It looks like it’s going to be sunny this weekend, and it’s a Bank Holiday. That can’t be right though, can it? It certainly doesn’t sound like something that happens in the UK. When we have the inevitable rain and grey skies that we’re more accustomed to you’ll have an extra day to play games though so it isn’t all bad!
I’ve been steadily filling our house with cardboard contraptions while I work through the Labo kits for review, and on top of that I’ve been playing Project Nimbus: Code Mirai and plugging away at God of War, which is pretty good. For all the eye candy, the gameplay is pretty standard in my opinion, but maybe it’ll open up more as I get further.
Jason was the first to drop in this week, and he’s played Frostpunk which is “amazing but depressing”, Battletech which is “slow but okay”, and Saints Row 4 which is apparently the “best superhero game ever”. He’s obviously forgotten about Superman 64. Crawl is also “possibly my favourite local multiplayer game at present” which sounds good! Tuffcub has played a bit of Fortnite, saying “I still don’t think it’s all that as a single player game”, and finished Mad Max, which he thought was very good.
Gareth has been playing more Rise of the Tomb Raider, which is seemingly pretty good, and some Middle Earth: Shadow of War. “Whilst I’m still looking forward to the patches that remove the microtransactions, the game is still pretty fun. I still haven’t found an enemy worth calling a nemesis though, which is kinda the whole point of the nemesis system, I suspect.” Miguel just poured all his time into Monster Hunter World this week, steering clear of everything else.
Aran tried a little Fortnite this week and sadly he failed miserably each time. On top of that he sunk some time into Rayman Legends which is “just perfect”. On the flip side, he tried Knack and deleted it after a couple of hours. Steve meanwhile has found himself drawn back into Kingdom Hearts to grind for synthesis materials. He also spent an evening playing the PS4 version of Red Faction which “holds up relatively well”. Aside from that he’s holding off whilst waiting for a copy of God of War to borrow… off me.
Dave has been looking at two ports or remasters. While one is embargoed until next week, the other is Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, which is apparently a very good upgrade from the Wii U version. He also found himself playing Donkey Kong Country: Returns 3D “to remind myself that the 3DS can’t do 60fps on a Wii game…”
Jim decided to sack off the Nier: Automata platinum after deciding he wasn’t a fan of its multi-playthrough approach. Things did get better though, “In fact, I was in a bit of a malaise this week until I found Into The Breach. It’s condensed strategy title somewhat akin to Advance Wars but much more puzzle-y. I also gave Banished a spin on PC – used to love Age of Empires and The Settlers. It’s a slow burner to say the least but I’m digging it.”
Finally, Tef returned to Overwatch for a few matches and decided that he would finally play something other than Mei, because he was basically playing Mei as though she were a tank anyway, so might as well be Winston instead. He also returned to Battlezone Gold Edition, as it ditched the need to play with a VR headset strapped on his face, booted up Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze on Wii U to supplement Dave’s Switch impressions, and dove into Laser League for a few matches in Early Access before its launch next week.
Now then, what have you been playing? And what’s in store this weekend?
JR.
Finished off God of War this week with 100% game completion and nabbed a new shiny platinum in the process.
Fantastic game. I thought the ending was great and unusually low-key for a God of War game. This definitely feels like part 1 of a much bigger story. I get the feeling that the next game will be even more incredible – especially since we’ve only just scratched the surface with regards to the Norse mythology.
The talking head, Mimir, is absolutely hilarious and is still telling humurous tales long after the main plot has ended. The tale about how he came to have his eye stones was one of the best. How he drank too much ale and was so inebriated, he tried to convince the frost giants to put them in his nipples instead. ‘Mimir of the Bifrost teats!’ ?
Surprisingly, there’s quite a lot of humour but it really worked for me.
Boy: “How do you build a piece of armor out of something so… so…
Brok: “Nunya.”
Boy: “Nunya?”
Brok: “None ‘ya fuckin’ business.”
Boy: “Oh.”
The corrupted Valkyries were brilliant too and the Queen was a real challenge on the higher difficulty. I hope we haven’t seen the last of them.
I was gutted once I’d completed everything because I didn’t want it to end. Can’t remember the last time I felt that way about a game. I can’t wait to see what happens next but I think we’ll be waiting a wee while before we get the chance to find out. Could go a number of different ways really.
Also completed episode 3 of Telltale’s Batman Season 2. It’d be nice if you actually had the option of a good outcome once in a while but like most Telltale games, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Still really enjoying it so far but I’ve simply stopped caring about the consequences.
MrYd
I’m now just 1 trophy from the platinum on Killing Floor 2. But that hardest difficulty one is bloody impossible, so I’ll come back to it later and probably do it first time.
Also 20something hours into Ni No Kuni 2, which is growing on me more now. So many side quests though. And the annoying skirmishes. But it does contain the word “knickers”, so that’s good.
And then, because that backlog isn’t going to get any shorter, so why not make it longer instead, I started Monster Hunter World. Which is lots of fun. Although it does appear that if you’re struggling, play it at the right time of day and some Japanese player will appear and do all the work for you. Which takes some of the fun out of it. I can see myself putting many, many hours into it anyway.
So those 2 are taking up all my time. I’m not even going to think about God of War yet. It’ll be cheaper by the time I get around to it. It’s only an 8/10 game anyway, isn’t it? ;)
Oh, and the free “update with non-VR mode” for Battlezone tempted me back in. Free things are always good. Even if it’s just “make your tank horrible colours” and “fill your tank with wobbly skellingtons”. Must remember to take a picture of those.
There might have been a bit of the PS+ games as well. I forgot how good Rayman Legends was. Then it all came back to me with the first musical level. Those levels are the best thing in the game.
tactical20
I got about half way through the 3rd and final area of Far Cry 5 and suddenly lost all interest. Few too many things I started to find annoying and guess I just had enough of constantly opening the map and running around trying to find a vehicle. A week’s break and maybe I’ll return to finish it off. I’m looking forward to the dlc still. It’s the first season pass I’ve ever bought.
Andrewww
About two weeks ago some idiots suddenly started playing a game which was about mobbing me out of work. That didn’t end well for them, but for a moment it got very stressful, and I found no time to play more sensible games anymore. This week, I was going back to normal, and needed something light and relaxing, so I started playing Rime. It’s quite a beautiful game, although it feels lacking a clear direction where things are going, but I quite like it.
ron_mcphatty
People are bastards, glad they didn’t win. Do you still have to work with the idiots?
I’ve been sinking more time into GTA Online, slowly climbing the ranks, wasting lots of time making pennies then spending them on stuff I don’t need. It’s so much fun :)
Andrewww
Thanks. Yeah, the atmosphere in the office will be quite mixed over the next weeks, but they leave end of June/early July, so we’ll make it there.
TSBonyman
Ah, i wasn’t sure what your workplace shenanigans were but glad it’s being resolved.
TSBonyman
As my return to Bloodborne wasn’t yielding much progression, i picked up a few new games in the psn deals. Human Fall Flat has some fun sandbox-type challenges, nothing too taxing so far and the controls aren’t too clumsy – at least not as clumsy as Octodad was.
Dear Esther, why did you ever exist? Ok so i picked this up as it was only €3 and was bundled with a dynamic theme. The dynamic theme turned out to be a static cave with the occasional drip. And now that i’ve dealt with the exciting part, let’s move on to the game. Dear god, i was ready to pull my own teeth with the slow crawl through the gloomy landscape, desperately tapping the other buttons that made the camera zoom in, so that i could temporarily make it seem like i was moving faster. And i now have a callus on my thumb from having to constantly hold the left stick up in order to keep moving. And then the character whose voice pops up at certain points and says some odd stuff that presumably will make some sense at the end. Thankfully the third chapter brought a change of scenery, but the crawling pace means that exploring alternate routes is not something i’ll be doing.
Oh and i jumped back into Bloodborne again and caved-in and got co-op for Martyr Logarius. What a difference that made, he was much easier to deal with when one player distracts while the other attacks. And the on to the Shadows of Yharnam, so i called in the npc nearby and another player co-operator so we could have a three on three fight. Success again and i then had Byrgenwerth to explore and then – Rom the Vacuous. I got him on my third try. I did summon an npc but he didn’t arrive until a minute into the fight and then died a minute later – and didn’t do any damage to Rom, so it was all my own work and a sweeter victory for that!
And i’ve played some of The Old Hunters dlc, opened up the second shortcut but now there’s bloodlickers. I don’t like them. The hunters are great enemies to fight though and there’s one or sometimes two around every corner. Hoots aplenty.
And back in the main game now that i’ve defeated Rom, a whole new area, Yahar ‘Gul, has opened up to me and it makes the earlier part of the game look vanilla in comparison. My exploration of this area thus far has led me to a whole lot of – You Died !
Aplologies for the amount of wordage this week. ;)
Andrewww
Haha, Dear Esther, I was about to get that one, before I read this. As much as I liked some of the ‘walking sims’, I don’t think I need that.
That’s exactly the point about Bloodbourne: the cost of progression. I’d love to explore this game fully, but it takes such an effort. Seems like you made very good progress though, well done.
What about Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin, which is only £9 in the sale right now. Would you recommend that or will I just get stuck, again?
TSBonyman
Yeah i was stuck for a while in Bloodborne and it was still taking up my time so i’m glad i did the co-op. I can’t really advise about DSII, i picked up DSIII on sale a month before BB was on plus, enjoyed what i played but it’s slower paced than BB and doesn’t have the same gothic-horror vibe that BB has – and i just kept thinking about BB while playing it, so i jumped back into that. I did also think it was a bit harder than BB but that might ultimately be down to the differences in play style.
Andrewww
Ok, thanks, you just successfully kept me from extending my backlog quite considerably with games that would quite drastically keep me from working on my backlog… :o)
Jag
Finished off God of War this week which I think is easily one of the games of the generation.
There’s a level of polish and quality to every aspect of it that you can’t help but be impressed.
One of my favourite things is the time it takes for your axe to return to you depends on how far away you left it. It reminds me of some hilarious moments in Thor Ragnarok where Thor mistimes his hammer callbacks.