What You've Been Playing This Week

[QualityChimp]

I've been really enjoying Arkham Asylum. Been a while since I played it, so forgotten most of it, but I like the Metroidvania structure, dripping little advances by opening up a new area or giving you a new gadget. Was going to try for platinum, but some of the trophies are silly (40 combo?!) or need you to rinse the bonus missions.
I am addicted to finding all the Riddler puzzles. Some great ones where you have to align a question mark on different platforms.

This still feels awesome jumping down off some gargoyle perch and swooping across the map to take down some unsuspecting henchman.

[Golgo]

Finished Hogwarts Legacy. 50+ hours' worth, and was too fatigued to rinse the last big section of the map. The RPG (clothing-based) mechanics are half-baked and finicky, the total lack of morality system was perplexing given the casual horrors you are able to wreak with impunity (not to mention the chronic levels of thieving required to progress), but the spell-casting combat is really terrific and it's one of the most vividly and lovingly realised fantasy world I've ever encountered in gaming. Voice acting pretty great if somewhat too gratingly posh (mostly only the villainous lah-wa clarses have regional accents, guv'nor). The canned cut-scene animations? Not so great. Everyone looks different but moves exactly the same. Also, does suffer quite heavily from repetitive Ubisoft open-world map litter, and from a lack of enemy variety (colour-coded spiders, trolls, humans, goblins, frog-things, wolves, and that's it). Overall, though, it was quality. Be interested to see what they do with the next one.

EDIT: Polished off the DLC, 'Haunted Hogwarts', which was a brilliant change of pace. Properly spooky and surprising, and somewhat reminiscent of the Beneviento section in Resi 8. Showed what they could do with this franchise/engine if they stepped away from the formula that makes up the vast bulk of it - enjoyable thought that was. Slightly idiotic that this DLC is currently still locked to Sony devices, but there you go...

[Neon Ignition]

Doses of Helldivers 2, really trying to get motivated to finally plow through Watch Dogs: Legion as well

[MartyG]

Gary Grigsby’s war in the East

If you ever want to feel that you’re gaming-inadequate, forget Souls-likes and try war-based strategy games. I keep trying to learn this game but even after watching numerous tutorials it’s still massively overwhelming. Might just be better off sticking with Peggle.

[QualityChimp]

Got jealous of everyone blasting space bugs in Helldivers II on the PS5, so I finally bit the bullet and did it.

I loaded up EDF5 again.

I'm still trying to up my completion percentage to get that weapon unlock, but there are massive gaps where I've played as one class, so I'm going back over Normal and Hard settings, the latter where the most gaps are. You can play on Hard and unlock Easy and Normal too, but Hardest and Inferno need to be played separately, which means you're playing each level 3 times minimum for all for characters and there are over 100 levels! I've pumped hundreds of hours into this and I'm still under 60%!

Yet, it's still a blast to play!

Was tinkering through a few levels when the other players left to farm DLC weapons and looked for some Hard matches when EDF legend, prinnysquad appeared with his weapon unlocks to help me chip away at my percentage complete.

A couple of other chumps tagged along and we started rinsing those 30 to 50 levels, usually just smashing everything with the limits off, but still a lot of fun.

One guy, "Alpha Male" had triple Prinny's health but still wasn't quite 100%, so I suspect he's a filthy cheater, but he actually played alright, to be fair.
Unlike the lower-rank guy who had unlocked some top-tier bombing runs and was happy to be able to play with them, oblivious to the collateral damage!
I spent most levels running away from the flashing danger zone!

It's possible to take a shortcut to higher health and weapon, but I think the upgrade loop is so great, it's actually fun to play through the earlier levels to unlock weapons and health that help you clear the next difficulty up and repeat.

It's great that a game I've played for hundreds of hours, but I still love playing it. I think it's the co-op element where you get such an eclectic mix of players from weapon-hunting n00bs to 100%ers helping other players out.

[prinnysquad]

Got jealous of everyone blasting space bugs in Helldivers II on the PS5, so I finally bit the bullet and did it.

I loaded up EDF5 again.

I'm still trying to up my completion percentage to get that weapon unlock, but there are massive gaps where I've played as one class, so I'm going back over Normal and Hard settings, the latter where the most gaps are. You can play on Hard and unlock Easy and Normal too, but Hardest and Inferno need to be played separately, which means you're playing each level 3 times minimum for all for characters and there are over 100 levels! I've pumped hundreds of hours into this and I'm still under 60%!

Yet, it's still a blast to play!

Was tinkering through a few levels when the other players left to farm DLC weapons and looked for some Hard matches when EDF legend, prinnysquad appeared with his weapon unlocks to help me chip away at my percentage complete.

A couple of other chumps tagged along and we started rinsing those 30 to 50 levels, usually just smashing everything with the limits off, but still a lot of fun.

One guy, "Alpha Male" had triple Prinny's health but still wasn't quite 100%, so I suspect he's a filthy cheater, but he actually played alright, to be fair.
Unlike the lower-rank guy who had unlocked some top-tier bombing runs and was happy to be able to play with them, oblivious to the collateral damage!
I spent most levels running away from the flashing danger zone!

It's possible to take a shortcut to higher health and weapon, but I think the upgrade loop is so great, it's actually fun to play through the earlier levels to unlock weapons and health that help you clear the next difficulty up and repeat.

It's great that a game I've played for hundreds of hours, but I still love playing it. I think it's the co-op element where you get such an eclectic mix of players from weapon-hunting n00bs to 100%ers helping other players out.

That bombing run gimp was a Grade A throbber. Zero tactical awareness and not a team player at all.

In theory, the upgrade loop in this game could be eroded by tagging along to a room with 100%ers and all the unlocks. You could literally do nothing and still complete a shedload of levels and get all the top tier weapons. I didn’t do that with EDF5. Every weapon was painstakingly fought for, every level exhaustingly picked apart.

What you can’t do, though, is tag along on inferno. It’s too hard. You need strategy. Only the game hackers with absurd levels of health can complete it without a lot of planning, discipline and skill. Some of the later inferno levels took four of us at 12000+ health each every ounce of care and determination to complete. And even then, it was seat of your pants stuff.

[QualityChimp]

I know I'm like a stuck record, but anyone dismissing EDF as basic bug-blasting hasn't played it.
It's ludicrously tactical.

Love swapping out the weapons to have the right took for the job.
We changed to close-range kit from snipers when we knew we had to get up close to those shield bearers.

Some missions require you to aggro the enemies really carefully or before you know it, you're getting mashed up by 1000 Ravagers.

Thanks for you help last night. I keep seeming to join games where I don't need to play those levels!

[prinnysquad]

Missions with zero progress are all well and good, as long as there’s some point. Some of the absolute weapons last night weren’t even trying to get weapons and armour! Tosspots.

[Tobal]

Back on the Stellaris train, fell off a while ago due to the changes in archaeo-tech weapons in fleets, and then not getting on with massive update to leaders and the council. But i'm back, the archo stuff has been balanced, unity use changed and with the leader stuff allows alot of flexibility for building tall over flat (smaller empire but very techno advanced) and QoL changes to the UI that have required mods for years now.

After trying out one of the toxic race for the first time and getting boxed in by 1 advance empire, 1 religious nutter that hates me and the mercenary band i gave up an went back to try my fun empire, the Robot terminators. This time i looked up how to properly build and organize fleets without the auto helper which i should have done years ago, but i'm now nearing where endgame crisis pops up after waring with the galaxies biggest federation (basically half the empires) for 200 years with no end in site until making decent gains in recent game years after the biggest boys (an awakened empire) on the block taking a disliking to one of the federation members, dragging them in to a losing fight halfway across the galaxy while i'm trading blows with them on another front with my planet killer ship currently on the production line. what a game.

[QualityChimp]

Hearing the Helldiver woes, I'm glad I'm back on the EDF waggon, this time with waggons Prinny AND Katsu!

I think I've played three nights in a row staying up to 12:30 each blimmin' time.

Laughed when I had an achievement pop after years - 60% complete!

I'm chipping away at the Hard difficulty before moving on to Hardest.
I only have 11 levels left (with a couple needing all characters to run through it) then Hard will be done.

This game still manages to thrill me and make me laugh with the sheer spectacle at times.

[hudson]

Balatro (PS5/Switch) - Roguelike poker game has me hooked! I'm all in!
Helldivers 2 (PS5) - sublime game to play with friends
Street Fighter 6 PS5/PC) - still grinding away
Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster (PS5) - This is cool to play with the additional assists.

[QualityChimp]

More EDF5. I want to reach 70% before the grind begins anew with EDF6!

Thanks to Prinny and Katsu carrying me with their weapon/armour unlocks, I'm up to about 64%, with about 7 runs left on the last handful of missions until I've played through the first 3 difficulties with all 4 classes.

I think it takes about another complete run with 2 characters on Hardest to hit 70%, but I've done a few on the higher difficulties, but it still feels a long way away!

Every time I'm left to fend for myself with the limits on, the game gets so much tougher!
Although I really enjoyed soloing a mission in France where the frog soldiers drop and you're sneaking between buildings before kneecapping them with a shotty and turning them to ex-Kermits before they can crawl away.

I know I should be playing something new, but I'm having so much fun again and I like the social aspect of the game.

[importaku]

Still ploughing away at dragon quest heroes 1&2 finished the first game & near the end of the second, i have enjoyed it quite a lot so far. Some of the quests have been a little challenging due to the language barrier but i slowly figured my way through.

I did spot that dragon quest X online has a eshop trial version so i was curious to see what it was like compared to the offline one i have finished. Bloody huge download of 25 gig i eagerly got myself started only to be greeted with a black & yellow error screen basically saying i wasn't allowed to play as i wasn't in japan lol it's wild that they still region lock this game when the lifted that restriction on older versions but it holds the record of probably been the only switch game that is geolocked to a region, really can't be arsed with getting a vpn just to get around this hurdle. One good thing though as i was tempted to import the physical a while back i'm glad i didn't as it's not a cheap game and i would have been gutted to get ready to play to be told nuh-uh by sqeenix.

[Deuteros]

I started Riddled Corpses EX on the Vita during my one-hour train commute back home.

It's a twin-stick shooter with a simple gameplay loop: you collect gold and upgrade after every run in order to make it a bit further each time.

It's so engrossing I would have missed my stop if a regular hadn't nudged me!

[QualityChimp]

EDF5 - All three lower difficulty tiers get!

My son walked in as I was playing the final level and he asked who the big enemy was and explained that it's the end-of-game boss.
He asked how many levels there were and when I told him 111, he said "you've played it 111 times?!", then explained that's per character, so 444 times, then a load extra on the higher difficulties!

It's funny that as progress slows down, you get achievements for your completion rate at smaller increments, so I've just had ones for 62% and 64%.

Up to 65% and nudging ever closer to that magical 70% that allows weapon unlocks.

I really don't know if I'll ever 100% this as there seems to be a mix of mid-level and n00bs playing and someone with 200 health ain't going to last 2 seconds on these tougher levels.