What You've Been Playing This Week

[Atticus]

But playing Dusk also and liking that very much indeed.

Just googled that and it looks ace. Will deffo be picking that up.

[QualityChimp]

Just googled that and it looks ace. Will deffo be picking that up.

I also just Googled Dusk and it suggested some silky negligées, so tried again with "game" added and I agree it looks mint, but less sensual.

[Atticus]

I also just Googled Dusk and it suggested some silky negligées, so tried again with "game" added and I agree it looks mint, but less sensual.

*** returns to google ***

[randombs]

Swinging through the Spider-Man DLCs. Just starting the final chapter. It’s been great fun, especially since I went to the accessibility menu to skip puzzles and change button mashing prompts to button holding prompts.

[Atticus]

I played some Dusk last night. It is a cracking little game but after 20 mins or so a familiar feeling came over me that haven't experienced for years: motion sickness (it's a fast moving game). Hopefully a tinker with the fov might take the edge off.

[importaku]

Have a lot of switch stuff i'm working my way through but today been playing a lot of spectacular sparky a stupidly good run & gun game it feels like a established mascot game as the level of polish on it is crazy. It's like what a game at the end of the 32bit era would be like where devs learned how to squeeze every trick out of a console to make something really good. Nicalis combined elements of dynamite headdy & gunstar heroes together to create a whole new game the levels are bright colourful & packed full of stuff to kill. Sparky is rather likeable too he talks a lot in fact all the characters do and the cutscenes & bosses are fully voiced & the acting is pretty great it's a little cheesy but genuinely funny quite a few times i have laughed my head off.

The game is very fluid to control the dash & aiming is really responsive which is essential as on the harder difficulty levels it will destroy your ass as the guns & your dash ability are on gauges so if you overload one you will have to wait so it's a juggling game of shooting & dashing and finding a safe spot to rest for a second to get your dash stamina back or your gun to cool down. Managed to finish story mode and a new mode called frenzy unlocked which removes the gauge restrictions for dashing & weapons fire but the catch is that in this mode your health slowly drains so you have to keep moving fast and getting stars & armour refils to keep going so it can make things pretty strategic during boss fights.

Hope someone releases this as a physical as it really deserves to shed it's digital only availability.

[Cassius_Smoke]

Picked up Scarlet Nexus.
Combat is exceptional, just really good fun. I even like the 'high school' jrpg elements, which normally make me cringe. It's not overly cheesy. Yeah I like it.

Also played through Bloodstained again. Much better once you know what to expect. It not nearly as hard.

Visage
Psychological horror at is best. It's like Amnesia mixed with a bunch of other horrors. It's still that ghost train on the rails kind of thing, but I've been nervous to walk down corridors and jumped more than once. Ps5 update make it look nice too. I recommend it.

[QualityChimp]

Not played much bit watched a couple of Gameranx videos and now I'm tempted to start something time-consumingly epic, but know I'll love.

Choices are:
Skyrim (never played it, but have my mate's PSVR copy)
Witcher 3 (like Skyrim, but swearier?)
Cyberpunk (because I like to make my own mind up and think the setting is right up my street)
Deus Ex (whichever was free on PS+ because I enjoyed the other ones)

What do you think, chums?

[wakka]

Can't speak to Cyberpunk or Deus Ex, but I played both Skyrim and Witcher 3, plus their DLCs, to death back on release.

They're both excellent games, and I think they've been very influential, so if you haven't played either you should definitely give them a try at some point.

They're similar in some ways and different in others. In Skyrim the voice acting and storytelling is of the usual Bethesda quality (i.e. not great). But where it shines is the level of freedom to take your own path it affords. Every person can be spoken with, interacted with. They're all unique. And the world is rammed with great stuff, that you can approach however you want - as a sneaky thief (who's also a vampire), a do-gooding knight, a spellsword, a orc barbarian wielding a warhammer...the list goes on.

In Witcher 3, the quality of the script and acting is much, much higher. It has a vastly better story and characters. But you are Geralt - you can't be anyone else - and while you're offered flexibility in whether you emphasis physical attacks, magic, or alchemy and potions, there isn't the same level of choice in how you approach the game as a whole that Skyrim offers. It's more linear, story-wise, too. You can pretty much ignore the main story in Skyrim if you want. You can't really do that here.

Both offer huge worlds with lots to do. I would give Skyrim the edge on random characters to meet and little caves and things to explore, but there is fantastic stuff like Gwent in Witcher 3, which is a collectible card game which you play against NPCs (and which is hugely addictive).

TLDR they're both excellent but offer slightly different experiences. If you haven't played them, you should have, so I'd put them ahead of Cyberpunk (which sounds like it needs another year of patches anyway), and Deus Ex if you've already played quite a few in that series.

[nonny]

Skyrim or the Witcher 3, both are epic in different ways...

The Witcher 3 will get a next gen patch but I wouldn't wait around for that as it still plays very well if you're on the new consoles.

If you're on PC you can mod them to your heart's content.

[Cassius_Smoke]

I'd go Witcher3.
Skyrim is good, but even with mods it's looking and playing its age now.

Deus Ex mankind Divided is really good.

[dataDave]

I’ll never bother with console Skyrim again, especially not a PlayStation release with the minimal mod support. It’s just not worth the jank. The PC version is always at the cutting edge, thanks to the restless community.

I think out of that list I’d pick Witcher III. It’s the most consolised, I’d say. I’ve modded it for the PC, but that hasn’t strayed any further than UI and QOL mods. I have a rebalance mod as well, but that’s the only thing I’d class as important, and the only thing I’d miss if I were forced to play on a console.

EDIT: I’d miss +3h C4vi1L, too…

[wakka]

I know you're massive fan of modding Skyrim Dave, but I would just say, I played 250+ hours of the game totally unmodded on the worst ever version - PS3. It was bad. I was dealing with sub 20fps framerates later on!

But the thing is, I still loved it to pieces. It's a great game, one of my favourites of all time. So personally I wouldn't rule out Skyrim simply on the basis that you can't play it on PC with loads of mods. If the options are:

a) never play Skyrim due to lack of access to capable PC with mod loadout

or

b) play PS4 Pro Skyrim

I'd go with B!

[dataDave]

I’m ruling it out down to me wasting 50/60 hours playtime, not once, but twice on main quest breaking bugs which somehow corrupted my entire save history. The second time it happened was after they’d finished supporting it with patches six months after release.

If you must, do try the Xbox version as you can download the unofficial patch at least. That fixes everything.

[Neon Ignition]

At the moment things feel overstretched:
Accounting for tomorrow...

-Forza Horizon 5
-Halo Infinite
-Call of Duty Vanguard
-Battlefield 2042
-Resident Evil 4 VR
-Grand Theft Auto III Definitive Edition
and a couple of small scale PC titles

I'd aimed to really push hard on stuff this month but there's been so much life drama etc that I'm exhausted come gaming time. Coupled with steady big releases I'm chipping at stuff rather than getting anywhere with it. I'm going to give it the weekend to try stuff some more then thin the herd to regain some progress.