What We Played #637 – Palworld, Prince of Persia & The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered

It’s been another frigid week here in the UK, so we’ve naturally taken the opportunity to stay inside as much as possible and play some video games. And since it’s the middle of January, that’s also meant playing games from before 2024… with a few notable exceptions.

One of those exceptions is The Last of Us Part 2 Remastered, which was the main game that I spent time with this week to help with Gamoc with our review. It’s a bit like the Wii U remasters that Nintendo was pumping out for the Switch a couple years ago, where they spruce up the main game and add an extra game mode – a roguelike called No Return – and between that, the slightly enhanced graphics, and the commentary content, it’s worth considering for a $10 upgrade.

Speaking of Gamoc, TLOU2 was joined by some Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands and has been planning a new D&D campaign, which he swears is purely by coincidence.

While he’s continued on with playing Starfield as a surveyor sim, Aran has also gone all the way back to Crysis Remastered – “Never played the games before so thought I’d go through them. Pretty entertaining so far basically pretending to be Predator and fighting the enemy.”

When it all went a bit wrong, he then hopped in a Hummer and rammed through some shacks.

Nic B has been playing something that he can’t talk about yet, but that he’s been very excited to play. Outside of that it’s been Monster Hunter Now and Pokémon Go, the latter of which has been a real struggle after Niantic’s changes and the cold weather. Still, he’s excited for some new ‘mon in the game, so “we’ll give it another chance to see if John Hanke has totally screwed the Poochyena or if there’s life in the game yet.”

Nick P’s on duty for our upcoming Tekken 8 review, but aside from that he’s continued on his run through Lies of P and a bit of Dead by Daylight.

There hasn’t been much gaming for Ade, but he’s lived vicariously through his son building enormous towers in Minecraft and his partner building enormous Dinosaur parks in Jurassic World Evolution 2! It’s presumably a lot like having a personal Twitch stream, but with less talking.

Jason’s been playing Palworld – that survival game with Pokémon-like monsters and guns that’s now in Early Access – which is way better than he was expecting, and “possibly the coolest take on the monster catching genre we’ve had in ages. Also shows that an open-world monster game doesn’t have to run like poop.”

It was a bunch of ports and remasters for Reuben, who finished up our Another Code: Recollection review and is carrying on with Apollo Justice Trilogy. When not playing those, he’s been loving his time with World Tour in Street Fighter 6.

And Steve has blazed a trail through the new Prince of Persia, “which is up there with Hollow Knight and Symphony of the Night in terms of Metroidvania games,” so it’s ruddy good in his estimations. He’s also got his co-op gang back to playing Back 4 Blood, which is more palatable with its card system than it was at launch, and continued on with Astral Chain, and some indie games that he’s plugging away at for reviews.

That’s us, but what about you? What have you been playing?