tomassi

I always seem to buy these games (on big discounts to be fair) but never get over halfway before getting bored. I currently have Black Flag, Unity, Syndicate, Origins and Odyssey in my backlog. All started, none finished!

Meh. Don't have VR so can't make use of those games. Not interested in the Among Us rip off, the Knight game looks as old as it is, and I tried Knockout City when the beta came out and wasn't exactly blown away by it.

Oh well, always next month!

Wild West? Check
Top down/isometric? Check
Not turn based? Check

This is right up my street!

Terrible month IMO.

First Class Trouble? Would rather wait and get Among Us next month to be honest.
Kingdoms of Amalur looks as old as it is.
Knockout City was OK when I tried it but nothing overly special.
No interest in the VR games because I don't have VR!

I don't get this. So the trial countdown starts when you hit download? Does that mean, presuming it will take, say, an hour to download, that I can then play it for X amount of hours, or does the timer continue to count down even whilst the game is sat unopened on your home screen?

I'm playing the Riders Republic trial which is quite enjoyable to be honest. I'd get the game in a sale one day for sure.

I may also download the other PS trial games - Little Big Planet, Death Stranding etc and see how much game time I get on them once they've downloaded!

Cool, I like playing Stardew Valley with my daughter, so will be sure to get this!

Pretty sure the previous versions on the store went for £24.99 (and as low as £14.99 when in sales). How on earth is this worth an extra £30?!

No eFootball?!

Seriously though, if and when the bugs are ironed out and new content added, that would surely be on this list. This time next year maybe?

@Slippship If that's your opinion, that's your opinion mate. Personally I can't see too much difference with Apple and Spotify though. I mean, in terms of morals and greediness etc. Spotify pay how much to artists? 0.0000004p a play per song or something ridiculous.

We all still use these products and services despite all that though, so are we any better?

I like it. There, I said it.

@Slippship you kind of lost your argument over Apple's morals and ethics when you said you sub to Spotify

I snapped up Lonely Mountains Downhill, which I enjoyed on my Son's Xbox Game Pass. And I finally bit on Uncharted Lost Legacy for £7.99 even though I'm sure it will be on Plus sooner rather than later. Finally, I also snapped up the Mafia Trilogy, mainly because the standalone first game was £20 and the whole trilogy was £27. Around £9 per game, can't argue with that!

@Bingbongboyo Codemasters were a whole different thing when I was a kid! Along with Ocean they were huge in the Spectrum market! Great days!

I'll settle for a remake of Super Stuntman from the ZX Spectrum days please Codemasters! Or maybe a remade Dizzy Collection?

Would happily do this but A) the download thing is annoying and B) the offer ends 28th October. Why? Can't it just be an ongoing thing? Why do there have to be date limits on it?

Also, if the trial starts from when you download it, does that mean the timer is counting down even if I download it and then don't play it straightaway???

@UnlimitedSevens same! What's worse is, having a wife and kids, I actually get fairly limited time to play on the PS, so I could realistically not get through this backlog before I die!

@UnlimitedSevens oh man, my backlog is similar. I'm a nightmare for a bargain. If I see a game sub £5 that is well regarded, then I'm all over it. Similarly if there is a big AAA game sub £10 I'm on it as well! I recently bought Watchdogs on sale for £3.99 not because I have any huge interest to play it, but because it cost £3.99!!

I went for Minit, Spelunky, Hellblade and Salt & Sanctuary all for a total of £15. Nice! The Hotline Miami Collection was showing as free on the store as well for some reason so I got that, even though I own them seperately. Not sure why it was showing as free, but jump on it if you can!

Kind of looks fun, but Steep is kind of fun and I never play it, so probably won't bother with this until it's sub £20.

@amenohi it is true, the kids (or certainly my son, his mates and his cousins) only play F2P or multiplayer games such as Fortnite, PvZ, Roblox, Minecraft etc. I've tried to get my son to play offline games a million times and he's just not interested!

@HUD_Wayne I think it's just a way of doing business, like in the physical world. If you notice, certainly in the UK, there are lots of streets that have, say 4 estate agents in close proximity. The wisdom being that they will all get business because people generally walk from one to the other. So this is the video game equivelant, having lots of F2P shooters next to each other!

Or maybe they are just all unoriginal!

I play Brawlout with my kids sometimes. It's fun enough. I believe the Kung Fu Panda game we got years ago with Plus would fall under this category as well if memory serves me correct?

@TheArt I don't think I can handle it! Makes me too nervous. I like to enjoy playing games, not get stressed out by them! Maybe I'll play the first hour just to say I've played it!

Good to see them adding big, newer games like Last of Us 2. Undoubtedly it will only be for a couple of months probably but still better than nothing. Would be good to see some PS5 games on there soon though.

I'm quite a scaredy cat so never played a whole lot of Last of Us. For wimps like me, is Last of Us 2 more or less scary than the first one? I guess I mean, are those scary clicker things in it more or less than the first one?!

@Otherbarry yes!

I can't believe the level of excitement on this page when, right next to it on this websites home page is about three articles absolutely destroying Konami's abysmal efforts at making PES a F2P game! Why would anyone have any faith in them to restore these other franchises?! In fact, I can't believe they are even taking all this work on when the state of eFootball has been received with such dismay. You'd think they would be working round the clock to try and salvage that as best they can!

At least they actually finally communicated something I guess! Total embarrassment!

Funny thing is they probably paid someone a decent amount of money to come up with that!

I honestly can't fathom how a game developer has let this happen, let alone as big a one as Konami. They've literally killed all their other franchises but I never thought they would do the same to PES. It's the worst release of a game I've ever seen. The worst marketing I've ever seen. It's embarrassing.

As for the game, it could potentially come good in the future. As the review says though, if there is a build out there (that youtubers played) that is better than this one, why on earth wouldn't Konami release that instead? It's like they are actively trying to ruin the franchise for some reason? Maybe they are?

The passing is atrocious. My Nan could pass quicker and with more force than this game, and she passed away three years ago! The players slip and slide around just as bad as FIFA's do. There are glitches galore. Graphics are average at best. Sound is pretty bad. Commentary and menus are, as usual, abysmal.

I hope it redeems itself in the future but, unfortunately, football fans are used to yearly releases so will probably have forgotten about eFootball by the time it's playable. And are Konami going to keep spending money on developing it if there isn't anyone playing it?

@Integrity I too only play offline but I don't actually game a whole lot so I tend to just play a few kick off games against the AI as and when I get an hour here or there. FIFA 21 sucked me into the FUT world for the first time and I'm keen to avoid that this year because it really is a time sink and detrimental to playing other games etc. Career mode seems pretty good to me, personally. As I said though, I don't invest a lot of time into it. I'd say the career mode is far more in depth than PES, but far less in depth than Football Manager of course.

I don't know if you've played eFootball yet but I think you'll be sorely disappointed by it. Not saying it may not get better in a years time but, unfortunately for Konami, I think most people will have deserted the game by then. If that happens, will Konami just forget the whole thing and kill it dead? Plenty of F2P games have gone that route fairly quickly so who knows. Hopefully not as we need more than one game on the market!

Happy playing, whichever game it is you choose dude!

@AFCC the curious thing is, it only has 9 teams and 5 minute games OFFLINE. If you play online you can enter an event and choose from 200 teams and the games are longer. I mean, why?!! If there are 200 teams in the database actually ON THE GAME, why can't us offline players access them as well? What's the sense in not allowing that?

And I did test online just so I could see what other teams are on there, and the online is abysmal. Laggy to all hell, I got disconnected after about a minute! Never again.

FIFA 22 all the way for me this year. 2nd year in a row I'll be FIFA over PES unfortunately.

@kejsi-sensei Don't get me wrong, I'm not a FIFA fanboy by a long stretch and I'd happily play both games each year if I enjoyed both. I simply don't like PES anymore and even more so this new iteration.

I agree with him about microtransactions though, they are pretty bad in FIFA! I haven't, and wouldn't ever spend a penny on them in any game though to be honest.

@Integrity I always thought like you, PES is best FIFA is rubbish. But then I realised I only actually got excited about the data updates for PES, and never actually played the game because I no longer enjoyed it. I turned to FIFA and, some aspects of it's gameplay are a bit soulless perhaps, but it's still better than PES IMO. Sadly I have to report that the new eFootball is even worse. Menus still terrible, commentary still terrible, the generic players still awful, graphics not great AND the gameplay is bad. I know most people's critiscm of FIFA is 'floaty' or 'skatey' players, but eFootball is just as bad!

@Integrity they're really not! FIFA has way more animations and movement than PES which still seems to play in some sort of 8 directional, tank-like way. Don't get me wrong, I wish that PES was still good, but it sadly hasn't been for a while now IMO. It's a shame, because I was always a PES guy. But last couple of years I've gone FIFA because of how bad PES has got (again, IMO).

FIFA always won the day on literally everything apart from gameplay but even that now seems improved. Or certainly, when held up against eFootball.

@Integrity we must play a different game! The animations in PES 2021 are awful! The running animations alone are so weird. All straight robot arms! Never seen anyone run like that before, let alone a professional athlete

FIFA has it's faults, but the new one isn't too bad (so far). Certainly better than eFootball which I tried this morning and is very, very bad! How someone at Konami signed this off for release is beyond me.

The 15 second mark that car nearly wipes out the whole crowd of watchers, but I think they magically teleport back at just the right time!

I played a lot of FIFA 21 and FIFA 22 feels way different, in my opinion at least. Players are heavier and way slower than last year, so if the pace put you off last year, you may well enjoy this new version (until it's undoubtedly patched to suit the youtubers).

As for graphics, I'm playing the trial on the PS5 and I was actually underwhelmed compared to FIFA 21 on PS5. I didn't think it looked as good personally, but maybe that's just me?

@Danloaded my kids newly arrived Smyths catalogue says Among Us is due November!

I skipped it all, as I actually wanted to play most of the 10 hour trial rather than watching cut scenes!

I wish EA actually put as much time into scanning the faces of the actual players rather than celebrities for cut scenes. Seriously, there are A LOT of good players in this game with terrible generic faces.

I'm also tempted by Train Sim World 2 but, by the time you've bought it and all the DLC it costs about £8,000, and I don't want it that much!

@get2sammyb

It's hard not to be when you've been playing these games for 30 years!! I still enjoy them regardless though to be fair.

Reads the article. Smiles.

Plays FIFA 22. Shakes head as quickly realises none of the above make any difference whatsoever and it's still exactly the same game as the previous year.

Meh generally. I do own Moonlighter though, which is a pretty good game! It's nice to see PS Now being extended beyond three games, and including some niche indie's though (regardless of whether they interest me personally).

Well, that's made my mind up! FIFA 22 it is. Even if this is free, they've handled the launch so badly (typical Konami) that it doesn't even warrant a download at this point.

Maybe at the end of the FIFA 22 play cycle, if PES (not eFootball) has improved by then I'll chance it. At the moment, I just feel embarrassed for the Konami officials and people who try and put a positive spin on it!

Played it briefly on my son's Xbox, on Gamepass. It's OK but didn't delve any deeper.

That FIST game looks good, so I'd be happy with that for PS5 and Uncharted Lost Legacy for PS4, along with Shovel Knight Treasure Trove as mentioned above! That would be a great line up (Day one release, big AAA studio game and a revered indie gem).

Anime? No thanks, you're alright! Rather it stay as it is to be honest. Or just roll Plus and Now into each other.

"And finally, Tennis World Tour 2 is just about the best tennis game on current PlayStation consoles — although to say that there's any competition would be a lie".

This seems like an odd statement to make when AO Tennis 2 actually had decent enough reviews (69 on Metacritic compared to TWT2 58). I thought Sammy would know that seeing he's a huge tennis fan?

AO Tennis 2 is actually available on PS Now for those who want to try it instead. It's not amazing but I've heard it's better than TWT2.

11pm?! Guess my son won't get to experience it then.