Be Excellent To Each Other

1) I Expect You To Die (PS4 : PSVR)

Amazingly clever little VR game

He had some help.

1) Homefront (PC)

Lauded as being “inexcusably short” upon release the campaign is actually longer than newbie Battlefield 1. It’s basically a CoDified Red Dawn. It does nothing outstanding, it’s generic, and it’s a typical shooting gallery BUT it’s a reet solid blast as you smash from scene to scene tearing up shit.

It doesn’t linger at all: It has a particularly good level which has you causing a ruck in B&Q, it has a level with a giant radio controlled death car called a Goliath, you smash through suburbia even ruining some ladies home as she’s shielding her baby, you fuck up some hillbilly hicks that have established their own community years before Far Cry 5 tries the same thing, you infiltrate a labour camp, uncover some death squads and mass graves, and tell a kid begging for food to fuck off. In fact, there’s even a bit where a kid’s mum and Dad are shot in front of him on the streets. It’s kinda dark.

The bad bits: it’s just a generic FPS shooter; the voice acting is terrible, I couldn’t get the aiming speed right for the joypad despite it being a console game first and they call north Koreans “Norks”. Dirty norks. Flabby jiggly norks.

The sequel is great too and probably dirt cheap now. Play them both and slap some norks. Fnaar fnaar.

1) Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)
Some bad points - Slippy slidey Ice Worlds, Daft wavy motion controls* and occasional locking of returning to old worlds reduce this to a score of 4/5.

* In handheld mode? Seriously?

Mario never stopped having slidey ice worlds even though people have hated them since the eighties. It's almost like no one at Nintendo ever read Amiga power

1. The Magic Circle: a very interesting thing with genuinely unique ideas and mechanics.

The setup is that you're an unnamed playtester on a game that's been stuck in development hell for years. You end up with 'debug' powers in the game world and need to use these to progress, while playing witness to the squabbling between the major actors in the game's development; which gives you an insight into the painful history of it all. This setup is used to good effect right from the beginning (e.g. you spawn and pick up the sort of legendary sword you'd expect in such circumstances and then it's almost instantly wrenched from your grasp by the lead designer after an argument about whether the game should even have any combat or not) and all throughout we get skewerings of familiar concepts like crowd-funding, ridiculous fan demands, etc.

Mechanically though it's also very interesting and well put together. Your debug powers don't extend to changing anything about your own avatar; but what you can do is trap and edit the attributes of all NPCs in the game. This is handled through a toggling interface rather than actual code cutting but the upshot is that all the behaviours and armaments of the objects you encounter can be tweaked and buffed, with the caveat that you can only use things you've already encountered. Want to create an army of hovering attack dogs that use the fire-proof properties of rocks and will attack mushrooms on sight? Have at it! This leads to a sandbox-y approach to problem solving and the games makes experimentation suitably easy so you never fear just dicking around.

If I had any complaint it would be that there's just not enough of this and it seems to end just as you're properly motoring with it all. Oh, and there's one attack type which is almost game-breakingly powerful once you work out how it functions. The upside to that is the game never outstays it's welcome and I think most people here would get a lot of fun out of this 'game about making games'.

Is that on a PC?

That's what I played it on; but apparently it's out for the consoles as well.

1. The Magic Circle
2. Rusty Lake: Roots: a pointy-clicky escape style game in the long-running Rusty Lake series that pairs their usual macabrely logical puzzles with a really nice bite size level structure. I really enjoy this series and this one about the fucked up goings on in the Vanderboom family tree is probably the best one yet. I played this on my phone but it's also on Steam for a couple of quid.

1. The Magic Circle
2. Rusty Lake: Roots.
3. Old Man's Journey: puzzle-y game for Android wherein you guide the titular Old Man on his titular Journey to his old home by sliding chunks of landscape around in order to create paths for him. The puzzle aspect of it's never particularly challenging--although the way you slide things around the place is very gratifying--and it gets a bit repetitive towards the end. It's really the presentation you're in it for though because it's fucking lovely to look at with it's storybook style graphics and charming little interludes explaining his life up until that point.

1. Edith Finch

1) Homefront (PC)
2) SUPERHOT VR (PSVR)

The best and most refreshing gaming experience I’ve had in years. Absolutely essential. I was IN! THE! GAME!

1. The Magic Circle
2. Rusty Lake: Roots.
3. Old Man's Journey
4. Bohemian Killing: an indie French murder simulator. Well, less of a murder simulator and more of a murderer simulator as the game begins with you in the dock for a murder you actually definitely committed.

The aim then is to provide your testimony, by playing out the events of the crime itself, in a way that makes you look innocent. A clever and unique idea for sure, but the game world is pretty small and a lot of it boils down to waiting for the clock to run down so you can carry out an action that fits in with the time-scales of the evidence.

There are multiple ways to play the game out but the differences are only of tiny degrees so having run through it once (and been found guilty because it wasn't at all obvious how to interact with a core character) I could really be arsed doing it again. An inclination that wasn't helped by the fact it bugged out during my actual first run through and I had to restart it. Which isn't a massive deal as it doesn't take long but as it's not actually all that fun to play it was much more of an arse ache than you'd expect.

So, nice idea not very well executed.

5. Hidden Folks: an incredibly charming and well designed game of Where's Wally, essentially.

You get a load of maps of differing sizes utterly stuffed with well drawn and cutely animated Folks getting on with their business and you need to follow the clues you're given to find a load of different characters or objects in each map. Initially this is utterly daunting because of the sheer amount of stuff going on, but you quickly get a sense of where areas are and the clues themselves are like lovely little puzzles pointing you in the right direction.

The sound design deserves a lot of praise in itself because each sound, be it background noise or actual sound effect, is made by the developers themselves (i.e their actual mouths) which is fucking adorable.

It's worth noting that playing on your phone could probably be considered hard mode but even at that I managed to find the vast majority of the Folks. Now and again I had to jump over onto my tablet but even that's made easy because on Android your save games sync flawlessly making this incredibly easy. Overall this is a lovely and charming little time-killer and comes highly recommended.

6. Until:Dawn: Rush of Blood: PSVR light gun shooter extraordinaire. Having played it through once I'm not sure I'll ever go back as I don't give a shit about score-chasing in any game, but it's just such a blast to go through that I don't mind that (also: it was free). There's the odd time when I'm sure I'm hitting stuff and it's not registering but that's rare and overall it's an incredibly well implemented thing and certainly the sort of thing that'll be good "showing off VR to new people" fodder because it's so easy to grasp and makes such good use of the dual Move controller.

2) Prey (PS4)

Jesus Christ that was good. I started it in 2017 so I'm going to name it my 2017 single player game of the year.

1. The Magic Circle
2. Rusty Lake: Roots.
3. Old Man's Journey
4. Bohemian Killing
5. Hidden Folks
6. Until:Dawn: Rush of Blood
7. Rusty Lake: Hotel: more Rusty Lake escape-the-room/pointy-clicky goodness with their usual mixture of good puzzles and macabre events (the set-up this time is that you have to individually murder the guests in a hotel and serve their meat up to the remaining guests, because of course you do).
8. Outlast: first person horror game from a few years back with the hook that you can view the world through the night-vision mode of your camcorder, but doing so drains the battery so you've got to maintain a balance between seeing what you're doing and not running out of power.

Maybe a few years ago its mixture of exploring and hiding from roaming monsters in a scary science facility was unique but it's pretty old hat these days and frankly I'm sick of it's shit. Every single bit of every level boils down to bullshit basic 'puzzle' solving (i.e. find item A and stick it in slot B to unlock door C) which is supposedly made interesting by having monsters roaming the area you're searching. In reality though the enemies are just irritating ambulant obstacles designed to slow your progress through what would otherwise be literally minutes worth of gameplay; it's not scary, it's just outright fucking irritating having to replay a section after getting caught.

The plot's the usual tissue-thin 'science went too far' underground-bunker-and-experiments bullshit that plays out through documents you find lying about because of course it fucking does. Literally the only interesting thing in it is the Richard Trager character whose line in monstrous buddy chatter is charming and chilling in equal measure. His actual behaviour though is exactly the same as all the other fucking brain dead AI so even he becomes boring pretty quickly.

Despite all my eye-rolling here it's not technically a bad game and I did rattle through it all in a single sitting last night so it obviously had some kind of grip on me but it's just so repetitive and samey and you've seen it all before in loads of other games.

1. The Magic Circle
2. Rusty Lake: Roots.
3. Old Man's Journey
4. Bohemian Killing
5. Hidden Folks
6. Until:Dawn: Rush of Blood
7. Rusty Lake: Hotel
8. Outlast
9. Rusty Lake: Paradise: more awesome batshit bonkers crazy-pants puzzley action. Man, I fucking love these games.

1. The Magic Circle
2. Rusty Lake: Roots.
3. Old Man's Journey
4. Bohemian Killing
5. Hidden Folks
6. Until:Dawn: Rush of Blood
7. Rusty Lake: Hotel
8. Outlast
9. Rusty Lake: Paradise
10. Homefront: generic shooty gameplay with generic shooty characters in generic shooty missions. The opening Half Life style intro is genuinely disturbing in places and sets a scene with potential but very little is then done with that or the characters so it becomes moot. There's nothing terribly wrong with it but there's nothing interesting about it either. On the upside, it was free and only lasted four hours so scratched any kind of military FPS itch I might have for a while.

3) Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (PS4)

Naughty Dog are masters of their art. Stunningly beautiful throughout with tons of tiny details, most of which I felt guilty running past. I wondered how long someone had spent making this fabulous piece of incidental background scenery. Hours maybe, and I ran past it? It really made me want to stop and just enjoy the time and effort some people had spent creating this master piece of visual art. So I did.

The game was more of the same Uncharted 4 stuff, which isn’t a bad thing, it’s just, I don’t know, it just doesn’t blow my socks off. It’s great but ultimately disposable. At least it could take the piss out of itself: especially when you have to manoeuvre a box ala U4 and Chloe says “I hope we don’t have to do that again. It’s tiresome.” or something like that. It was a fun moment. There is also one great section at the end which was mind blowing and looked amazing. A real rollercoaster of a moment that was, sort of, a stab at the same thing they did in Uncharted 2.

The characterisation was brilliant, as you’d expect, and Chloe and Nadean are just lovely characters for a video game. I particularly liked Chloe who, for me, out Lara’s Lara. Lara is too much of a whiny down in the dumps anyway. Chloe is hard as fuck but she’s also a sassy minx with a smart mouth. All the incidental chat is great, again, as ever. Naughty Dog know exactly what they’re doing.

I’m sort of glad that Naughty dog are done with Uncharted though as I think any new IP after The Last of Us will probably have more interesting gameplay that has bogged them down since Uncharted 1’s formula. But, hey, enjoy this while you can because this is a great game that needs to be played. And it’s cheap too.

4) Uncanny Valley (PS4)

Completed it twice. There’s something like 5 different endings I think but I can’t be arsed to seek them all out. I don’t know what it was but I was enjoying it right up until I wasn’t enjoying it. I liked the chunky pixel art until I couldn’t see what was actually on screen. I liked the gameplay loop until I realised that the first two or three days played out the exact same each time. I liked the story about this mysterious structure you’re the security guard for until it went hackneyed and daft. I liked the idea of multiple playthroughs until it was clear that the bad ending was the same every time. I liked playing it until some stupid bugs appeared which would, for example, teleport me back a couple of screens.

The sound design is good though.

If you want a psychological horror game which has the same premise as Uncanny Valley but is miles better, then play Lone Survivor.

11. Batman: The Telltale Series: after being bored rigid by Game of Thrones I had no real intention of playing any more Telltale games (which seems a bit weird in hindsight given how much I enjoyed The Wolf Among Us and, especially, Tales from the Borderlands) but as this came free with PS+ I thought I'd give it a shot.

And it's good. Really good! I blasted through it all in one sitting and was totally engaged throughout. It obviously helps that I'm already a fan of Batman so there's an instant level of connection there, plus the signature QTEs seem to make more sense in context because you're using them to deliver crushing kicks and punches to deserving thugs which adds a weight to your movements.

It's also helpful that their version of a lot of the usual characters depart sometimes massively from their comic versions so the story is nothing if not interestingly unpredictable; it's like playing a game version of an Elseworlds story basically. The biggest indicator of how I felt about this is probably the fact that I've gone from not giving a shit to being eager to snap up the second season as soon as it's complete.

11. Batman: The Telltale Series
12. Red: a sequel to Android puzzle game 'Yellow' about which I said, "a puzzle game for Android where your objective in each of the fifty levels is to turn the screen entirely yellow. Mostly this involves poking, prodding and swiping to work out the mechanic of each level but a few of the levels have obvious mechanics and the challenge is in the actual solution. Good fun either way." I'd say the same about Red (except replacing the word 'yellow' with 'red' obvs).

1. Super Mario Odyssey (Switch) - finished story + Pink Floyd level + over 300 power moons

Incredible - Nintendo does it again! Agree with Dave to an extent, but it didn't really subtract from a wonderful experience. Such a good mix of new and old.

I prefer the PS4 version.

It keeps going, unless you've finished, finished it

There is no way I'm finishing it. Some of the stars are the very opposite of fun.

Seeing the credits counts for this challenge in my mind. I haven't stopped playing it yet.

Oh, me neither, but I saw the credits ages ago, and as long as I can still get a few mins every time I pick it up, I'll keep going.

5) Resident Evil 7: Not a Hero DLC (PS4)

I’d say it was more of the same but it isn’t more of the house from the beginning of the game, it’s more of the mine from the end of the game, in the mine from the end of the game. Yup, a bunch of reused assets. I’m a bit disappointed to be honest but it’s free and more shooting so that’s good, right? Give it a whirl. It took me 1 hr 34 mins so it won’t take much of your time up.

3) Sniper Elite 4 (PS4)

Ghost.

11. Batman: The Telltale Series
12. Red
13. Evo Explores: another day on the Play store and yet another shameless Monument Valley rip-off. But this one's incredibly well executed, which means it stands out massively. It utterly nails the template and even adds a couple of interesting mechanics of it's own in there, while still looking as lovely and being as much fun as you'd expect. If you liked MV and are looking for more of the same then snap this right up. It's even available on Steam and playable as a browser game on Kongregate.

11. Batman: The Telltale Series
12. Red
13. Evo Explores
14 All That Remains (part 1): another room--or, in this case, bunker, escape thing from Glitch Games who're known for their Forever Lost series. This one has exactly the same look and mechanics as their previous stuff but begins a new series which looks to be heading in an apocalyptic direction. If you like their stuff you'll like this (I do, a lot) and if you don't you won't. It does mark the point where I realised how incredibly useful the in game camera mechanic is for this type of game, which means it's only taken me six whole games to get this point. Sometimes, I'm not a smart man.

6) Layers of Fear (PC)

Layers of boredom, more like. I’m sure it’d work well as a VR game but as a walking simulator on your telly it’s boring personified. Which is funny because I remember a bunch of gaming sites and YouTubers doing ‘Let’s Plays’ and stuff while acting “hilariously” scared of its antics. Those people can all die in their sleep and wake in terror to find congregations of the uninvited attending their beds, protean figures slouched among the room’s dark corners in all multiplicity of shapes, gibbons and gargoyles, arachnoids of outrageous size, a bat shaped creature hung by some cunning in a high corner from whence clicked and winked like bone chimes its incandescent teeth, gesturing them into an eternal furnace of their own doing.

I enjoyed it more than you did.

7) Genital Jousting - Story mode (PC)

Erm, it’s brilliant! Much (much) better than it has any right to, it being a game about dicks. It follows the story of John in his quest to find love before his school reunion. It’s hilarious at times with some funny narration. It probably only lasted a couple of hours (fnaar, fnaar) which was just about the right length (fnaar, fnaar). Shockingly well written, it avoids all the obvious cock jokes. It ain’t War & Peace but it’s a silly little story that shouldn’t really exist but I’m glad it does.

8 ) Corgi Warlock (PC)

You’re a Corgi. You’re a Warlock. You’re a Corgi Warlock.

Push right and hold down X.

Win the game.

Or a fish mage.

I'm the fish mage

You’re Magic Pug.

Who's Pig?

1) Super Mario Odyssey (Switch)
2) I expect you to die (PC/VIVE)
Was quite late to the show with this, so don't have much more to add to the general plaudits otherthan a minor complaint.the control scheme was not great. (Trying to manipulate the touch pad while keeping a grip on the trigger/grip bar made my hands hurt plenty)

This seems to be a theme so far this year.

You should have got it on PSVR, then.

Or Rift.

(1) Super Mario Odyssey

“Finished” in the sense I beat Bowser. I only have about 220 stars so a lot of game to go yet. I’ll echo other people’s thoughts: it’s thoroughly lovely, although it’s unapologetically difficult at times. (The gappy checkpoints in the last couple of levels were a source of frustration.) Still, though, it’s so jam-packed with thoughtful and clever details I don’t know how you couldn’t love it.

Just you wait... It gets much, much harder.

I think I'm on about 850 stars. Its quite grindy by this point.

I have an easy solution which is: when the fun stops, I stop.

I didn't think it was particularly difficult. Now the extra levels at each world have opened up - now they're teeth-gnashingly hard.

Title

Very much this! It's still great though and even though it's hard, I do still enjoy playing it.

That's pretty much where I am. It just leaves me head scratching about how they thought some of these stars were good ideas.

Jump rope, I'm looking at you...

They're moons not stars! Jeez