It’s definitely ramping up to Christmas, and the reveal of the 30th Anniversary PlayStation consoles in classic grey has reopened the question of whether a PS5 Pro is now an essential purchase. Because it’s a nice retro grey. Whatever your feelings about a piece of tech that lives inside a closed TV cabinet, it’s all very cool, and nice to see Sony going the extra mile by making literally everything grey.
When I’ve not been looking at pictures of consoles, I’ve been playing the wonderful The Plucky Squire, the calming Caravan Sand Witch, Star Wars Outlaws and a bunch of other stuff inbetween.
Aran has played some demos including Slopecrashers, Hush Hush High, and Pairs & Perils. He’s also continued his playthrough of Final Fantasy XVI, saying, “I’m at a stage where it has now opened up after the first few hours. I’m enjoying it a lot. I also finished Beyond Galaxyland for review and that will be published next week.”
It’s also been some Star Wars Outlaws for Ade, who tells us, “I’ve been really enjoying it! It perfectly captures the atmosphere of the original films. Best Star Wars-y thing in years. Which, considering the low bar set by the recent TV shows, isn’t really saying much… nonetheless, Outlaws is very good by any standard”.
Tuffcub has been playing Spider-Man 2, though he’s not been totally sold by it, “It seems to be more of the same so I didn’t bother playing much”, he continues, “I’ve also been playing Alan Wake Remastered which I finished, v good, Transformers Fall of Cybertron, just because, and Astro Bot. The God of War level in Astro Bot is better than the entirety of Ragnarok. Fact.”
Jim has also been enjoying an Astro Bot love in, “It has taken up most of my time this week and has been another perfect game for PlayStation Portal. Naturally, I’m going for a completionist run – although I rarely chase after trophies nowadays, Astro Bot offers some major incentives for those wanting that sweet PlayStation nostalgia rush.
That’s not all though, because “Speaking of trophies, now that the TimeSplitters trilogy on PS4 and PS5 support them, I’ve been playing the first game in the series. I’ve never played it properly despite sinking countless hours into both sequels and it still holds up pretty nicely. The PS2 emulation’s rewind feature adds a handy thematic twist, allowing me to effortlessly rerun levels and pull myself back from death’s door. This has been particularly useful during the nail-baiting challenges.”
Nic B was one Bot from 100% completion on Astro when the game crashed. He cried, “I have to redo 7 of the hard levels!
Beyond that I have played [[heavily redacted]]. It’s pretty cool, if you like that sort of thing.”
Meanwhile, Steve has been playing something he describes as, “A perfect party of nostalgia and homage that really pays tribute to the great games of the past while introducing fascinating new modes of control and interaction – but enough about Golden Axe: Beast Rider… More seriously, Astro Bot is just pure gaming joy distilled into an experience that constantly keeps me smiling. Beast Rider can fuck right off with its awful controls and instant death pits. I have been working through some reviews so expect What the Car and Squirrel With a Gun soon whilst another one is possibly embargoed but is a remaster of one of the most neglected Wii exclusives and the review will drop next week.”
Miguel has caught up on the main story in Zenless Zone Zero, played and beaten Thank Goodness You’re Here and also Clickolding, and he’s been playing some Fortnite too! Tef had a little gaming time to himself, telling us, “I played a bit of that new Warhammer game. Warhammer….. Boltgun? Got to say, the graphics are really something.”
Finally, Gamoc mostly played Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag, along with some other bits. He says, “I love Black Flag despite the stupid stuff, like trailing missions and boat stealth missions, I was worried revisiting would be rough because of those.”
What about you, what have you played? And are you tempted by any of the 30th Anniversary PlayStation gear? Maybe just a DualSense…
TSBonyman
Astro Bot is an absolute darling of a game, it’d be easy enough to race through it in no time but i’m restricting myself to a couple of levels per day, including replaying those to find everything. I unlocked a few of the extra levels (the Triangle ones) and they are challenging -took me quite a few goes to get through – but thankfully quite short so they never become too frustrating. So many magic moments to discover, it’s really well put together. My only gripe is that the photo mode is locked away until later on when it really should have been available from the beginning.
Andrewww
My playthrough of Forbidden West came to an abrupt stop when the game left Plus on Tuesday. To me, it makes no sense to take such first party games out of Plus and away from players, especially at short notice, it’s just plain annoying. And Sony won’t even get more of my money in this case, as I just got the disc version on my son’s library account for free, and I’m back in the game for another month to finish it. So, I’m playing Forbidden West still, but rather in spite of Sony’s efforts to stop me.
My son also had to get a new racing wheel, as they stopped my perfectly fine G25 from working a while back, another case of Sony just annoying their long-time fans.