With the news that E3 has been cancelled this year, you wonder whether this signals the end of large-scale games events as we know it, or simply that E3 had come to the end of its usefulness. Given the awesome time we had at Gamescom last year, I think it’s clear that there’s still a need, and an audience, for these types of show, but without the support of the industry your event is never going to get off the ground. It’ll be interesting to see what the fallout from it means for the games industry at large.
I’ve had a long week – I swear it lasted about 23 days – but in that space of time I played a bunch of Star Wars: Fallen Order, Ravenbound, Clash: Artifacts of Chaos and the new Feathered Species DLC in Jurassic World Evolution 2, which my son and I found utterly delightful. It does have dinosaurs in it, after all!
Tuffcub has been playing Destiny 2. Obviously. Meanwhile Nic B has been playing “the absolute hell out of RE4, which I absolutely love. Still playing Marvel Snap, but despite a huge patch to rebalance the game, it’s not as fun as it was. Another big QOL update is coming in April, so fingers crossed it makes the game fun again!”
Nick P’s week has also been dominated by RE4, telling us, “I am now on my fourth run, looking at sub three hours I reckon. Absolutely stunning game and well worth the 10s it’s been getting. I’ve also been playing a metric ton of Marvel Snap which since hitting Infinite, I’ve been able to experiment with new decks. Finally, I’ve been playing Crime Boss: Rockay City for review.”
Steve has also played a whole lot more RE4. He says, “Got everything done apart from the S+ runs and unlock all guns. Just over halfway through Standard S+ which is going well but think the rest may be beyond my abilities. Stuck between facing up to my limitations or trying to brute force it for the platinum. Part of me wants to play something else but if I stop then I’m admitting defeat! I have started the top-down Zelda-like Blossom Tales 2 as a change of pace/ bedtime game – RE4 was getting too intense for my sleep hygiene!”
Finally moving on to something other than RE4, Gamoc has played the Diablo IV beta, which he rather enjoyed. He also played The Outer Worlds Spacer’s Choice Edition for, which is a poor remaster of a still enjoyable game, and has continued on with some Animal Shelter Simulator also for an upcoming review. Aside from that, he dove back into The Walking Dead Saints & Sinners (on regular old PSVR1, unfortunately) because “it’s great.”
It’s been more Marvel’s Midnight Suns for Aran, who’s still really enjoying the exploration of the Abbey and building up character relationships – “I think I spend more time doing that than the actual missions.” – while Reuben’s week has seen an awful lot of Fire Emblem Engage, “which I’m enjoying far more than Three Houses. Alcryst is best boy.”
Finally, Tef has continued to plug away at The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners and the Chapter 2 sequel, and reviewed The Last Worker on both flat screen and in VR. It’s an enjoyable story with a really great cast backing it up.
What about you? What have you played?
TSBonyman
I picked up Callisto Protocol cheap (preowned). It’s an amazing looking game, especially the environmental detail and the character models. After 2 hours i came away very disappointed though, every single enemy encounter is a QT event without the normal visual QT cues, making combat not feel like combat at all. What there was felt sluggish, so you were just hoping to get some kind of a generalised hit against an enemy – nothing like discreetly targeting and cutting off limbs in Dead Space. Even so (playing Normal) the combat wasn’t challenging – i eschewed the dodging after a bit and just relied on whacking with my whacking stick – and i barely lost any health so i had little use for the medi packs.
The thing that put me off entirely though was the lack of waypointing. “Make your way through (named area)” was no help when the area was circling around on itself via various doors and corridors. A beautifully rendered disappointment after all the hype and especially compared to Dead Space which it took a lot of it’s ideas from.
Andrewww
I finished Man of Medan meanwhile, which was fun, but over much quicker than I would’ve expected. While I like short games, here I was just a little surprised how suddenly it was all over (and it wasn’t because everyone had died on me). Overall I liked it, it had some nice scares, but it was nowhere nearly as good as Until Dawn.
Instead of working on my backlog, I got Amnesia:Rebirth in the sale and am playing that. It started off promising, and, of course I hope it’s just half as good as their brilliant SOMA, but I can’t say much just yet.