What You've Been Playing This Week

[JazzFunk]

Playing the original 360 GEARS OF WAR on Xbone right now and proper loving it (I had a code on a piece of paper in an old game).

Yeah...this is still EPIC. Last time I went thru it was the remastered vers late-ish last year but still looks glorious and still feels like FIRE!!!!!!

Gears 1 was always the game I wanted to hate but sealed the deal proper when I first got a 360 back in May 2009. What a great, visceral, edgy game. It's ace and valid in both versions, both are great.

A *CLASSIC*!!!!!!!!!!!

[QualityChimp]

Diablo III
A new season has started, which would have been great for us n00bs to play together, but to join a season, you have to complete a mission in Adventure mode. To do an adventure, you have to have completed the story mode, all 5 chapters. I've been hammering it and I've only just reached chapter 3!

I'm not sure what we'll do now as we're at different points in the game.

[Cepp]

Gave Dragonball Xenoverse a try. I picked it up on sale for a fiver or so a few years back IIRC. I love the whole "what-if" part of it, creating your own character as a self insert and so on, but you can tell a lot of the game is going to be padded out with fluff. There's a hub world with three areas and NPCs to speak to, fighting moves and items to buy, item mixing and creation...etc.

I just want something linear with a game like this. Fight, cutscene, fight, cutscene and so on.

I think Dragonball FighterZ will be a better fit.

[Dogg Thang]

I finished the Minerva’s Den expansion of Bioshock 2 last night. It’s really good. Possibly the best bit of Bioshock, in my view. It presents a location which sits perfectly in with Bioshock 2 and yet feels different and unique enough so it doesn’t feel like a retread in any way. It makes better use of the raw materials, especially when it comes to cameras and turrets and how you can really use them to your advantage, but also in enemies too where it makes a feature of the brute splicers in a way the main game never quite did. And the story is small, neat and good.

My only negative was my own fatigue having played through the first and second game and directly to this. When I first played Minerva’s Den it was after a long wait and it was better for it. So I’m not going to move onto Infinite until I’ve played a few other games in between.

[Colin]

Just finished another playthrough of Uncharted 3, that’s five Naughty Dog games down in the last few weeks. Just about to start the first Uncharted again. Playing the PS4 remasters even though I don’t feel they look or feel right. Also, because I’ve just played all the latest ND games it really shows how fat they’ve come, though I did still feel UC3 was pretty epic. I should’ve played them all in order maybe.....

[Colin]

And that's Uncharted done. Only Uncharted 2 to replay and I'll have complete by Naughty Dog-athon in the space of a month. Never as an adult have I had so much free time for gaming as I have during this lockdown.

[Neon Ignition]

Friday round up:

Nintendo 3DS
On Area 2 now for Hey, Pikmin. It's a prett decent 2D adaptation of the series so far, I expected something more ropey but it's been alright as yet.

Nintendo Switch
Little progress this week so still on the first episode of The Walking Dead: Season 02. Curious if the save transfer is as useless as it appears as the story seemed to wipe the slate clean very quickly.

PlayStation 4
After benching the PS3 for now I'm just at the start of a replay of the campaign of Call of Duty: WWII

PC
Very much file managing instead of playing at the moment, first up though probably needs to be to sit down and do the DLC add-ons for Metro: Exodus

[Hirst]

I've been alternating between Yakuza 5 and Sonic Mania, the latter of which I've only just got. I know I'm late to the party but I have to say I really admire what they've done with Mania, it doesn't just look/feel/sound right but the level design is brilliant - they've straddled all the different types so you have super fast ones, more slow ones, some that are very freeform and some more linear. They also haven't tried to fiddle with the core gameplay mechanics too much. It's clear the developers not only love the old Sonic games, but fundamentally understand what makes a good Sonic level design. I wish they hadn't brought back the blue balls special stages though, they were always awful.

[randombs]

Finished Halo CE (MCC/PC)

Started Halo 2 and am playing it with the upgraded graphics. I preferred the old graphics for CE(the lovely green/purple combination) but Halo 2's regular graphics are pretty bad.

Also, this time the sound is upgraded as well as the graphics and it just feels better overall. The CGI cutscenes are spectacular and you can switch between them and the original in-engine cutscenes(although I wouldn't recommend this - the videos are faster paced than the in-game scenes so you can miss stuff during the switchover).

[Brad]

Been playing Grim Dawn. It’s like Diablo. It better and looks incredible.

Also started Arma III. The starting missions now explain things a lot better than they did at launch so I might actually get into it this time. I need a better mouse than this standard Dell one I had lying around.

[Paddy]

I got UNIEL:St (Clr) and have been clearing arcade mode with each member of the roster. It looks great on the Switch and I lament that it may be one of the last HD 2D pixel-based fighters we'll get. There's plenty of charterer and guest art to unlock in the game's gallery which makes clearing the game worth it.

I've also been progressing through Judgment but a little more slowly later in the week. I'll get some more time on it this weekend as I'm interested to see where the story goes as it continues to hold my interest.

[importaku]

Gone back to no mans sky tonight as i haven't played it for a few months and there's yet more content added i love how it just keeps growing with free updates. Enjoyed adding the mech suit to my aresnal spent a few hours upgrading it as well as unlocking all the new blueprints thank goodness i have 30,000+ nanites in stock to plunder it's good that there's still uses for the things. Didn't travel anywhere much although i did goto the nexus and do the weekend mission and notices a load of quicksilver items have been added to the shop so i'll have to go work again at getting more of them.

Also been playing Naruto shippuuden ultimate ninja storm 4 as i have only gotten a small part into the story mode until tonight where i have now reached the final arc of it, these games are so fun to play. Extremely flashy move sets and awesome QTE scenes really enjoy playing these and that's from someone who doesn't really get on with fighting games to a huge degree but the Naruto ones i have always enjoyed as there's a proper story behind it thanks to it going from the anime.

Really should play more but my mind hasn't been in the mood with all that's going on these past few weeks. Come home eat and then pretty much pass out till midnight and then by the time i wake up there's not much time left to game. Thankfully i have just under 3 weeks of holiday due mid august and i have a massive parcel coming from Japan so i plan to game my ass off and do craft stuff.

[Team Andromeda]

Playing F1 2020 which just looks and plays so good. One of the best sports games ever produced and is also a joy to play with the Wheel

[dataDave]

I've been streaming Skyrim with over 250 lore-friendly mods which add realism and immersion. It took me six weeks to balance everything.

Embedded Tweet

That shot might not seem very special, but there's no more auto-aim/target tracking, no reticule, and my character is still very low skilled, so fired arrows can fly anywhere really. One of her arrows bounced off of my light armor which was mega lucky. I'm playing with realistic damage, so all it takes is one arrow and you're down for the count - most likely dead.

[QualityChimp]

Diablo III is great, looks lovely and has been fun to a degree, but we thought we could play the new season together, but you need to complete all 5 chapters of the story, then do a rift mission and it feels like we've got to play our fill of Diablo to play more Diablo. So now we're at different levels and will probably not play together again. I thought this would be ace in co-op, but it's been a little bit disappointing with the extra hurdles and the easy gameplay.

So last night's Monday night co-op sesh was in Payday 2.
It's such a clumsy front-end and we end up spending a while working out how to join each other's games, but when we're in, it's great fun and the missions are nice and varied. There's always the lure of one more mission to upgrade your perks or armoury.
I've just spent 10 minutes looking at loadouts, rather that hit "reply", so I guess it's getting to me!