PWB December 22

Haven't played High on Life myself yet but surely this ability to try stuff with no regrets is really the best thing about Game Pass? It enables smaller, quirkier games to find their audience. Same thing happened just recently with Pentiment, I'm sure there wasn't much demand for a wordy medieval visual novel drawn in the style of an illustrated manuscipt but those who liked it (like me!) really loved it.

It's why I always roll my eyes when people complain that there aren't enough first-party exclusives on Game Pass. The addition of an annual Forza and Gears of War title wouldn't suddenly transform Game Pass into a more attractive proposition. It's all about the variety for me, the opportunity to check out interesting stuff on a whim and see if it appeals.

Absolutely agree, the range and constant updates are what makes it appealing to me. I'm not really interested in much of the current MS first party AAA games - I am not a fan of Gears, Forza or Halo - but it's still good value for the third party stuff, the oddities and the indies. It's like a massive demo service as well as an interestingly curated library.

Comedy is very subjective. For example, a lot of people like James Corden and think he's funny, when he is objectively a cunt.

Roiland's schtick reminds me a little bit of how people despised Vic Reeves Big Night out or Stuart Lee doing 25 minutes on stage by repeating the same phrase with slightly different inflections. I think for a lot of people comedy has to have an output, adhere to an ebb and flow and is a technical discipline. Roiland often would adlib large sections of R+M when drunk or high. Some entire episodes (interdimensional cable ones) are entirely based around him improvising and often laughing at his own jokes while doing so. I can quite see how it would be irritating, but at the time it was one of the freshest and most exciting things you could watch, which is why it built a cult following. It sort of depends what you want from comedy - some of the funniest things I've ever heard have come from groups of drunk/high teenagers on a bus. Depends what you think comedy is and where it can be found.

I think the incessant burbling as you play a videogame, with observations on your actions by someone who loves the sound of their own voice, is so pertinent at the moment in the era of Twitch, that I found the entire conceit amusing even taken at face value, even if you don't actually like the actual game itself.

Bin
We all decided to play Hunt Showdown. It's very similar to Dead by Daylight. It has fourteen different types of SPOOPY game currency (BLOOD DOLLARS, FLESH COINS, VICERA PESOS) and a menu system so convoluted it looks like the manual to a fusion reactor. The entire game is an extraction shooter, but your guns are shit and everyone else is a twat. You go into SPOOP-O-VISION to find blue blobs that lead you to 3 clues that then narrow down where a massive spider or pus covered 8ft tall giant is and try to kill them, then run to an exit before the other players fuck you over. There are zombies as well, for some reason. I had to stab a horse to keep it quiet at one point - it's that sort of game.

It looks nice enough with a sort of dusk in the Deep South vibe, but like Tarkov it's complex, needlessly punishing, has pay to win elements and has a community full of die hard, trigger happy players who have long since broken all the game systems in their benefit.

I don't see why anyone would hate on High on Life. It has more creativity in the opening 10 minutes than most AAA titles manage over a 100 hour run.

Your first ten minutes must have been totally different to mine. All I got was a bad Duke Nukem ripoff, a lot of talking, some very wooly shooting that felt like I was facing Halo grunts (though I did like the location-based damage) and a tonne of F-bombs. Got to FUCKING SPACE CITY and that was enough. I don't hate it, but I also have far better ways to spend my time. Deleted.

Thanks, Game Pass:

High on Life - Not for me, binned.
Eastward - A quaint indie adventure that's too slow and dull for me, binned.
Power Wash Simulator - Nonsense and hypnotic, keeping it around for easy achievements when the need arises.
Disney Dreamlight Valley - Oh no.

Play

Midnight Suns - not sure about this yet. The pacing annoys me, what with all the social simulator stuff, and the core gameplay, which is good but feels like it probably still has more to give, is getting sidelined. I’m hoping the side-stuff calms down, and the balance shifts a bit, as either I get to spend more time hitting things than searching the grounds/doing weird platonic flirting soon, or I can see me getting bored fairly sharpish. The dialogue, characterisation and non-combat gameplay just isn’t strong enough to justify the amount of heavy-lifting it’s doing, and half the time I feel like I’m playing a fairly bad pre-MCU years Marvel game on the PS3.

Vampire Survivors - darling of indie GOTY lists, this quirky little roguelike thing recently stealth-dropped as a freebie on mobile, and now I’m spending a worrying amount of time playing it on my iPhone and iPad, despite the lack of cloud save.

MH Rise - still at least once a week, possibly forever / until the updates end and MH6 comes out

Want

To recommend Vampire Survivors - again, it’s free. Also, the Dead Space remake, the Switch version of Have a Nice Death, Silksong, etc. Mainly just trying to get through the backlog at the moment though.

…and more:

Colt Canyon - God no, deleted.
Pentiment - I like it, but need to be in the right mood for it. It's verrrrrrrry slow, and a tad overwhelming with the size of the places to explore. Will come back to it.
Return to Monkey Island - As obtuse as ever, and I'm not sure I have the patience for it… but then using the hint system seems to defeat the point somewhat. Hmm.

Return to Monkey Island - As obtuse as ever, and I'm not sure I have the patience for it… but then using the hint system seems to defeat the point somewhat. Hmm.

Me during the original games some years back

The hint system is very well implemented, definitely doesn't defeat the point.

Oh and Dreamlight Valley is wonderful. Although I wouldn't recommend it on Xbox, it runs at half the framerate of the PS5 version.

Given it's only free on Xbox, don't think I have much choice.

Already loving how it implements mobile ticks to stop you playing. Energy meter that only fills up if you eat or rest, my arse.

Okay yeah, Chained Echoes is looking pretty good so far, the management of the Overdrive bar is fun and you seem to have a nice range of tactics or at least will do when you get a few more skills, and it has cool 'mechs'! <3

Ah, nice! Didn't think you'll get round to it so soon. Been playing the Street Fighter 6 beta at the moment, so I'm not playing it again until that's over.

What do you think of the difficulty? It might be me, but normal enemies have been giving me trouble starting from the ghost types if you're up to them yet. Your a lot better at these types of games though, so I'm sure you'll be fine. Would you say the game has done a good job at speeding things up compared to other 16 bit JRPGs? Sometimes turn base can turn me off a few hours in, but this dose a lot to fix that. Like no healing outside of battle needed, no random encounters and something I've got to give a lot of credit for, no grinding because you don't level up.

Yeah, it's definitely pretty quick so far and I'm not too far in but it's not really been difficult other than I've been destroyed by three crabs at once a few times and the unique monsters, but those times I just retried and used a better strategy. I really like the combos/synergy between the team so far, Oil Strike from Glenn and then the Fire attack from Lenne really hurts them, especially if you can stay in Overdrive.

Play

Street Fighter 6 beta

Oh man I had lots of fun with this. The overall hip pop theme feels great. Kinda reminds me of Third Strike. It's definitely got it's own vibe. From the battle hubs to the resigned characters in the RE engine. Outside the gameplay, it feels like a fresh start for series. After playing SFV for 5 plus years, it's great. As for the battle mechanics, there seems to be a lot more to it called the Drive system which can be use in many ways. Every round you start of with 6 bars of meter, and using different versions of drive defensively and offensively will cost you.

Drive reversal. Pretty similar to what's in SFV with it's V reversal. While blocking, you can spend two bars to push the opponent back for some breathing space.

Drive parry. A lot of people will confuse this for the same parry system that was in Third Strike, but this works a lot differently. You hold this down to stay in a stance when you'll parry everything while your meter drains. As good as this sounds it's dangerous if you press this when the opponent isn't attacking as it'll be a free combo and fails against grabs. You can do a "prefect parry" if you time it right, but it's still not as strong as the Third Strike parry and it doesn't give the same advantage to counter.

Drive Impact. A one cost bar universal move that can absorb 2 attacks. If this drive impact hits. You'll crumble the opponent for a free combo, kinda similar to the focus system in Street Fighter 4. There's a lot more to this though. If the opponent blocks this. It will push them back a few steps, giving decent space between the two, but if they hit one of the corner walls it will still crumble them even though they blocked it. It dose put them in a juggle state so you won't get as much of a punish combo. The corner is more dangerous than ever before. You really do feel a fight for your life to get out as the opponent wants to keep you there. There's more to the corner I'll get into later. Honestly, one of the strongest answers to drive inpact is to do your own drive inpact back if they are being reckless.

Drive Rush. This is where the fun starts. This cost 3 bars and let's you cancel attacks into a fast dash which can be used for multiple things like, creating new combos, closing in from long range attacks and continue attacking while the opponent is blocking to try to open them up with mix ups.

Over Drive. This has replaced "EX" attacks. It will no longer use your super meter anymore, but now use drive meter instead. I love this for many reasons. You don't have to share with supers anymore. So you'll be able to use "EX" attacks to combo into supers if needed. Also it means you'll start every round with 6 bars of meter to play with. No need to save from previous rounds. This will definitely take me awhile saying "OD" over "EX" attacks. 😂

One last thing. Burnout. When you run out of drive meter you'll become in a burnout state and your drive bar will slowly start to refill. Until then, you'll take more damage and chip damage when blocking. Attacks have better frame advantage (I won't bored anyone with frame data), but they'll be able to do stronger combos that aren't possible to someone who isn't in burnout. Also going back to the corner. If you knock someone into the corner who is in burnout, you'll stun them even if they are blocking. As weird as it is for Street Fighter, this is the only way to stun the opponent. No stun meter or anything like that. Anyway, this will refill the opponent drive meter back to full after being stunned. Like in most Street Fighter games attacking will help fill your drive and supers meter, but some moves like supers can drain the opponent meter too.

My overall thoughts are very positive from the beta. The game feels very polished in ways Street Fighter V didn't. This is no longer Capcom who needed Sony to help found the game. This is Capcom who's been smashing it for the last few years. The hype is real, and I can't wait for the full release!

If I can't find a local scene for this I might as well not buy it. :/

Play online, it's what I'm doing. I didn't talk about the online but it seemed faultless. I think after the last few years we've seen so many online tournaments from the Capcom pro tour if that's something your interested in.

our internet is bad and im fed up of people giving me solutions that dont work

And one more:

Inscryption - Wanted this for ages, grabbed it on Switch. I like it a lot, though it's not as wall breaking as I expected (having played and loved Pony Island, I was anticipating more). It's also surprisingly difficult, and the furthest I've got so far is the second boss 'fight'. Not sure I agree those should be one chance situations, it's easy to fuck up and lose… especially given bosses have two bites of the cherry in terms of health. The lack of persistence hurts too, losing your deck and any built up kit means you're effectively starting from scratch each time. I still like it a lot though.

Started Halo Infinite, it's looking like it could be a collection of generic Halo outposts and bases connected with a technically integral but still kind of superfluous open world…and I think this is extremely good!

Letting me take the weapons I want and approach a base how and where I want feels like the closest we're gonna' get to a full game of 'levels' like Silent Cartographer/Sierra 117. I found a sniper and used the Grappleshot to ascend the walls of a base and pick off the higher tier Brutes before jumping down to engage in typically excellent Halo gunfights. I think I already prefer it to 4 and 5.

I take a Rocket Launcher from one 'Free the Marines' node and bring it to a 'Kill this Banished Leader' node. These guys have a health bar and shields so they're like sub-sub-boss fights, but he's on a Ghost this time and I pull the trigger from afar before he's even seen me and watch my rocket slowly close in and completely delete his map icon in a ball off flame in a single hit. 10/10.

Only issues so far are:

1)This is the loneliest Halo game as a result of the open world shenanigans I think, I can solo the rest of the series fine but this would be several orders of magnitude more fun than it is now in co-op, Legendary difficulty even.

2)You are basically attacking the same outposts and freeing marines over and over, I've yet to feel it getting repetitive because of how dynamic every situation is but the potential for it to getb oring is there I guess?

3)The open world looks nice and it's sort of necessary filler to get you to approach places on your own terms but sometimes after cleaning up an icon off the map I'm a bit like 'now what'

And one more:

Shovel Knight Dig - Basically Mr Driller with Shovel Knight, with loads of hidden stuff thrown in and branching paths as you descend. It's TOUGH and incredibly obtuse, giving you pretty much zero guidance on how anything works or what symbols on signs mean, how to do things, etc. I am enjoying it a fair bit and have slowly made progress but in terms of games that are user friendly… man, this isn't one to recommend at all. And that's despite it having an Accessibility menu in the options.

Things to add.

1)
Vampire Saviour is incredible. Really addicted to it.

2)
Love Halo Infinite. It's one of my faves for sure, been back on it lately tidying up some of the side bits I missed.

3)
I got the Xbox Wireless Headset in the last week and it's really good, never been that into the idea of playing a game and listening to something over than the in game audio, but gotten so far behind on my favourite podcasts I have started to as the headphones allow you to connect to two devices at the same time and balance them out separately.

Witcher 3 on PS5 now looks and feels like Witcher 3 did on the PC. Or One X. Which is nice. Digital Foundry are smoking crack if they think the Ray Tracing is transformative. It looks…. pretty much the same with it on or off. Or, slightly different but not necessarily better one way or the other. Only a nutter would play at 30fps anyway, so a moot point.

I can't seem to get a save on it and I can't play the Bloody Baron quest line again or I'll have a breakdown, so it'll be a Bin for now, But yes. It's the Witcher 3.

Digital Foundry are generally insane anyway. Last Christmas they were telling everyone to play Forza Horizon 5 at 30fps because it had slightly better draw distance on shrubbery. I just ignore them now and put everything into maximum performance mode as soon as I can, I’m much happier that way.

It's a Christmas day miracle, that's the last boss of Inscryption beaten with a ridiculously overpowered set of cards.

…

…

…

Ahhhhhh, THERE'S a fourth wall completely shattered.

Got myself Sonic Frontiers for Christmas and just beat the first boss, it's the most I've enjoyed Sonic in years (I played Mania and couldn't be bothered finishing it…) even if it is a bit janky and flawed. I think the open world mostly works, I say mostly because sometimes I've found the platforming a bit suspect, maybe I'm just boosting to go fast too much though. But as a playground for Sonic to collect Stuff I think it's been really fun so far, lots of grinding rails and jump springs and loop the loops, like miniature gameplay sections to please your lizard brain. It has combat and this too is pretty fun if a bit simplistic, in terms of the bigger enemies like bosses this is where it feels a bit janky to me as you fly at 100mph to hit this precise boost zone, but again nothing too game breaking for me.

The worst part of the game is amazingly enough, the more traditional, non experimental Sonic levels O_o. Thse are short levels based on past Sonic stages throughout the series and for some reason Sonic feels like absolute shit to control here, the feeling of momentum is absolutely fucked and all over the place so you will be going full blast then suddenly slow down when you homing attack into an enemy or something. Bit weird considering this is Sonic's origin, even for the 3D games people loved the platforming stages even if they didn't like the other stuff, fans seem to pretty unanimous in that these are worse than the 'gimmick' this time. :thinking:

Want - I'm sure nobody is surprised to hear that I think I want to get a Playdate handheld. https://www.ign.com/articles/the-ten-best-games-for-playdate-in-2022?utm_source=twitter

I will be keen to hear your thoughts when you get it.

We have been re-watching Obi Wan and started to watch Andor so that has led to me having a bit of a Star Wars games binge, returned to very slowly playing through Jedi Knight 2 on the Switch and finally got passed the stage I was previously stuck on because I finally just looked it up (I had missed a vent you need to crawl into to trigger an explosion) and have also been playing Republic Commando and Jedi Fallen Order.

Want - I'm sure nobody is surprised to hear that I think I want to get a Playdate handheld. https://www.ign.com/articles/the-ten-best-games-for-playdate-in-2022?utm_source=twitter

Considering it's been out a while and is a massive gimmick, I'm kind of surprised. Seems like one of those things people leap on at launch, then totally forget about.

It's not the easiest thing to get hold of and it's price is a bit above impulse purchase. I think the fact that developers can release games for it on itch.io gives it a lot of potential.

Also they have drip feed the games that come with it haven't they?

Yep. Two games a week for twelve weeks.

My mate has one and it's a lovely device. As a Teenage Engineering stan I will pick one up at some point.

Play
Elden Ring (PS5) - I've played a fair bit of it on PC with my youngest via the seamless coop mod (the only way to play it coop). As he's the sort of guy who finishes Sekiro 7 times on the hardest difficulty, just for lols, the dynamic was largely him one shotting bosses and tearing around the landscape at speed while I barely had a chance to understand any of the mechanics. So, I figured I quite liked it and I just wanted to pootle around the starting few areas at a slower pace for a bit, trying to understand what the fuck is going on. Unfortunately the native PS5 version is a mess, and runs at a random framerate that might be in the mid40s in Performance mode. But the PS4 version (Pro version) runs at a flawless 60 and looks roughly the same, so I'm using that instead. It's a very interesting game. I still don't understand any of it, but it is undeniably interesting.

Ghostwire Tokyo (PS5) - bit of a weird one. An impulse purchase on disk on the cheap. It's basically an FPS with Persona monsters set in Cyberpunk 2077 with fingers for guns. It's kind of weird, but the core combat loop of fingering a monster (lel) and then ripping its soul out (sounds like my ex! lel) is satisfying. It looks nice, but for some reason it has 6 graphics modes and about half of them make no sense. The story is… very Japanese. It's quite conventional in many ways, with a thick dollop of weird icing on it. I don't know - it seems fine?

The Quarry (PS5) - only just started this. It's a sort of janky horror QTE thing with uncanny valley rendered humans. It's OK, I have a limited tolerance for this sort of thing, with only the androidy game in the Heavy Rain series being one that I enjoyed (can't remember what it's called - not Beyond, the other one). But it does have a co-op mode, and isn't excruciatingly badly written or directed. A bit different I guess.

Also Valorant and Apex. My eldest has got into video production, so keeps making gameplay videos of us. The added stress of being videoed made me fuck up my first Ace in ages in Valorant. Being 46 and playing comp shooters is bad enough, let alone with the fact that every mistake is recorded for posterity and the lols.

Want
Scan customer service to get their shit together. I ordered 2 similar things. One I need to RMA. It's reached almost farcical levels of interactions now where the order I want has been cancelled twice and then I've been double billed for the one I don't want. Their customer service is energetic but hopeless.

A new camper van. I miss my old one.

Bin
Shadow of the Colossus (PS5) - I forgot this was the remaster, and downloaded it on a whim. All looks very nice and runs at 60fps. Remarkable how ahead of its time it was, but still fucking disturbing. I downed the first big boi, felt sick and then questioned my gaming choices. So still working as intended.

Christmas - a shit enough year for me generally with losing my dad over weeks of awfulness. But I also haven't spoken to my partner since Christmas day over an argument (she did something mindbogglingly stupid and was called out for it) and one of my best mates and his partner of 5 years are clearly having huge relationship issues and I had to sit at a social event watching them tear each other to shreds. Tis the season to be jolly!

Weight! I was a "thought leader" at a big European conference a while back (I know) and when watching the videos back I noticed I was a fat thought leader, who really looked like he had spent the last 2 years largely sitting at a desk begging people for money (this is true). Since October I've lost 10kg, restarted running and the gym and have absolutely made huge strides to get ready for an ultra marathon next year. For the first time in town pre-Xmas a friend I hadn't seen for a while said I was looking trim and healthy which is always nice validation. Just another 10kg to go to get to race weight, but I am feeling hell of a lot better (and also have a wider trouser selection from my wardrobe).

That was a lot cav. Recommend you call your partner. Well done on the weight loss though!

I have continued to play High on Life - I don't even think the talking is all that irritating and it is genuinely quite funny at times (someone did a great post on rllmuk about the "Oh you like Rick and Marty, I don't even know what that is" style response to anything regarded as amusing these days) even if you're not into the Roiland-schtick. In so much as any videogame has ever been genuinely funny, of course.

Most of the "humour" is the game taking the piss out of games' rote structure and design tropes of videogames themselves ass well as the arbitrary design decisions and stuff we take for granted. And while the game is mercilessly sending itself up it also delivers up a pretty decent Metroid-Prime style hub and spoke upgrade+environment title with some quite nice movement and environmental interaction tech. I keep coming back to it basically being Savage Planet with more f-bombs and I think that's pretty much on the nose. In a sea of blandness it at least stands out, and that's good enough for me.