cavalcade

I can't imagine that the first-person combat in Oblivion is going to be as good as Avowed's.

It's not.

And yes, the first stable I came across gave me some free horse armour.

Turns out the freezing this morning was shader compilation, which they forgot to put a loading screen in for. So the game just hangs for 10 minutes. I do love a bit of Bethesda jank.

It precompiles all the shades at the first load doesn't it? There are other places too?

I can't believe they missed the opportunity to do the funniest thing and release new Horse Armour DLC for the remaster.

I liked Oblivion a lot (more so than Skyrim, I think) but I'm getting my fantasy nonsense fix from Avowed at the moment so can't see myself starting another one.

The special edition comes with horse armour DLC.

It seems like a decent remaster from what I've played so far. But Avowed really just does what it does better these days.

Suspect I might have had enough of Blue Prince as well. The RNG is miserable, and even now that I'm learning how and where to best use different rooms (and discovered a pretty significant mid-objective) I spend more runs making no progress than seems intended, waiting for it to spit out something useful that can unblock some hurdle or other.

I'm not sure I'm getting this - I've played a few runs, assembled a random collection of rooms from the options it gives me, ended up blocking myself into a corner eventually and then restarted.

I'm seeing people talking about hundreds and hundreds of hours of content and I'm just looking at it thinking HOW??? But it's oddly compulsive, and I'm tempted to start making notes as I've uncovered a couple of bits as I've gone through, so there's something about it for sure.

I find it compelling - but I do think if someone generated a mod that let you click through the map screen and quickly do runs it would be a better game. The compelling part, I guess, is the rules on how certain things happen in particular rooms, depending on positioning or timing (and uncovering that), but it is a massive killer that the cycle to check if you're doomed or not is so long and the rules sometimes so diffuse and unclear that it's massively frustrating.

Oddly compulsive though as even when I'm shouting at it, I just click to start a new run.

South of Midnight is an absolutely wild videogame for the current climate. It features a black female protagonist, with dreads (who isn't "conventionally" videogame attractive), in a deep south setting animated in a sort of stop motion with a sometimes dissonant, highly evocative folk soundtrack. In the initial few scenes it's largely women talking to women (and black women, no less) without a single man present. The husband has also been fridged, not the wife. It's like Republican nightmare fuel.

It's absolutely beautifully put together, the animations are flawless and the flat storybook cutscenes between chapters are lovely. The opening level has some really impressive set pieces. The entire thing has the feel of a team really having a cohesive vision and absolutely executing on it. The issue is, ultimately, the actual gameplay is utterly generic. It's Uncharted wall climbing (complete with a blue tint to show climbable ledges - though weirdly, and frustratingly, no grab visual cue to know if you can jump on something or not) and a sort of creaky, button mashing combat where you kill videogame gribblies to clear locked glades.

I'm torn, as it's so lovely to look at and you have to resepect the artistic risks they've taken, but it is stupefyingly dull in bits too….

Right, Atomfall's going in the Bin. I'm playing on the easiest combat difficulty, and still getting increasingly frustrated by the repeated deaths to bullet-sponge enemies and endless fucking rat swarms. I'm plugging several shotgun shells point-blank into a [spoiler]'s face and still getting murdered by them in two hits. I've got upgraded weapons, unlocked a bunch of permanent buffs, and use every item in my inventory to prepare, but I'm still slamming into the same wall over and over and over. Stealth doesn't appear to be an option, as these bastards spot me as soon as I open the door.

It's such a shame; I was probably only a couple hours' concerted effort from the finish line, but all the fun has completely evaporated.

The AI is pretty shocking in bits. I've found there's ways you can attack where the enemy simply can't path to you, or just gets confused and stands there. Which I have resorted to with the more difficult enemies. But it can be a bit brutal. I assume it'll be patched a few times, as I think if they can smooth the edges out it will be something of a cult classic.