What We Played #283 – Pokémon Sun & Moon, Final Fantasy XV & Steep

This week has been all about Final Fantasy. That’s partly down to the fact that I reviewed it, and partly because after one of the longest development cycles of recent times it’s not only turned out to be a critical success but also a commercial one. Of course, Final Fantasy remains one of the most bankable properties out there, but players have been put off from purchasing titles for far less than XV has suffered. It’s great to see that the care and attention that’s gone into bringing the game to market has paid off – but it’s not without some controversy.

Games shipping incomplete isn’t uncommon these days, in fact it happens more often than not, but adding to a story after a game has come out seems like an unfair punishment to early adopters, as is changing how whole chapters play. This is a title I’ve really enjoyed, but reworking Episode 13 will remove one of the worst portions of the game, and chances are that alone will mean it’s considerably better. Are early adopters beta testers? They obviously shouldn’t be, but once again, they are.

Jake was very happy to catch a shiny Pichu in Pokémon Sun & Moon, and that he bought some Pork Buns in Sleeping Dogs Definitive Edition. He was even happier at how well he was playing Halo 5 and Titanfall 2’s multiplayer. It’s been a good week if you’re Jake.

Our Kris has finished off the Titanfall 2 campaign, and while he wasn’t as wowed as some people expected him to be it still had a few highlights like the [spoiler] level, and the factory level. I didn’t put a spoiler warning over the factory level as every game has one of those, right? He’s also been playing ALL THE SOLITAIRE. I’m not sure why he was shouting about it, but I backed away slowly so as not to enrage him further (I think he actually likes Solitaire).

Tuffcub has had a heavily VR-flavoured week, with EVE: Valkyrie and the Star Wars Battlefront Rogue One: VR Mission, both proving to be excellent. This month’s PS+ offering Hyper Void also has VR DLC so he’s tucked into that before finally removing the headset to try out Stories, the Paladins’ alpha and some more Titanfall 2. He’s now eyeing up a PS4 Pro as a Christmas treat.

Dave has been suffering a little with the PC port of Dead Rising 4, which he’s sent advance warning out about some serious stuttering when things get too zombie-rific, which surely misses the point of the game a bit. He’s also put some time into Dragon Quest VIII on 3DS and Mekazoo on PC for a review. Steve meanwhile finished the “sublime” Inside, continued to plug away at his Tyranny review, and gave up ever getting the platinum for Ratchet & Clank on the Vita thanks to the horrible controls.

For Aran there’s been a lot of RIGS on PSVR, where he’s steadily rising up the ranks, and is looking forward to the future content they’ve promised. Besides that he’s working on a review of The Little Acre which will appear next week. Miguel has been in “stress city” this week, which given he lives in the US could be any number of places, and as such he’s only managed a few minutes of Pokemon Sun and Fate Grand/Order.

Jim has been reviewing Ubisoft’s Steep while loving his time with The Last Guardian. So much so that he immediately embarked on a second trip through the story, which completely cemented his adoration for Trico. There’s a couple of trophies for completing it in under 5 hours which he just missed out on so play through number three is probably not far off!

Finally, our leader Tef dropped in after a week of severe technical problems:

My most played game this week has been “PC Diagnostics Suite”, in which I try to figure out how to fix my PC. The “fun” started on Saturday night when I installed a PCIe capture card and it stopped booting properly. Sunday was then spent removing components until it was bare as it could go… and still nothing.

I think I know what’s wrong with it, that the BIOS has been corrupted somehow – and a CMOS reset didn’t help – so I’m trying to figure out how to reflash it, but the information online is as clear as mud.

Also Oxenfree, Adrift and Inside.

It’s alright, he’s got it back up and running now thanks to a very poorly documented reset trick.

Now then, what have you played?