What You've Been Playing This Week

[importaku]

Currently enjoying Urban legend dissolution centre bought it digitally while i wait for my physical special edition as it's one i want to give double support to plus it's like £15 so hardly breaking the bank digitally, having to ration the chapters as i feel like i'm whizzing through as it's really addictive and have no idea how many there are and i'm already on chapter 4 and i want it to last as long as possible. The artstyle is amazing as well as the lighting and other effects. The main story that runs in the background of the seperate cases is also gripping me, i love the way you scan social media for clues to help identify what type of urban legend you are dealing with before you then go more in depth on location to try and piece together how to solve the case, the english release is very welcome as there's no way in hell i'd manage this in Japanese although thankfully the jpn physical does have english in there. Soundtrack is equally amazing it oozes creepyness & mystery, in case you haven't figured it out my current game of the year so far.

Feels like playing a 16bit horror anime, i really hope this gets another game it could easily be a series unless the story forces that from happening.

[Anpanman]

Talking about overfamiliar I'm still EDeffing, having a great time as mentioned earlier trying new strange weapon combinations and strategies.

Obviously I'm doing it at a lower health level too but so would anyone else. It is still excellent fun and whilst on the whole I'm doing well there are still those levels which are challenging to say the least.

[Dogg Thang]

I've been playing Alien Rogue Incursion on Quest 3. Overall, it's not bad. It's set very much in the same world and time as Alien Isolation and the look is familiar from that game but this is not scary as hell, like that game was. It has more of an action focus. It looks pretty great and the atmosphere feels spot on.

The one big negative for me are the xenomorphs themselves. They're kind of janky and often move around objects in a way that looks like they're sliding and it really breaks the immersion for me. And they're weirdly not enough of a threat and too much at the same time. What I mean by that is that there are many parts where you're just taking them down one by one and it's easy and dull and just breaks the flow and then you hit one beat where just reloading your weapon means there are three around you and you're dead. The shotgun and pistol need to be reloaded one bullet at a time and the control is far from seamless so it's a frustrating way to go out.

So it's okay but not fantastic.

[briareos_kerensky]

Phantom Brave The Lost Hero on Switch. Direct sequel to 2004's Phantom Brave, the game Nippon Ichi created after the success of Disgaea.
The first game experimented quite a lot back in the day, ditch grid-based movement and having some basic physic for jumping, item throwing and bounching. The Lost Hero keeps the gridless movements but tones down physics.
You control Marona, a girl that confines ghosts into objects to fight for her; confined ghosts take on the properties of the haunted object, including traits like...invicible. Always nice to have an enemy bound to an invicible object, as object properties are normally hidden by the UI, and there's only one icon per object to point out their main stat bonus (attack, defence, speed, etc.). In fact the whole interface during battles could use a complete overhaul: for example elemental weaknesses are only highlighted by holding down ZL, and holding down ZL precludes from using other elements of the interface that would perfectly work together, as there's no graphical of control overlap.
Maps are filled with objects that you can and can't haul, including stuff like bushes that act as trampolines. And it's way too many objects, maps don't really need that many object laying around for haunting, as you have a deployment limit and even without reaching that limit, it's pretty easy to get rid of all the opposition.
The AI is dumb, and beelines towards the closest opponent, often getting stuck in fences or other obstacles.
And the game simply doesn't run well on Switch. There's an option for performance and quality mode, and I'm playing in performance. During the first maps you can see animations dropping frames here and there, but at least cursor movement is fluid and you can scroll around the map easily. From the first map of the second chapter though everything goes bad, animations use a fraction of their frames, the cursor jumps between objects, and map scrolling is painfully choppy. And again, that interface...it's OK on screen, but handheld you need to really squint to see some numbers and icons. Probably better played on a PC with a mouse, the amount of information you need to factor in requires fast cursor movements and precision console pads can't really give.

Metaphor Re:Fantazio on PC. Have you played Persona 3, 4, or 5? Well, this is Persona with a fantasy twist. I think the biggest difference between this and Persona 5 is that all characters can use different avatars; stats like intelligence and charisma have been renamed, and so have some spells, not eveything. Why not everything? I don't know.
Like Kuro no Kiseki/Trails Through Daybreak you can attack enemies in dungeons with real time attacks and dodges, though here it's used to induce stun and then trigger the usual turn-based battle, so the system is not as developed as Kuro/Daybreak.
One good thing is the game automatically changes button prompts based on what you've connected, and it recognised the Switch Pro Pad without additional drivers. The other good thing is the music, which is almost exclusively with choruses and goes strong for pretty much every location/event; it fits well the setting and the story predicaments the party find themselves in.
Overall it feels like Persona 5 in a different world, this being both a good and a bad thing. Good because Persona 5 was an excellently crafted game with good writing, engaging characters, and pleasant combat system; bad because Methapor Re:Fantazio doesn't seem to do anything particularly new, other than renaming game mechanics found in the Persona series. Here there's no demon collecting and merging though.

[Golgo]

Persona 5 Strikers. Thought I'd give this a spin as it's been a 'freebie' on PS+ for yonks. So, it's not really the fast-paced musou spin-off I was expecting. Koei-Tecmo certainly learnt lessons from Atlus on how to disrespect the players' time. Just needed to go shopping for supplies and weapons and was mission-directed to traipse around the shops in local area and Shibuya. Had 'closed for the summer' pasted outside, they did. Mysterious! So then had to traipse back to Leblanc cafe to puzzle out what to do with the Phantom Thieves. Whereupon, after much extraneous dialogue and low comedy, we ended up buying stuff from the internet with tutorials on this innovative new mechanic. A total waste of time. Now pushing the 3 hour mark with about 25 minutes of combat so far. Also more of Octopath Traveller 2, and after fairly prolonged play (16 hours) now finding the gameplay and map a little shallow beneath the lovely visuals and music. So...much ennui and negativity from me here, sorry folks!

[Cepp]

Disney Dreamlight Valley
Very relaxing, I put a bit of time into it every couple of days.

Warhammer 40000: Boltgun
It looks great, movement is great and the guns feel great, but it's super basic with boring level design and arena fights. It's not maintaining my interest so I'm going to move on.

[endo]

Civ 6: had another dive into this, having seen the cold water poured on Civ 7. I'm sure it'll turn out great in the end, but I'm not paying up front for an incomplete game.

TOTK: about 45 hours into this now, after clicking with it, and really enjoying it. Took a while to get into the groove, but now I'm there it's great. The lighting in this game is beautiful. I basically never do screen grabs in games, but I find myself doing just that at random times here, like halfway up a mountain at sunset. Last game that had lighting like this — where I'd just stop and gawp — was Oblivion.

[QualityChimp]

Just more Skyrim (PS4) and I'm nearing the end of the DLC section I stumbled into.
There are some decent missions and just cleared out a cave jam-packed with exploding spiders, which lead to a couple of instadeaths.

It's hilariously clunky, though. Some guy starts a passionate conversation with his daughter, then just wanders off and they carry on conversing across the town.
Someone died and the NPCs are all like "he was a good man, the whole town respected him", and yet his corpse remains in the middle of the town with them walking over his body on their pre-assigned loops.

[Neon Ignition]

This weeks line up:

NSW - A Hat in Time
RAX - D
PS5 - Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons Remake
PC - A Plague Tale: Requiem

[wakka]

What on earth is a RAX?

[randombs]

What on earth is a RAX?

ROG Ally X?

[hudson]

this I think. Which has a USB lead for hair.

[Atticus]

I finished my Last of Us playthrough. Really enjoyed every moment. Just like re-reading a favourite book. Performance on the Pro is lovely too ... rummaging through drawers for pills and scissors never looked so good.

Also, I got a new table on Pinball M, the horror pinball game from the masters at Zen Studios. It's called Camp Bloodbrook and it's basically a Friday the 13th table without the licence. Really fun table.

[briareos_kerensky]

Some doujin shooters I got on Steam some time ago but haven't played till now.

The first is G-Scramble, which you can complete in about 15 minutes as it only features one stage and two playable ships. It's basically someone's first shooter, and it's a bit rough around the edges. You can collect power ups for firepower, and speed, plus extra bombs. Increasing firepower doesn't feel much of a jump, while speed makes your ship way too fast for the bullet patterns presented here; the bomb is a bomb. Good effort, it's free, but you won't be revisiting it after you've cleared it twice.

Then we have Graze Counter GM, which I started today. As the name implies, the main mechanic is grazing bullets as enemies like in Psyvariar; this charges up the graze meter and once triggered you get a focused laser beam that makes you invicible, absorbs enemy bullets, and is more powerful than your standard shot. Hitting enemies in this state makes thme drop stars, which charge the break meter, that when triggered makes you get more points with a more powerful and wider shot.
Graphics are crisp and this is one of the few precious Japanese doujin games that doesn't fear fullscreen on 4K monitors, meaning it's integer upscaled and pixels remain sharp.
The playing field is 4:3s, with the sides of the screen showing enemies, though they cannot be harmed and they cannot harm you. You start off with two ships, but after compelting the game once (pretty easy at the lowest difficulty) you get two more. There are various game modes and you can customise many things, including secondary abilities and revenge bullets.
This seems like a quality shooter.

RANDOMX. I've been playing this for about a week, one credit at a time. It's a vertical shooter where endstage and midtage bosses and weapons are randomised (hence the name). You have three ships with different movement speed, three different starting weapons, and different abilities (one can charge up to two shields, one has more weapon drops, etc). All weapons have limited use, and during stages you can get more by stopping at the local Argo. Not a joke, and also not Argos.
Anyway, there the shopkeeper will give you up to three new items, which can be either a new weapon or an improvement to special actions: satellite gives you an option for the duration of the game; line moves the automatic item collection line lower, letting you collect bonuses with less risk; guard spawns invincible options around your ship; flame inflicts damage to your enemies; eraser purges bullets where your ship is; the last two abilities are triggered at random throughout the stages.
Weapons range from missiles that would make Ichiro Itano blush, homing lasers, 3 or 4 or 5 shots, wip lasers like Raiden's purple power up, flaming phoenixes, rainy clouds, swarm of bees, or It's floating red baloons. You can reject weapons if you don't like them, and everything has a brief text description, but nothing can really prepare you how the JK school uniform will perform...ant that it changes the shopkeeper's attire to a bikini.
There are more than 70 bosses, and to face them all you have to go through all the available difficulty modes. While the random nature of this title will be strange, I mean, how can you strategise how to face a boss you don't know with weapons you might not have, but it's exactly this random nature that kept me coming back, especially when the game drops the first strange weapons. Each playthrough lasts for about 30 minutes, and levels are fun enough to warrant multiple playthroughs.
Unfortunately when you put it to fullscreen on a 4K monitor graphics are filtered and get a bit blurry, but there are multiple visibility options for bullets. The interface is a bit busy, and the system has a good tutorial that explains everything. Recommended.

And in the following days I'll try REDNEG ALLSTARS (also available on the Japanese Switch store).

[QualityChimp]

Playing some Skyrim (PS4).
Doing the DLC thing and there's an outstanding quest, but because the NPC asking it just keeps repeating about how a dead guy was a good man and I can't complete the quest and get the related achievement.

So, I'm back in the main island doing a few more quests.
I'm able to ride atop dragons now. Which is nice.

I'm thinking of pushing on with the main quest, but it's so easy to get distracted.
That's the joy of Skyrim - you keep finding little interesting moments.

I picked up Andro Dunos II for just over £1 (PS4), so I've some Schmup action to dip into at some point.