What You've Been Playing This Week

[Dogg Thang]

I played through Exhumed on the Switch, or Powerslave Exhumed as this edition is called. It's absolutely wonderful and still plays so well after all these years. The current port is very faithful and just cleans everything up and runs beautifully smooth. It is sold as a mix of the Saturn and PS1 version. Early on, I started to think it leaned towards the PS1 version but, actually no, it's definitely closer to the Saturn version in terms of the level layout and play system. Which means that bomb jumps are back, which is cool.

It's a stone cold classic and one of my all time favourite games so it has been lovely to play through it again after all these years.

[CMcK]

Started playing Crimson Clover World Explosion. Bl**dy ‘ell it’s an absolute blast. Best STG I’ve played in yonks. Spectacular amount of stuff on screen and a straightforward but rewarding scoring mechanic. Highly recommended.

[Golgo]

Completed (only) my second successful run at Slay the Spire - just under two hours this one was.

Used the 'Watcher' this time. A really brilliant monk/martial-arts themed character, where you have to 'meditate' between different outlooks to try to build up your attacks and draw maximum effect from cards/combos. Intriguing set of distinctive cards with this one (but they all are tbh), and really high risk-reward. Tremendous fun.

[QualityChimp]

Finished off Hong Kong Massacre last night after a couple of nights of intensive play.
Initially, I'd complete a mission then replay it to get the speed, no slo-mo and no-miss challenges.
Each of them unlocks a star, which you can spend to upgrade the weapons, but focussing on the machine gun is the way forward.

The difficulty started going up and just finishing them was a challenge, let alone trying to be fast, accurate or without the slo-mo!
The last bunch of missions took a looooad of replays and one took all night to finish.
It's intense and borderline frustrating, but every death is fair if you know what you're doing.

I knew it was an Indie game, but I think it's the work of one person with the music by someone else!

[Neon Ignition]

Entering the weekend:

PlayStation 5 - Assuming the postman sorts it out I'll be starting Horizon II: Forbidden West

Xbox Series X - Barrelling through Taiko no Tatsujin given its brisk length and how it doles out achievements for the daily rewards points.

RG355 - Slow picking through Castlevania 64

PC - Due to the rewards aspect I'm doing a round or two per day online in Halo Infinite. Besides that I'll tinker with The King of Fighters XV and I'm working through a very small little mobile style game that is actually turning out to be good fun, Agent Intercept

[wakka]

Agent Intercept looks like maybe the most QC game I have ever seen

I remember that one from being on Apple Arcade a while back. Maybe I will take out a trial of the service to play it on Mac, it looks pretty fun.

[QualityChimp]

Yeah, that looks mint.
Drifting, explosions, Bond homages, amazing!

[Colin]

The Artful Escape. Recommend by [MENTION=2540]teddymeow[/MENTION] I’ve literally sat and played the whole thing start to finish today with only a break to take the dog for a walk. Absolutely loved it.

[nonny]

The Artful Escape. Recommend by [MENTION=2540]teddymeow[/MENTION] I’ve literally sat and played the whole thing start to finish today with only a break to take the dog for a walk. Absolutely loved it.

Oh yeah that's brilliant isn't it... I played that with headphones on when it came out and ended up finishing it in one sitting as well.

Just a lovely experience from start to finish.

[Brad]

Metro Exodus

It looks incredible for starters. I play in 1080p which means that even though I'm on AMD (6800XT) I can have everything on maximum including full ray traced everything and still hit 100FPS. It plays really well but in my first few hours it felt like at least half of that was cut scenes, which I like in a Kojima game but pretty much not anything else. Things are not signposted well and the other characters telling me where to go and what to do didn't make much sense but somehow I managed to repeatedly end up going to where I was supposed to; just concerned that at some point that won't be the case. Anyway, the story is pretty cool as is the gameplay so I will definitely persevere with this one. Anyone else played it?

[Golgo]

Tales of Arise.

Don't like it at all. The combat goes for real-time action but is piss-poor and the narrative is intrusive and puerile. The menus and HUD go for an attractive minimalism and in the process don't give you all the quest, weapons and skills info you need for an action-RPG, e.g. on gauges/cooldowns, etc.

[Atticus]

Finished Bowser's Fury this week. Not the longest game but thankfully it's all killer no filler. I like how the islands feel like one giant waterpark. And subtle evolutions keep the finding of Cat Shines always interesting. Big kaiju Bowser is defeated but I still have plenty to do and find so there's definitely value here. Fair play to Nintendo for not just releasing 3D World Deluxe. BF is a great companion piece. It's interesting playing any 3D Mario game after Odyssey though, which is finest game ever made imo, raised the bar so high. Still great fun though.

Tales of Arise.

Don't like it at all. The combat goes for real-time action but is piss-poor and the narrative is intrusive and puerile. The menus and HUD go for an attractive minimalism and in the process don't give you all the quest, weapons and skills info you need for an action-RPG, e.g. on gauges/cooldowns, etc.

I tried this one and felt the same. It was getting praise right, left and centre but it felt so generic it was like it was made by a machine, fed a few pointers and tasked with producing an 'RPG product'. There's no life or passion to feel or connect with at all.

[Cepp]

Carried on with my Witcher 2 save. Enjoying the story but wish I'd got round to reading the books. Lots of new characters being introduced and it feels like being more familiar with the source material would have made it even more enjoyable.

[Colin]

Gears Of War 4. Missed out on this and 5 having not had an Xbox in a long time, and it’s nice to return to the game world having really enjoyed the earlier games. I’m having a lot of fun with it though my memory tells me (possibly wrongly) that the earlier games had a bit more spectacle? Having the Series S and game pass really has had me gaming a whole lot more recently which has been great.

[Finsbury Girl]

Elden Ring - cannot see myself playing anything else for months