What You've Been Playing This Week

[Golgo]

Loop Hero on Switch. Been meaning to start this for a while. It's really ingenious, piling around your loop auto-fighting, laying tiles in the landscape to spawn enemies and unlock buffs, material and equipment, trying to maintain the optimum balance of risk/reward as you loop around and around like a mental, fretting whether to hightail it out with your booty or go a few more loops. Really appealing pixel art, too. Story also good:

->Open Spoiler<-

the Roguelite set up makes sense in an overall narrative of a fantasy civilization scattered into oblivion, so with each loop you are effectively remembering it back into existence.

But wow, the controls. Obviously it started on PC but it feels like it was ported by someone who had never seen a console or used a controller. Not as bad in this regard as the Switch port of Darkest Dungeon, but not far off. Still, fun. Beat the first boss after about 6 attempts. I like how you get the option to keep looping after that to try to reap more resources from the monster-spawning machine you've made by that point, risky thought it is (if you die, you lose around 60%).

Also been playing Cyberpunk 2077 on PS5. This has really impressed me. Initially it struck me as unpleasantly reminiscent of the GTAs - what with all the lurid and puerile advertisements/media personalities that are baked into its world and bark at you with funnies from everywhere - but the proper meat of the story is excellent and full of countless well-crafted characters and quite affecting scenarios, even for stuff that would pass as grindy busywork in other open world RPGs. Customisation is great, with straightforward but effective - and immediately impactful - RPG pathways, and combat pretty meaty for an RPG of this kind. I'm going for a kind of hacker/samurai babe. Game's a real looker, too. Sexy time bits are fairly cringe, as they always are. Never played it in its debacle stage years back, but it seems to run really well now. Only seen a couple of trivial glitches. One thing the GTAs do have over this in terms of open world drive-em-ups, however, is the licensed music on the car radio. Music tastes in the future are proper crap, folks.

[nonny]

Currently surviving my way through Grounded, ever since i finished both subnautica games i have been wanting another crafting survival type game i already play no mans sky and astroneer but those dont have the same feel as subnautica. Grounded seems to have filled that void perfectly, the story is really intriguing the setting is amazing and the voice acting & soundtrack are top notch. Managed to build a temp base of all the bits of gear i need to craft and have slowly started upgrading my weapons and armour,played about 7 hours so far and i have managed to find the next set of Dr Wendells labs, getting into them is a different matter.

Love the whole vibe and artstyle, looks so vibrant on oled switch, while not as impressive as running on pc it still holds up pretty well.






My current base until i choose where to build a proper full kitted out base


The sense of scale is great, running fact to face with huge spiders not so much lol.


The lighting and shadows are really nice.



Visiting BURG.L in the oak lab is always a nice excursion, managed to revive the duplacator and find some of his missing chips to progress the story. Love his design.



Also found one of these things, had to fend off waves of bitey gits till it finished mixing, worth doing though as it gave me a load of science points.


So far it's an amazing game, so pleased it fially came to switch. Been wanting to play it for years since i saw it originally appear on youtube from people playing the steam early access version.

Grounded was my obsession there a few years back. Really glad other players are finding it just as good on other platforms.

It really is a complete gem of a game and just gets better the further you get into it. The pond base (which you're probably going next) is flat out amazing and it just improves from there.

those spiders though... nightmare fuel.

[Finsbury Girl]

Started a new character in Elden Ring. Coming off playing Dark Souls 3 in the last week, my muscle memory sucks

But it has cemented in my mind that this is one of the greatest games ever made, and right up there will my all time favourites.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm dual racing at the moment, hopping between Crash Team Racing Nitro-Fueled which is servicable enough fun, better than most kart racers but laughable to contend it with Mario Kart - also Hot Wheels Unleashed 2 which does contain numerous new features but if you've played the first one it's far too overly familiar

[QualityChimp]

EDF5.

I'm over 99% complete. I think I have 11 playthroughs of the final few levels, so I really need to playing them was the assistance of some real beasts, not the people playing the game for the first time and are surprised that they die when an ant looks at them funny across the map.

Did the penultimate mission as Air Raider and had a poor weapon loadout, so it tool far too long for us to complete and thus was late to bed again.

[hudson]

Stellar Blade (PS5) - I'm still slowly working to try and 100% it. Such an amazing game. It has sprung me to investigate other similar games such as...

Bayonetta (Remaster PS4) - I can't believe I have never played this. Oh my god, it's phenomenal.
Bayonetta 2 (Switch) - Oh my gawd again! I just played the intro to this and it's one of the most bizarrely entertaining intros to a game ever

[dataDave]

Bayonetta (Remaster PS4) - I can't believe I have never played this. Oh my god, it's phenomenal.

Honestly just stick with the first game until you complete it properly. That means clearing NSIC mode. The game doesn't end once you're done with Normal mode, it carries on through Hard, and then into NSIC, just as a NG+ would in any other game.

The intro from the Future Press guide says it perfectly:


I'll phrase it like this:

Normal Mode is like a fun action game.
Hard Mode is like a rhythm brawler.
NSIC takes the metronome and sheet music away.

Each loop starts to gradually feed into the next. Like at the end of Normal mode the enemies will start to move and attack faster, at the end of Hard mode some enemy attacks will no longer trigger Witch Time, and by the time you're partly into NSIC you won't even need it anymore, which is just as well because the mechanic doesn't exist from that point on (unless you manually trigger it with an equiped accessory) and the game plays all the better for it, in its true form.

Don't let the rest of the text put you off - you don't need the rest of the guide really, this one page probably contains the single most important string of text from the entire book. My initial advice would be to stick with the Scarborough Fair set of handguns that you get after the first level. Don't overwhelm yourself with weapons and their various combo lists at the start. Stick to the handguns and rinse out both the PKP (horizontal launcher) and PPKP (vertical launcher) for the entire duration of Normal Mode. Also don't tap the main attack buttons, you want to get into the habit of holding the buttons down momentarily ASAP - I can't stress that enough. Onyx Roses (the shotguns) actually help with getting into the habit as you need to hold the buttons down for their charged shots.

Another fine tip is to spot projectiles or enemy attacks that you can offensively dodge into to purposely trigger Witch Time. Normal Mode is very visual, come Hard Mode you'll be playing by ear.

[hudson]

Honestly just stick with the first game until you complete it properly. That means clearing NSIC mode. The game doesn't end once you're done with Normal mode, it carries on through Hard, and then into NSIC, just as a NG+ would in any other game.

The intro from the Future Press guide says it perfectly:


I'll phrase it like this:

Normal Mode is like a fun action game.
Hard Mode is like a rhythm brawler.
NSIC takes the metronome and sheet music away.

Each loop starts to gradually feed into the next. Like at the end of Normal mode the enemies will start to move and attack faster, at the end of Hard mode some enemy attacks will no longer trigger Witch Time, and by the time you're partly into NSIC you won't even need it anymore, which is just as well because the mechanic doesn't exist from that point on (unless you manually trigger it with an equiped accessory) and the game plays all the better for it, in its true form.

My initial advice would be to stick with the Scarborough Fair set of handguns that you get after the first level. Don't overwhelm yourself with weapons and their various combo lists. Stick to the handguns and rinse out PKP and PPKP for the entire duration of Normal Mode. Also don't tap the main attack buttons, you want to get into the habit of holding the buttons down momentarily ASAP - I can't stress that enough. Onyx Roses (the shotguns) actually help with getting into the habit as you need to hold the buttons down for their charged shots.

I'll bare this in mind, fo sure.... but I..... I am just a man!

[dataDave]

I'll bare this in mind, fo sure.... but I..... I am just a man!

While you're holding down P...K...P you only have to tap/spam the dodge button over the top of these attack inputs and you've discovered Dodge Offset!



Why do you need to do this? Ultimately you are required to complete all your combos for the big Wicked Weave attack at the end which can push, or lift, or break armour. Enemies are attacking you all the time, so you also need to dodge out of the way mid-combo, then continue the string after you're safe. A connected Wicked Weave will also reset the combo score degradation and increase your points multiplier. That's maybe only required for score-attacking and Platinum badges, however it's also a soft guide in that it pushes the player towards playing 'properly'.

Scaling back a bit, in terms of points and damage you want to ALWAYS grab the enemy weapons. They do tons of damage and rake in a load of halos (points/currency). If you see an enemy carrying a weapon you like you can Torture Attack them to force them to drop it. The ultimate position is to grab an enemy weapon, taunt them to make them angry (they'll go all lava-like), and then trigger Witch Time before laying into them. There's nothing more effective and satisfying than compounding score and damage multipliers that way.

[Golgo]

Loop Hero still. It's fun but it gets extraordinarily grindy. You might have the best run but are capped on how many resources you can bring back to camp (20), so the rest just get trashed. Meaning you may have enough for a basic upgrade (a villager's tent to a mud hovel). Feels like an artificial way to pad the game time and it definitely saps the momentum and enjoyment.

[QualityChimp]

100% completion on EDF5!

I'd told myself I'd never 100% this, but I had the urge to play a bit more a few months back and it got its mandibles back into me.

I was quite close to the unlock limit, so pushed on. Once that was done, I raced through the earlier missions with all the armour and weapon unlocks off.
Did some farming missions with Katsu and Prinny and they helped me get some of the best kit - bombing runs, mechs and laser turrets for the Air Raider, lances for the Wing Diver and the blazer for the Ranger.
With those bits, it made it easier but still needed tactics on that final run of Inferno missions.
There's a missions with a zillion whesps, spiddas and roly-polies, but you can hide inside the entrance of a flowers shop and pop up some barriers.

Story wise, there's a little bit of plot. I particularly like a run of missions where you recapture the base you start from.
You approach through a valley, then attack the base, then go inside and find the giant mech that can take down the kaiju, then finally emerge and stop the invading masses.

Anyways, it's a lovely game and roll on EDF6 - thanks to everyone who fought alongside me.

[QualityChimp]

I captured the finally mission. You can't hear Prinny's chat, but I'm not talking to myself like a nutter.

What do you do when you 100% a game you've put 400+ hours into? Obviously you start to complete the DLC...

[prinnysquad]

Well done QC. You woke up today a man, after spending many years a mere tidgypud.

I still think we should smash the DLC. Go for total 100%. Besides, you can’t go from being jizzed on to…nothing, so abruptly. It’s summer now and we need to knack some whesps.

[importaku]

Grounded was my obsession there a few years back. Really glad other players are finding it just as good on other platforms.

It really is a complete gem of a game and just gets better the further you get into it. The pond base (which you're probably going next) is flat out amazing and it just improves from there.

those spiders though... nightmare fuel.

So far 50 hours have flown by, the game just keeps getting better & better. I have barely touched anything else on my switch since i installed this. So far i'm at the point where i need to craft the embiggening cocktail however i can't get the javamatic to power up so i'm working on that although i have learnt that it's a huge protection event so i have held off trying to get to the ending and i'm now concentrating on making my character as strong as possible as that black widow totally wrecked my ass as i fantically whizzed by her tring to avoid combat lol. Have tier III armour and weapons but i need to work on amassing supplies now and strengthening stuff. Have started the mission of dragging supplies to set up ziplines to cut the massive hike to get to the upper yard now i have one at the pond to take me right up without going via the bbq. Havent figured a quick way to get into the sand pit though i was well pissed off to find that it wont let you build on the edge of the sand pit so having to go through the ant nest to get there is a trial.

The pond was subnautica all over again, nobody told me the spiders had learnt to swim. Turned around and there was one of the buggers heading right to me i turned to swim away only to be confronted with what i thought was a friendly koi carp. Nope new trauma unlocked.

Still so many places i can see but haven't been able to get into like the castle grayskull looking place near the pond or the sandcastle in the sandpit. Found what looks like the entrances to the termite & fire ant nests but those buggers are strong and i'm not making it out if i go in at my current form. Still loving the story it's genuinely interesting i keep scouring all over to find the lore documents as i want to know about it all. So far i have found out why i ended up in my predicament but not exactly why those 4 particular kids were chosen but least not everyone at ominent is evil.

With all the new game plus content and all the other stuff in the game along with not even started to properly build a massive base using all the bluprints yet it's going to last me a very long time. Might actually be one of the gaming highlights of the year.

[nonny]

So far 50 hours have flown by, the game just keeps getting better & better. I have barely touched anything else on my switch since i installed this. So far i'm at the point where i need to craft the embiggening cocktail however i can't get the javamatic to power up so i'm working on that although i have learnt that it's a huge protection event so i have held off trying to get to the ending and i'm now concentrating on making my character as strong as possible as that black widow totally wrecked my ass as i fantically whizzed by her tring to avoid combat lol. Have tier III armour and weapons but i need to work on amassing supplies now and strengthening stuff. Have started the mission of dragging supplies to set up ziplines to cut the massive hike to get to the upper yard now i have one at the pond to take me right up without going via the bbq. Havent figured a quick way to get into the sand pit though i was well pissed off to find that it wont let you build on the edge of the sand pit so having to go through the ant nest to get there is a trial.

The pond was subnautica all over again, nobody told me the spiders had learnt to swim. Turned around and there was one of the buggers heading right to me i turned to swim away only to be confronted with what i thought was a friendly koi carp. Nope new trauma unlocked.

Still so many places i can see but haven't been able to get into like the castle grayskull looking place near the pond or the sandcastle in the sandpit. Found what looks like the entrances to the termite & fire ant nests but those buggers are strong and i'm not making it out if i go in at my current form. Still loving the story it's genuinely interesting i keep scouring all over to find the lore documents as i want to know about it all. So far i have found out why i ended up in my predicament but not exactly why those 4 particular kids were chosen but least not everyone at ominent is evil.

With all the new game plus content and all the other stuff in the game along with not even started to properly build a massive base using all the bluprints yet it's going to last me a very long time. Might actually be one of the gaming highlights of the year.

You're further than I got... I think I was on the big sandcastle in the top north part of the map when I gave it rest. I was playing solo but it is absolutely legendary in co-op.

There's a few ways you can get to later parts earlier by some sneaky jumping up the leaves of some plants. Obviously you run the risk of encountering rock hard enemy types but you can sneak in and out and salvage a load of stuff.

Your whole write up makes me want to go back to it now!