Ninchilla

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.

Yeah, I've hovered the Buy button on The Manor a couple of times, but having bit actually run the game couldn't quite justify it to myself. I may take another look…

I just ran a session of Mausritter for the kids (plus Sarah for guidance) , and it went pretty well! I stole the gist of the setup from LMoP (friend asked you to meet him, but you get there and he's been kidnapped), so they had fun chasing down a group of rats who were trying to force their fellow adventurer to open a magical vault for them.

Along the way, E revealed a mildly alarming determination to shoot everything in the heart with her mouse's bow, L tried to squash a surrendering captive with his warhammer, and they set fire to a spider's web before Sarah added injury to insult and skewered it with a spear.

In the end, they rescued their friend, got some cool loot, and were just barely talked out of committing any war crimes - so they're TTRPG naturals, basically.

They've already asked when we can play again; I'll have to see if I can come up with something that has less combat, perhaps?

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..?

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.