What You've Been Playing This Week

[QualityChimp]

I played some more Dead Island last night with my mate. Two of our co-op gang are away this week.
Got totally mullered within seconds of leaving the safe area, so we changed tack and were a bit more cautious.
Did a few missions together, then carried on with my game in the earlier part of the story.
It's really good because you can find yourself exploring or helping people you find, or taking a diversion to run a few zeds over.
Ended up going to bed later than planned, oops.

At the weekend, I cracked open the FlipGrip to play a couple of Psikyo shooters I picked up in the Switch sale, Strikers 1945 and Gunbird 2.
Both are a lot of fun, the latter being a bit more humorous and the former like an alternative 1945.
Similar to Zero Gunner 2, there are loads of great enemies like a zeppelin that turns into a mech and so on.
Just love seeing the pixelart from the day.
Bugs me when modern developers make retro games and make them artificially blocky, when developers of the time were striving to make the best possible graphics with the technological restrictions.
With shmups, I love it when there are things going on in the background, like in G2 there's a cowboy playing a guitar, some knights cheering or the enemy pirates running up the screen to get to their base and boss ship.

Embedded Tweet

[Atticus]

Love that. Need to get me one of them FlipGrips.

[QualityChimp]

Love that. Need to get me one of them FlipGrips.

It's not perfect. It covers the power button so you have to go to powersave mode in the settings. When you wake it up, you have to wake both controllers, because they're not connected. When you slide it in, you can change the volume. The main home screen is landscape, so it's a bit fiddly.

However, these are absolutely minuscule issues, in reality.

Once you're in a portrait game, you don't think about it again, it's really intuitive and don't notice it's there.

It's a nice bit of kit and the Switch is becoming the home of shmups, so worth investing, if you're a fan, IMHO.

[Atticus]

Just finished LoZ Link's Awakening on the Switch. It's a more substantial game than I expected. I've been playing it pretty solidly on my days off and it's taken me a fair old while to finish ... some pretty challenging puzzles for sure.

[Cassius_Smoke]

That's reminds me, I've been playing Zelda: Link to the past on and off. Never played it before. It's pretty good. I'm up to the desert area. It zips along quite quick really.

[CMcK]

Back to Streets of Rage 4 this week but playing with Blaze now. Still very impressed with this game. Also playing some Ghost Blade HD and Natsuki Chronicle. I think Ghost Blade May be my most played game of this generation.

[QualityChimp]

Finished Ruiner on Saturday, and then managed to blast through Carrion and Yoku's Island Express before the weekend was out. You can tell I've been left to my own devices (literally)

Was Ruiner any good? It's currently £3.99 on PS4.

https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/product/EP3643-CUSA08386_00-RUINERPS4EU00000

[fuse]

I like it a lot. It's not very long, but it's got a tonne of atmosphere, and breaks the action scenes up into nice little minute-long chunks that you stomp between. Definitely worth £4.

[nonny]

I just finished Mad Max... Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now what do I start next? A quick scan of the backlog top 10 reveals:

Red Dead Redemption 2
Resident Evil 7
Nier Automata
Doom
Burnout Paradise Remastered
Spiritfarer
Wasteland 3
Alan Wake
Psychonauts
Brutal Legend

[Brad]

DCS. Awesome flight simulator. Quite demanding, needs 32GB of ram for multiplayer. Base game is free but I'm about to spend £65 on one single plane lol Was tempted to get the F14 Tomcat so me and a mate could be Maverick and Goose but am going for the F/A 18 Hornet as it's the most versatile. Very good implementation of VR too.

[Colin]

Was Ruiner any good? It's currently £3.99 on PS4.
https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/...INERPS4EU00000

Well worth £4 mate.

[Neon Ignition]

Friday Round up:


Nintendo 3DS:
Just rounding up some objectives before making my way to the Bay, the furthest I've ever stuck with this entry. I'm appreciating it's different than Ocarina but it's unquestionably the weaker entry of the two.

Nintendo Wii U:
Not done very much of Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush but it's okay for something a little different from the usual of the series. Visually nicely done.

Playstation 3:
No progress again planned on Call of Duty: Black Ops

Nintendo Switch:
No further on Paper Mario: The Origami King either till next week.

PC:
Dabbling and finishing up with Microsoft Flight Simulator, about a quarter of the way through Saints Row III: Remastered, on Act 2 of the meh Battletoads and just started Tell Me Why which is very slow to get going so far.

[Paddy]

I just finished Mad Max... Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now what do I start next? A quick scan of the backlog top 10 reveals:

Red Dead Redemption 2
Resident Evil 7
Nier Automata
Doom
Burnout Paradise Remastered
Spiritfarer
Wasteland 3
Alan Wake
Psychonauts
Brutal Legend

Of those I'd recommend RE VII, Nier Automata or Doom. They won't demand much of your time and are great experiences all the way through.

[QualityChimp]

Mario Maker 2 - just thought I'd check it out. Some brilliantly tricky but rewarding levels.
Strikers 1945 - Liked this, but just dabbled a little.
Gunbird 2 - Game gets silly hard at the end. Just had to pump up the lives and continues just to make it to the end.
Iron Man VR demo - Good fun, but a bit faffy. I felt clunky rather than slick.
The Playroom VR - My son wanted to play some VR. Did the cat and mouse one and the dino one.
Dead Island - Monday Night gaming sesh. Played with friends. Too much sewer shenanigans, but still good fun.

I also looked at my Xbox One and deleted all the Game Pass and One Live games because you need an active sub to play them, so it's pretty much just become a streaming box and a 360 emulator.

It's tricky playing stuff with kids around. So Dead Space and Saints Row were out, for example.
I tried Skate 3, but it was telling me to do tricks and when I did them, the icon on screen said I was doing it the wrong way. There was only so much of Jason Lee telling me I was close to getting it right before it went off.

Played a bit of Peggle. The final bunch of levels are insanely difficult!

[dataDave]

I just finished Mad Max... Thoroughly enjoyed it.

Now what do I start next? A quick scan of the backlog top 10 reveals:

Red Dead Redemption 2
Resident Evil 7
Nier Automata
Doom
Burnout Paradise Remastered
Spiritfarer
Wasteland 3
Alan Wake
Psychonauts
Brutal Legend

Perfect Dark.