What You've Been Playing This Week

[Cassius_Smoke]

SSX3: It's stupidly hard. One tiny movement of your thumb is all it takes to lose. I use to play the crap out of this and the frustration is all coming back to me.
Its still a brilliant game, great mechanics, but jesus they just needed to dial it back like 5%.

Silent Hill 2: gameplay aside (which was janky even then), it's a phenomenal game. A work of art.

[QualityChimp]

Oh, someone was effusing about Split/Second, which has always been slightly off my radar, but saw it was about £2 in an MS sale.
Watched a quick video and realised this is just perfect for me. Like a cross between Stuntman, Burnout and an explosion at Michael Bay's ACME explosives factory.

Should have been delivering some Christmas cards, but instead kept replaying the first 3 courses until I was 1st in all three.

If you drift, draft or get air, you build your boost meter. Rather than making you go faster, it allows you to trigger on-track obstacles, usually some sort of explosion, but if you save up to fill the meter, you can trigger a course change, which might be a different route through a hangar, or toppling a giant observation tower, that then becomes a tube leading you to a rooftop diversion.

Such a great game, I can't believe I missed out first time.

I think it was Monkey Juggle DX who pointed out the rubberbanding, which possibly put me off purchasing, but aside from that, it's been a... BLAST!

[wakka]

I played quite a bit of that back in the day, it is a really fun game. The only problem with it is that it becomes quite repetitive after a while since once you've seen the environmental effects once, you've kinda seen them.

A good game though.

[Travesty]

Yesterday two friends came over and we played Monster Hunter Generations and Mario Party: Island Tour. MHG was fun, we will be going back to it next year, we did not get to play that many missions because one member of our party had not played far enough to open the multiplayer, so we had to wait for him to go through the final mission that opened the multiplayer game. Mario Party: Island Tour was not good, Mario Party: Star Rush is kilometres and miles above Island Tour, will not be going back to it. I mean it was fun to play with friends but it's not a good Mario Party game.

[Golgo]

Just re-completed Metroid Fusion on the DS, having forgotten just how teeth-grinding that last 4 or 5 bosses are. Swore the place up a storm, I did. Hopefully now Santa brings me the Metroid Dread I asked for and it's not so cheap in its endgame bosses.

[Finsbury Girl]

I've actually managed some gaming time! Switching between Nier Automata and Sekiro ; thinking about starting God of War as well as it was free on PS5!

Loving the PS5 after waiting SOOOOOOOOO long to get one

[Cassius_Smoke]

I've actually managed some gaming time! Switching between Nier Automata and Sekiro ; thinking about starting God of War as well as it was free on PS5!

Loving the PS5 after waiting SOOOOOOOOO long to get one

Best thing is revisiting games and seeing a marked improvement.
Nier Automata is brilliant too.

[Finsbury Girl]

Agreed - I'm really loving Nier!

[Cassius_Smoke]

Agreed - I'm really loving Nier!

You have to play through it three times with different characters to get the 'true' ending.

[QualityChimp]

Dipped into GTA Online with my mates for the first time in months as a last session before Christmas together and it was a good laugh.

We mainly arsed around in a private session in our various vehicles, did a couple of missions and finished with a race.

Mate got his Toreador (turbo boost submarine car) stuck in a gap the width of his car and I was crying.

[MarioMark]

Finally started The Last Of Us Part 2. Decided to play it as my Christmas game (it's so festive!) seen as it's being pulled off of PS now on 4th Jan. Damn it's good. Granted it has the FPS upgrade on PS5 but I can't believe it's a last gen game. It's a technical masterpiece. I've just hit hour 13 so about half way in.

Also finished Halo Infinite campaign on Normal difficulty. It can get quite challenging in parts. I love that you have options on how you do the outdoor missions thanks to the sub open world. There's not a lot of vehicle levels so I've manipulated it myself by going round on the banshee, camping high and taking the enemy out with a sniper rifle. I would say overall the open world doesn't get used a lot in the main campaign, it's more a hub world to access it. I am looking forward to going back and doing the side quests and exploring more when I want another Halo fix. It's 343's best Halo by far.

Also been doing the Braking Point "campaign" mode on F1 2021. If you're a fan of F1 I recommend trying it. The cut scenes are cheesy joy, good story as it progresses.

[CMcK]

Started Halo Infinite last night. It’s a bit tasty. The grapple hook is a great addition to the Chief’s arsenal. Firing it into a grunt then pulling yourself in taking it out with a melee attack is brilliant. It’s rather versatile causing jackals to lower their shields lining them up for a quick shot too. Traversal is a bit hit and miss with it though or maybe that’s just me?
This feels like a classic Halo game in most respects and that’s a good thing. Playing in performance mode and it’s really smooth. You can see some shimmering around objects with quick movement but I guess that’s a side effect of whatever temporal accumulation the game uses?

[nonny]

Started Halo Infinite last night. It’s a bit tasty. The grapple hook is a great addition to the Chief’s arsenal. Firing it into a grunt then pulling yourself in taking it out with a melee attack is brilliant. It’s rather versatile causing jackals to lower their shields lining them up for a quick shot too. Traversal is a bit hit and miss with it though or maybe that’s just me?
This feels like a classic Halo game in most respects and that’s a good thing. Playing in performance mode and it’s really smooth. You can see some shimmering around objects with quick movement but I guess that’s a side effect of whatever temporal accumulation the game uses?

With the traversal you'll notice a little x in the centre of your reticule when the object you're looking at is in range and able to be grappled. It's still an art being able to traverse purely through grappling every few seconds but it can be done.

I'm now 100% complete in the campaign on normal difficulty having picked up the remaining skulls and audio logs last night. Have thoroughly enjoyed my play through and whilst it has got me wanting more I'm also really glad 343 didn't artificially extend the game with boring side quests. There's just enough here to make unlocking all the FOB stuff worth it, and all the special weapons etc... But you can also ignore it completely and go at this purely for the 14 main missions like any other Halo title.

I'm now playing The Gunk as a quick palate cleanser before I pick up a new big game. I'm thinking of Horizon Zero Dawn next...

[Cassius_Smoke]

Deaths door

That's a terrible game. It's not an adventure game, it's not a rogue game, it's not really anything. It's just a really drawn out game of very little depth.
Want to level up? 400 souls for the first point in a skill... You get 1 soul from killing an enemy. 400 enemies to level up 1 ****ing point?! And it's not like enemies come think and fast. I've played for probably 3 hour and level 1 point in a skill. Ridiculous.
The combat is terrible anyway, I'd say Stardew Valley has a better combat system, and that's saying something.

Don't bother with it.

Deleted from console.

[nonny]

Deaths door

That's a terrible game. It's not an adventure game, it's not a rogue game, it's not really anything. It's just a really drawn out game of very little depth.
Want to level up? 400 souls for the first point in a skill... You get 1 soul from killing an enemy. 400 enemies to level up 1 ****ing point?! And it's not like enemies come think and fast. I've played for probably 3 hour and level 1 point in a skill. Ridiculous.
The combat is terrible anyway, I'd say Stardew Valley has a better combat system, and that's saying something.

Don't bother with it.

Deleted from console.

This is one of my GOTY contenders. I thought it was brilliant from start to finish (though there is a huge end game I didn't finish).

I think you're the first person I've seen who said they actually disliked it!