my PC than I ever expected while looking frankly pretty stunning. To be honest it's not really my cup of tea - it is exactly what you'd expect, a rather dry simulator - but it's worth jumping in just for the opportunity to buzz over your own house and crash a plane into your office. Add a couple of bonus points if, like me, the sound of an extremely serious flight instructor talking about her Flaps sends you into a fit of childish giggles.

What I really like about Flight Simulator is that it's just about the apex of what a simulator can be in that genre. It's a massive undertaking and a towering achievement that I have basically no interest in, and that's great. There's someone out there, some very specific group of people, for whom this is maybe the best game that's come out in years. There are people who are really hardcore flight simmers that are finally being served with an absolute gold standard of a game, and I am incredibly happy for them. They've gotten their perfect game.

Microsoft Flight Simulator - an almost inconceivably impressive thing, that runs far better on my PC than I ever expected while looking frankly pretty stunning. To be honest it's not really my cup of tea - it is exactly what you'd expect, a rather dry simulator - but it's worth jumping in just for the opportunity to buzz over your own house and crash a plane into your office. Add a couple of bonus points if, like me, the sound of an extremely serious flight instructor talking about her Flaps sends you into a fit of childish giggles.

It has nice clouds. Perhaps because I own a drone I was expecting a little more from the graphics (and yes, I have looked at them on Ultra). They're decent, but not really mindblowing. Most places I've checked have been some strange Other Place uncanny valley versions of the real thing, apart from my partner's house which is in the middle of nowhere and incredibly accurate. I do like the general presentation and vibe to it, but it is essentially like all the other Flight Sims but with better clouds.

I might revisit it when VR is patched in, but it's rather meh.

I finished PaperMario- although I really enjoyed playing it, I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t any more of the game to play - I thought once the boss was finished, the world would open up for a more free roaming experience

I just finished it. It does. Reload your save from finishing the game and you'll see it lets you go clean up everything you missed (plus adds a little more, even though you technically haven't finished it at that point…).