General gaming discussion

This timeline showing Rockstar Games releases is crazy.

Timmy Chalet is quite a big name The Game Awards.

Lego is cool. Is it a Technic set?

Started playing Wolfenstein 2, guess I'll be "shootin', stabbing, strangling Nazis" for Christmas 😄

I'm also going to give Halo Infinite MP a retry. Hearing good things about it being back to its Hay days and I didn't pick up COD this year.

I felt the same with Kojima's new thing.

Hyper-realistic facial animation. Yeah, well done, I've only seen that about 20 times now.

Picked up Far Cry Pandora Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora. Have only a few hours played, the first hour of which dragged. It's still dragging actually, running around slow as feck, gimme the damn dragon thing already. And every time there's a main story character interaction, you get a black screen, first person view of a custscene you can just about move your head in, another black screen when it's over and then you have control again. Really sticks out and breaks immersion.

Controls are fine, lots of upgrading to do. It is basically a Far Cry set in the Avatar world. Watchtowers are now drill sites, and clearing them will clean up the wildlife and unlock stuff. So far, they've given me a bow, a bomb thrower and an assault rifle. Big emphasis on foraging with a mini game to pull the plant correctly for a Pristine version of it, which means the meals you make have better benefits, etc. Lots of clothes crafting, with more collectibles. I've already been invited to the store.

World is stunning though. And you can have markers completely off, with quest hints giving general directions working off points of interest you can see/route. So probably a great game for those who want to explore a frankly massive map. Like, I ran for 10 minutes and uncovered about 3% of the map. I can see how fun it will be once upgraded more. Story is servicable so far. Will stick with it for another while.

DF say it graphically top tier stuff on PC. And if you turn off the open world signposts, and go into explorer mode, it's a good game.

The landscape, changing weather and wildlife in RDR2 is sublime. If you turn off all the on screen prompts, maps, etc ... it's like wandering around in some beautiful painting. They created a timeless art style in its own believable universe. BOTW and Wind Waker are similar. And GTA6 looks gorgeous too for the same reasons

Amazing. I often get caught up with the technical aspects of games, but they live or die based on art direction and gameplay.

I bumped into the manager from the Gamestop where I used to go today. It was cool seeing him again.

Insurance and high street rents make it very hard for retailers. But the main thing was the flip to 80%+ digital purchases. When you lose that volume of your sales it's going to be hard to stay going.

Now that the weather is cold, I find I'm less likely to head upstairs to the PC, and as such have been dipping in and out of Game Pass on the xbox in the living room with the stove, picking games that have been recommended. So far, I've hit the following.

1. Lies of P - absolutely cracking soulslike, highly recommended.
2. Remnant 2 - not clicking with me yet, might not go back to it.
3. Coocoon - phenomenal puzzle game, really makes you feel clever when you solve a problem, and has quite subtle audio clues that let you kow when you're on the right track,
4. Hardspace: Shipbreaker - this is an odd one, Its a game where you're effectively working in a space scrapyard, cutting apart massive spaceships for salvage and sorting stuff into recycling / furnace etc. It sounds like work, but its oddly very calming, you kinda get into a flow state where you're cutting joints, floating stuff off to one side, then its very satisfying to link a huge amount of components together and send them hurtling towards processing. Its got quite a good sense of humor as well, with the whole 'valued slave to the corporation' thing thats going on.

We've all been there 😄