The second week of 2023 is in the books, and I can already hear the distant stomping of all the big games that are set to come out in the next few months. Xbox is going to have a big first half of the year, Sony has got PSVR 2, Nintendo’s got their first big exclusive coming out next week, and then there’s all the third party games that will be vying for our attention.
So, to bury my head in the sand, I’ve settled back into a groove of Halo Infinite, sprinting through the weekly challenges and then grabbing a match or two each day. That’s been joined by a little more Marvel’s Midnight Suns, though I’m still near the start of the game, and a couple of sneaky previews that I’ll tell you all about next week.
After last week’s first name alphabetical ordering, this time we’re going to go with surname alphabetical, and without a Mr. Aardvark on the team, we’ll start off with Nic B. He got in his usual Pokémon Snap and Marvel Go (or whatever), as well as a bit of Doom Eternal which he was gifted over Christmas. He also played a bunch of Path of the Midnight Sun for our review (not to be confused with Midnight Suns), which is “a good game and JRPG fans should definitely check it out!”
Gamoc jumps up to second place this week with a surname that begins with ‘C’. He’s been played Cyberpunk 2077, Beat Saber, and PGA Tour 2k23 – “Turns out I like golf games quite a bit. Who knew?” He’s joined in the ‘C’ by Steve, who played lots of Octopath Traveller, “which is a superb JRPG to absolutely nobody’s surprise”, and is hoping to beat before the sequel arrives. He also raced through Nobody Saves the World, and was able to use all his saved up pocket money to buy a Steam Deck, which he’s had fun setting up with a bunch of indie games and emulators.
Jim is next up with the letter ‘H’, and he too has mainly spent his time playing Steam Deck and mobile games – he’s not turned his PS5 on at all in 2023! There’s been Marvel Snap and Kartrider Drift on phones, while he’s also been thoroughly enjoying the physics-based destruction of Teardown on Steam Deck.
Perhaps the most mysterious of us all is Tuffcub, and while I cannot reveal his true identity to the world, I can say that he’s next. He gave us some suitably brief judgements on some of last year’s games: “I played Saints Row (rubbish), finished Ghostwire Tokyo (v good), The Callisto Protocol (v v good), and Destiny 2.
Dom L gets us back to some regular names, but since he’s played Fire Emblem Engage and nothing else, we’ll move on to Miguel M, whose alliterative name suggests he might be a Stan Lee comic book character. Speaking of which, he’s played Marvel’s Midnight Suns this past week, alongside Chained Echoes, some Fortnite, and a bunch of One Piece Odyssey for our review of the anime JRPG.
It was his usual doses of Fortnite and Dead by Daylight for Nick P, but he was introduced to and immediately by the social deduction shenanigans of Among Us.
And finally, going from first last week to last this week, we have Aran S. He played OmegaBot for review, which will appear next week, and started God of War Ragnarök, loving the Mafioso introduction of a certain god.
Now then, what have you been playing?
Andrewww
Back from my X-Mas break, I first tried the Forspoken demo. Looks a bit like Zelda for adults to me, the world looks beautiful, and the fighting mechanics take a little to get used to, but feels ok. Given I played through the full demo and didn’t delete it after 2 minutes, I consider it promising.
Then I stumbled across an overlooked gem of a game in Plus, which sadly leaves the service very soon. I happened to find ‘Last chance to play’ in the Plus section of the store (which seems only available on the console but not on the web), and found The Council.
Wow..!
It’s a shame I did not become aware of this game earlier, as I find it excellent. It’s quite a unique blend of game elements, with an interesting story set around 1790, about a secret society and a meeting of political leaders at the time (Napoleon, Washington, etc.), involving a murder mystery you have to solve. It’s got interesting riddles, has an RPG skilltree, etc., and is not just testing your motor skills, but becomes much more exciting if you like (and maybe know something of) the history of arts, politics, etc.
I’m only in the second ‘season’ so far, and cannot say anything about the rest of the game, but I’m totally hooked. Unfortunately, it leaves Plus on the 17th already.
I think I’ll keep a closer look at this ‘Last chance to play’ section from now on.
MrYd
I also got stuck in to finishing off The Council before it leaves PS+ next week. I’ve just got to play the first episode again and make some different choices, and then the very start for another choice and I’ll have another Platinum.
But then I’ve been at the excellent Fell Seal as well. Taking my time to level up lots of characters, otherwise it gets a bit unfair.
And because I haven’t got enough to play, the equally excellent Chained Echoes. Proper old fashioned pre-FF7 RPG with turn based battles. With an interesting twist with the overdrive meter. Get it up into green overdrive mode and you do more damage, go further into the red and you take more damage. You can’t just spam attacks, or you’ll end up in the red overheat zone, so you have to do things to get back down into the green, with certain skills being marked in yellow to do it, or swapping characters or defending. Made by one person (mostly?) over 7 years. Sounds like he had the right idea not to copy all those old RPGs but from what he said… “Some didn’t even age well. But in my head, they are still amazing. And I tried to recreate what I had in my head. Not how they actually were”. Which is the right way to do things.
Anyway, highly recommended if you like that sort of thing and want to play what you remember them being like, not what they actually were like.