Old_Man_Harper

Really good game since the patches earlier in the year and they haven’t stopped tuning it. Think of a grimmer Fallout. A lot of time crouched in ruined buildings wondering what to do now and bursts of violence that are so very satisfying when you get it right.

I thought that was an order of magnitude better than the first episode. The Left4Dead bit was entertaining, but above all kudos to the producers for not pulling any punches with the ‘big spoiler’. After last week, I really feared they might.

I didn’t reckon much to it. Ellie seemed more of a brat than the somewhat moody and ‘difficult’ game character and Dina is suddenly the hottest girl in Jackson - their relationship seemed a bit implausible. Abby and her friends look like they should start a band and save civilisation through the power of music. Oh, and the ‘therapy’ part.

On the plus side, there were a few good bits and there is clearly room for improvement.

I prefer Tommy’s jacket.

Unfortunately that does suggest that there won’t be another DA game. I’m sure people who haven’t tried it yet will enjoy it - it looks good and has great combat. I felt the dialogue was less good though, and each character’s arc seemed to end with a fairly inconsequential binary choice that you made on their behalf.

I started it today on Series X and it’s really good! Like a more brutal Fallout, with plenty of ‘I’ll just go and have a look over there’ (famous last words…) about it. No bugs that I have noticed. They will not announce another version during a timed exclusivity period, but I’m sure a PlayStation version will arrive as it is clearly a game they intend to support for years.

I don’t think that western-style buyouts where one company buys the other entirely are particularly a thing in Japan. I don’t know why, maybe a regulatory issue or maybe just the nature of their business culture.

Sorry to hear this, I played Double Exposure at the weekend and thought it was excellent, not quite as ‘cosy’ as True Colors but really engrossing (I’d say you do need to have played the first game though). Also, the ending hints at an intriguing potential direction for the future of the series.

I wonder how they’ll structure it? The game has lots of flashbacks and time jumps. Even after the end credits finished I was expecting ‘Six Months Later’ or something to appear on the screen.

Sounds like a way to completely ruin the game, to be honest! I just can’t see how it would work on some of the big battles.

So sad for the people who worked hard on it. 😢

I’d like to see an approval system for your character among fellow students and more of a feeling of competition between the houses over the school year, even if that doesn’t include quidditch. Also, I deliberately avoided learning the unforgivable curses in the hope that the game would reward me for doing so, but it seems there was no penalty for using them.

I feel very sorry for the developers. All their efforts for years and then this. Nobody says that there’s anything wrong with the game, just that it isn’t distinctive enough to stand out. Perhaps it could be relaunched as a free-to-play game.

Milking a bit more cash out of Forza Horizon 5 would make good business sense - it’s a few years old now and those licenses won’t last forever.

It would need to be carefully moderated or at least require a player to have purchased the game or played it for a few hours.

Reading (and downvoting) some of the pathetic ‘reviews’ on the Xbox store, particularly for Game Pass games is depressing. For every new release, there seems to be a crowd of toddlers who won’t play the game but will flock there to give it a 1* review and call it ‘woke DEI trash’. I know that Microsoft removed some reviews after an indie developer complained, but generally it seems to be a free-for-all and I really don’t know why they continue to allow it.

I think they promised something like 5 years’ support for the game when it launched way back when. Clearly it’s now an indefinite commitment…

It’s a bit ungenerous compared with True Colors - for the £15 extra you paid for the ultimate edition of that you got the Steph dlc and the remastered versions of both LiS and Before the Storm.

Really delighted to see this, plus a release date too!

Whatever they do, I bet they still won’t be happy with the sales they get. It seems like they have unrealistic expectations for everything they release.

@DennisReynolds this puzzles me. I don’t understand why they don’t market their console or games more. They certainly used to (remember the terrific ‘birth to death’ ad?) but this generation they don’t even seem to have tried at all. 🤷‍♂️

I have PS+ and have had Game Pass since launch. I’d say I’m happy with both. But then I like to play lots of different games and I guess the reality is that for a pretty hefty chunk of the world’s gamers, CoD, Fortnite and FIFA (as was) are all they really want.

@Foxhound I have many solo hours under my (pirate) belt. There’s still a lot to do, you just have to be a bit cagey. Besides, battles are still fun even if you get sunk - you never really lose anything unless you go sailing around with a hold full of treasure chests.

@GamingFan4Lyf Happy to help - I completed the game solo, although I didn’t get the best ending, which needs you to complete a couple more things that might be easier with other players.

Another tip - there’s an easy way up to the picnic table that doesn’t involve you spending an entire real-life morning building a tower up to it. Like I did…

If you build your first base closer to the ‘mysterious machine’, you’ll be safe from prowling wolf spiders. Also, they are nocturnal and sleep through the daytime. I never went out after dark!

Tip: there’s also a red ant nest near where you start. If you assemble the appropriate ant-parts armour, the soldier ants will ignore you. You can then get bigger enemies like orb weaver spiders to chase you, lure them to the ant nest and let your new soldier ant pals kill them.

I think it requires more than one play through to get everything.

Apologies if this has been asked before elsewhere, but can the game be played solo? I don’t really have any friends to team up with (I’m at the older end as far as gamers go) and am not keen on randoms. Has anyone tried it?

See you on the sea! Arrr!

It is niche. I’m the only one of my Xbox friends who played it. But if you think you might like it, then you probably will.

@shonenjump86 It’s fun - the game is set up for having a laugh. You can fight other ships if you want but quite often people will team up to do missions and the map is big enough to let you putter about and do your own thing.

@DexTepa Once you level up a couple of times you get the opportunity to choose a ‘feat’ - if you pick ‘Alert’ for all your party, you’ll have high initiative and your party will get first turn in every fight. It really makes it easier.

I’ll get this, it looks like my sort of thing. What with Stalker 2 on the way, it looks like ‘mysterious alien zone’ is 2024’s equivalent of ‘time loop’.

Grounded is a terrific game, I’d say the best console survival game. Unfortunately because it was a ‘small team project’ it spent so long in early access that the full launch didn’t make much of a ripple. Don’t be fooled by the chirpy teenage characters it is pretty savage! Emphatically not for arachnophobes - check out some of the YouTube clips!

Pentiment is very much a game for ‘The Rest is History’ fans - it even has a bibliography and it did interest me enough to want to read more about the Protestant Reformation.

My GOTY for 2022, a grown-up game for grown-ups. Manon Gage isn’t the only great performance, they are very good all round and I even quite enjoyed the films when I’d assembled them in order. Obviously there’s more to it than that, but it’s hard to describe without spoilers. Safe to say that if you think you’d like it, you probably will.

I had a look the other day and it said come back on the 19th and put the disc in and you can have it for a tenner. Which is exactly what happened.

It won’t be the same without the BIG DAMN LEVER that LL had on the cabinet. It was so satisfying to slam it forward, although it did mean you’d use all your fuel up and smash into the lunar surface.