The First Play Thread of First Plays

[Finsbury Girl]

Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights - This was free on PS plus and it's a great metroidvania game. Honestly this type of game is right up my alley, it's not too hard but is challenging, and there are lots of areas to explore. I'm almost done and have had a great time in my 20 something hours on it. Really fun game, if you're into these type of games I would recommend it highly.

[Neon Ignition]

Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
So far it seems fine, the Uncharted copy/paste suits Star Wars and I've not yet reached the more open areas but generally the game seems solid.

[Cepp]

Throne & Liberty

It's a throwback MMO that's gorgeous and so far has been fun to play.

[fishbowlhead]

Everspace2

I wanted a space shooter on PS5 and this doesn’t disappoint. It’s elite dangerous super lite in all the right ways, no planet exploration but plenty of trading, fending off pirates and wrecks to explore. Story is lite but does enough to plod the game along. Gameplay is simple yet has enough depth for evasion and jinking during fights to keep you interested. Upgrades are given out like candy and encourage you to clean an area and explore as you never know what you’ll find. Graphics are lovely and run silky smooth at 60fps after the patch installs, i noticed some dips off the disk data but nothing too bad (pro update already in the works the devs have said).

A solid 7/10 fishy’s for me so far.
wordy rating: a pleasant surprise.

[Neon Ignition]

Call of Duty: Black Ops 6
So, the campaign is solid. It tries its best to mix things up which means you get some uneven parts as well. With COD campaigns, the Michael Bay spectacle is really the draw, which this does have but you're also dealing with a COD plot so there's that nonsense to work through as well. Like MW3, some missions are open areas and are better made than the prior game but this often means more stealth or puzzles, both being areas where the game falls hard. It holds together till the overlong finale at which point time with the MP began. Maps seem broadly solid as is the gameplay but it's not too engaging because, to be frank, the series has simply become pretty tired at this point. You have a decent set of new maps but we've done all these settings and ideas numerous times before in prior CODs. The game plays more like a greatest hits megamix which MW3 proved many fans are happy to get but being in Game Pass just helps make the game more dispensable than it had already become. A huge release for day one, uninstalled by day five.

[hudson]

Dungeon Clawler - Steam/Mobile

A rogue-lite game (currently in Early Access, but feels/looks ready) that is similar Slay the Spire in terms of getting through a dungeon, defeating enemies and find some bonus rooms along the way to buff or heal your character etc. What DC does a bit different is add in a claw machine

I have a couple of hours on it and I love it. The music is excellent.

[wakka]

I played through My First Gran Turismo last night.

Really enjoyed it actually. It's not really my first Gran Turismo, of course (although I do like the name) - I've played most of the entries at one time or another, to greater or lesser extents, although not for about 15 years at this point.

Although I like the stylings of Gran Turismo as a series and the concept of the carPG structure, I'm far from being a petrolhead. I'm actually not all that interested in cars. I don't even having a driving license to be honest. So this was a nice chance to sample a game I'm curious about without committing to the full experience.

The game consists of some of the traditional license tests, three races, and three time trials. There are quite a few different cars to try, too, from ordinary hatchbacks to classic supercars.

I enjoyed my time with it. The game defaults to the cockpit view, which I stuck with, despite never having used that in a racing game previously. There's something quite zen and relaxing about moving through the course, following the braking prompts and racing lines. It's really quite absorbing. Dare I say mindful. And I love the presentation. The lounge jazz music, subdued sound effects, and overall vibe of the game are absolutely delightful. There's none of the brashness of Forza Horizon. It's all rather classy. I started to feel a bit underdressed, sat on my sofa in trackies and a fleece.

I'm definitely tempted to pick up the full game now to play more, so in that sense it's done its job very well as a sample (it's a pretty substantial one, too - it probably took me about an hour and a half to complete). The only thing that slightly puts me off is how much of an expert I'll need to become in the various arcana of car parts, but I guess that's not unlike learning all of the made-up stuff in the skill trees and inventory systems of any RPG.

[Lebowski]

played a bit of Infinity Niki, this week and it’s weird how familiar it all feels i’d say 90% of its systems are identical to its main rival genshin impact. it’s like they stole Genshin Impacts lunch.

It’s a 3d adventure where your dropped into a strange world with a cute little side kick, and have to explore and collect, errr Dresses. each legendary dress you unlock and craft has a different power, super jump, enemy cleansing, animal grooming ect. it’s all super twee and very cute. you can also get standard cosmetic dresses that don’t have special skills from the gatcha style collection system, not sure on the point of the gatcha dresses yet but their seems to be a lot of clothing to collect so far to change up your look.

combat feels very secondary here you’ve got one method of attack so far and this feel very one note. your not putting together teams of unstoppable skimply dressed hero’s here so i don’t know what it’s hook is to get you to spend real money.

7-10 looks lovely but borrows very heavily from other game and where it try’s to carve out its own niche it feels a little pointless so far.

[Tobal]

Made In Abyss: Binary Star Falling Into Darkness

A game based on the manga/anime series Made In Abyss, and one game I desperately wanted to be good. Instead, it's quite poor, and something that no fan of Made In Abyss should touch.
The game features tow modes: Hello Abyss and Deep In Abyss; the former follows series protagonists Reg and Rico as they descend into the abyss in search of Rico's mother, while the other allows you to tackle the exploration with your own character. Deep In Abyss is also not available until you have completed Hello Abyss, which in truth is a glorified tutorial I'm struggling to complete.

Pretty much every movement option is slow, from the standard walking cycle, to climbing, and descending ledges via Reg's extensible arms. A stamina meter dictates what action you can perfomr and for how long (with the exception of walking), resulting in being able to run short stretches and climb walls that seem tailored exactly to how much you can climb with a full stamina bar.

The original work tells (and shows) in great detail the dangers of climbing back up the abyss, calling it a curse: nausea, headaches, loss of the sense of direction, and even worse. The encroaching curse in the game is represented by a purple frame slowly growing all around the screen, and that is triggered even when jumping. Standing still slowly reduces curse buildup, and I've had the curse taking its effect only once, when I triggered it on purpose out of curiosity.
What happens when climbing a wall? You stand still, stamina is only consumed when moving alongside the wall. This is kinda stupid and removes all of the tension of this action, and characters in Made In Abyss are very fragile, and most drops will kill you outright.
In fact, pretty much everything will, and the game doesn't skimp on gruesome deaths...in Japan the game is rated CERO Z and M17+ in America.

Aside of the painfully slow movement options, you can only carry a limited amount of weight, or be encumbered and become even slower. You need to keep track of HP, hunger, and "exploration stamina", which can be recovered by cooking food using ingredient scavenged all over the place.
About half of the items present in the game are useless in Hello Abyss mode, as you don't go back to the base camp to sell them, and story checkpoints give you enough materials to carry you through Rico and Reg's story.

The game is full of either puzzling or bad design choices.
For example, just before setting for the abyss with Rico (a non-return point in both game and original work), I wanted to create a manual save. Only that developers placed two NPCs in front of the only manual save point in the game, so I'm relying autosaves instead. There are no checkpoints other than reaching the new story beat, and more often than not you'll be forced to go through stages multiple times because a stupid error or because you're losing patience due to how slow actions are.
I've found myself exploring during the night, and the game never tells you that clicking on the right stick turns on the light Rico has on her helmet.
Reg has a lifebar, and once incapacitated you'll have to wait a while for him to come back. He's much better at combat than Rico, but he oftens get stuck in the most basic terrain in an infinte loop of jumps, seems to be unable to climb walls, doesn't teleport to your location when too far away, but he always appears when you have to rappel down ledges. He also never shuts the **** up, constantly going "Rico, I sense danger nearby", and Rico replying "what to do...?". It's absolutely irritating.
Also, cutscenes with QTEs. Please stop.
And don't make me fight things after tutorialising on how it's much better to run from danger.
And tutorials on things you cannot do in Hello Abyss mode (like creating a tie-down point to descend ledges, because you have Reg).
Item description is lacklustre: I was poisoned, and was chomping down on food to keep me going (I didn't want to restart a stage again), with no item telling me "cures poison". I had some gauzes, which according to the description fully heals and can used to treat leg and arm injuries. I used one, and magically the poison goes away.

I'm told Hello Abyss mode lasts for about two hours, and I'll keep on playing to see it through, but damn the game is making this difficult. A much better way to approach Made In Abyss would have been to ditch the established story and do something along the lines of Etrian Odyssey, a Mistery Dungeon game, or go for absolute broke and do an open world Xenoblade-like. This is especially painful after having gone through a 100 hours of Xenoblade Chronicles 3 and starting a new character in Elden Ring.
I say this because what makes the original work good are the story and characters, the weird stuff is a complement to that, and the game doesn't have an ounce of that, and rather goes for an awkward adaptation of the concept without any bit of charm in it.

I ended up buying it while it's part of publishers sale on steam for £8 (Fire Pro World can be had for £5), which is a fair price. Pushed through 2-3hrs odd of the pretty bland retelling of the anime story with some antiquated gameplay to put it kindly with Rico and Reg which as the game says is suppose to introduce you to the systems... which is fair other the side of the game 'Deep in Abyss' explains feck all. I wouldn't call the other side of the game a roguelike or lite, the levels, items and monsters look set to me, and plays like a PS2 era game time travelled to 2022 from the controls and environment to the way little is sign posted like there should be a game manual to tell me what the debuff status effect is doing (because its not in game, you just get an coloured icon), the way the main quest says go here and its up to you to explore how to get there while managing HP and Hunger, with the 2nd quest having 6 exits to different areas before i found 'jumping rock' area i needed to get to.

Going to stick with it, there just something about the grind to level up your character, craft items/food and the sprawling vertically of the areas that appeals to me.

[briareos_kerensky]

and plays like a PS2 era game time travelled to 2022

I think you are misremembering how PS2 were

[Tobal]

I think you are misremembering how PS2 were

There is something about how old feeling the combat is, like it was lifted from Dark Cloud 2. I ended up finishing it after some brutal sections, finding out the hard way environmental puzzles reset on zoning which really screws you over in layer 3 with how sprawling that hell hole is, threading the single needle route though that maze which included smashing through hard to see breakable walls in the dark, timed wall climbs against 1 hit flying monsters (puts morrowind cliffracers to shame) into a tiny easily missed wall hole all against ticking hunger bar. What kept me going was the exploring challenge, finding out what, went where, completing as many the guild requests in one go as i could and making it back to Orth alive with bag full of stuff to sell and upgrade.

[Tobal]

The Wandering Village - town builder on the back of kaiju, i could see a couple of forumites had played the gamepass release mid 2023 where it didn't impress. I've now picked up for £13 sale on steam with year and half of updates to reworking and adding to the research, buildings, hazards and the ocean biome. It's a mostly ok town builder where they take direct control of the citizens off you and hope the A.I. sorts out your building or foraging commands in a timely manor, which also makes moving resources around impossible leading to some lengthily walks for all the artisans... minor problems as the game does move at snails pace dictated by Onbu pace and the rising difficulty in biomes and weather, so you just spend time waiting on new people to turn up, resources to come in while turning each buildings work force off and on.

On my first save still and im starting to get to the backend of the game with biomes/weather being more dangerous and changing frequently while im stuck waiting to unlock the last 1/4 of the research tree.

[briareos_kerensky]

Marfusha: Sentinel Girls and Snezhika: Sentinel Girls 2. Two tower defence games available on Steam for less than 10 bucks each. They both have the same settings and Sentinel Girls 2 is a direct sequel of the first.
Story goes that Marfusha lives in a dictatorial country and gets drafted in the military to defend one of the gates of the capital. Each day you face waves of enemies and depending on how well you do, you get paid, and with money you increase your stats, buy weapons, items, or companions who fight alongside you and give the world some more depth. Main weapons last for a finite number of days, and if it runs out you revert to the standard handgun. Items include barricades of various height, mines, spikes, AA and ground turrets, and repair items for whatever you are protecting. Somewhat more rare, you can also get secondary weapons, which run on a timer; these weapons are very powerful and can make short work of the handful of bosses sprinkled throughout the game. Main weapons include assault rifles, sniper rifles, submachine guns, shotguns, machine guns, and grenade launchers. Weapons are decently balanced, each with its own rate of fire, clip size, bullet spread, and reload time, though submachine guns have a very high rate of fire and almost immediate reload time and become unbeatable after you spend a few credits improving Marfusha's stats. Standard grenade launchers are somewhat lackluster; advanced grenade launchers, on the other hand, are incredibly powerful.
Companions use one weapon and effectively double your firepower, and hiring one is essential to get one of the many endings available.
There's also an infinite challenge mode with online leaderboards.

Sentinel Girls 2 stars Snezhika, Marfusha's litte sister, and follow the same structure, only with more variety. All weapon classes have multiple variations with different fire mode, power, and clip size, and overall are better balanced. Companions have better defined storylines and there's even a split in the main storyline that influences stages visited and how missions play. There are more bosses and enemy types, making the game more varied and basically improving on every aspect compared to the first.

Graphics are very simple, and typical of many doujin games, the game maxes out at 1920x1080; you can go fullscreen on higher resolution screens but SG1 gets a bit blurry, while SG2 uses a nearest neighbour filter and graphics keep sharp. There's no voice acting, sound effects serve their purpose well, and music is nice for what it is.

Both games last a couple of afternoons: during that time you will unlock all characters, weapons, and extra card in challenge mode, but most probably not all endings. Unlocking those endings require to play both games from start to finish multiple times and you'll get bored after three or four playthroughs, especially in the first game. SG2 adds an easy mode that makes replaying the game so many times more bearable, as well as a hard mode. One playthrough lasts about one hour for both games. Both games have some sense of humour to counter the overall grim and dystopian setting; the pixellated graphics go hand in hand with the setting, and if the games click, their simple nature favour multiple replays, and the multiple endings do give you something to look forward to.

If you want to try one, get the second, it's a more refined and fun experience overall.

[Dogg Thang]

Just a little mention for the Suikoden remasters. I'm a little way into the first game on Switch and I'm really impressed with the remaster. Most people know I have a big thing for pixel art so replacing the beautiful pixel backgrounds in this could have been a disaster but I actually think they have really retained the spirit of the original game. It almost feels like a memory of what the game was, if that makes any sense. It looks great and they've put a serious amount of work into it. All the effects are redone and some of them are lovely.

Overall, I'm really impressed with it.

[Tobal]

Dark Deity 2 - PC/Steam, a GBA fire emblem-like, never played DD1, saw this going fairly cheap (£15), reviews on steam are very positive mostly around the vast improvements on the first game, better controller support/UI pad works just as well as mouse, having played with both could easily see this ported to the switch, better graphics and animation easily on par with GBA and the mobile gacha game, variety in mission objectives and story branches.

Story is fine, bad country invades a smaller one while your mercenary order is in the area exploring some ruins, and you play as the kids of the first games heroes. Voiced dialogue is abit to modern humour for me, way to much teen snark dripping from every sentence the teens(early twenties maybe?) speak when you would expect most of them to battle hardened and speak in an old fashioned or serious way when civilians are getting murdered in front of them for example.

Can't speak much to customisation so early on (mission 10, 5 hours in atm), you get starter job characters which can be changed with items to 1 of 4 jobs at level 5 (4 more at level 25) and i think they get to keep the abilities/map spells of the previous class, but i've not had enough of the upgrade item to experiment outside of seeing characters keep their starter abilities. Aside from that are raw stats upgrades, 2 ring slots which need crafting, and 2 runes which can mode the jobs weapon, weapons have been very limited so far with only 1 upgrade in the shop.

Game can be hard if charge ahead, as the A.I. will target your glass cannons/healers and gang up on them if they can, i've lost my thief girl countless times now, which means she's under levelled compared to the rest of the cast (lvl11 to 13/14).