I've gone back to Burnout Paradise for the third time (finished it on 360, rebought and finished it again on PS4), because it's on EA Pass and I can now play Freeburn with my partner while we sit together. It's still great. Unlikely, I know, but if anyone fancies some multiplayer at some point, I'm very much for it… those challenges won't complete themselves.
Tempted actually. I loved that game back in the day, hadn't even noticed it was part of EA Play. I assume it's the Remastered version - how does it hold up in a post-Forza Horizon world?
Yep, it's the Remaster that comes with all the DLC.
It's as great as it ever was. I never really liked Forza. This is fast as fuck, smooth and packed with things to do.
Seriously, if you're down for some online with me and the missus, please shout.
…
…
no wait not that
Keys in the bowl with mart
My long-term strategy of hovering over the "buy" button but never actually committing to the purchase has finally paid off with Final Fantasy XII, which is landing on GamePass on the 11th.
I remember enjoying what I played of this back on the PS2, but hit a grind wall and lost interest. I understand this remaster has overhauled quite a few of the systems, though given the decade-plus intervening period I doubt I'd notice much of the nuance anyway.
The other games being added to the console service that day are theme-park-build-em-up Jurassic World Evolution, and Stealth Inc. 2: A Game of Clones.
FFXII is one of the few Final Fantasy games I really don't get on with. I've tried it a couple of times, I think I made it over halfway through the remaster (which is genuinely pretty good) but ultimately I just find it a bit tedious and I don't really get on with the automated battle system very well. Lots of people really rate it though so hopefully you'll find it fun.
Jurassic World Evolution is surprisingly good, though. A very overlooked game.
I remember that I did really like the Gambit system in FFXII, though as a programmer maybe I'm just more susceptible to the charms of an automatable system like that. It's certainly better than the fidgety real-time systems some other RPGs have tried.
I liked it to start with, but found on later bosses I was just dying over and over without really understanding why. Not enough feedback, maybe, or perhaps I was just underlevelled, but I soon lost patience with spending ages repeatedly switching things around in menus only to die all over again in a matter of minutes.
I mean let's be honest: I've got Dragon Quest XI, Yakuza 7 and Mass Effect Andromeda on the go – I don't need a fourth massive RPG on my plate right now, or I'll never get through Hitman 2.
"Shall we play some Everybody's Golf?"
"Actually there's a new golf game on GamePass, shall we check that out?"
Big mistake
Rory McIlroy PGA Tour has the worst new-player experience I think I've ever seen. To start with we couldn't even find it in the list of installed games, because it's under EA SPORTS RORY MCILROY PGA TOUR - of course it fucking is.
Then you start up and you have to watch an unskippable, poorly compressed video featuring a badly-animated uncanny valley zombie Rory McIlroy doing something or other. Then about 15 tutorials which basically amount to "this golf game has the exact same controls as every other golf game you've played".
THEN… then… you get to play the game? Actually no you don't. There's an even longer unskippable video featuring a mix of Real Rory and Zombie Rory talking about the "feeling of golf" or some such bullshit.
THEN you have to work your way through an example hole with Zombie Rory, following instructions and hitting all the same buttons you've just laboriously learned about in the 15 tutorials. There's no scope to actually really "play" this hole, you're just following orders, nor of course can you skip it.
By this time we'd been sat in front of this stupid game for half an hour and hadn't even seen the main menu screen, let alone been able to start the 2-player game we wanted.
"Shall we play some Everybody's Golf?"
"Great idea"
Uninstalled EA SPORTS RORY MCILROY PGA TOUR, fired up the PS4 and were playing actual videogame golf within minutes. What an absolute load of horseshit.
Looks like the Bethesda acquisition is starting to pay off for end users. Most (not quite all) of their catalogue landed on GamePass this morning. So if you want to spend the weekend being Doomed, Dishonored or having a Fallout, have at it.
Looks like the Bethesda acquisition is starting to pay off for end users. Most (not quite all) of their catalogue landed on GamePass this morning. So if you want to spend the weekend being Doomed, Dishonored or having a Fallout, have at it.
The game that really stands out for me from the Bethesda dump is Prey. It's fantastic, and criminally underrated. It's like a spiritual successor to System Shock 2. Definitely try that if you haven't already done so. You can leave Fallout 76 and Doom Eternal well alone.
Prey has also just got a bump to 60fps on the Series X, along with Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and the original Dishonored.
Wreckfest also just got enhanced to 60fps. The Xbox Series X might have no games, but it’s easily the best way to play all your old ones!
coughs in PC
I liked Prey's first maybe two thirds? It has some amazing bits. It gradually goes off the rails and completely loses the plot by the end, but definitely a game far better than it has any right to be.
Do you still get to play as a Native American called Tommy Hawk? That was the best bit.
To be fair, apart from that, wasn't it fairly respectful as videogames go? At least for the first hour.
And yes, I remember "the bit" where it goes off the rails. But before that. Before…. the bit.
Do you still get to play as a Native American called Tommy Hawk? That was the best bit.
Wasn't the best* bit that everything in the alien ship looked like a giant vagina? Or am I misremembering that?
(* absolutely worst)
What are you guys talking about?
There's no Tommy Hawk or vagina-ships in the Prey I'm talking about. This is the 2017 Prey which nobody noticed coming out and is a slow-burning horror mystery set on a space station, developed by Arkane, the creators of the Dishonored games. It has skittery spider monsters like Half Life head crabs. The head crabs can, brilliantly, shape-shift into everyday objects so you suspect every piece of clutter in the environment. I shot so many mugs. It's brilliant, and along with Control is one of my favorite games I've played in the last five years.
What is control? I keep seeing adverts which seem to think I would be excited to play it, but said adverts then totally fail to tell me anything about it.
I think Prey, along with God of War, is a great example then of why you don’t give your new game the exact same name as a worse game in the same series from years ago. I’d not even considered playing it, I’d assumed it was a remaster of the vagina-spaceships game from a decade earlier.
Maybe I’ll check it out. If it actually turns out it is full of vaginas then I’m blaming feltmonkey.
Oh that Prey. I thought that was a bit meh. Reminded me a bit of the opening of KOTOR 2 with endless grey corridors.
I haven't played a lot of Prey, but I thought it had an extremely strong opening. It feels very Bioshock-y.
Cav, you might be thinking of something else again. It's got really good environment design, a combination of sleek sinister sci-fi and art deco.
The first hour or so is a bit bland, but it quickly turns out to be a feint and you soon get to the space station environment, which is gorgeous.
What are you guys talking about?
The old Prey game. I was being facetious. I know there are two. 
What is control?
/looks at current state of British politics
/takes deep breath
WELL, BRIAN, I-
/explodes into a million pieces
I did play quite a bit of the first Dishonored yesterday. Very reminiscent of Thief, genuinely really good actually, and the first proper level was surprisingly long.
What is control? I keep seeing adverts which seem to think I would be excited to play it, but said adverts then totally fail to tell me anything about it.
Imagine if there was an X-Files video game, but it was designed by David Lynch who binned Mulder and Scully and took the best gameplay bits of Psi-Ops and made them better. Throw in an introduction to Jungian theories; lovely, lovely lighting and buff to a high sheen. Oh! Include Easter Eggs in the main game calling back to Alan Wake, then make the link explicit in the DLC and you're there.
Most fun I had with a game last year. Would recommend unreservedly. You really should give it a go.
What is control? I keep seeing adverts which seem to think I would be excited to play it, but said adverts then totally fail to tell me anything about it.
's a good game. Third person shooter that was heavily inspired by the SCP wiki.
I did play quite a bit of the first Dishonored yesterday. Very reminiscent of Thief, genuinely really good actually, and the first proper level was surprisingly long.
I absolutely loved Dishonored. The second game is great too. Try watching some expert playthroughs on YouTube, they're pretty mindblowing.
Here's a run of the final mission. (Story isn't exactly important, but just in case, area spoilers.)
That's… completely insane. And about as far removed from how I've been playing it (cowering in corners, using Dark Vision, stashing bodies carefully behind crates) as it's possible to get. I was kind of aware that the game was giving me lots of tools but hadn't really considered how they could be strung together.
I need to go into the options and see what control bindings there are though, it really feels like I need Blink on its own button if that can be done.
What is control? I keep seeing adverts which seem to think I would be excited to play it, but said adverts then totally fail to tell me anything about it.
It's absolutely brilliant. At the most basic level it's a third-person game set in an impossibly sprawling and labyrinthine government building, and themed around unexplained events and interdimensional wierdness, but it's so much more than that, and it's so beautifully done. It has a smart sense of humour about it's own silliness, satisfying gameplay, great design (particularly considering it is set entirely within an office block) and some fantastic moments. I rinsed it, completed every goal including the DLC and I still want more of it.
Here's a run of the final mission. (Story isn't exactly important, but just in case, area spoilers.)
Crikey… I've done a high-chaos run before, but not that high chaos…
Yeah, that video is nuts. He keeps killing people with their work colleagues' severed heads. The moment when he fires a rocket into the air, goes and kills a couple more people, then turns around and watches the rocket come down and hit the mech is incredible.
The most impressive thing, for me, is that it's all one take. He did the rocket thing a few minutes into the run - he must have been completely sure it would land.
Control seems to be a bit like that… PS2 era (?) game we all used to like that involved throwing boxes at people and taking over their minds and making them commit suicide. I've never been bothered to download and play it as even though it looks funish it never looked funish enough.
Dishonored is absolutely brilliant. Just such tight circular design everywhere. Beautiful interlinked systems. I revisit it from time to time (though I didn't like the second very much). My playstyle (as in Cyberpunk) is sort of "stealth until I get discovered then everyone dies". Even the innocents. My middle son has been playing them too for the first time and really enjoying them.
From the latest Bethesda batch - I sort of let Doom 2016 pass me by. I put together a 780ti SLI'ed PC for fun and I was hunting around for games to test on it (this is a PC which would've been cutting edge in 2013). I saw Doom had SLI support and was commonly regarded as a good benchmarking game. Slapped it on and played the arcade mode a bit. Now downloading it on my main PC as holy shit what a banger of a game. I remember playing it briefly before and not liking it - perhaps it's using M/kb now and being better at it, but goddam it was smooth af and so fun. It also played at 60fps with everything switched to full on a single 780ti, so fair dos to the devs.
Doom 2016 was like the best FPS I' played in years until the sequel came out.
Watch out, any mention of Doom on this forum tends to summon Dok from whatever nether dimension he inhabits these days to inform us that we should all be playing the 1993 version instead (he's probably right).
I like Doom 2016, as cav says it runs like shit off a shovel on even fairly modest PCs. It does get a bit samey as it progresses though. The first half is great but then it doesn't really know where to go after that apart from a couple of slightly annoying boss battles. I also thought some of the upgrades over-complicated things a bit, I just wanted to run around and shoot stuff. But maybe that's just me.
I tried Doom Eternal and got stuck, unable to progress, during the tutorial. So I didn't go back to it. From what I've heard it is much more difficult and more involved than the first so probably not what I'm looking for anyway.
I am enjoying Doom 64 quite a lot at the moment though, that one's new to me.
I think we can probably be paying the original a bit too much reverence some times, honestly.
I think we can probably be paying the original [Doom] a bit too much reverence some times, honestly.
Dok, when he reads this:
Dishonored again: is there a name for that very particular, fading-Empire kind of 1950s vibe it's got to it? All those crumbling warehouses and docksides are very atmospheric. The smoggy streets too. And although it's supposedly set in "Dunwall", its atmosphere is pure post-war London. I've definitely seen other media use a similar sort of setting - although off-hand all I can think of is an obscure episode of Doctor Who, I'm sure there are better examples.
It's not steampunk, which is basically Victoriana plus clockwork; and it's not quite the same as BioShock's art deco vibe either, though they share certain aspects to them. It feels like it ought to have a name.
They called it "whalepunk" in the studio, and they based the architecture on London and Edinburgh. It's got a real oil-paint swirl look to all the textures, and nothing is symmetrical; there's nothing else that looks quite like it.
Catching up…
Control sounds good.
Dishonoured video is mental.
Doom 64 is fun.
Isn't Doom 64 more horror-ey than 'RIP AND TEAR' Doom 1 and 2.
Nah. Much the same. Doom has never been as scary as that flickering lights level near the start of (I think) Doom 2.
Control seems to be a bit like that… PS2 era (?) game we all used to like that involved throwing boxes at people and taking over their minds and making them commit suicide. I've never been bothered to download and play it as even though it looks funish it never looked funish enough.
Psi-Ops. You're thinking of Psi-Ops. It plays at least as well as you remember Psi-OPs played.
Dishonored again: is there a name for that very particular, fading-Empire kind of 1950s vibe it's got to it? All those crumbling warehouses and docksides are very atmospheric. The smoggy streets too. And although it's supposedly set in "Dunwall", its atmosphere is pure post-war London.
"Albion", innit? That fading memory of Empire and the Industrial Revolution that powers the strange nostalgia and nationalism that convinced the gullible that we could still rule the world just by ingenuity and 'pluck'.
That's an absolutely perfect name for it.
Perfidious suggestion.
Octopath Traveler has been added this morning, that's a surprise, I'd always thought it was a Switch exclusive. Is it any good?
It's a Square-Enix JRPG, what do you think. 