Currently Playing

[Wrathbone]

Just finished Star Wars Outlaws and both DLC. I played a few hours when it first came out and thought it had potential, but it was rough around the edges and there were some questionable design choices, particularly around the stealth mechanics. A year of improvements later and it was worth the wait - this is an absolute delight of a game now. It’s arguably greater than the sum of its parts, as none of the gameplay features are particularly innovative or remarkable, but they all hang together well, resulting in a game that is consistently good fun.

The stealth is where the most drastic improvements have been made. No longer are there auto-fails on detection, meaning you can blast your way out of a tight spot or flee and hide, or if you’re quick enough you can just sprint up to the enemy who’s spied you and lamp them. This is much more in the style of Han Solo muddling his way through a situation than the rigid Splinter Cell mandatory sneaking it was originally.

Aiding you is your critter companion, Nix, who proved to be not just invaluable and central to the game, but undeniably loveable. There’s a mission where you’re forced to operate without him and it hammers home just how important he is by not accommodating for his absence at all, which makes things much more difficult. The rest of the cast of characters is similarly excellent, with the sardonic commando droid ND-5 stealing the show. I found myself genuinely caring for Kay Vess and her ragtag acquaintances.

Outlaws has been so badly maligned from its awkward release that I fear we may never see a sequel, which is a tremendous shame because I think this may be my favourite Star Wars game since KOTOR 2. Nothing else has captured the feeling of being an itinerant space mercenary quite like this (and a cheating, swindling Sabacc player, which I became obsessed with to a similar degree as Gwent) - in many ways, it does a lot of what Starfield tried to achieve better than Starfield. And it’s Star Wars to boot, done very well indeed, with some of the most sumptuous Star Wars locations I’ve ever seen realised in a game. It captures the original trilogy feel perfectly, while seamlessly incorporating things from both the prequel and sequel trilogies, and it does so more effectively than Disney has managed most of the time. If anyone is still on the fence about Outlaws, I’d urge them to give it a chance now.

[Sly Boots]

Very interesting to read! I've wavered on picking it up a couple of times due to the negativity on its release, but if it's a right rollicking time now I shall check it out

[Wrathbone]

If I had any criticism, it’s that the space exploration and combat isn’t quite up to scratch, though it’s reasonable enough and isn’t a huge part of the game.

[Lenny Solidus]

It's kind of ironic that I've been eyeing up buying the game for a good few weeks now*, I do so wish they had delayed the game initially as I mentioned in a post from last year.

The negative reception it received perhaps while not being completely avoided because well we all know "Ubisoftbad" and I wish that could have been filtered through a little more to the ever-growing online praise I've seen for it overall. Over on the Guru 3d forum, more specifically, over there a dedicated group have slowly been coaxing others to give it a chance and many of those who did have been singing its praises, I always intended to buy it at some point but after playing the small demo I honestly can't say it shifted in convincing me to at the time. Quite the opposite, really. I don't think it's the type of game that lends itself to a hugely restrictive demo.

That said when you have a game that is now down to just £18 I'm going to purchase it later today but put it aside for a little while as I already now have several other huge open world endeavours on the go as it is, and I feel it takes away the magic somewhat playing more than one at a time. I did however pick up The Ubisoft Avatar game for the time being to try out the two-man coop play with Snowy and that game is unlike anything else I've seen visually (disregarding Horizon 2 which I've yet to play) though currently I'm awaiting the third person update for it coming later this month.

* That's an abject lie, I've been watching site prices for it somewhat feverishly since it released as the Ubistore has it listed for £60 for just the standard edition.

And bought.

Spoiler

[Sly Boots]

Yeah, I played it for about an hour last night, quite enjoyed it.

Main complaint is it took away the ability to bet on the racing in the starting area after half a dozen attempts. True, I'd failed every single one, but I was about to win soon, I swear! No, I don't have a problem... ¬_¬

[Wrathbone]

I did very nearly get banned from several sabacc tables for blatant cheating. Never got sucked into the racing as it didn't seem to have any strategy.

[Sly Boots]

I did very nearly get banned from several sabacc tables for blatant cheating. Never got sucked into the racing as it didn't seem to have any strategy.

So tonight I went on with the intent of playing for an hour or so exploring the first major city you get to... spent the majority of the time playing sabacc

[Alan]

Dishonored
I should have loved this but I bounced off it hard on release because LMB activaes your right and and RMB your left and my brain couldnt get past that! Playing it now on Steam Deck where left trigger woirks the left hand abd right the right and my brain is much happier! Oh and yeah, I do love it! Its a fantastic game. You could nitpick the more wooden story elements and such but the core gameplay loop is just great. I've reached the "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" so I'm not sure how much I have left but hey, theres a whole second game waiting for me after... oh and another half a game too! What a time to be alive.

[Animalmother]

Dishonored
I should have loved this but I bounced off it hard on release because LMB activaes your right and and RMB your left and my brain couldnt get past that! Playing it now on Steam Deck where left trigger woirks the left hand abd right the right and my brain is much happier! Oh and yeah, I do love it! Its a fantastic game. You could nitpick the more wooden story elements and such but the core gameplay loop is just great. I've reached the "curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal" so I'm not sure how much I have left but hey, theres a whole second game waiting for me after... oh and another half a game too! What a time to be alive.

Excellent games, especially the 2nd one. One of my proudest gaming achievements is making it through Dishonored 2 without killing anyone on the hardest difficulty.

[Lenny Solidus]

Sniper Elite V2 Remastered

As I felt like returning to the series and was caught between reinstalling SE5 or buying the newer Sniper Elite: Resistance I opted instead to give the Remastered version of SEV2 a shot, and I'm extremely mixed on it thus far. On one hand the remaster treatment is actually quite good I've tried a few of the challenge maps and they are all nicely up to date in terms of lighting, shadows and textures. Aside from the animations feeling dated still, you'd be easily mistaken for thinking it's far newer than it is. A 2012 game remastered in 2019 being played in 2025 although my main concern is that there seems to be some form of memory leak issue going on after more than ten to fifteen minutes of play, and as such you can visibly see the game chugging and feel it in the controls. And it's a damn shame just as I was starting to invest some time and get immersed the game just completely craps itself and requires a restart. From what I can tell the word is the devs were always well aware of said issue, and it was simply never fixed.

Star Wars: Outlaws

Oh man, I've not yet played enough but I can already see where much of the love for this game directly stems from. If you can put aside some of the jankyness (I'm sorry but the grapple swing mechanic is still kinda awful ) and take in the underworld vibe of it all at the same time forgetting that yes it's Massive, but this isn't The Division nor does it attempt to be really - there genuinely seems to be a lot of love poured into the experience, now that the stealth aspect has been taken care of to not be so immediately punished there's far more scope to deal with things in your own way at your own pace. I've played perhaps five hours and as I have a deep seeded thing about playing far too many open world games at one time I'm placing it on the back burner for now to see how things turn out with more updates. I think once I'm done with AC Shadows I could very well find myself wrapped up in this.

The Ascent

Picked this one up after noticing the gang had all started playing it recently, there was a time where all I ever played was this style of genre of game due to being so PC limited, and a great time was most certainly had. I discovered games such as Sanitarium and an endless stream of Cryo Interactive games that proudly saw me through many years of solid gaming. Tis a beautiful looking game no mistake, I'm intrigued to see where it takes me both in terms of solo play and in coop.

Daemon X Machina

If you recall games such as Omega Boost on PS1 and Gun Metal or Slave Zero on PC you can get a slight of what this game is like, not an exact replica by any means but a very simplified incredibly stylish Mech style shooter. My son is currently playing the much newer version and after seeing this on sale I thought I'd give it a try, plays well and looks like it has plenty of investment promise available, something to just let off a little bit of steam in the evenings.

Assassin's Creed: Shadows

All I need to say on this front in particular is that I rather dearly love this game, I just switched over to playing as Yasuke after spending a good 50+ hours strictly playing it as a Tenchu inspired Stealth experience lurking in shadow crawling rolling and sneaking. Now it's time to play the big guy who can kick enemies straight into oblivion, the sense of power he conveys is fantastic. As I have now taken the decision to finally progress the interconnected story matching both Yasuke and Naoe is actually starting to truly come into play now, so much so that I'm becoming interested enough in proceedings to no longer be tempted to hit that ever tempting skip button. The world is so alive and so rich, besides that the fact you get to experience it all in two quite dramatically different ways and can opt to play as who you wish at your own leisure is very much the icing on the cake.

I've still yet to uncover over half the map due to the very haphazard way that areas are split into certain level requirements with some at the bottom being level 44 some at the top being 35 and so on, I'm only level 31 currently. There's plenty to do however, every new story beat pretty much unlocks a brand-new group of enemies to deal with when I've yet to even complete the previous. Much as in the same exact vein as Outlaws then - I sincerely hope one day more people give this the chance it honestly so richly deserves.

Spoiler

Coming across a melon duel while simply randomly wandering around the world just taking in the gorgeous sights was most certainly an interesting highlight, that's for sure.

Avatar: Frontiers Of Pandora

Snowy and I played some coop together, and admittedly I had fun doing so, the main growing issue being for me that compared to Shadows the upscaling method and more specifically frame gen does not help me out and the excessive amount of detail and scenery truly impacts me and no amount of setting changes make any real difference. It's easily one of the most demanding games I've ever played though initially it started out well enough the more of the world I'd explore and open up pretty much has been degrading performance more and more. There is a huge planned update for the game coming in December to coincide with the inclusion of a 3rd person mode and I'm very much resting a lot of hope on that update making frame gen work and deliver some optimisation for those of us on the 30 series of cards. Fingers crossed it does and Ian and I can get back to dishing out blue brotherly annoyances.

Edit: James Cameron's Avatar: The Game on Xbox 360 was one of my favourite games that I also later bought on PC - playing as both sides was fantastic, such a shame they didn't choose to go down that same road with this game too. Still fun though, and that environment, oof.

Tales of Arise

So one day I decided to try and run the playable demo for Final Fantasy 16 on my still fairly new PC. Big mistake. Though the eye candy on offer was immediately jaw dropping too also dropping my PC's performance like a heavy stone tied to thirty other heavy stones and then a cow added for extra certainty. I swear it must have hit somewhere in the region of 3 frames per second at one point as my case fans went mental and I tried my best to quit out in a very hasty, panicked fashion. I've never seen anything quite like it, and that was just the demo.

Thankfully, there are games such as Tales of Arise that also exist. Some twenty pounds cheaper runs like a dream and plays in near abouts at least the exact same fashion without putting me in a panic. Four hours in and already stuck on the second stage of the first major boss. Classic. I did think I'd struggle with the control scheme but it turns out it's very intuitive, responsive and makes any enemy encounter both a visceral and visual treat. I had owned Tales of Bursaria for a very long time but never got round to playing it much, the art style fluidity discovery path and overall excellent presentation of this seems like much more my kind of thing.

I am contemplating picking up Khazan too at some point, incidentally. Very much dug the demo and it ran great.