It’s been a week that’s absolutely raced by, with sudden bursts of news and announcements in the run up to Tokyo Game Show 2022 coming from Nintendo, Sony, Xbox, Capcom, Square Enix and more. In the middle of all of that, my amount of leisurely gaming has taken a nosedive, but I did get to check out Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion, Valkyrie Elysium and a few other upcoming Square Enix titles. Keep an eye out for previews in the next day or two!
Steve was the first to chime in, and he’s been reviewing Metal: Hellsinger, “which lives up to the title”. When he’s had time outside of that, he’s been hunting down the last trophy for Arcade Paradise’s platinum, found the indie Souls-like Thymesia to have a very enjoyable focus on combat over exploration, and carried on with Xenoblade Chronicles.
Miguel’s been putting his fancy new high refresh rate monitor to the test… by playing his usual cluster of video games. That’s meant plenty of Apex Legends and Rocket League, but he’s also been carrying on with Cult of the Lamb. With Bayonetta 3 on the horizon, he’s started Bayonetta 2 to try and beat it before the sequel releases, and he’s played some of “the best Final Fantasy title – Strangers of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin”
Nic B and Aran kept it relatively quiet this week. Nic mixed Pokémon Go with Yu-Gi-Oh Cross Duel (more thoughts on that next week), while Aran’s kept plugging away at Horizon Forbidden West. With most of the side missions now done, he’s been forced to actually play through the main campaign!
Reuben’s review of Disney Dreamlight Valley will be going up in a couple hours, and he’s “quite honestly addicted to it because I’m just that predictable”. Aside from that he’s been doing a lot of splatting in Splatoon 3… and losing a lot of games in the Turf War multiplayer. He’s also been dragged into Pokémon TCG Online by a friend who thinks he could use another very expensive hobby.
There was a strange concoction of UFC 4, Crusader Kings 3 and Assassin’s Creed Valhalla for Gamoc his week. “The latter now has a rogue-lite kinda thing that’s quite cool and almost unique if Ubi hadn’t done the same thing in three Far Cry 6 DLCs! I’ve only done one run so far but it seems pretty good.”
Nick P got to live out one of his life-long dreams by visiting Capcom (in the UK) and play Street Fighter 6 – catch his full preview here for his hyped up thoughts – but naturally spent his home gaming time with his go-to Dead by Daylight and more of Cult of the Lamb.
Tuffcub has almost certainly been playing Destiny 2 this week, but aside from that, he watched about 30 minutes of some film or other. This is more exciting and interesting than I’ve just made it sound.
With Jason running out of things to do in Genshin Impact, he’s returned to Rocket League and tried out a game called Grid Force: mask of the Goddess. It is “a fun Mega Man Battle Network-style bullet hell game where you collect loads of characters and fight it out with them.”
And finally, Dom’s been playing something Maddening, which is one way of saying that NFL is back. “There’s some nice tributes to John Madden, but they don’t go far enough.”
Andrewww
This week I started playing Returnal, which I got as a boxed game before it was included in my Plus library. I’m still slightly undecided what to think about it. It looks and plays very well, but I’m still disoriented about all those reruns in constantly changed levels, and it feels like you’re not making any proper progress at all, which may become frustrating soon.
Then I got my PSVR out and played through (most of) Red Matter. It’s the first time playing with those awkward Move controllers feels halfway ok, even if you still have to fight regularly with the control scheme. But when it works, it’s cool. It’s still a pain they deliberately restrict choice and accessibility by forcing you to use these controllers, of course. They get the atmosphere in the game right and the puzzles are interesting and mostly at a good level of difficulty too. The quality of the story is a matter of taste, I found it ok so far. But given I almost never feel any motion sickness in a PSVR game, it’s slightly worrying I start to feel dizzy here at times, so I’d advise others to be careful with this game.
willbuchanan
I got the co op trophies in Far Cry 3 on PS3 and I accidentally got the platinum in Lego Legends of Chima Laval’s Journey on Vita (I thought I’d need to buy all the red bricks as well as collecting them, so it was a surprise when I collected the last red brick and the platinum popped!).
I don’t know what I’ll be doing over the next few days – probably playing some Lego game or other and AC Brotherhood, but I think it’ll be an unusual few days, due to national circumstances.
hornet1990
Killed off John in Far Cry 5 and now have to capture his bunker… that’ll be a job for this weekend.
MrYd
Same as last week, really.
Finished off Toem and got the platinum. Enjoyed it quite a bit. One of those little indie games that works well for PS+. (You should see how many of those I’ve got platinums for since the New PS+ launched)
Inscryption is still being excellent. Shouldn’t really say much about it, because it’s best to go in not knowing anything other than it’s a card battling thing. But I finished the first act, then it got weird. And harder. And simultaneously easier in some ways.
Plus grinding through all the events in Grid Legends. A decent looking game, with very drifty cars. And a lot of events in the career mode. That story mode is just terrible though with some acting that’s more like reading some lines. Even from the next Doctor Who, Ncuti Gatwa.
And a couple of PS+ games with PS5 upgrades. One recent, and one I finally got around to downloading. Outer Wilds is now actually playable (it was horrible with the PS4 version), if I could work out what was going on and what to do. I think that’s got an hour or 2 to convince me it’s not an overrated pile of bollocks. And Greed Fall, which was one of those that didn’t have the PS5 upgrade for the PS4 version until New PS+. That’s a vast improvement over the PS4 version where the frame rate seemed to be both too high and too low at the same time. Possibly just horrible input lag. Now it’s nice and smooth and a reasonable RPG.