Play
Mass Effect 3 (Legendary Edition) which is more Mass Effect but now…
I'm not enjoying this very much. Some git's nicked all the lightbulbs and everything's now much darker than in the previous games for no reason at all. In fact the game overall somehow looks worse than ME2 - the cut-scenes and conversations in particular seem to have had far less care taken over them and it all looks far less believable and coherent. Shepard's run is now a kind of slow-motion waddle that looks utterly ridiculous. The new crew members aren't a patch on the old ones. The environments are now more maze-like and I'm spending far too much time working out where to go, not helped by Shepard's new enthusiasm for jumping over little gaps and climbing ladders. And my quest log is filled up with tasks I seem to have picked up from conversations I didn't even notice going on in the background. Overall, it's Mass Effect, but worse.
Maybe I'm being a bit harsh? It probably hasn't helped that the first two quests I elected to do both turned out to be massive bits of DLC for the original game (Omega and Leviathan respectively) - obviously I didn't realise but maybe getting locked into huge storylines so early on has soured me on it. Or maybe it genuinely isn't very good. We'll see.
Diablo IV - I'm not sure I really get this. I mean I'm playing it as a kind of brains-off loot hoover game where I follow quest markers and press A to make things die and then I dress myself up in other people's clothes. (I killed a fox and it dropped a pair of pants and 48 gold, which was quite impressive). It's a bit grim and grey but the actual gameplay loop is quite satisfying. But then it's got all this other STUFF going on that it keeps trying to tell me about and I don't really understand any of it - seasons, battle passes, loot tracks, challenges, aspects, rewards, world events - and the little tips it gives on loading screens talk about stuff that makes no sense to me in the slightest. Maybe I need Diablo 1-3 knowledge to work all this stuff out, because it doesn't feel inclined to explain any of it. In the meantime I'll keep pressing A and watching stuff die.
Want
I quite like the look of Capes - a turn-based superhero strategy game from the makers of Hand of Fate. Might treat myself to that at some point, even if it does look like prime Game Pass fodder.
Assassin's Creed: Mirage is now regularly available at less than half its original price so that'll get bought at some point, probably once I'm done with Mass Effect.
Bin
The Tories, obviously.
ME1 had the best story, ME2 has the best combat, ME3 is somewhere in the middle.
PLAY
ilomilo - In the wake of finishing Lorelei and the Laser Eyes, I realised that this brain-breaking puzzle game from the 360 days was also by Simogo, even though their branding isn't on it anywhere. It's backwards compatible on Xbox, so we've gone back to it since I remember being addicted to it back in the day. Fucking hell, it still breaks my brain.
Cat Quest II - I remember enjoying the original, and there's a third game coming, so I grabbed this from eShop when it was €4 recently. It's a lot… simpler than I recall the first one being? The co-op bit isn't even relevant as I'm playing solo, so it just means I've got a backup if my main hero dies. It's fine, I'll finish it, but it's not going to linger in my memory long once I'm done.
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga - I forgot this had been added to the GBA app for NSO, so now I'm playing this. Might be too much RPG after finishing Paper Mario, but why not eh?
WANT
I'm travelling back to the UK in three weeks, and physically seeing my kids for the first time in four years. Last time I organised that, things went spectacularly tits up thanks to Lufthansa cancelling flights, meaning I had to let them down and I lost a tonne of cash. I guess I want it to go smoothly this time? It's right in the middle of the Euros, so hopefully the fuckers wouldn't dare mess things up when all the eyes of the footballing world are on Germany… right?
BIN
Not much point saying the usual (Tories, Trump, etc)… It's looking increasingly likely that we're heading to global coverage for right-wing awfulness in most countries and between war, hatred and everything else these arseholes stand for, we're all fucked regardless. Cunts rule the world.
Additional PLAY:
Star Wars Hunters - Out today as a F2P squad shooter on Switch, iOS and Android, and it's… not utterly terrible? I'm not an expert on these games, so maybe it's utter balls but for now, I'm not inclined to delete it. I'm sure that'll change in the very near future. I also think it's doing that thing of pitting me against bots, but that's fine. My favourite hunter so far, which I don't have access to because F2P bullshit, is a really tall Jawa that's actually two Jawas in a long coat, one standing on the shoulders of the other. I'll take that kind of pointless humour any day.
Played a out two hours of Hunters last night and it was surprisingly good. It was clearly bots to begin with, although being on Switch it feels clear to me who else is on Switch and who are on mobile. Looking forward to playing some more later.
I played Hunters and I wasn't particularly impressed, it seems very basic with almost everything good locked behind F2P bullshit and the 30FPS update isn't great for a game like this. Also the fake not-actually-Star-Wars music really grated. Anyone with access to Game Pass should probably play Battlefront 2 instead, which is an unbelievably good and fully-featured Star Wars multiplayer shooter that doesn't always get the recognition it deserves.
I also played a bit of Humanity which is a very Tory kind of a game - supposedly you have to save people, but actually it doesn't matter how many you let die as long as you save the one or two important ones which are literally made out of solid gold. It's fun and quite clever but I'm sure I'll bounce off it as I do almost all games where your only reward for completing a puzzle is another puzzle.
Play
Advance Wars: Re-boot Camp - Testing the GBA version of this on emulators reminded me I never finished the Switch version and I feel quite bad about that, so here I am. It's not even that I dislike this version, it's not as good as the GBA version and while I don't hate the visuals I do wish we got something more closer to the GBA game (some black lines here and there so I can see all the seperate parts on a tank more easily would look so much nicer already, as opposed to the almost one tone blobs we have), I still think overall this is one of my favourite games on the console by far.
The online functionality is a massive shame though, Advance Wars by Web exists for free and has ranked/casual queues with tables of the best players, it has maps that have been actually designed with competitive play in mind and tiering of COs for balance. I can't do any of that in this version, it would have probably made it my most played game on the console but I only know one person with this game and I can't even use the Switch itself to ask if he wants to play. You can design maps which is a cool feature but they're pretty small and what is the point if you don't have any friends playing this, like is probably the case these days?
Burnout 3: Takedown - This is a real blast to play but sometimes I get clipped by something I didn't react to because I'm going at like a 100mph, as far as drifting goes this feels like the best racing game but as a serious racing game I think I do probably prefer Ridge Racer.
Okay, fair, I should also prob not blame the game for my lack of skill and reflexes (sometimes a bus do be approaching from the side of the cut off zone in a cross junction though 
). I just know some people hold this game in really high regard. I said this before but I played a little of Burnout Revenge and the mechanic where you can just shunt cars going the same direction of you now is interesting, it eliminates this issue for me almost completely at the expense of the rush of narrowly avoiding traffic, I dunno how people feel about that.
Burnout 3 was the last great Burnout game for me. Totally agree about the shunting, I didn't see the point at all.
Burnout 2 is probably my favourite, and nails the risk/reward idea that the later games forgot about. Traffic dodging, no takedowns, burnout chaining, and you have to consume all your boost in one go or lose it.
That Burning Lap event where you drive the Formula 1 type car. orz
Additional PLAY:
The Case of the Golden Idol - Whichever smart fellow on here was extolling the virtues of this a while back, I apologise for not listening sooner. Grabbed this for a tenner in the Switch Summer Sale and it's wonderful - kind of what I'd expected, but not what I'd expected at all. I had it in my head it was a full-on Monkey Island style point and click, not small isolated (but still thematically connected) scenes with conundrums to unravel and Obra Dinn-esque darkness. I'm loving it so far (we're in the middle of the third chapter), playing it on the TV so Debs and I can work stuff out together. Sadly, the DLC bundle isn't discounted so that's another tenner on top… will pick it up eventually for sure though, once I've got my UK trip in two weeks out of the way.
I think that was me, it's great isn't it.
Although some of the later chapters made me feel pretty thick.
How many chapters does it have? I don't want to look it up. My main worry is that I'll race through and be done too soon…
10ish, I can't remember exactly. Maybe a few more than 10.
I'd say just go for it, definitely don't take an extended break. You'll already have seen that there's something of an overarching narrative, and it can help to remember who's who. Although all the cases can be solved in isolation, of course.
Bin - Mass Effect 3. I hate it. It's shit. If ME1 was a galaxy-spanning RPG and ME2 was a series of action-movie vignettes, ME3 is a shit shooter where every level is a brown battlefield filled with concrete blocks. I'm fighting the same enemies in the same configurations in levels that look exactly the same, over and over. Occasionally it breaks up the battlefields with a warehouse full of ladders where I don't know where to go. It looks significantly worse than both its predecessors too and it's so bloody dark that half the time I can't even see what I'm shooting.
The combat system is awful too - I don't know what genius decided to map every useful control to the A button but I'm constantly trying to run and sticking to cover instead, or trying to break cover and doing a silly little roll. It's a game that seems to want you to use all its new melee attacks then fills every encounter full of turrets that shoot you to bits the second you break cover.
Worst of all, it keeps undermining its own narrative by sticking me into prolonged stretches of what was obviously DLC. I'm supposed to be fighting a war against the Reapers but instead without warning I'm now chilling in a sushi bar and fighting an evil clone. It's just absolute bullshit and I think I am done.
Do I just stick it on easy and play it for the story or accept that this one isn't for me? From what I've heard the ending is, incredibly, the worst bit, so I'm tempted to just bin it and be done with it.
Life is too short and you're older than me. Move on. 
It’s not as good as either of its predecessors, for different reasons, and the end made me quite angry at the time, even if they did then tweak it later, so I’d also argue against persevering, seeing as you’re already clearly not enjoying it.
I loved ME3, and I particularly liked the Citadel DLC. Not for the business with the clone, the tone of which shifts weirdly into a comic caper, away from the somber tone of the rest of the game. The part I liked is the party at Shepard's flat. It's this really sentimental, characterful goodbye to all these characters. You have a group photo that changes depending on your relationships with the various crewmates and which ones have survived.
Yeah. The weird thing with the Citadel DLC though is that it lets you start it halfway through the game, and it just kind of appears in your quest list with no real clue as to what it is - I think it shows up as the Normandy needing to dock at the Citadel for repairs, which I thought might give me a fancy new weapon or something. Suddenly I'm chilling out at a sushi joint and doing clone capers in what is obviously meant to be post-game content and it makes absolutely no sense for everyone to take time out in the middle of a war to have a big party. I even tried to back out once I realised what I'd started but I was locked in for the duration.
I guess ME2 did this as well with the Arrival DLC which was a pretty important bit of post-game story content that also would have been well out of place if you'd done it in the middle of the game. I get that these things had DLC release schedules originally but it's a shame the Legendary Edition didn't think a bit harder about when and how you're supposed to tackle these extra bits of story.
Without spoilers, the Citadel stuff is not meant to be post-game, though I don't know when it makes the most sense to tackle.
Yeah, it can't be post-game, but it should definitely be late game. At the point when you have all of your crew assembled, and before you start the last section of the game, seems about right.
The tone is weird, but it ties into some good writing about how the people that the war hasn't reached yet are kind of going about their lives as normal, discussing the war as a scary situation that is happening somewhere off in the galaxy, but still going into the office on Monday and not preparing for what is coming at all. I think that's well-observed. I think we'd all put our bins out the morning after the apocalypse.
Additional BIN:
AFK Journey - Yeah, that's enough of that. The game's been out a few months and has already transitioned into that form where there's constant busy work, repetitive tasks to do every day before you even get into the main game (like, 30 minutes of stuff daily) and it's just dull. I completed the base content and everything from the first 'season', so that's enough. The fact it was a massive drain on my phone battery helped with the decision too. Deleted, never to darken my mobile door again.
Isn't the whole point that you can do all that stuff literally AFK or have I misunderstood the marketing? D:
Kind of? But not. It has elements of AFK - you can set your party to battle through enemies in various modes until they hit a brick wall, because they're not strong enough, for example - and you can say 'Go here' in the main story without needing to control them with the virtual stick. But it's got a lot of menus to navigate, a lot of places where you have to hit buttons to start things off, a lot of needing to activate things in your inventory, power up heroes, etc. It's still quite involved and frankly, I don't have the time or energy for it. It's very lovely to look at, there's a tonne of lore if you're into that sort of thing (I found myself skipping the story parts in the end), and it's quite easy to play without spending a penny. But I've had my fill, so I'm out.
I'm still busy with Genshin and Honkai so that's me out, the latter of which just got a new patch and I luckrolled into two characters I wanted (kawaii girl who is also a mech suit pilot) so i'm big chillin' right now.
I've been playing Sifu here and there after work, it's a bit different to what you might expect looking at the gameplay, the cool martial arts action doesn't really hint at the game's rogulike elements or take on permadeath, but those things are a huge part of the game. It's also kinda' hard, it just feels generous that you can keep reviving when you die at the 'mere' cost of aging upwards (until you realise your age has to last the entire game until you redo a stage dying less).
I wasn't immediately keen on it, it felt a bit unfair, but all I've been doing is the first stage over and over trying to get a no death run and I'm getting closer, it's kinda' how it feels you're expected to play.
And the combat looks and feels fucking amazing, seamlessly transitioning into throat punching and leg catch-breaking animations, when you get into a good flow state you feel like you're playing a game adaptation of an old Jackie chan or Jet Li classic. There's even an Oldboy hallway section, I mean, no hammers but when you get through it without being touched and you look back at the hallway of broken bodies? Satisfying as hell.
Isn't the idea that every time you age up, you get more experience to access better moves, etc? That's how I understood it. I don't think you're meant to do a 'year one' deathless run unless you're an absolute maniac oh wait, it's Al.
As I understand it you do get buffs as you get older, including becoming a glass cannon (less health, more damage) and you get to permenently unlock moves if you buy them a few times in a row, you also unlock permanent shortcuts to get through a level faster on a replay.
I don't think you're meant to do a 'year one' deathless run unless you're absolute maniac oh wait, it's Al.
The first time I beat Ninja Gaiden 2 on Master Ninja mode I didn't upgrade my healthbar with the 1000 souls at all, doubt I'd be ableto do that nowadays.
Additional PLAY:
Darkest Dungeon - Not my first rodeo here, but I've never done well at this. Turns out, based on watching my partner play it (since she's good at it), I've been playing totally wrong this entire time. So now I'm back in, managing my team correctly, utilising upgrades efficiently and actually making progress. What a great game, can't wait for the sequel on Switch in mid-July.
Perhaps inspired by Gar's Mass Effect saga, I've decided to give Andromeda another look after bouncing off it a couple years back.
It's… fine? Weirdly buggy in ways I wasn't expecting; it'll occasionally freeze rendering for a few seconds (audio continues normally) and then speed through the frames it "skipped" to catch up. Seems to happen more in cutscenes and while driving than in combat, at least.
The alien design is pretty lazy – I'd have preferred something much more unique than "chunky biped with backwards knees and a human face"; where's the Rachni-types? – but the environments so far are quite varied and there's been a decent variety of mission objectives (even if they do boil down to either "shoot thing" or "scan thing"). I've also been surprised at how some of the choices I've made have resurfaced in sidequests; I'm sure the alternate path probably isn't much different, but picking a Science outpost over Military for my first colony felt like it'd be Big In Name Only rather than sparking protests back on the Nexus.
I've been a bit under the weather over the weekend (and it persists), so this kind of fairly straightforward scifi exploration-with-shooting thing is exactly what I was needing. (It was either this or Starfield.)
I'd have loved it if the war you landed in the middle of was more morally grey, and you had to either choose a side or try and find a way to get them to work together. Maybe different arks could have met different factions first, and exacerbated tensions within the Initiative, too. Instead, it's a very clumsy, straightforward "save the smooth ones from genocide" conflict that just isn't that interesting.
I assume there's also no question about the impact all my terraforming has on the planets' native life. There's an implication that I'm actually returning them to their original state, but having to use all these big alien monoliths definitely feels like I'm just running roughshod over whatever was here before.
I don't honestly remember all that much about the plot, but yeah, I think reactivating the Mysterious Ancient Structures is presented as an Entirely Good Thing.
In a tangentially-related additional Play, I've restarted Dragon Age: Inquisition.
I was going to replay Dragon Age II (it was only £2.50 on Steam!), but the PC version has no controller support, and any mods or configs I can find don't really help much. So I just reworked my Dragon Age Keep a little bit to set up a world state, and started with DA:I.
I'm still very early in the game, and I'm definitely not going to be a completionist about it - for one thing, I'm planning to skip as much of the crafting/busywork bollocks as I can - but I want to refresh my memory as much as possible on what the fuck's going on before The Veilguard comes out. And I had a hankering for a low-stress RPG, frankly. I even managed to create a character who didn't suddenly become an absolute ghoul as soon as the facial animations kicked in!
Looks like Case of the Golden Idol (plus all the DLC maybe?) is on Netflix Games for mobile as of today. So that's nice, I don't have to pay a tenner to get the extra stages on Switch then.
I want the Dead Rising Remaster Day 1! I consider DR1 a masterpiece still, so I hope they don't change this too much. I know it can be a hard/frustrating game but at least give me the option to play it as it was, then again if not I'll just redownload it on PS4!
As for improvements, oh man, shooting might be revamped, the skill unlocks could be different, animations could be updated,, zombie gore increased expotentially!
I really loved Dead Rising, one of the bravest AAA game designs of all time. I must have played it over and over again until I perfected it, it was just so far ahead of its time. Nowadays everything seems to be some sort of roguelike so maybe the structure of the game will be more obvious to people, but back in 2006 that whole idea of having to constantly perfect your route and juggle different time limits, starting over and over until you got it right, was really adventurous. Most people just expected a straightforward zombie game and it was so much more.
The sequel wasn't bad either, not quite as good as the first one but still broadly the same concept. DR3 and 4 (especially 4) rather missed the point.
I know the Psycho boss fights really frustrated a lot of people because if you're not prepared for them they will absolutely slap you about like a Capcom Boss usually does. I think these are a good example of how the game rewards you for learning about the game and where things are, the Psychos in the Jeep are one of the main offenders but if you know what you are doing you can find the Uzi in the Plaza (or just a pistol from a mall cop), then make the Jeep crash into a tree by lurking near it and then waste them all. From there you can take the massive gun on the back to the Psycho in the gun store and eviscerate him in seconds and bang, you now have access to guns.
And I know people hate the Survivor AI (People do tend to be dumb when they're scared though right? >_> ), but there's a lot to be said about the pure relief you get from a successful survivor run back to the safe house, and the feeling of being bold and making a more efficient single run with more people rather than a safer and less efficient double run with less.
Also you can dress like a dork and suplex a Zombie through a window
Oh jeez, buying Balatro during the Steam Sale might have been a mistake, this might become a problem. @_@
Balatro is great. When the mobile version arrives, I'm doomed.
A lot of those types of deck-building roguelites I really enjoy, but only really scratch the surface of, just pootling around in the lower “difficulties”, trying to get something that feels like an “ending”, before just dipping back in intermittently afterwards when I fancy a quick run.
Balatro though… I have it on both PS5 and Switch, and I think either got to or finished the highest level with at least one deck (on both), before having to make a conscious decision to stop playing it, as I was starting to get seriously burnt out, and needed to actually play something else.
It’s brilliant, but it’s dangerously addictive, and absorbing, to the point where I really did lose track of time.
Set the preload for Zenless Zone Zero because why not, and now it's here two days early. No idea what it is, other than being from the Genshin developer (I've only watched half of one trailer), and no idea if it'll be playable on Android without some kind of controller support. Let's see!
(EDIT: Launch is still July 4th, it's just allowed me to download all the files and be ready… fine)
