General gaming discussion

60 FPS or higher is always best, but I can live with 30 if it's stable. It's also near impossible to go from 60 FPS to 30 FPS.

Last of Us Part II is a good example: absolutely rock solid 30 throughout on PS4, absolutely no issue whatsoever playing through it. Now that I've tried it in 60 FPS going back will make it feel weird and janky.

If a game is only available at 30 FPS, I'll play through without complaints if it's stable. But hopefully the extra power in new-gen consoles means we'll see 60 FPS options at least as a standard. That could change as the gen progresses and games become more demanding, but really does seem more and more devs are committed to giving options at least. And Insomniac is working miracles with their 60 FPS ray-tracing modes.

I remember how bad some sections of Half Life 2 were on my family PC. The narrow railway section of City 17 was single figure territory.

But by god I pushed through, and it was still glorious.

The Artful Escape hadn't really made much of an impact on me from the clips / screenshots I've seen. But it's a new Annapurna game (developed by Beethoven and Dinosaur) on Game Pass so of course had to check it out.

My initial impression is, honestly, 'holy ****'. Trust me when I say any kind of video compression basically ruins this game's visuals: in action, this is mesmerising and vivid quite unlike anything I've played. I mean, I thought Psychonauts 2 was a glorious explosion of colour (and it absolutely is), but to extend that metaphor this is basically a supernova of colour. Really, really can't understate how much better this looks at a higher resolution and a good frame rate. I also think short trailer clips also don't even come close to capturing how individual scenes burst with colour and emphasise the spectacle in long, flowing gameplay segments. I'm honestly inclined to say this is one of the best looking games I've ever played, and I did not for a second think that's what I was going to get when I booted it up.

The music / sound mixing is suitably booming and epic. The gameplay is honestly fairly meh and straightforward - hold right to run; hold x to shred your guitar (you want to be doing this all the time); jump occasionally. There's also some simple battles which just require you to copy the note / button patterns your opponent tells you. Honestly, it's disappointing there's not much rhythm action in this game about guitars and music. But really you're here for the trip: the gameplay may be frankly uninspiring, but everything around it is quite the opposite. Seriously impressed by this weird and wonderful thing.

Also, after the underwhelming star performances in 12 Minutes, this uses a relatively big-name cast to much, much better effect. It's also very well written - I mean, some of its themes are less than subtle, but this is a game where you drift down a mounting shredding your guitar while giant flying whales with multi-coloured neon cities on their backs drift by in the background. Subtlety is not this game's thing, and it's all the better for it. Embrace the goofy, psychedelic spectacle of the thing - it's really quite something if met on those terms.