Thrillho

@GamingGod I can easily have a vision in my head but find it really difficult to implement. Some amazing designs on the subreddits for these games though (I imagine mostly on PC though..)

I really enjoyed Planet Zoo, mostly for career mode as I enjoy the management side of things but suck at the creativity side of designing landscapes and large enclosures. It's one of the reasons that I bounced off Planet Coaster 2 as I struggled with designing rides.

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@Dodoo Who knows if it means anything for the 4th game. Borderlands 2 released DLC 5 years after the game released to tie into the 3rd game, while Mass Effect 2 had the Arrival DLC to tie into ME3 (but with only two years between the games).

A good way of building some hype and getting people playing again.

Star Wars Outlaws is a real 7/10 experience but the bits it does well are great fun. The sort of game that would have been much more fun as a linear experience than needing to fill fairly empty open worlds with unnecessary guff.

Hard mode isn’t hard… apart when you go straight into it from normal mode.

Getting the bad ending on hard mode wasn’t difficult but getting the whole plethora of other trophies on normal was.

Nice review. I loved Returnal so this sounds like a nice progression of that; useful and interesting new additions and new aesthetics but with the underlying gameplay similar. I still think Returnal had some of the best movement of any game I’ve played.

There’s also nothing better in this sort of game than having a run when you’re in the zone, have a perfect weapon and ability load out, and the level layout works in your favour.

Now I’m a dad gamer I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to get into this as I can mostly only player in 60-90 min goes but the new additions make it sound a bit easier to do so.

The lack of Outer Wilds in this list is borderline criminal.

Such a beautiful game and I loved the different planets and some of the concepts they came up with for them. Learning to fly that damn ship (and, more importantly, land it) took a fair bit of effort.

Landing on the tiny station orbiting the sun for that trophy was an utter nightmare too!

It sucks but from reading other parts of that post when it came out;

1) They have a lead translator who has been there 10 years (i.e. from the start) so it's not completely replacing the team.. for now.
2) If they're in the very early stages of whatever they're next making, they probably don't need two people for the job currently.

I imagine there's a fair bit of downsizing of teams after the release of a game as studios, especially of this size, can't keep an entire team on standby for their next game.

I certainly don't make any apologies for it but it sounds pretty rubbish and it seems so tough out there for people in the industry at the present time, even more so if even part of peoples' work can be "replaced" by AI.

I was far too young to be playing RE1 when it came out as I was only 8 but a mate had it and we were enthralled. And back in the days of memory cards he knew a guy who had unlocked the rocket launcher so got a copy of the save to play with that.

When I borrowed it I remember being so scared when the giant snake first appeared that I turned the console off

I admired your guide though @Quintumply as for the Lost Souls yours was in a sensible order to make it easy to complete, and not just a list of where to find and complete them like many were.

Excellent games... if you can get past the swinging hippo tail section in Lion King anyway.

@Metonymy To be fair, @graymamba didn’t specify which year when he said GOTY.

I've got it downloaded to play at some point but as a gamer dad these days I need to find the right time to start another 100hr epic.

@johncalmc It's Friday Night every night in the calmc household.

@johncalmc Which photo??

@Vermines Enjoy! I still think Returnal is one of the best games of the generation but beating that first boss takes some effort.

Definitely one I’m keen to finally play though, although probably not at the £50 price point.

A 9?? So you’re saying this is better than Baby Steps??? /s

@Kairuuu Two different speed run trophies is mad. I didn’t get the platinum for HK and looks like I won’t get it here either!

I loved Hollow Knight and it’s one a “white whale” platinum trophy for me as I could never complete the pantheons.

I adored the world and exploration, and though the platforming and combat felt great.

Very looking forward to this at some point!

Just give us the Expedition 60 game we all want. SMASH!

@LiamCroft Any idea on how it runs on the base PS5 given there are frame rate drop offs with the beefed up machine?

@Truegamer79 I always forget this was a PS2 game with how good it looked. That said, MGS2 was a pretty good looking game on that console too.

It also can’t possibly have been on PS2 as there is no way this game is twenty years old 💀

@Oram77 I mean, you could try actually playing it.

It’s one of my favourite games of all time. The artwork and music are sublime, and I loved the sense of exploration in the game. The combat felt really tight to me with some excellent bosses and the platforming also felt great.

Can’t wait to finally play this!

@Czar_Khastik No worries, sorry I forgot to tag you in my reply!

I’ve had to drop things down to story mode to just plough through these bosses now as I just want it done. And while the Maelle glass cannon build helps speed things up it takes even more of the pleasure of the combat away.

@get2sammyb I’m almost there now with one trophy to get but honestly the grind has kind of soured my experience of the game somewhat. Getting a character to lvl99 in particular has been a chore.

So many areas are just constant boss rush setups though which is fun for a bit but gets somewhat tedious after a while, especially if you get KO’d after spending 20+ mins on one fight.

After playing so much Yakuza, having a Japanese dub with subtitles doesn’t bother me.

However, in the first game it did feel I was missing out a little as there were no subtitles or anything for some of the general chatter that NPCs made as you moved around areas which felt a bit strange to me.

@nessisonett That’s the real game.

I found Evil Genius 2 really disappointing. The fact you only own one lair is rubbish too as any early design mistakes are tricky to rectify. Quite repetitive too.

Damn, I reckon I’ve been a PS+ subscriber since around 2013 now when they used to give away loads of games a month on PS3.

The only benefit to closing it down was that it made me finally cash out my points. A nice £30 for free.

A shame I didn’t realise some of my points had expired though..

This game will be dining off the Jason Schreier seal of approval if nothing else. His comments on the game are what’s had it on my radar though but this review confirms some of the worries I have about it.

Some odd comments about the scoring of the review though; it partly shows why numerical score are nonsense but also the mentality that anything not given a 9 or 10 is utter garbage.

The original game was weird; I thought the overall story and premise was quite neat. But then it seemed like there weee only about four types of enemy and three weapon types, and with only a small number of planets to land on you ended up with a ridiculous number of quests and side quests within seconds of landing on each one.

Some fun companions though and their side quests were some of the highlights.

Inscryption is an excellent game. Such a crazy game that is spoilt by knowing too much about it but well worth it. A really tough but satisfying platinum too.

Dredge is a great chill game but also pretty dark at times. I thought the minimal story fell a little flat at the end and there was a bit too much faff for the platinum but still a good game.

Knights and Bikes is a gem. I played it solo where you can switch between characters but it would be amazing played couch co-op. So many neat little nods to Cornish life if you know the area too.

@QiaraIris Next year? It was three years between the initial release and final DLC for the last game (on PC). Don’t expect that definitive edition until the end of the decade!

I actually had the PSone mouse that I used for Player Manager back in the day..

With the literal billions they’ve made (and are still making) off GTA5 across three(!) console generations, they could probably release this for free without financial concerns, especially if they’re going to monetise an online component.

A fun game but a weak main story and a bit too much bloat, even for a Yakuza game. But the two main protagonists are some of the best in gaming and work wonderfully alongside each other.

Minus points also awarded for locking the high XP dungeon behind DLC, making the grind for the top level trophy pretty infuriating without it.

I only just finished the game with the platinum and loved it. The main gameplay loop is pretty chill but fun, and I loved the random mini games throughout.

Some spin-offs with different focuses and game styles would be good fun and the variety of different directions they could go could be really interesting. Perfect for a shorter indie title.

@Ryne-Gaia I’m almost certain something like the level 20 mod would allow you to start at that level. So not necessarily a “super easy mode” for the whole game but certainly for a lot of it.

That pill needs an “I played the demo to death” option. I can’t remember if that was an OPM demo or from somewhere else.

@Quintumply TP Hospital was great fun and obviously a must play if you enjoyed Theme Hospital back in the day.

I found TP University didn’t quite hit the mark for me. It was cool that each level had a theme around it but there was a lot of waiting around when objectives required you to wait to the end of the academic year.

KIRYUUUUUUU CHAAAAAAN!

Both my music and gaming collection has gone predominantly digital over the last few years.

For both, it’s partly a storage issue but also a bit of a feeling of unnecessary waste; buying CDs just got pointless as I’d import it to my laptop and then never use it and in both cases it’s more plastic etc that just isn’t needed.

I do buy some of my favourite albums on vinyl but have never done the same with games as the price difference between the two media is so great.

The nostalgia of reading through Mega Drive manuals and things like the RDR maps people have posted are strong (Witcher 3 even came with some stickers I seem to remember) but the only reason I bough a couple of PS5 games on disc were because there were no sales on games when the console was new. Almost all of my purchases are through PSN sales now.

@johncalmc The question is can you build a hostess club on the island that you then need to run yourself?

@MrGilly69 as the previous comment said, there is so much in the game that isn’t explained to you and that I’ve found out via spoiler free Reddit posts.

But the sheer freedom to do what you want is insane. It’s kind of amazing that Larian were happy to make a game where you will miss significant amounts of content. Again, it’s funny reading Reddit posts where people have completely missed (or straight up killed) companions. And there was a video on Twitter recently that showed the insanely different ways people had approached one of the early big encounters.

Extraordinary game.

@Nepp67 it isn’t the last one with Kiryu…

@AFCC This game is all about linking Kiryu’s timeline in LaD so it might not make much sense to you in places but it’ll I don’t think it’s essential. Probably more important to have played the main games, especially Y6.

@LiamCroft I can stack my Essential subscription at the discount price through the app (although 25% discount, not 30%)

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