What You've Been Playing This Week

[QualityChimp]

More of that stupid Vampire Survivors, greedily sucking my time up.

There's a load of stupid reasons to replay like achievements ("play with X character for 10 minutes"), levelling up options (gauntlet + knife = ?), characters to find and so on and I'm a total sucker for those pointless collection challenges.

So ended up playing quite late trying to get certain weapon combos to evolve them or finding new characters or looking for artefacts because it's got its fangs into me.

[Neon Ignition]

I'm around halfway through Astro Bot now, really trying to take my time with it as it's overall clearly a short game

I'm into the second half of Indika as well now, not as weird as the first half hour suggests it will be

Also a bit of the way into Bioshock Infinite on Switch, it's generally solid but sweet baby jesus the joycons are horrid

[importaku]

Been playing way too much i'm juggling a crazy amount of games in my current play rotation from new arrivals and older stuff i'm still chipping away at but mostly at moment gundam breakers 4 is taking up most of my game time. Weirdly i have never been into the anime as the story doesn't really interest me so i have no nostalgia for certain models it's purely on looks, i adore the design especially SD gundam. This game is probably the best one on switch so far the other gundams have been a mixed bunch this one is purely action and the combat is satisfying.

The game is basically 2 parts, the story & missions where you fight against a seemingly endless selection of gundam from decades worth of releases however as you fight parts break off them and you get to keep these parts. You can then use these parts from various gundam to build your own custom one of if you grind enough you'll eventually have all it's pieces to build a whole replica of that certain model. What makes this cool is there's hundreds of gundam in the game and easily a thousand various parts or more all of which can be painted shaded & weathered also decals can be added onto it's also a model building game as there's the diorama mode where you can use all the parts for your personal gallery to build amazing scenes the game lets you customise everything including the problem when you mish mash various parts together from different gundam that are clashing and clipping through each other the game lets you space and rotate parts to make them all fit better.

I did enjoy the SP quest mission with pacman, hopefully they add more in. Had to complete mazes like the original then fight off a huge pacman themed gundam boss, the reward was pacman decals to add to my gundam.




My current monstrosity i'm just adding the strongest parts i find to get through the story mode the combinations are literally limitless there's so many weapons and parts to find as well as some parts & weapons having special abilities that you activate while battling. At some point i'll settle down and build a gundam thats more aesthetically pleasing than one that looks like an explosion in a gunpla parts bin


The credits you earn for doing missions can be used to buy gunpla kits from the shop. These are exact recreations of real kits i have this very exact knight gundam it's one of my faves. Some kits have all the parts in the box but others only some parts or just the paint pallet of that gundam you can find the rest of the parts from battling and breaking the parts off them as you come across them in game.


There's a whole online mode that i havent tried as i don't want to get destroyed just yet but there seems to be building contests that you can enter your creations in. I like that it's not only a action game but also goes quite heavily into the model building side. Although it would have been super fun if you could literally build them like you do in real life cutting out the parts and clipping them together in game. It's gonna last me ages just finding and unlocking all the parts and other bits let alone the synthesys where you evolve & level up each individual part using the plastic you win from fights.

[QualityChimp]

That looks amazing, importaku ! Thanks for sharing those pics!
Pac-Man AND Gundam?!

More Vampire Survivors because it keeps on opening up more characters, weapons and levels.
I've managed to get a couple of other mates addicted too!
Pretty far on, I think, but who knows as it keeps adding new stuff.

Finished another playthrough of Stuntman: Ignition, which you know I love.
Basically, if the kids are on the PS4 in the playroom, I'll play on the Xbox One in the lounge, dipping into cheap Indie games or the 360 Games With Gold and I had a hankering for some stunt thrills, so naturally I've 100%ed the whole blimmin' thing. Every stunt in every scene, the quick jobs and the directors cut stunts, all 5 Star String It.
Stringing the stunts is so much fun, pushing yourself to make the scene even more thrilling.

I looked for gifs on Google and just foundmy own gifs from the Stuntman retrospective thread!

[fuse]

There's like 10 games that've come out / are coming out in a one month period that I really want to play. Very rude, games industry.

I finished up all of the Castlevania Dominus Collection - expected it to rule, it does rule, thank you very much Konami/M2.

Played through To Hell With the Ugly, which is this shortish adventure game with a light sprinkling of turn based combat in a stylish 50s noir setting. It's based on a novel and if you were to skim what it's about it sure it'd sure sound quite heavy, but it's characters are almost entirely dismissive of these themes and it stays fairly breezy. Quite enjoyed this.

Have also made a start with the Ace Attorney Investigations Collection. Decided to replay the first game before finally getting to play the second, and while I had remembered the last case of 1 being a nightmare, OH MY GOD it is even more arduous than I remember. It just goes ON and ON. I did finish it over the weekend, and have just finished the first chapter of 2 as well. I think I got up to maybe the third chapter before the fan translation version repeatedly crashed on me, so this is feeling like a lot of retreading to experience a very small volume of new content, but I do love this series so. After this it'll just be the 'Layton vs' game that I've not played!

Then it'll be deciding between UFO 50, Keylocker, Astro Bot, Emio: The Smiling Man, Legend of Kage: Shadow of the Ninja, Visions of Mana, the Marvel Fighting Collection, The Plucky Squire, Victory Heat Rally, Beyond Galaxyland...

[Dogg Thang]

After this it'll just be the 'Layton vs' game that I've not played!.

Ohhhh... that's a good one. I really enjoyed it.

[MartyG]

NEO: The World Ends With You

JRPG from Square Enix, action based and a sequel to the DS game (which it turns out I have in my library and can't remember playing). Very stylish, but the combat is very button mashy and not particularly satisying. All attacks are based on pins and your team can only have one pin each, the idea is to swap between your team members to maximise your combos. Maybe you need more pins to make it exciting, but it felt a bit meh in the first hour.

Thank Goodness You're Here

Certainly a nice looking game and at first it was quite fun and interesting. I do like that the places you have to revisit change as things happen in the game, but essentially the gameplay exists of randomly slapping things and that's it. If you don't like the slapstick humour, then don't bother and I did think things started to grate a little after an hour - it's worth a look.

Train Sim World 5

It's more of the same, but it's a fairly complete sim that's a bit less technical and more approachable than Train Sim Classic. It still has the thousands of pounds of DLC, of course, but you can upgrade to the new version for free and pull in your existing DLCs (they all work), you just won't get the new routes and engines without the paid version.

It's a good sim and you don't need to buy all the DLCs - they vary in quality depending on who made them, and they're always worth waiting for a sale to buy. Overall though, I do quite like the TSW games, despite the flaws.

Zoeti

Bit of a mid deck builder game. It tries to twist the concept by you drawing a standard card deck and assigning attacks/defence moves to the various poker hands (straight, full house etc). The problem is you can only assign one move per hand rather limiting the attacks in the game, and as such it limits the tactical elements of the game to its detriment. There are much better deck builders out there, like Slay the Spire.

The Callisto Protocol

This game got a bit of a slating at launch, but I found it pretty decent. There's a good story here and the game looks fantastic on a high-end PC. The combat is definitely simple, but I didn't mind that too much, it meant it didn't get in the way of progressing things and it's not like it felt bad, it's just not a complex system. You bash things, which seems pretty in keeping with a game set in a prison.

Tactical Breach Wizards

A turn-based stategy game, with XCOM vibes. The idea being you control a team of wizards with wizarding powers, and you use these to push people out of windows.

It's more a puzzle game than a deeper strategy caper, at least early on when you don't have a lot of different play options. I think this is one that will open up tactical options as you progress. It's a pretty fun story that's well scripted, and definitely worth a look.

[briareos_kerensky]

Gundam Breaker 4
Just completed the story, unlocking MG parts, and played a few missions here and there...but you don't unlock new missions, you replay previous missions at a higher difficulty level against the same enemies, mid-bosses, and bosses, so I heeded the X button's cries for help and will move on to the next thing soon enough.

Pathfinder Wrath Of The Righteous
It was on offer on Steam, so I took the plunge. It starts nicely, and after the first story chapter you end up commanding an army, complete with a Might & Magic-like minigame for army-on-army battles. It's so well done that developers included an option to completely skip it. Oh well.
But when you're down exploring with your party, it's pretty well done, though there's a heavy influence on combat; I wanted to play a Charisma build with persuasion/intimidation as primary way to go through the game, but outside a few dialogue options, it's spells galore, as I'm rolling as a sorcerer.

[edit] Well, this happened.


Mechabellum
Just out on Steam. This is a strategy mecha game with heavy emphasis on multiplayer, and right now there is no story campaign, only a series of missions teaching you how to play the game. Mechabellum is neither turn-based or real-time, it's more of a tower defence game where you and your opponent set up your mecha force based on available resources and what has been deployed the previous turn, and then click "play" to see how the battle ends, with no player input required.
As a single player game it's not that great, as a multiplayer game is decent. The game however doesn't do a good job in explaining units, there's a lot of trial-and-error involved about which units to deploy against which, upgrades, and stationary defences to install.
Mecha design is cool and there's a good sense of accomplishment when winning a battle, but if you want a mecha-based strategy game, go out and play Kriegsfront Tactics Prologue, it's free (well, it's a demo for an upcoming game).

[CMcK]

Back on Crimzon Clover on the Switch again. Such a good game, a proper old school score chaser. Would be nice if my physical copy ever turns up...

[Tobal]

Gave the Plucky Squire a go, i don't think that is a game for adults, after wasting alot of my time through unskippable cutscene after cutscene, it had a couple of nice ideas around the word stuff which it did about three times, but i quit and deleted it at the umpteenth sneak past the beetle section, a deeply boring, boring game.

Moved on the Sky Gunner next, a PS2 game emulated on PS4/5. I made a massive mistake of choosing advanced controls thinking this was a crimson skies/ace combat styled game with free movement but the game has this extremely silly camera lockon (like always Z-targeting in the air) that makes it unpayable with advanced controls. If i give it another go i'll have to look up a youtube controls guide for the 3 or 4 options it throws at you.

[huxley]

Cyberpunk on PC, Just finished the main story and going back to explore the other story lines / Quests.
Got Phantom Liberty on my wish list now.
Favourite games of the year for me so far

[MartyG]

Metaphor: ReFantazio



Or at least the prologue which is free to download on Steam. Seems like a very nice JRPG, with an art style sort of similar to Persona 5. The combat system seems very nice, allowing you to battle through lower tier enemies in an action-RPG way, but can be switched to turn-based team combat on the fly. It's all very fast paced, so things move along quite quickly in the overworld/combat parts. It's difficult to tell how the story will progress, but early parts (first hour of so) is more visual novel, but I think that's mostly because it was scene setting and character introduction before the exploring properly began.

I definitely think this is one to look out for if your a JRPG fan, certainly grab the demo and have a look at the very least. Releases on 11th October.

[Finsbury Girl]

still plugging away on Sekiro. My new game is now up to the final boss and I've done all the other optional bosses and mini-bosses. To be fair I only really struggled on

->Open Spoiler<-

Father Owl

, he kicked my arse repeatedly AGAIN, I'd forgotten how tough that fight was

Anyway

->Open Spoiler<-

Isshin

is proving quite tough. My deflection timing is all out of whack he has weird timing on his moves. Anyway I suppose I gotta git gud again.

Loving it BTW.

[wheelaa]

Currently have five games on the go, retro aside.

Gears 5 - habit really, daily challenges to add to my coins pile that I don't need

Halo Infinite - fun, plus the career rank grind to Hero (currently Diamond Master Sergeant 3)

Vampire Survivors - actually I'm a DLC behind as I spent far too long ascending one of the adventures the maximum 60 times to see if anything cool happened (it didn't), with an update yesterday, and a new DLC next week...awesome!

Brotato - have 14 or 15 character runs left for the 100%. Saving it for easy May daily rewards towards the 1k monthly

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes - not that far into it, haven't considered anything to be amazing yet, nothing bad either. Really enjoying it.

Dear oh dear. 5 months on, and very little change. Still enjoying it all, but need / want to be done with a couple of games sooner rather than later so I can add more variety to my gaming time.

Anyway...

Currently have three games on the go, retro aside (very minimal time spent).

Gears 5 - more dailies, more coins, utterly pointless, but fun. I've got to break this habit! 'New' season starts today, could be the time to drop it.

Halo Infinite - Onyx Major 3 now. Career rank grind up from 30% (end of April) to 76%. Was hitting 10% a month May to Aug. Hoped to up the monthly % to get that last 30% done in two months (Sept and Oct). Has gone the other way, a paltry 6% gain in September, so looking at the end of Nov now, I hope. Partly due to

Doom + Doom II - Hello old friend. Loving it. One of the greats. This edition packs 187 missions of carnage, each of which I'm doing on UV with 100% kills and 100% official secrets (save any glitched levels) and all unofficial secrets. Not so fussed about 100% items, but I grab all the main ones.

- Doom - 36/36
- Doom II - 32/32
- Master Levels - 21/21
- TNT: Evilution - 32/32
- The Plutonia Experiment - 12/32
- No Rest for the Living - 0/9
- SIGIL - 0/9
- Legacy of Rust - 0/16

- Total - 133/187

Updates...

Vampire Survivors - knocked out one of the free updates. Still 2 DLCs behind, plus another free update. Haven't touched for months, done with it I think. Maybe knock out the free update(s) should I ever need achievements for GP quests I suppose.

Brotato - Finished all the character runs. Waiting for DLC.

Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes - Not touched at all except when I loaded it up by mistake one time. Need to finish HI and Doom so I can sink my teeth into this.

[charlesr]

A bunch of N64 stuff.
F1 World Grand Prix - I used to love this, but now it feels janky and impossibly hard.
FzeroX - I am not great at this game, but I read gamefaqs and it says side attacks are the real way to go around corners. I try them and veer off the track
Blast Corps - fun as ever. This never gets old
1080 - ditto. Amazing
Pilotwings - ditto. Amazing, but the frame rate is a bit rough at times

Tempted to restart Zelda OOT. Probably won't. Surely only teenagers have time....