Be Excellent To Each Other

And now another bastard appears, I fucking knew I should have kept my gob shut.

It is very good...though my allies are very needy.

Good god they are. If I could change one thing it would be to turn off the asides they deliver to you as you wander about. It's like a super-sycophantic Fable. I'd rather be called arse licker again.

Arse licker!

Thank you for scratching that itch.

Currently a bargainous £12 or so on Steam, for anyone interested.

Brotato on the XBox is annoyingly more-ish.

Both Starfield on game pass and Helldivers 2. Helldivers is super fun.

Trains

Armoured Core 6: All arena battles smashed, 80% of the campaign done.

Have now bought Balatro on Steam and Xbox...excellent poker themed deck builder rogue like. Also made by a single developer.

Got that arrival at the platform slightly wrong

NOW I AM THE BASTARD

Pacific Drive - I have been sucked up into an anomaly and have to escape back from this weird world by fixing stuff and scavenging parts. Also, my car is haunted.

It's a first person survival type game, only a couple of hours in. It it seems worth the £20 so far.

Think I’m about 30 hours into Diablo IV, and I’ve skipped pretty much every bit of dialogue or cut scene.

It's the best game.

I spent 230 hours beating every character on Danger 5 difficulty and then there was just a massive void in my heart because there was nothing else to do.

Sort of interested in this. Looks like it might be the closest thing to Fuel on the Xbox 360. That was apparently a racing game but for me it was just a driving game where you looked at forest fires and areas of astounding natural beauty.

I thought I was bad wanting to do Level 5 on one character then trying to do the rest on easy

Currently playing through the latest Remnant 2 DLC. It's a weird game in that it's sort of brilliant, mainly because the shooting is so satisfying, but I hate so much about it too. The weak power-ups and loot, the utterly obtuse puzzles and the Souls-like (ugh!) bosses.



Each character handles differently enough that trying to figure out a Danger 5 clear with each one sometimes feels like a different game each time. Some of them are a lot of fun, such as the Engineer. While others can be really tough such as the Streamer. There are decent guides on YouTube to point you in the right direction in terms of starting weapons and what stats to focus on for each class. It's definitely one of my favourite ever games now.

Just started playing through Project Osiris. An unofficial remake of Alien Breed 3D, but in the Doom engine. I'm actually surprised at how good it is, it feels just like playing the original... but better.

Just in the process of reviewing Roxy Raccoon's Pinball Panic. Definitely don't bother with that.

For actual gaming enjoyment I've started Humanity which is by the guy that made Rez. It's a sort of Lemmings-style puzzle game with some nice, minimalist visuals and pretty decent gameplay. Invariably though these things always start off fun and end up becoming unfathomably complex but for now I'm having some fun with it.

Just fired up Geometry Wars 3 for a bit of a blast. I’ve not played it in years but I still have plenty of scores in the top 100 on the global leaderboards.

Oh man. I loved that game. I had a top 10 on King mode back in the day but i imagine I've dropped well down the rankings now.

At the best I had top spot on two of the main 50 levels, a bunch more top tens, and plenty of others in double digits.

I reinstalled this (PS4 version) and my once top 10 King score is now in the 200s.

I fired up a bit of Pacifism mode. I think I might be addicted again!

I’ve played it a lot this week and beat a couple of scores. The one above is now 9th on the leaderboard

My best score now is 18th on stage 5 (Sapphire).

I'm 170th on the first level but playing now I can't figure out how to get three stars, let alone a good score. It's been way too long!

What am I missing?

What’s your PSN ID?

squiddycr4

It won’t let me add you. I’m Alex_Zoidberg

Damn you giphy!

I'll add you today, Zoidy.

Currently playing Magical Drop IV. The MD games were always good (although I preferred the spin-off Money Exchange Puzzle) and this one is probably the best of them. It's got the crispy UI and look of the recent Puyo Puyo Tetris but is a lot more fun.

Thanks. Thats given me a few more scores to chase.

I played MD2 & 3 a lot on MAME. Didn’t realise there was anything after that.

MD4 is brand new.

Been playing a fair bit of Zen Pinball on iPad recently. My heart sank when it flashed up I’d passed MrC’s score on Sorcerers Lair last night. Think I got over 30,000,000 so passed Lave too on the same game. Trousers score is 157,000,0000!

That's nostalgic for me because back when I was on the Xbox 360, Trousers pretty much had top score in almost every game he was on.

That's sad. I often think about MrC in spite of never knowing him. His heartfelt pleas for lifestyle change amongst others hit home, and I always feel a pang when I see his name on friend lists or leaderboards.

He’s on my Geometry Wars leaderboards too, and it’s a very sad thing to know that they won’t be changing

Just started Assassin's Creed: Mirage. I've not played one since giving up out of boredom on Brotherhood but I fancied playing something nice looking because usually I'm reviewing indie nonsense.

Did the first mission and it seems alright. So far, so Ubisoft. Will rush the story, probably not too fussed about going for all the trophies.

I am wait for the new AC game... I have played them all but black flag

I thought AC: Animal Crossing, and though I am 100% certain I’d know if there’d been an announcement I still got a lil bit excited

Pacific Drive still terribly creepy.

I do wonder if we're not that far away from an announcement about a new one , Nintendo usually put these out with a lot of time (I'm still waiting on the new Layton which was announced Feb last year and is still down as '2025')

This article from a few months back was calling out that there has been no new content / data mined from the game so although the seasonal changes will still happen there is no other new things to look forward to : https://www.eurogamer.net/the-last-days ... l-crossing

That’s just it. Honestly, I think Nintendo dropped the ball by not expanding the museum and simply dropping a whole load of new fish, bugs, sea creatures and dinosaurs into the mix every March. The need to have that museum as full as possible is a real one.

Surely it'll be a Switch 2 launch title now?

I have mostly been playing Animal Well on my Steam Deck
It’s very charming, inventive, sometimes challenging. It’s a pixel art metroidvania and has clearly been developed with much thought and love. It’s a delightful game

I've got hooked by a couple of Apple Arcade games on my ipad recently.

Star Trek Legends feels like it should be one of those games where you have to pay to get the good stuff and are constantly limited by cooldown periods, but no - there are no transactions at all, all the resources are earned in-game and you just have to grind a little bit but not ridiculous amounts. There's always another unlockable coming soon so it's very good at keeping those little dopamine hits coming. There's a tiny bit of strategy (deciding which characters abilities / attributes complement each other best, and which things to level up first). It's quite good for a quick pick up and play, but I have also pissed away few entire evenings lazily just pootering about on it. It's quite charmingly presented. As expected, I still haven't unlocked Picard (or even Kirk, who is not as good) but I do have all my other favourites like Worf, Riker, Bones, Geordi, and uh, Romulan Security Guard 1. Is it fun? Uh yeah, kinda.

Beyond a Steel Sky - I remember playing Beneath on my iphone some time before 2010 and finding it a gripping, atmospheric, and fun adventure game. I'd forgotten about some of the details of the ending of Beneath, but remembered the slight dread and horror of it as I started to get to the end. Beyond is presented in a neat 3D environment, comic book cel-shaded style. It works well. The voice acting is pretty good although the mix of accents is a bit jarring. The puzzles are decent, challenging and yet always feeling like the solution is close by but without feeling too obscure. The controls aren't great but the environment is mostly easy to navigate apart from one or two areas where the characters get stuck or can't seem to squeeze through what looks like it should be an easily navigable path (like a bunch of chairs sat outside the cafe). NPCs are well characterised and I found I cared about some of them, but they do have an annoying tendency to either get in the way as you are moving around or walk away as you are trying to select an interaction option.

This really hooked me, I spent some solid multiple hour long sessions playing it. The story is really good although the ending seems a bit rushed. It was mostly, but not completely, satisfying. Overall though a really good game and highly highly recommended.