What You've Been Playing This Week

[Neon Ignition]

Current Line Up:

VR - Horizon: Call of the Mountain
Handheld - Tales of the Borderlands
PC - Saints Row V
XSX - Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name
PS5 - Final Fantasy XVI

[Golgo]

Finished FFVII Remake and the Intermission DLC. Loved 'em. Now onto Cassette Beasts, which is a delight.

[Dogg Thang]

I finished Yakuza Kiwami last night. I loved it. Not quite as much as Yakuza 0 but it wasn't a big drop either. It's so much fun. It's so tempting to just keep going through them but I really should take a break for a bit so I'll find something else to play before jumping into the next one.

KIRYU-CHAAAN!

[wakka]

NIIIIIISH-IKIIIII!!!!

[Golgo]

Started playing Hogwarts Legacy. Absolutely stunning recreation of the castle and the combat is more adaptable and challenging than I anticipated. Magic casting is usually a rather damp and fey way of fighting but the way they've implemented it here it packs a real wallop. Enjoying it. Only annoying thing is the voice acting of the vast majority of the students, which is so damn posh they make the old Queen sound like Waynetta Slob. It's like being incarcerated with the Ovaltineys and its inspired me to turn my character into an obnoxious griefer among them.

[nonny]

Started playing Hogwarts Legacy. Absolutely stunning recreation of the castle and the combat is more adaptable and challenging than I anticipated. Magic casting is usually a rather damp and fey way of fighting but the way they've implemented it here it packs a real wallop. Enjoying it. Only annoying thing is the voice acting of the vast majority of the students, which is so damn posh they make the old Queen sound like Waynetta Slob. It's like being incarcerated with the Ovaltineys and its inspired me to turn my character into an obnoxious griefer among them.

Yeah I picked up Hogwarts in the recent sale and paid £10 after rewards. The RPG mechanics and general completion side quests are a bit mundane but they've absolutely nailed the actual school/castle to the extent that it almost makes up for any short-comings in the overall gameplay loop.

Really liking the combat as well, which is surprising because watching the movies I always found that to be the weakest part... but here they've done wonders with the mechanics.

As a side... I've gone back to Control after completing Alan Wake recently as I remembered I hadn't finished off the DLC. I am really glad I did as it's a nice precursor to dropping into Alan Wake 2 (which I have started but I am only 2 hours in).

[Lebowski]

This week i have mostly been playing the excellent sandbox destruction game Teardown, I've also been pairing this with Super Mario Wonder which feels like the perfect handheld game as you can pick it up do a few levels at a time (or a whole world as is often the case) .

[endo]

I've been getting back into Starfield and I must say I'm enjoying it more now. It's Bethesda by numbers, but it's opened up a bit now and I'm having fun with it. Apart from that, I'm dipping into Super Mario Bros. Wonder, with really only the special world levels left to finish, some of which are doing my nut in. Also finally revisiting Zelda TOTK, after playing it for a couple of hours on launch day and not touching it since. Great stuff so far.

[wakka]

I've not been playing too much but finally installing the Pocket's 2.0 update has gotten me using that again.

I've been dipping in and out of a ROM of Pokémon Pinball Ruby & Sapphire (never gets old, it's so much fun building up the Pokédex), now compatible with the delightful GBA SP 101 screen filter, and I've also just started the PCE CD point and click 🧟♂️Dead of the Brain🧟♀️, which I'm playing using the very nice new CRT filter.

The latter has such cool artwork, I really love the high resolution PC98 point and click style:




I also spotted yesterday that someone has released a fanhack of Pokémon Trading Card Game on GBC, changing all of the cards over to the Western second generation series and increasing the difficulty.

It's called Pokémon TCG Neo and you can learn more about it here (not a link to a ROM, just the patch and a discussion thread by the creator).

Really considering giving that a go. I played the fan translation of Pokémon TCG 2 last year and had an absolute blast with it, so more of the same would be very welcome.

[MartyG]

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (demo version) - this hadn't been on my radar, but having played the demo this is now near the top of my next purchase list. The combination of platforming and combat is very finely tuned. It reminded me a little of Dead Cells, it plays with a similar slick feeling. Definitely one to give a go I think.

Also had a play of KeeperRL which is a RogueLite, mixing Dungeon Master with Dwarf Fortress, quite fun. And finally, Stardeus which is a colony-sim game along the lines of Rimworld, but in space - not bad. Both worth a look if you like the genres.

[briareos_kerensky]

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown (demo version) - this hadn't been on my radar, but having played the demo this is now near the top of my next purchase list. The combination of platforming and combat is very finely tuned. It reminded me a little of Dead Cells, it plays with a similar slick feeling. Definitely one to give a go I think.

Glad to hear this. I've just finished Super Mario RPG and downloaded the demo on Switch.

[edit] played through the demo. First impressions:
Cool, I can choose Persian as spoken language.
You need to accept to link to Ubisoft Connect, back off, and only then the game lets you continue without logging in (or creating an account)
Controls pretty well, though I miss a heavy physical attack that is not holding down the normal attack button.
English dubbing is...eeeeeh, most probably not too much money has been allocated for this.
I can reliably make my character disappear by jumping and using a special attack in a portion of the map. I can still control him, but the only way to solve this is to restart the demo.
The demo is way too short! Half an hour from start to finish, and if you get to the final room you're thrown out to the title screen without the chance of exploring anything you've missed (unless you restart playing).

I'll probably pick it up when it comes out.

[Golgo]

More Hogwarts. Been exploring outside the castle, which - it has to be said - is really beautiful but suffers quite badly from the open world trope of map clutter and trivial/repeatable tasks and collectibles. One thing that bugs me here is the way the entire in-game economy is predicated on blatant theft, to the extent of pushing past a merchant into their stockroom or bedroom, robbing them blind, then purchasing something off them with the money they've just watched you steal. I know this endemic to these kinds of games but I wish a better system could be found. It's so immersion breaking, especially in this game where your character is all kindness and sweetness and light. It feels almost like the NPCs have agreed to tolerate your behaviour because they know you're 'special' or something. The reliance on finding clothing items is also way overdone, and I do think there's something wrong with the levelling. I've been tinkering off the beaten path, but not that much, and my level is way above the levels required for the majority of main and side tasks. Beyond that, combat and exploration remain as enjoyable as ever - combat options really quite good now, with no restrictions on using the nastiest curses as happens in the films.

[Neon Ignition]

Very little, I've really eased off this month. Currently about to finish the truly dire Frog Detective and am on the third chapter of Like a Dragon: The Man Who Erased His Name

[hudson]

Monster Hunter Rise/Sunbreak - Just hit High Rank in Rise. The game is crack. Grabbed Sunbreak, which I hope to see some day once I've boxed off Rise.

[importaku]

Picked up the arcade archives release of rainbow islands, while the music is not the same i really don't mind it as it's a small price to pay for having it with me on my switch whenever i fancy a game. Hell the last time you could even get it on a console outside of emulating it was back on ps2 Some cool new things too there's a high score mode and a caravan mode along with the regular original release and the extra version in there too. There's even a neat feature where if you press ZL it overlays rainbow bands if you struggle figuring out where they are meant to land to get the colour you want. You can turn it on & off there's also other options in the settings menu like auto inputting the titlescreen codes that gave you extra items at the start of your game.

Had a huge session today while at work & at home managed to do a full run and get the true ending, still as fun as ever it truely is my most favourite arcade of all time. Still got it.