PWB July 2024

Play

Mass Effect 3. I dropped the difficulty down a notch and I'm enjoying it a lot more. I still think it's the weakest of the three by a long, long way but at least the endless combat is now an interruption rather than a chore and I can enjoy the things it still does well. I think I'm now into the final sequence so should wrap this up in the next couple of days depending on when I get a chance to play it.

Against the Storm. Fantastic city-building game that's also a bit of a roguelike - you have to prop up numerous small settlements in different situations rather than focusing on one mega-city. It has elements of Anno, as you desperately try to get supply chains up and running, but you're always dealing with the randomness of whatever map it's created so you often need to think on your feet in terms of what you can and cannot build and what alternatives you might have. It's PC only at the moment but works quite well on the Steam Deck (it's quite mouse-heavy, which the Deck copes with decently well but clearly actual desktop users will have the edge here).

Octopath Traveler. Not too far into this but it's really nostalgic and looks tremendous. I haven't played a JRPG as straightforward as this in ages and it's like slipping into a warm bath, albeit one that was poured twenty years ago.

Want

I've genuinely got no idea what's coming out in the second half of this year apart from the occasional sequel or remake, which is a bit sad really. What am I missing?

Bin

Extraordinarily the UK is only like the third most catastrophic shitshow of a Western democracy right now. Hoping the Tories get a SUPERBEATING on Thursday but hoping even more that France and especially the US wake the fuck up.

(Gaming-wise) I didn't last the distance with Diablo 4. I was really enjoying it for a bit but it just got easier and easier as I progressed until I was just pushing one button to make stuff explode, over and over. I'd love to have been able to increase the difficulty but you can't do that until you complete the campaign, so in the end I just drifted away from it, bored.

Play
Continuing intermittent Sea of Thieves - we managed to eke into the top Emissary bracket for our guild this month about an hour before the reset.

Dragon Age Inquisition - also on easy, because I'm just here to see some different story paths from my previous runs, and refresh myself on what everything is before Veilguard. There are some party members I just really like, though, and trying to stick with some of the others is tougher than I expected. Vivienne's presence is at least softened somewhat by my instantly recognising Indira Varma's voice, however.

Want
Well, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, obvs; it's by a big marketing push at the moment, for a game with a release date of "Winter", but a lot of the buzz is very good, so fingers crossed it holds up.

Astro Bot, which I pretend I'm going to get for the kids, but really…

I've read two previews of Star Wars Outlaws, both of which described it as basically Uncharted, but were on opposite ends of the scale as to whether that's a good thing or not. I like Uncharted, but I'm wary of the Ubisoft badge. Definitely not one to preorder, but if the reviews are good, I might be swayed.

Bin
I wonder how it will feel on Friday, waking up and maybe not having to put "the Tories" here? Still, it's not Friday yet, so the Tories, obviously. And the Overinflated Frog Prince can get (back) in the sea, too.

Play

Final Fantasy XIV: Dawntrail
this has been out for a few days now and I just beat the main quest, set in then ew region of Tural.

…

I didn't enjoy the main quest experience this time, for me it was everything people who don't like XIV say XIV is and some of my own issues with it. I enjoy the new area, new characters (especially new main character, Wuk Lamat) and even the new premise of the story but the execution of the narrative was really dull, full of overly long and boring cutscenes with gameplay tasks that for the most part felt non combat related and took the stereotypical MMO 'pick up this' quest design to a crazy extreme.

Don't get me wrong, this really bums me out and I hate that I felt relieved when I finished it but it really doesn't have to be all doom and gloom. As someone who thought Endwalker was a fucking amazing main quest and end to a decade long story, it's my least played expansion, it's considered the worst one for content beyond the MSQ and that's fair because this is an MMO and not a single player RPG even if it can be played largely as one. The dungeons and boss fights are by far and away the most fun they've ever been since ARR, the new combat skills I have on Dark Knight are really fun and we've got so much content coming this way that is designed in a way I can do while hanging out with my MMO friends of several years now. So it doesn't ultimately matter if the MSQ sucked, because this is potentially going to be my most played expansion and favourite era of the game since Heavensward.

So if people can stop saying I have a low attention spam and hate that I'm not the star of the story anymore that would be nice.

Want
I will be getting the Tsukihime remake eventually, been a long time since I read the original Visual Novel and this is apparently amazing.

Bin

Want

I've genuinely got no idea what's coming out in the second half of this year apart from the occasional sequel or remake, which is a bit sad really. What am I missing?

Star Wars Outlaws (if it's not shit), new Test Drive game, Astro Bot, Zelda, Mario and Luigi, AC Shadows, Avowed, Indiana Jones, Dragon Age, Rise of the Golden Idol. All penciled in for this year.

It could be a very busy end to the year.

PLAY
Still on holiday having to fill my time because Ireland is rainy as fuck, so I've gone back to Dredge as I never finished it. Need to do the latest Elusive Target in Hitman: World of Assassination when I get home, and I've got a little bit more Vampire Saviors to play before I've unlocked everything again. Oh, and Zenless Zone Zero is out tomorrow, I've downloaded everything so I'm ready.

WANT
Darkest Dungeon II is out on Switch just before my birthday this month, so I'll be getting two copies of that (one for me, one for my partner). Mario & Luigi: Brothership is my project at work, so I'm very much looking forward to that later in the year, along with Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom (not my project). Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, yes please. And I'll be jumping on that Marvel Vs Capcom Arcade Fighting Collection as soon as it drops, because MAH-VEL BAYBEE.

BIN
I don't have a hobby any more! Retro toy collecting is pretty much done for me now after the binge of MASK activity, and my short-lived aim of picking up some Japanese GameCube games fell flat when I realised there's actually nothing I really want (though I did get copies of Def Jam Vendetta and SSX Tricky because why not). Might be nice to have some money in my pocket for once, but I know what I'm like.

Bin

Extraordinarily the UK is only like the third most catastrophic shitshow of a Western democracy right now. Hoping the Tories get a SUPERBEATING on Thursday but hoping even more that France and especially the US wake the fuck up.

Imagine if you had three kids in France! It's an absolute shitshow. While my youngest you couldn't really tell from a French person in an administrative sense (he was born there, has no accent, has a social security number of a French national) my eldest two I think may have a rude awakening to the outsider status they actually have if Le Pen gets in. Again, both speak fluent French and have integrated completely into the country, but there are enough markers that a full fascist state will put blocks in place to them doing particular jobs/using particular services. They also live in the Sarthe, which is tolerant in bits, but the rural areas are a nationalist cess pit.

I am prepping in a way, ala the 1930s that for at least one of them they might eventually make the switch back to the blasted wasteland that is the UK (but it'll just be moderate right wing under labour, not full fascism, I hope).

Next week I get to experience my first marching season in NI too, so it's going to be a brilliant two weeks for me politically.

Zenless Zone Zero has controller support on Android! Hallelujah, blessed be.

Posting this again in the correct thread…

On a whim, I downloaded Korean F2P co-op looter shooter The First Descendant. I've just run through the first tutorial mission, and… it's basically just Anthem.

It's just Korean Anthem.

One slightly jarring thing is that the voice with has all been (fairly well, if hammily) dubbed, but it still uses the original Korean lip-sync. Another very jarring thing is that there's a character in it called Bunny, who everyone talks to as if that's a totally normal name to have when everyone else has dramatic and fantastical names like Ajax, Viessa, and - checks notes - Kyle.

The UI is a bit too busy, the controls aren't particularly intuitive, and aiming is twitchy as fuck - but you also get a grappling hook that you can use to climb onto giant monsters and punch their armour off, so..?

Went back to Hades, which I apparently haven't played since 2020. I am not good at Hades.

Went back to Hades, which I apparently haven't played since 2020. I am not good at Hades.

Are you playing with God Mode on? Apparently, you are allowed to, it doesnt stop any trophies or access to anything. But it just feels wrong to switch it on, like I'm cheating or something.

Yeah, not going to do that… seems pointless. I remember when I played it the first time, I got all the way to Hades once, he absolutely destroyed me and I just dropped the game immediately as it had taken me so long to get there. Now, the roadblock is back to being the fight against two people at once in Elysium, but I'm sure I'll get there eventually.

As I understand it, the game isn't over until you finish it… ten times? Bit much. But I'll keep going while my patience lasts. There's still loads of stuff that seemingly alludes me in terms of understanding and unlocking, so I think I'll look some of it up to give me a leg up.

Don't think I posted at all here last month.

Play - I am really enjoying Star Wars Hunters and still on my football games side project. Had to have a break from that due to work, but returned to it Friday.

We have played a lot of Luigi's Mansion 3 and the little one has become obsessed with Pokémon, so have supported a playthrough of Pokémon let's Go Pikachu.

Want - The school summer holidays. Badly.

Bin - Bosses. Had a monumental falling out with my boss because she goes through spells of falling out with and blaming people. So life has been very stressful recently whilst that has been my turn. Unbelievably bipolar.

Bin

Extraordinarily the UK is only like the third most catastrophic shitshow of a Western democracy right now. Hoping the Tories get a SUPERBEATING on Thursday but hoping even more that France and especially the US wake the fuck up.

Imagine if you had three kids in France! It's an absolute shitshow. While my youngest you couldn't really tell from a French person in an administrative sense (he was born there, has no accent, has a social security number of a French national) my eldest two I think may have a rude awakening to the outsider status they actually have if Le Pen gets in. Again, both speak fluent French and have integrated completely into the country, but there are enough markers that a full fascist state will put blocks in place to them doing particular jobs/using particular services. They also live in the Sarthe, which is tolerant in bits, but the rural areas are a nationalist cess pit.

I am prepping in a way, ala the 1930s that for at least one of them they might eventually make the switch back to the blasted wasteland that is the UK (but it'll just be moderate right wing under labour, not full fascism, I hope).

Next week I get to experience my first marching season in NI too, so it's going to be a brilliant two weeks for me politically.

You've got to be relieved today, right? It's not clear exactly what is going to happen now, but the worst case scenario has been avoided. Kudos to the French people for (just about) rejecting the far right.

For my sins, I have started Zenless Zone Zero, or ZZZ, the new gacha nonsense from Hoyoverse (Genshin Impact, Honkai: Star Rail, etc.). I'm not sure how much I actually like it, though.

I think it wants quite badly to be a Persona game. It's got a social "real world" layer of gameplay where you walk around a cosy not-Tokyo-I-swear neghbourhood and talk to people, visit stores, or run errands. There's a video store that you can run in a sub-Yakuza minigame.

More obviously, it's got that P5 thing of every UI screen looking totally different, except where P5 just slapped a new lick of paint onto a consistent underlying structure, the number of different screens, resources, upgrade paths, to-do lists and storefronts in ZZZ means that they don't just look different, they all work differently, too. This is even more apparent playing on PC (or, I assume, PS5), where the button functions aren't even the same from screen to screen. I don't imagine there will ever be a day where I'm familiar enough with all the slight variations to be able to move smoothly through the UI. I'll be checking the prompts every single time.

Combat is goodish; it's pretty button-mashy but you can chain together combos between the three members of your squad in a few different ways. It really does benefit from buttons, though – I've mostly been playing with my phone touchscreen, but a couple of tougher missions did necessitate an Xbox pad because in the heat of battle I wasn't reliably hitting the dodge button.

As a whole package, it feels a bit overwhelming. Not just for the usual gacha-game nested dolls of upgrade paths and materials, but the way you've got to navigate the mundane environment with a camera thats a little too close, a little too low and a little too sluggish, and the number of different things you've got to keep track of. Maybe it'll slow down at some stage, but I don't recall Arknights or Star Rail throwing this much stuff at you, this aggressively, this early on in the game.

The music's great, though. The battle themes are all dubstep bangers.

I'm back from my hols and fully intended to dig into ZZZ shortly… good to know the issues you're having. Maybe I won't get sucked in as badly as I thought after all…

Come back to Star Rail, we have a girl who pilots a mech suit!

Come back to Star Rail

I thought about it a while back, spent over an hour re-downloading the client, and then was immediately put off by how much I had to catch up on. At least with ZZZ I'm in on (kinda) the ground floor.

A lot of free jades in those quests, if you wanna' look at it that way.

You've got to be relieved today, right? It's not clear exactly what is going to happen now, but the worst case scenario has been avoided. Kudos to the French people for (just about) rejecting the far right.

Not sure we're out of the woods yet. A shaky half arsed solution for a few months, a collapse and the far right marching in isn't beyond the realms of possibility.

But surely all you need to avoid that is for a group of French politicians to put aside their differences and work together…

Yeah, I see what you mean.

I think I've played 80-100 hours of Dawntrail already :/

Went back to Hades, which I apparently haven't played since 2020. I am not good at Hades.

Are you playing with God Mode on? Apparently, you are allowed to, it doesnt stop any trophies or access to anything. But it just feels wrong to switch it on, like I'm cheating or something.

Okay, fuck this - God Mode on. 40 deaths on and not an inch further every single time. Life's way too short for this. The fact it only makes you 2% stronger from a baseline of 20% each time you die at least means I'm not ploughing through in a single sitting… still going to be here a while. But after dying to the same boss 40 times in a row, this game needs to be done.

Play
I've not had a lot of time to play much stuff. I wanted to switch to Immortals of Aveum on PC, as I find it hard to play on pad, but my god, the minimum requirements to get it running at 60fps mean it's almost impossible to run it on anything. That said, weirdly I did get it running with Frame Generation on a 3070 (thought it was a 4 series only thing) on my laptop which seemed to work wonders. AI finally does something good. Anyway - I actually think it's not a bad game (even if it's terribly optimised and will never be updated now).

Was looking to something to play through with my eldest son over summer. We tried Generation Zero (hated it) but have now decided to give Solastra a go. I'd never heard of it, but it's basically BG3 at home. Or Tesco Value BG3. The characters and voice acting isn't great, but the environments are good and it has a really open approach to solving problems. Fighting is turn based on a grid and based on DnD 5e. Story is meh. But it's quite dense and PC-centric and we think it might fit the bill.

Who Pressed Mute on Uncle Marcus- this similar to Her Story, only less of a game. I'm not even sure what it is. Imagine a Abigail's Party with interactive bits like an FMV game from 1996. It's strangely compelling, even if some of the acting is absolutely rancid.

Alien Swarm - I'd played some of this back in 2011. Maybe with one of you. It's a (now) free top down, 4 player twin stick, brutal Helldiversesque game. Can be played coop online. It's really good! The graphics are shit, but it's well balanced and for free…. well, can't complain.

Want
Gaming-wise, I can't think of anything. Even though I never use the Steam Deck I am getting increasingly tempted by the Ally X or the new Zotac thing.

Bin
Inkbound - As a huge Monster Train fan I had high hopes for this, but found it was really, really not to my taste. Hated the art style (which also looked shit on the Deck or full size monitor), theme and mechanics. Shame really.

It's parade day in NI today! A lot of tolerance and small, family friendly bonfires everywhere. Anyone with half a brain has gone on holiday. Unfortunately, I do have half a brain, so I'm culturally immersing myself.

I'm not at binning the new Labour administration in its entirety yet, but I can feel it coming…

Biden, for the love of fuck, step down.

Had that thing of a friend saying she wanted to be more than a friend, and (due to Leonardo diCaprio-style age gap of 15 years) that not being a good idea and now quite hard to go back to a friendship again. I'd love a month of lower drama in my life please. Also, as many of you can guess, it's not like I have friends to spare due to how lovable and charming I am.

Playing Kid Icarus Uprising again and it's still such a good fucking game

Inkbound - As a huge Monster Train fan I had high hopes for this, but found it was really, really not to my taste. Hated the art style (which also looked shit on the Deck or full size monitor), theme and mechanics. Shame really.

Ah that is a shame. I agree with you about the theme (it's really in love with its own plot, which I didn't care about at all, and it throws a lot of tedious dialogue at you early on - but it does calm down) but I really enjoyed the mechanics and I don't think it's a bad looking game at all.

My main issue with it, as with a lot of PC games, is that it appears to be in permanent development. i.e. nothing ever gets fucking finished. At the moment it's still a bit lacking in content and variety, and I wished I'd just waited a year or two until they were done with it. I blame Agile.

Had that thing of a friend saying she wanted to be more than a friend, and (due to Leonardo diCaprio-style age gap of 15 years) that not being a good idea and now quite hard to go back to a friendship again.

If it helps (it won't), my mum's second husband is 25 years younger than her, not far off my own age, and they've been together over 30 years now. It's a reverse Leo but it shows these things can work.

Anway:

Play - Cyberpunk 2077. It's astonishingly good. I really wasn't sure about it for the first hour or two (it throws a lot of tutorials at you early on, and it's all a bit 12-year-old edgelord in tone) but once you hit The Heist mission it just never lets up. This is one case where I'm glad I did wait to play it because I'm sure three years of patches and fixes and a big expansion have really enhanced my experience.

It was always pretty good, but the years of improvements have turned it into something special.

And I'm not talking about your mum's second husband.

Additional PLAY:
Darkest Dungeon 2 - My partner's been looking forward to this for ages, because she's a massive fan of the first one. I got it for her on Steam when it was cheap, but we don't play PC games so she only really scratched it once. It hit Switch on Monday, and we spent all evening playing it.

She absolutely hates it.

I'm a bit disappointed that she feels that way, because a) I spent €35 on it and b) I actually really enjoyed watching her play, and look forward to diving into it myself when I get paid next and can get my own copy. But I can also see why she's not a fan. In going down the Slay the Spire route (runs that aren't connected, the branching map, the upgrades which are entirely structural and not connected directly to the heroes you're using to give that connection to them), it's not really Darkest Dungeon as it was. You lose all sense of relationship to the heroes, because you're only fighting to keep them alive in that particular moment, not across an entire campaign. There's very little agency there, so it's easy to wonder what the point of it all is. I think she was just looking for DD, the sequel and not a totally reimagined game. The evening ended with her entire party getting wiped by a group of enemies featuring a boss who did nothing but heal his team - she wouldn't accept the praise of her getting right to the end of the first mission on her first try - then being really cross, turning everything off and going to bed stressed out.

In fairness, she has to shoulder some of the blame here. You can't spend the entire time ignoring tutorials (which it absolutely bombards you with initially), then complain you don't know how stuff works or don't understand what all the little icons mean when there's a list of them right there in the pause menu. You can't complain about the buttons or menus not reacting properly if you're trying to play it like a different game (namely, the first one) or not reading on-screen text that says 'You need to do THIS first'. You can't just expect something to be what you want, and then be annoyed when it's not. But still, the result is the same: I doubt she'll ever play this again, and I'll have to enjoy it on the side instead. Oh well. At least she can go back to the original and keep playing that instead…

Play
Too many games! Games everywhere!

PS Plus catalogue has just added Remnant 2, Crisis Core FF7 remaster, Pathfinder (BG3 before BG3 was cool) and re-added Monster Hunter Rise. Plus Anno 1800, which I still haven't made a dent in.

And they seem to have opened the floodgates on PS2/PSP games, with every Jak & Daxter, Sly etc all landing in the last few days. Which is making me consider becoming the only UK owner of a Playstation Portal.

Plus Dungeons of Hinterburg just hit Game Pass, I bought Prince of Persia: Lost Crown on Prime Day, WoW's next expansion lands soon, and No Man's Sky just had a huge update.

My second child is due in less than a month. That's plenty of time, yeah? 👀

I want to play that Hohokum dev game… Flock? Looks nice.

BIN
Hades - Bored now. Back to banging my head against the brick wall, and I just don't have the energy to stick around for nine more completed runs. It's nowhere near as varied as something like Isaac and, while I appreciate the story, it's just not doing it for me. I'll watch a YouTube video.

Additional Play
I think Dungeons of the Hinterberg is one of the most beautiful games I've ever played.

That does look gorgeous. Does it play as well as it looks?

It is actually a wonderful game too. A sort of Germanic Zelda crossed with Pokémon? I think this has to be this year's HiFi Rush.

It’s on Game Pass, isn’t it? Might have to give that a go.

Yeah, it got added yesterday. Tempted to try it, but something about the animation looks off to me… not that I can criticise people, even digital ones, for how they walk. Will give it a try nonetheless.

In my quest to find more good commute games I am back to the R-Type series, super hard but really fun and the Force mechanic (the attachable turret) is really cool. Also trying out other (horizontal) shmups like G-Darius, this crazy game that let's you capture enemies and turn them into your own weapon.

I found Crackdown 1 free on the Xbox store and I am absolutely hooked.

The Xbox 360 store goes offline permanently on the 29th, I believe… is there anything on there that's essential, but would actually work on a Series X?

Ninja Gaiden Black and 2, both far superior versions to the ones in the Master Collection. (Unless I've misunderstood, those are old games right?)

The Xbox 360 store goes offline permanently on the 29th, I believe… is there anything on there that's essential, but would actually work on a Series X?

Anything that’s backward compatible will remain, because it’s technically now on the regular store. It’s only the old 360 marketplace that’s going offline, ie the thing you can only access from a 360 itself.

Ohhh… then no thanks.

Ninja Gaiden Black and 2, both far superior versions to the ones in the Master Collection. (Unless I've misunderstood, those are old games right?)

I meant games for mortals, Al.

Another Late Play
Anthem. Just sunk a couple of hours into this and, it's quite good? Looks amazing, and plays like a slightly less up its own behind Destiny. The flying is cool and everything feels rock solid. It's got the kill 10 blorples to get a florple loop of every game ever, but the moment to moment combat is so good you can sort of forgive it. The lore is actually fairly engaging too - nonsense, but fairly high concept nonsense. Also, the mo-cap, lip sync and acting is absolutely A-tier. Runs with everything on Ultra at a ridiculous fps on even a modest PC and looks as good as anything else out there in 2024. Not sure why it was such a catastrophic failure, really.

(edit: I might've played this before on console, now I think about it. So it clearly isn't very memorable).

Anthem suffered from fairly typical live service launch jank, but coupled with the fact that it vtt have enough story stuff for BioWare fans. And yeah it's got some of the best traversal going, but the world and enemies aren't varied enough, and the just wasn't enough to do.

I secretly think that if Anthem and Mass Effect Andromeda had been combined into a single game, it would have been incredible.

I think Stage 4 of R-Type has me beat, this level is ridiculous. 😭

I want to play that Hohokum dev game… Flock? Looks nice.

My kid is playing this as we type! And it's a wonderfully charming experience to see her sit and play through, obsessive over and constantly talk about since she started yesterday.

It's a lovely game, I finished it the other day. I was playing, my other half was watching and advising while she was ill (and frequently pointing out the stuff I'd missed, since I had that gaming tunnel vision). Really enjoyed it, though screw becoming an expert in every family type…

Play: Prince of Persia The Lost Crown is an exhausting game. It's a metroidvania with an absolutely punishing default difficulty. You can tweak everything to make combat more manageable, but even then the 'dodge window' setting (which I had at an old-man appropriate 'Large') seems largely pointless. The wind-up to these attacks is lightning fast, so increasing the dodge window doesn't seem to change much.

And there doesn't seem to be any dodge invincibility, so you have to dodge in very specific directions with perfect timing. It's very much about learning patterns, which jesus I don't have time for any more.

And aside from the difficulty, everything is just so frenetic. Special attacks cause the camera to cut seven or eight times in a couple of seconds, all flashing lights and anime posing. It's ADHD the game.

It's a shame because there's clearly a very good game under all this bollocks, and I find myself almost falling in love frequently. Then I get stun-locked by a tellytubby rave on fast-forward, and all that good will goes out the window.

I'm eight hours in now. It's done a couple of false ends so far, and I'm hoping this next one is actually the finish line.

I'm tired, boss.

The android port of Streets of Rage 4 is absolutely perfect, I've played it on console to completion and this doesn't feel compromised in any way.

…well there are the touchscreen controls, which I'm not using because the game has controller support! I'm not saying it's definitely not playable because I haven't tried it but SOR4 is such a deceptively but purposefully deep beat-em-up that I find it hard to belive it's possible, or at the very least fun to do those insane cancels and combos using a touch screen.

Also, God damn what a good game, really good interpretation of classic SOR if it was also a fighting game almost.

Speaking of beat-em-ups, I have been playing Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks for the first time ever, its not as deep as SOR4 or anything but I'm having a blast! How have i not played this before??? I really like how Fatalities are used here, but you have plenty of ways to kill people without them, like firing them from a catapult and watching the the sheer force gib them against the side of a wall.

If you consider yourself a MK fan you should love this. Only thing I don't like is Liu Kang constantly screaming his usual MK gibberish for most of the damn game…