What We Played #358 – Detroit: Become Human, Yoku’s Island Express & Dark Souls

Ah, the sun. It’s hung around up there all week – at least here in the North – steadily cooking people’s skin, and helping the plants to finally grow. It was just a few weeks ago I genuinely thought we’d ventured into some kind of post-apocalyptic dusk where spring wasn’t coming. It’s not always the best weather for playing games, but once again I’ve spent my time indoors in the interests of science and have played games just to make sure they’re still good, even when it’s nice outside. Turns out they are! Beer is also good, and me Steve, Ade and Cael took one for the team for this month’s Pubcast.

I’ve been playing Yoku’s Island Express and Smoke & Sacrifice for next week’s reviews, as well as getting embroiled in some serious racing game time with my oldest son. He’s just got into cars, which is a step up from the repeated episodes of Robot Wars, and so we’re playing Forza 7, with his settings on Easy/Super Easy as well as the fairly woeful Gear Club Unlimited on Switch. Gear Club is a pretty horrendous throwback to appalling arcade racers of the noughties, but he really likes it, despite my protests. He’s also better at it than me, and while I’ll argue that it’s probably the twenty hours he’s played it for over my thirty minutes, it’s sobering that I can’t be sure that the only way he’s going to win is if I let him. If he starts to be better than me at Forza, I’m in real trouble!

Dave has big news this week, and that is because this is going to be his last week here at TSA! He’s heading off to pastures new, where he’s going Rock Paper Shotgun as a member of their new guides team. Obviously we’re going to miss him, even if this is clearly treachery and an unforgivable betrayal, but we wish him all the best for the future! If you’re stuck on an upcoming game, and you can find him, maybe he’ll have a guide to save you! All the best buddy!

He has played a couple of games as well, with his final piece for us seeing him take a look at how Dark Souls Remastered holds up, as well as going so far as to join a WhatsApp group to grab the legendary Pokémon in Pokémon Go.

In between being decidedly unwell, Gareth has been questioning the design decisions of Mafia 3. “The story is great, but it’s split up by repetitive missions that even I, with my unusually high tolerance for open world shenanigans, think are a bit silly. It’s got some amazing music in it though”. Jason meanwhile is ploughing through Moonlighter for review, as well as Dark Souls Remastered – “I love it! I killed Ornstein and Smough first time and felt like a badass.” He also enjoyed Quarantine Circular saying, “Bithell makes lots of games I wouldn’t consider my kind of thing, but the writing is always so well done that they keep me invested.”

Jim has played Space Hulk Deathwing in its enhanced form, but really wasn’t satisfied, saying “Hopefully we’ll see a truly great Warhammer 40K shooter crop up one day”. Apart from that it’s been “a butt load of For Honor and H1Z1. I love being able to juggle two great multiplayer games at once to keep me busy”. He’s also tackling his backlog, knocking off Undertale and now jumping into Metro Last Light. Aran has been playing Horizon Chase Turbo for review, as well as the Onrush beta, which he actually enjoyed. “There’s some niggles,” he said, “but the gameplay is fun and the soundtrack is ace”.

Miguel has played a bunch of games, and also returned to Horizon! “I set the difficulty to the Story option and had a lot of fun with the game. Playing it is even more fun and the story really picked up a lot. Great game.” He also played some Monster Prom, some Reigns: Her Majesty, the first hour of Ruiner, and got through all of Virginia and Firewatch. Then it’s been some Aragami and Owlboy for review, a bunch of Steamworld Heist, the Onrush beta, and some Under Night on PS4 with his buddy. He’s had a busy week!

Steve has rattled through the quirky Deadly Tower of Monsters, sworn at the ropey jumping in Crash Bandicoot, and spent the rest of his time on a pile of indie games for review, including Cultist Simulator, Runner 3, Death Road to Canada and The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker. “All fun in their different ways. Dark Souls Remastered is due to arrive on release day as well, so that will probably sneak in too”.

Tuffcub played Detroit: Become Human, “which is fab”, and Onrush, “which wasn’t”. He was also surprised to find he really like H1Z1. Meanwhile, Ade had the unhappy task of playing Disco Dodgeball Remix for review. “Playing it made me wish I didn’t”. He’s also been a “cheeky chappy” and picked himself up The Frozen Wilds DLC in the sale.

Tef was in Sweden over the weekend to check out Paradox Interactive’s upcoming games, including some fun times with the Crusader Kings board game. There was time on the flights for a few more battles in Mario + Rabbids: Kingdom Battle, before telling us about the Donkey Kong Adventure expansion, while his UK-based gaming has included something he can’t talk about yet and Semblance, a quirky puzzle-platformer with a deformable world.

And that’s enough about us. What have you played?

Written by
TSA's Reviews Editor - a hoarder of headsets who regularly argues that the Sega Saturn was the best console ever released.

17 Comments

  1. As was to be expected, I spent a lot of time with Star Trek Bridge Crew thanks to the new TNG DLC.

    It’s very impressive. Even the intro has been changed to a nice VR version of the proper intro. And then the nice shuttle ride before you find a game now has all 3 ships (the new 1701-D, the original Enterprise and the Aegis), which is cute.

    Then I started a game. It’s helped with finding games quickly now. First game, we had 4 androids, which was a bit creepy. Then started after the Borg. They’ve done a great job recreating the bridge (to be expected, really). The new ops role is more fun than the old engineer. And it went hilariously wrong, of course. The Borg infected us with nanites, which messes up the ops panel and limits repairs. The prototype we were supposed to be getting to help in the fight got destroyed due to The Incident. We barely escaped the Borg and got to the next location, only to be destroyed by the planet killer. And someone shouted “Shut up Wesley!”. Several times. Actually, I think everyone did. I really want to play with someone who’s actually called Wesley for real some time. But I doubt anyone would admit to it.

    Eventually I managed to do it, after several hours and many failures. Only done it once so far, but it’s definitely going to keep me coming back to fail with new people, and possibly succeed sometimes. And somehow my only success was with me as captain. It didn’t end as well with 2 Germans who kept getting in a panic and speaking German while I tried to remember any German from 30 years ago at school. (The best I can remember is “my porcupine has broken the station”, which has never been a useful phrase)

    Apart from that, Monster Hunter World has finally clicked after several failures at the main story quest. Now I’m killing all sorts of stuff and getting better equipment, and all with an actual aim now. The aim being to progress the main story as quickly as I can to see what other fun things it unlocks. I don’t know why, but suddenly you get into that gameplay loop of killing stuff, turning in bounties, crafting equipment, and then just one more go before you take on the story. It was ok before, then it suddenly gets to you. Just wish the camera would behave.

    And some Rainbow 6 Siege. Why did I let it tempt me with the free weekend??

  2. Finally completed Rayman Legends and The Crew this week. Still playing both as they have a fair amount of side content to get through.
    Rayman Origins and Legends are really great platformers, I’d recommend them to anyone.
    The Crew was surprisingly fun to play again after all this time, the physics patches definitely fixed the handling.
    Otherwise I’ve been making progress in Iconoclasts and Va-11 Hall-A on Vita, which will never die by the way, I refuse to allow it!

  3. Just watched Netflix this week. Evil Genius (about a bizarre bank robbery gone wrong) and Operation Odessa (about Russian gangsters attempting to sell a military submarine to the Medellin Cartel).

  4. I’ve put Bloodborne aside as i can’t stick it in this heat!

    I tried to get into Elite Dangerous but i’m afraid NMS has spoiled me rotten. I failed terribly at everything in ED – and that was just the training missions – so the next day i went back to NMS and had a lovely time.

    The ZOE VR demo was odd.

    The Wipeout VR demo was fab!

    • Completely forgot to say – Best of luck for the future Dave!

      • Thanks very much. It’s all a bit surreal, but hopefully it all works out! It’s nice that at least one person here noticed that news, I’ll be honest!

      • Second that! Good luck Dave, all the best :)

      • Indeed all the best Dave ;)

      • Sad to see you go Dave! Good luck with the new job :)

      • I seem to have skipped that bit too, all the best..! Is that a reason to read another source besides TSA..? ;o)

      • I was intending on wishing Dave luck, but then I wrote an enormous post and forgot that but by the time I’d finished.

        So this counts as doing it now, I guess.

      • Thanks everyone! In answer to Andrewww, why not both? :P

        But in all seriousness, I hope people continue to read TSA, as well as read the guides I’ll be posting.

  5. I finally got the GTA V platinum!! That was a slog and I remember thinking I wouldn’t bother when I first saw the list back in 2013. Great game, the grind facilitated lots of farting around which is a very good thing. I celebrated by seeing Solo at midnight at the BFI, which was great and I really enjoyed. Can’t wait to see it again!

  6. Far too much really.

    Finished up my first play through of DK Tropical Freeze, collecting all the Kong pieces and completing all the bonus stages. Amazing game.

    Played through another Kingdom in Mario Odyssey. Its weird, I enjoy the game but I never feel compelled to play it for longer than an hour or so at a time and have been chipping away at it for months.

    Finished up the story mode on Pokken Tournament. Wow that game gets tricky towards the end. Fun game though. Tempted by the season pass.

    Tried out the Sushi Striker demo. Love the OTT anime design but I have my reservations when it comes to the game play at this stage. Hoping the full game is a little more varied.

    Picked up FIFA on Switch yesterday as its currently on sale for 18quid. It might be missing Journey mode but, hey, its portable FIFA. Well worth the price tag IMO.

    Finally, made a start on Kirby after buying it at launch (been waiting for the Mrs to be in the mood to play it). I like it, its quite nice to play a game from time to time that focuses on fun over challenge.

    Think that’s everything… ;-)

  7. Bloodborne is still fantastic, made it to Castle Cainhurst, having lots of fun there, currently trying to deal with the guy on the roof. But I seem to have missed some other bloke, which is a spider, so I’ll try to figure that out too.

  8. So, my Nephews are on holiday this week which means, no swimming lessons, no boxing, no football, no homework projects and no spelling practice = lots of free time. So, I borrowed their Playstation and spent the week re-playing LEGO Marvel Avengers. I need to unlock every character because I promised weeks ago that I would and I haven’t had the time. I’m around the 75% mark and there are three days until they come home. Not even going to tell them – I’ll just let them load up the game and see. Can’t wait to see their faces :D

    Also, Detroit: Become Human and AER: Memories of Old arrived today. Added to the pile.

  9. Thoroughly enjoying PixelJunk Monsters 2 (co-op with my partner). The graphical upgrade from the first game is so incredible in comparison, it’s staggering. Especially close-in camera view.

    Good luck, Dave. You will be missed!

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