PWB August: No Sunshine For You

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Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. It's fantastic to have a "new" Ace Attorney game to play, and so far this seems tremendous. A bit more serious in tone than Phoenix Wright, this touches on themes like racism and colonialism and uses its historical setting to good effect; then again it has a character called Herlock Sholmes and a Russian sailor called Bif Stroganov so it's not exactly a serious critique of the Victorian era. Production values are out of this world and it's all exactly what I hoped it would be.

Monster Train. Been back to this in a big way lately, working my way through the various clans and Covenants. There's loads to do in this, it doesn't quite have the precision of Slay the Spire but I think overall it's a more generous and fun package with more depth than might initially appear. Really great DLC too.

Elder Scrolls Online. Still plodding through this, it's comfort gaming really but nothing wrong with that. Its main problem is still that the final zone of the original main quest is a turgid slog that's not in any way the grand climax it's intended to be - nearly done with it though then I'm off to Morrowind (whee!).

Want

Looking forward to Hades landing on Game Pass in the next couple of weeks so I can finally see what all the fuss is about.

Starting to get close enough to the end of the year that Forza Horizon 5 and Halo Infinite are starting to actually feel real. I wouldn't be surprised if one of them slips to 2022, though.

Bin

Regrettably I think Microsoft Flight Simulator isn't for me. It's simultaneously an astonishing technical achievement, and a mildly interactive version of Google Maps. I flew around a bit, found my house, crashed into Canary Wharf and didn't really have anything else I wanted to do. (I'm also not convinced the throttle controls in particular work on a controller, but I'm guessing anyone who is serious about this will wind up buying a flight stick eventually anyway).

TVs: it's not all that long ago that you'd buy a CRT, spend 5 minutes adjusting the brightness and colour controls, then leave the settings exactly the same for the next 15 years. Nowadays configuring a new TV requires a week off work and an intricate understanding of everything from dynamic tone mapping to Dolby Vision - well it does if you're as anally retentive as me. If anyone wants any help setting up an LG OLED TV then I reckon I've probably tweaked every single setting on mine by now, I'd hesitate to call it "done" but I'm actually happy with it for the time being. Hell of a TV though.

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I got briefly obsessed with Bit.trip Flux. It's the sequel to Bit.trip Beat and it's either a clever Breakout/SHMUP/rhythm-action mash up or its one of the purist videogames I have ever played managing to elevate not just the music and visuals but also the gameplay to an art form. It's definitely one of those things.

RPGs keep on getting interrupted. Cthulhu Dark is going good, not quite sure about the system but the adventure is great. 13th Age is still getting started. We did character generation for Traveller last night and that alone was awesome, can wait to get started with the game.

Want
I really want a Playdate (https://play.date/), I love the concept and the minimal controls to force innovative design but I'm not convinced that there will be more than a handful of actually good games on it. I guess that's not the point though, I should be supporting this initiative to do something actually different with videogames. I suppose I could just spend £150 on weird Steam games.

I forgot it was a new month, and posted in the old thread.

Anyway, Halo Infinite multiplayer seems solid, even if it's early days. They've got the fundamentals down, and I'd actually forgotten quite how different Halo feels to its twitchier, CoD-inflected cousins. Providing nothing goes horribly wrong in the next couple of months, this seems like a no-brainer.

FFXIV

Taken on a new job, I'm learning Marauder/Gladiator, mostly because I've hit lvl 80 on Dragoon and Red Mage and because back in the day you had to level two classes to take a Job, so to become a Dragoon I had to get Lancer to lvl30 and Marauder to 15, they've dropped that mechanic at some point but I had Marauder sat there at lvl15 and decided to have a play with Command quests and try and learn to Tank.

SMT Nocturne

Really enjoying this, though it's making me hanker for a switch port of Persona 3 (preferably a mash up of FES and Portable) due to its tone and aesthetics. Beat the Matador and am currently in some sort of Labyrinth.

Monster Hunter Rise

Dipping in and out of this as the mood takes me, it's excellent, MH really suits a portable format.

Animal Crossing New Horizons

Also dipping in and out of this as the mood takes me

Chernobylite

Started yesterday, it's a survival game with base building, crafting, stealth, horror, some sort "heist" thats being planned slowly. Missions only take about 15 to 20 minutes and it's very atmospheric.

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Pokemon Unite - I don't play MOBAs but I finally downloaded this last night and it's dangerously addictive and fun, I only played as Eldegoss so far because I wanted to be a healer/support but already there are quite an impressive range of picks and it will only get even better as they pick from their own roster of Pokemon. It's not quite as deep as what I've seen of DOTA2 and LoL but there's still stuff to think about, as you level up you need to choose between the skills you learn to slowly make your way towards some kind of 'build' and also you can unlock Held Items that affect playstyle too which are also very Pokemon type mechanics as well.

Great Ace Attorney Chronicles - Still at the start of Trial 2 because I have too much to play, but it's as Gar said. A game I think I didn't know how much I needed to I had it.

Skies of Arcadia - The only real gripe I have with this is that even though combat isn't really bad (although magic feels ludicrously underpowered) the random encounter rate is kind of anti-exploration for me, I wanna' explore the beautiful world map (in all it's low draw distance glory) but thinking how many times I'll have to fight my way through whilst I search is kind of off putting.

The optimism and positivity that runs through the heart of this game really makes it so nice to play though, even when he gets stranded on a desert island (and in this world that means a floating island in a bottomless sky) Vyse never gets down and gives up, Aika is always cheering and has massive smile on her face no matter what. If you want to play a jrpg without moody teenagers this is your game. Speaking off…

Xenogears - The mechs are really really cool in this, you meet a kid who works for the Church as an 'Etone' who is someone who hunts mutant like creatures called 'Reapers' and he does this by carrying a small armnoury on himself at all times and his combos involve him getting each one out, firing it, then putting it away for another one. Anyway he has a mech with a CAPE that fires bullets from its wrists how cool is that!!!

Also, really do need to point out how this game has at least 4 absolutely fantastic antagonists, some that aren't even on the same side.

Play. Monster Hunter Stories 2 - think I’ve just finished the hand holding introduction, and am doing all sorts of gene experiments on poor monsties. There are too many button press confirmations, and the time between loading screens is just that bit too long. But it’s fun.

It does mean I have to get up and cross the room to change carts to play MH Rise, so that isn’t getting played as much.

Want - I want to get back to playing the DLC for the Witcher.

Bin. My dad. Turns out he’s an anti-vaxx’er and has been on all the protest marches, thinks the 5G box on the telephone pole outside the house is controlling his thoughts. He had a mental breakdown twenty five years ago, this feels the same as that. Need to convince him to change his meds.

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After really enjoying, after a fashion, Mini Metro, I've been playing the first few levels of the sequel: Mini Motorways. If you liked Mini Metro, you'll probably get on with this too: it's got the same deceptively chill visuals, and a satisfying gameplay loop that spirals rapidly out of control the longer you play.

After a friend of mine started playing it for the first time, I'm trying to revisit Persona 4 Golden, with the aim of actually finishing this playthrough. (I did complete it on Vita, but I've never stuck with a replay past Kanji's dungeon.)

With Okami HD discounted on the Switch store and enough gold points to drop it into the impulse purchase range, I've restarted that, too. Being able to skip the cutscenes is a godsend.

Want

My Expanse RPG game is a player down but has now reached a decent place to take a break, so I'm looking at my shelf of rulebooks thinking of stuff to run as short or one shot games. My Body is a Cage (a Persona-inspired dungeon crawler with some of the most striking graphic design I've seen in an RPG book); another Electric Bastionland game (with The Stygian Library as the setting); maybe something with Blades in the Dark or Scum and villainy. And I've been (re)reading the preview rules for the Avatar and Dragon Prince RPGs, and have started thinking about giving them a proper run…

I'm also curious to check out Hades when it lands on GamePass.

Bin

I'm doing a bunch of extra stuff at work while waiting for my manager's replacement, and could do with maybe three or four fewer plates spinning.

Mini Metro is the only mobile phone game I've actually stuck with for about five years now - they gave it away for free at the start of the Covid WFH phase and I got quite hooked on it. I had no idea there was a sequel.

EDIT: ah bollocks, it's locked behind an Apple Arcade subscription. Fuck that.

I managed about an hour of both Mini Metro and Mini Motorways. Not for me. Does anyone have any other recommendations for Apple Arcade to play before our family trial runs out?

Tried Fantasian yet?

Sayonara Wild Hearts

Grindstone

Sayonara Wild Hearts

Hell, and indeed, yes.

Thanks I'll look them up!

Fantasian is the only reason I want Apple Arcade, it's the new RPG made by old Final Fantasy director/creator, Hironobu Sakaguchi, those diorama backgrounds tho.

I managed about an hour of both Mini Metro and Mini Motorways. Not for me. Does anyone have any other recommendations for Apple Arcade to play before our family trial runs out?

Clap Hanz Golf (by the Everybody's Golf guys) and Tiny Crossword+ are both great.

They buffed the Halo Infinite bots from "ODST" to "Spartan", and I actually have to work for kills now. It's still not quite like playing against humans, but it's a decent challenge. I don't know if I'd enjoy them being buffed further, though.

It was a neat idea on paper, but the more the events on what happened exactly in Trial 2 of AAC the worse it got, might be down there with the infamous Circus Trial of PW2 for me in terms of BS and possibly weakest culprit in the series?

Spoiler - click to showIt was absolutely beyond stupid to me how they went above and beyond to incriminate themselves over what was a tragic accident (and said accident is kinda' past my persona PW bs level honestly, pushed and broke his neck my arse), how stupid do you have to be to claim the dead person wrote in Russian just to find Ryunosuke in the Wardrobe? And how can you say you didn't notice the Bell was cracked because it was dark when you can literally feel it in your hand???

A shame, I still have faith in the rest of the game purely because Trial 1 was great through and through and the gameplay part, specifically the deductions which were new to me, were really good.

Ah man, I really liked it. It's something completely different, and:

Spoiler - click to showI didn't expect them to kill off Kazama so soon (though I guess they've got form with Mia Fey!) so the whole thing was a bit of a shock. Herlock Sholmes was great. The Dance of Logic and Deduction was absolutely brilliant. I loved the way it misleads you into thinking the solution will be the same as the Holmes story it's all based on, then goes in a completely different direction. And I liked the way it didn't have a court section, but then again it kind of did, with everyone throwing around accusations in the third act and trying to work it out.

Also

Spoiler - click to showThere's a strong ongoing narrative throughout the whole game it seems which I really like, it's very much the story of what happened to Ryunosuke rather than the PW approach of "here's 5 random trials and maybe the final trial has callbacks to the first".

But of course different trials appeal to different people - I didn't even mind the circus trial in AA2 that much, I didn't think it was the weakest in that particular game. For what it's worth the third trial (which I'm currently halfway through) is both more traditional and also completely mental, so I think it'll appeal to you more…

Yeah, it was interesting I just think it feel apart a bit when the actual websites came to light, I know that's pretty selective of me but there you go. I'm really looking forward to the new prosecutor though, be looks like a real theatrical dickhead.

AHEM I just noticed those damn typos and that is absolutely why you don't phone post at work hours ever tbh. I absolutely despise my phone's predictive text because it will get it wrong and the suggested alternatives at the top will always be what I wanted.

Annnnnyway, I'm still early into Trial 3 and yeah, we're back on track, they keep adding mechanics like Deductions and Summation Exams and they're all good and not gimmicky at all (looking at you Danganronpa)

I love the new Prosecutor so far too, he introduces himself with his cape wrapped around himself like Dracula or something which I thought was hilarious enough, but so far he's not got that one quirk like Franziska's whip or Godot's coffee but that's fine because Edgeworth didn't have that stuff either and he's obviously a good Prosecutor too.

I continue to be impressed by the production values of it all.

EDIT - oh maybe there's his Hallowed Chalice stuff but I dunno, just seems to be him being him?

I've been playing Last Stop over the last couple of nights and I absolutely love it. It's a very, very British take on something like Life is Strange, with three overlapping stories and a general undercurrent of sci-fi weirdness. In one story, a depressed middle-aged dad swaps bodies with an irritatingly perky 20-something game designer; in another, a gang of teenagers kidnap someone who might be an alien; and in the third, a woman tries to balance her work for a secretive organisation with looking after her elderly father and covering up an affair.

There's not much actual game here, it's very much a narrative experiece, but it's all done so well. London in this game actually feels like London, all bus stops and takeaways and suburban Tube stations, and the realistically diverse group of characters are all really well acted. It's obviously a low-budget thing - animation in particular is most kindly described as "janky" - but in a way that cheapness adds to its charm, it gives it a British telly sort of vibe. You could put the Tardis in the background and it wouldn't be out of place.

Anyway, it's on Game Pass if you want to check it out, it's one of those little gems that'll pass a lot of people by.

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Ghostrunner: Fuck you. Fuck you again. Fuck everyone who made you. Fuck myself. Fuck this stupid fucking game. Fucking fucky fuck fuck fuuuuuuuuck!!!!

Just one more go (restarts level)

Has anyone else played Splitgate?

Play Splitgate.

Further details, as I realise the above might have been a mite brief: Splitgate is a multiplayer FPS that plays a little bit like Halo, except you also have a Portal gun.

As in Portal, petals can only be placed on certain surfaces, but you can use them to set up all kinds of neat ambushes by hiding them around corners, then either blasting through them to attack enemies in the back, or just popping out with a shotgun.

You can travel through enemy portals (though you can't see through them, so it's a risky prospect) or shut them down with EMP grenades.

Environment and weapon design feels like it's aiming for Overwatch, but ended up slightly closer to Brink (anyone else remember Brink!?), so it's chunky and futuristic, but lacks much in the way of character.

Character models are a fucking bonkers mishmash of shit - a pink Groot, cat-people, some kind of zombie American footballer..? There's no real unifying design ethos; I'm playing as a robot samurai(?) I got from a loot box.

Yes, it has loot boxes, but everything's cosmetic, and most of it is ugly anyway. The UI has not been adapted in the slightest for console - text is positively microscopic, and looks like it would be hard to read even on a monitor. UX flow is also pretty bad.

TL;DR: it's a little drab visually, but great fun. The last time I played this many rounds of a multiplayer FPS game on the trot was Titanfall 2 (RIP).

Anyway, if anyone does decide to hop in, please enter KT94UN when you're asked for a Referral Code…

I tried the tutorial and thought "there's no way I'm gonna be any good at this"

I'm shocked how well I've done at it. It helps that most players seem to be terrible at using portals (I'm almost certain I was the only person doing it in my first match), but I've been on the winning side of every game I've played so far, topped the board in several, and have a K/D of 2.06.

It helps a lot that it's not as fast or twitchy as a lot of games, so you can use portals tactically; I rarely felt like my deaths were unfair, and even when you do die, respawns are very quick.

Had kinda forgot it was August.

Play - Far Cry 5 - I grabbed this last week in the sale, about 8 hours in as am off on summer hols and really enjoying it despite being just more Far Cry. I do like that the planes are hunting you (at least currently they are) so I keep having to dart into the bushes and tree line, even though the planes seem terrible at actually hitting you. I do love the formula of Far Cry games, even if I wish everyone would be less sweary in this.

BoTW - Massively back into this now, finally got the Master Sword now too. This is killing my Switch though, I only get like 2 hours in Handheld mode before needing to charge it.

Madden 21 - Our online franchise we set up had stalled out the last two months after a year of play, but has had a little. Resurgence recently

Want - Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1&2 for the Switch. I have asked for this for my birthday (which is tomorrow as I write this) and so it will be a spectacular error if this hasn't happened as its all I asked for!

Bin - House hunting, have given up and restarted this so many times but this time we are actually stopping.

Anyone else tried Wildermyth? What started with great promise (sort of XCom crossed with Paper Mario and a random text generator) has proven to be less creative than we first thought. But it's still capable of utterly bizarre, weird, storytelling moments. Like having a complicated film relayed to you by someone for whom English is something they half remember having done in school 20 years ago. As a multiplayer game it's fun, chill, odd and quite unlike anything else I've played (as a blend, even though the bits are all similar to other stuff). Recommended, I guess?

Case 1-4 of Great Ace Attorney is a bit of a disappointment:

Spoiler - click to showIt's the very definition of a low-stakes trial - no-one's been murdered, you don't get to cross-examine the 'victim' OR the defendant, and it's all about working out a sequence of events rather than trying to catch out a clever liar. It's the second of four cases where the crime happens by accident. Also, it goes on for bloody ages and I'd worked it all out before the halfway point, so it was just a case of letting it plod through until it caught up. Very disappointing.

I'm also starting to see why both games were released as a package: I'm onto the final case of the first game now and it feels like the game and story have barely got started. I'm assuming a lot of what I'm seeing is actually setup for the second game.

Still enjoying it, obviously, but I'm hoping for a rip-roaring final trial after what's been a bit of a lull.

In a complete reversal of how we felt about 2-1…I liked 1-4!

Spoiler - click to showEverything you said was true, but I just really enjoyed how it played out, like with the red herring about the juror and what have you. And accident it may be I still can't get over Kazuma breaking his neck because a 15 year old pushed him over a Cat onto the floor

I honestly don't remember any of the original Trilogy having their cases be all seemingly interconnected like Ace Attorney's seem to be so far (I dunno' where 2-1 fits in admittedly) and as such I'm really interested to see where 1-5 goes, and I may be imagining things but…there's something about the new Prosecutor as well that makes me think something is going on there (gonna slip in that I thought him chucking an entire bottle of wine over his shoulder at the public gallery behind him was fucking hilarious). I could be wrong, but I'm pretty hyped.

Anyone else tried Wildermyth? What started with great promise (sort of XCom crossed with Paper Mario and a random text generator) has proven to be less creative than we first thought. But it's still capable of utterly bizarre, weird, storytelling moments. Like having a complicated film relayed to you by someone for whom English is something they half remember having done in school 20 years ago. As a multiplayer game it's fun, chill, odd and quite unlike anything else I've played (as a blend, even though the bits are all similar to other stuff). Recommended, I guess?

Just checked some videos out, it looks interesting but with anything Xcom like, I ultimately just end up missing Xcom and then put another 20 hours into that. This has reminded me i never got to even the 4th mission of xcom chimera.

Finished The Great Ace Attorney.

Final case was described perfectly online by someone, so I'll say - great normal case, not a terribly good final case, really lacked the usual sense or urgency and drama apparent in how I remember the respective enders to each of the original trilogy (technically PW1 had 2 right? Since the last case in that was a DS extra). It's as Gar said, it's very clear they intentionally shipped this together as two halfs of a whole, as far as the first half goes I will say it was a good game but I wish for one thing we got more villains like the first culprit.

BIG SPOILARS
Spoiler - click to show the death on the boat was an accident, then you end up having defended the villain of the third trial albeit not confirmed til' the end where any hatred comes too late, then another accident which isn't even a murder and finally we get an actual somewhat hateable villain again.

TBH, eveything about the game is top notch, characters are amazing and gameplay is fun. But…yeah, the Trials are what I'm here for, hoping the second half really kicks things up a notch in the drama stakes a little.

Ace Attorney 2 is off to a great start not that I'm that far but I will say

Spoiler - click to showSoseki is the most annoying character in this frachise, jesus christ. I had empathy for him in his Trial because he was at the mercy of injustice and the racism at the crux of it but that thing he does is such a miss. Other than that, Susato in her disguise looked amazing, and the fact that she is even doing this is great character work

Well Hades dropped on Games Pass finally and it's fucking amazing, first roguelike I can remember where I'm almost looking forward to dying just to see more dialogue. So far I've just used the Sword, didn't want to switch until I could beat Meg and after like 8 runs (and she still had different dialogue to greet me with every time I got back to her…) I think using a Dionysus 'build' (as much as you can have a build of anything that early I guess) absolutely destroyed her since she had no answer to Hangover status, looking forward to trying other weapons!

I'm sure some minor niggles will present themselves later, like maybe when you know what most of the items do some runs will become blatant wastes of time..or something but so far this looks like a perfect game to me. Most dangerous 'one more go' game ever.

EDIT - Dead Cells also seems pretty good, it has a Parry so you know I was always going to like it, kind of a bad time to discover it though…

I think Hades may turn out to be a very slick and enjoyable entry in a genre I fundamentally don't like very much, but I'm enjoying it so far. I've had a few rounds, beaten Meg once, and it's constantly throwing new things at me. I haven't even got a handle on what all the room icons are yet, let alone working out what kind of "builds" I can make or anything like that. Just playing through and trying to upgrade as best I can when I get the chance.

I'm sure after a while I'll get fed up with it like I do all Roguelikes ("oh god, I really can't be arsed going through all these easy rooms again") but for now I'm having fun.

I need to go back to it. I got up to the surface after many, many attempts and was utterly destroyed by Hades himself, and then my interest fell off a cliff. Apparently, beating him is where things really open up in terms of ways to power-up, so I should try again.

I started playing I Am Dead, having owned it on Switch since launch. It's not what I expected, but also is… a weird puzzle game (expected) about finding objects within scenes by moving through the surrounding scenery (unexpected). It's lovely, but I'm bored by the amount of text and exposition around the puzzles. Then again, it's an Annapurna game so I really should have anticipated it being story heavy. Will plug on, as it doesn't seem all that long.

Turn on Godmode in Hades if you're like 'man I am progressing very slowly and getting bored.' You will have more fun.

I need to go back to it. I got up to the surface after many, many attempts and was utterly destroyed by Hades himself, and then my interest fell off a cliff. Apparently, beating him is where things really open up in terms of ways to power-up, so I should try again.

That's where I bounced off it too.

Ditto. If I could have restarted from just outside the last arena I’d have given it more time, but the thought of battling through all those rooms again, and knowing I’d need to do it ten more times before learning the final boss’s patterns, was pretty deflating.

I might give god mode a go. Although that does seem to defeat the point somewhat.

Play: I'm sure it's in line with Hades coming out everywhere but I've always been interested in playing Pyre. The only thing holding me back was that I've admired but ultimately bounced off Supergiant Games titles in the past. Anyway, it was on sale and I got it and then started it and then suddenly it was 2 AM.

I really like it. Wasn't totally convinced that The Rites had the legs to keep me going through the story but they've somehow balanced it perfectly. Love the world, love the writing, love the art and really love The Rites. It's like a magical take on NBA Jam.

Back to Assassin's Creed: Valhalla for a bit. It's a very easy game to drop in and out of - it's episodic by design - but it's every bit as shoddy as it always was. Ten months of constant patching and content updates haven't smoothed off its rough edges in the slightest. It's a game of beautiful landscapes and laughable, stiffly-animated potato people. It's a game about assassins where stealth is completely broken, and taking out anyone results in every enemy within a mile bearing down on your exact location. It's a game with a historical focus that's paid absolutely zero attention to accuracy, geography, local accents or speech patterns. It has the worst voice acting I've ever heard in a game, with bored-sounding characters routinely pronouncing names however the hell they feel like it on that particular day, then tops it all off by seemingly recording everything in a bin. It's had so many bug fixes that the patch notes screen in the game is also broken because it's not able to display everything. It is, in a word, rubbish and yet inexplicably there is absolutely fucking loads of it, the main story alone goes on for about 150 hours and they keep releasing more and more DLC and seasonal content. Essentially it is simply awe-inspiring in its sheer pointlessness and of course it has sold shitloads more than any other game in the series so will inevitably become the template for these things going forward.

Rush Rally Origins (switch)

Really, really enjoying this. It's perfect for a pick up and play session: shortish loading times, a stage is barely ever over 2 minutes long and the handling is so sweet and accessible. Overall I prefer art of rally (but on the PC with a controller with analogue triggers) but this definitely suits being on a handheld (and is only a fiver. It's on Android too but I can't do touch controls/don't like having my things covering the screen I'm using)

Also Quake thanks to that remaster they've done.

Ive never actually played Quake before, I did play the PlayStation version of Quake 2. To add to that I'm also playing it on Switch Lite rather than on PC/a big TV, but it's surprisingly playable. I'm crap at multiplayer, and I'm not gonna blame the tools as I'd be equally as bad on other formats but it's so instant and fast that I don't really care.

Might try have some fun with Quake 3 online tomorrow night, I was always an Unreal Tournament 99' guy but should be good.

I just grabbed Quake and all expansions for £2.50 on GOG. It's still great.

I always preferred Quake to Doom, but think that may be an age thing, as didn't play Doom till much later where as I had mates who had Quake at release.

I remember playing the original Quake on my very first laptop in my first year at uni.

Fuck, I'm old.

Quake III Arena was my bag. What a game.

Finished Great Ace Attorney Chronicles and honestly, pack this series up because it's going to be hard to top this, the first half of Chronicles is an okay AA/PW game, the second half is an amazing AA/PW game. Quite possibly up there with Trials and Tribulations for me, which, whilst Resolve does have an amazing final case (and the best culprit breakdown I've ever seen omg) T&T will always have that final Trial over anything I think.

What Resolve has over the original trilogy (and if fan talk is anything to go by, every game has at least one 'meh' case) is I don't think that there isn't a single bad case in the game, and the cases themselves are awesome. I can't go into too many details until Gar gets here I think and I don't want to severely overhype it anyway, there's one aspect that I can't wait to discuss actually but I can wait.

Yeah, I'm still plodding through trial 1-5, which is very very long. So it's going to be a long while before I catch up with you.

It's a weird game, everything about it is really strong and the translation in particular is amazing but the pacing is completely fucked. Everything's so long-winded, a character says something then someone asks them about it then they repeat themselves then they both agree - over and over again. They could cut at least half of the dialogue without losing any of the game.

It doesn't help that it's clearly designed as a two-part game so the first game doesn't even really build to anything. The final case is probably the best in the first game but it's not got that "epic final trial" feeling.

Hopefully the second game is snappier because otherwise it feels like I'll be playing this for months!

I said that exactly about the final case too and I don't think I'd have cared nearly as much if I didn't like Gina "u wot m8" Lestrade as much as I do, which is one of the strengths of Chronicles I think. You haven't said you are or anything but if you feel too burned out to jump into Resolve after I would at least check out the first case because it's a great taste of what's to come.