[JamieG]

I liked Control a lot too when I played it. It starts off strong in both story and gameplay, but I felt it fizzled out a little towards the end. Still well worth it overall.

I think the best game I've played this year was Hades. Really nice roguelike (or maybe rougelite) with cool ancient greek gods inspired story, excellent art/music and addictive gameplay. Played it for far too long really.

[Zods Beard]

Good luck with Sekiro Fiend, no shields to hide behind in that game!!!

Hades looks great. I can't wait for it and Disco Elysium to come out on PS4.

[JamieG]

I’m not brave enough for sekiro. I loved bloodborne but it was stressful. And when I had more time before kids. Sekiro looks too much.

Disco Elysium looks ace. I believe it’s coming to switch too.

[Fiend]

JamieG - Control didn't really fizzle for me, I liked the pre-ending, but also I jumped straight into the two DLCs which were really good.

I've seen a lot of love for Hades for sure.

Zod's, I always start with a shield and never use it, relying on dodging instead. I'll report back with my moaning and ragequitting :D

[Zods Beard]

Good luck with Sekiro Fiend, no shields or dodging to hide behind in that game!!!

Hades looks great. I can't wait for it and Disco Elysium to come out on PS4.

Corrected.

[tommytwotone]

Anyone had any experience with XBox controllers and "stick drift"?

Last night my left stick went a bit mad, and even a nudge up or down simulates holding it fully in that direction. This is a pain when playing, but even more annoying when trying to navigate game menus!

Tried all the homespun fixes I found to no avail. Have purchased a "repair kit" for £6 off eBay in an attempt to not spend £55 on a new controller for the second time in under 12 months...figured I've got nothing to lose.

[iain]

Anyone had any experience with XBox controllers and "stick drift"?

Last night my left stick went a bit mad, and even a nudge up or down simulates holding it fully in that direction. This is a pain when playing, but even more annoying when trying to navigate game menus!

Tried all the homespun fixes I found to no avail. Have purchased a "repair kit" for £6 off eBay in an attempt to not spend £55 on a new controller for the second time in under 12 months...figured I've got nothing to lose.

Worth trying the warranty if it's that recent?

https://support.xbox.com/en-GB/help/hardware-network/controller/controller-warranty

[tommytwotone]

Good shout - had assumed as my receipt etc were long gone this wasn't a go-er, but it worked!

[iain]

Good to hear 

[Fiend]

Good luck with Sekiro Fiend, no shields or dodging to hide behind in that game!!!

Well you got your wish for vicarious rage I guess....

uninstalled and permanently deleted sekiro

fuck that shit

mechanics suck arse

too many fucking bosses, too many fucking bosses surrounded by mobs you have to kill every time, loosing XP and coins on death without any possible retrieval, the fucking dragon rot mechanic,

the combat mechanics and relying on parrying is okay, and the stealth and grappling hook are great, but too much fucking horseshit getting in the way of actually enjoying that

from software better buck up their fucking act for elden ring

(well less rage and more contemptuous disinterest I guess)

[Fiend]

And thence back to properly enjoyable and nice Soulslikes, with a twist...

Ashen...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/649950/Ashen/

I'm maybe 8 hours in and really enjoying it, despite it not being my usual aesthetic style. Quite soothing for a soulslike too.

It's got the very standard soulslikes mechanics: 3rd person combat, refillable health flasks, fairly easy to die, spaced save points, lose all your souls on death and have to re-collect them, boss combats, etc etc. BUT it brings in a fair bit new to the genre: distinct theme/setting, very stylised graphics, AI companion, home "base" that slowly grows, NPCs you meet to populate that home base, various directed side-quests, a more open world than most soulslikes - and so far nice serene music too.

Maybe a nice one to try given the forecast this weekend.

[Zods Beard]

Shame about Sekiro Fiend, it is a very tough game. Less arduous with regards to save points etc but by far the most challenging From Software game.

I've looked at Ashen but haven't bought it. Surprised your not playing Valheim TBH.

I am looking forward to Disco Elysium releasing on PS4 next week.

[iain]

And thence back to properly enjoyable and nice Soulslikes, with a twist...

Ashen...

https://store.steampowered.com/app/649950/Ashen/

I'm maybe 8 hours in and really enjoying it, despite it not being my usual aesthetic style. Quite soothing for a soulslike too.

Nice to see someone else enjoying this, I think it's a brilliant game. I'd highly recommend co-oping it if you can, I played through it with my brother and it was a lot of fun and avoided the sometimes flaky AI with the companion.

Be prepared for some difficulty spikes, I think I read you didn't like that much in Remnant (which is also a better game in coop imo)

[Fiend]

I hate difficulty spikes in any games, and yeah some of Remnant's were bullshit even by soulslike standards, I've heard rumours of them in Ashen. I'm quite prepared to cheat through them if necessary these days.


Zod's it was the meta in Sekiro more than the combat that did my fucking tits in.

it's like they carefully looked at some of the more frustrating bits of soulslikes and semi-subtly made them worser
losing xp on death kinda sucks......so we'll make that worse into a permanent loss
having to run back from save points to retry boss combats kinda sucks.....so we'll make that worse by having unskippable mobs around the boss
dying time after time kinda sucks......so we'll make that worse by having a worsening problem each time you do
being underpowered and fragile kinda sucks......so we'll make that worse that you can't even grind for health / power

Anyway. Valheim, heard good things but sounds a bit open-worldy / unfocused / proc-gen for me personally.

[JamieG]

A couple more things I've played recently.

The Gardens Between - Nice little puzzle game with quite interesting time manipulation mechanic. Not too hard, pretty art style and not too long to outstay its welcome. Definitely a nice little time sink for a few evenings. Seems to be pretty cheap a lot of the time too. Quite a twee story about childhood friendships too but I enjoyed it.

Slay the Spire - Roguelite card battle game. Wasn't convinced after the first couple runs then it really started to get it's teeth into me. Once you start to unlock some of the better cards it improves. Feels excellent to get a really strong build going and get the cards combining into powerful attacks. Definitely would recommend if you are into that kind of thing. Quite a quirky art style too with occasional quite funny descriptions and asides for characters.

Talos Principle - Good 3d puzzle game in the vein of something like portal/portal 2 (or less so the witness). But not nearly as good as any of those. Totally ignoring the story as it seems to be some sort of pseudo-philosophical nonsense (that requires reading reams of text) which I can't be bothered with. Worth a go if you like puzzle games but would definitely recommend others before it including Portal, Portal 2, The Witness and Baba is You all of which are much better and more interesting.

Abzu - Got it free with a recent PlayStation play at home initiative. Wouldn't normally be that bothered with it except that my two year old daughter likes to sit and watch me play since it is full of bright and colourful fish. She was even learning to push the stick to steer the character a bit although we did spend ages going in circles. Definitely a very chilled out and pretty experience similar to things like Journey. Worth a go if you just want to totally chill out and look at nice fish.

[Fiend]

Two things might be happening at the moment.

1. The dank showery weather this weekend might be preventing you having an Ascent of your own on the rock.

2. You've had the sudden and dismaying realisation that whatever cyberpunk media you've been dabbling in just doesn't have nearly enough outrageous detailing and amazing graphical atmosphere that you really need.

So here's the solution!!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/979690/The_Ascent/

Isometric-ish twin-stick-shooter-controlled ARPG-lite. Controls are a bit janky and I'd prefer it in a true Grim-Dawn-style ARPG format, and the RPG aspects are a bit light.....BUT.....Holy fucking DETAILS. The world building is astonishing. Absolutely packed to the brim in cyberpunk styles designs and vibes. So if you like the sound of that, get it.

[Fiend]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1231840/Climber_Sky_is_the_Limit/

Demo available. Tuck in!

[crzylgs]

Sorry too busy managing my beaver based empire in Timberborn

Good fun if you like sim/management games. It's not overly complex at face value but then there are some slightly hidden advanced mechanics that take a bit of figuring out. The game is based around a wet / dry season cycle, water being essential for growing crops and making power for advanced materials. So you end up with some very funky dam, floodgate, irrigation shenanigans going on.

[Fiend]

Back to the OG...

An online gaming friend encouraged me to play Dark Souls Remastered (which is incidentally an almost fully functional PC port for a change) as he loves the original (but hasn't played any other soulsbornes nor other soulslikes, da fuck). And then got completely irate with me because I 1. Started with the Master Key gift and did most of the first third of the game completely arse over tit and upside down, and 2. Kept moaning that it wasn't as good as DS3. Which it isn't, but I can imagine it was pretty amazing at the time and as the first of the series, and once I got past the usual frustrating gameplay and lack of fast travel, I've really got into it myself, I wouldn't say it's fully distracted me from injury and lack of climbing, but it's had a tiny numbing effect on my.....soul.

[Fiend]

Okay so a belated Games Of The Year 2022 which due to my backlog and a lot of 2022 releases actually being log, only contains one 2022 game....

Ashen:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/649950/Ashen/
Unusual stylised soulslike with some nice additional extras like side-quests, evolving characters / hub, coop, etc. Some good exploration and lovely vibes in this, definitely a soulslike that transcends the genre a bit.

The Ascent:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/979690/The_Ascent/
Ultra-detailed and atmospheric cyberpunk world that is a constant pleasure to explore and battle around despite the rather light RPG elements.

Dark Souls Remastered:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/570940/DARK_SOULS_REMASTERED/
The OG. It didn't have the impact it could on me due to playing Dark Souls 3 recently, but undeniably great (and brutal). There's a good reason it spawned one of the best gaming sub-genres around.

...

And talking of soulslikes, I'm now on Nioh, which is more like a blend of classic ARPG-style missions / combats / looting / gear-munching in 3rd person, with soulslike savepoints and XP mechanics, all wrapped up in an entirely incomprehensible Japanese story. It misses out on the fantastic connected world exploration of Dark Souls, but makes up for that with genuinely useful looting, great graphics, characterful monsters and mythologies, and a much more forgiving meta.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/485510/Nioh_Complete_Edition___Complete_Edition/

[slab_happy]

My gaming knowledge doesn't go beyond a bit of tabletop RPG stuff, but my gamer friends seem to think this bundle for Ukraine is a good deal:

https://itch.io/b/1316/bundle-for-ukraine

"Contains a mix of video games (mostly windows, some mac, some linux), ttrpgs, and solo rpgs," according to one of the aforementioned friends..

Specifically on the ttrpg side, and for another good cause: https://itch.io/b/1308/ttrpgs-for-trans-rights-in-texas

Basically, they're great if you want to pick up a giant grab-bag of indie stuff to explore for a tiny fraction of its normal price (and throw some money at people doing good work).

[Fiend]

Let's talk Elden Ring !!!!

Wellsy, your time, also I've got a mate who lurks on UKB and has ragequit ER so  @him too.

Okay so Elden Ring is clearly massively flawed:

- PC port is bolloxed as usual with inadequate key rebinds, and very clunky menus.

- Mouse movement is also bolloxed, being cripplingly slow on highest settings, then if this is overcome in Window's settings, the horse riding is nauseatingly jerky and bow-aiming is near-impossible.

- The game runs really slowly, partly because the graphics scalability is woeful (i.e. still looks amazing on lowest settings, and could have been scaled down further).

- "Invisible monster" bug took months to be fixed.

- The lore and story is even more utter gobbledegook and before, managing to simultaneously be tediously generic and off-puttingly incomprehensible. It's like FromSoft put "generic epic fantasy cliches" into an AI text simulator, then translated it to Japanese and back to English using Google translate.

- The copy'n'paste dungeons and re-used monsters / bosses are blatantly lazy filler design.

- The open world can be a bit dull and tedious with too much empty wandering and lack of design.

- The aesthetics and splendour sometimes rely too much on BIG for the sake of BIG and overwhelm the viewer by size rather than purpose.

- The general aesthetics of the open world areas are a bit bland / chromatically jarring with the endless rocks and trees being a bit tiresome.

- As usual some of the progression / exploration can be just as obscure as the lore with quests / areas requiring specific actions that are easy to miss / bugger up, and/or outright obscure secret-hunting.

- The monster design is quite variable in quality from mundane (endless zombies and oversized real world critters) to OTT and bonkers (without logic to the combination).

- In short it's a weird mish-mash of open world, tight but basic dungeons, and more conventional souls-like interconnected maps, almost certain to annoy both open-world RPG players who will get frustrated with the bosses / difficulty / FromSoft obscurity, AND traditional Soulsborne players who will get fed up with some bland emptiness and endless wandering around picking flowers and mushrooms.



OTOH it's GOTY2022 and I'm fucking loving it 

[Wellsy]

Hmmmm tbh I have a lot of thoughts

I'll start by saying I think this is the best Fromsoft game ever, I think it's directly better than all of them except Bloodbourne and while BB is better in some ways overall I think ER is superior

I'd say playing it on a PC is probably hideous and essentially an exercise in sadomasochism, and not even the fun kind.

I liked the lore and the world. I liked the open world. I'm a big fan of melancholic wandering through a vast empty ruin as a theme and this delivered. I do agree that it could be repetitive but I would say that what they made is truly gorgeous.

It's a Souls game, with everything that entails. I think that at what it's trying to do it succeeds magnificently at though.

[Fiend]

I'd say playing it on a PC is probably hideous and essentially an exercise in sadomasochism, and not even the fun kind.

Not at all. Despite them buggering up the port AS USUAL, it plays and controls absolutely fine with #pcmasterrace M+KB (I don't use horse much, and only use the bow to snipe, so the over-fast movements of those isn't a big issue). I've played plenty of Soulslikes (DSRM, DS3, Nioh, Remnant, Ashen, The Surge and Hellpoint (which falsely claimed a controller was very important, and actually controlled the smoothest of the lot)) on PC and apart from fucked ports (that would be extraordinarily easily fixed if they tried) they're all inherently fine. None of that #consolepeasant nonsense for me,

It's a Souls game, with everything that entails.

Except it's not. It's a direct mixture of a Souls game with an open world RPG game, and everything that entails (very open-ended, lots of exploration, sometimes little interconnectivity, fast-movement option to compensate for size, plenty of crafting and resource-gathering options, the ability to avoid a lot of bosses, etc etc). It is exactly Dark Skyrim, or Elden Scrolls, and in that context...

I think that at what it's trying to do it succeeds magnificently at though.

is definitely correct. It's not the best Souls game around. It's not the best open world RPG around. It IS by far the best Open World Soulslike (released this spring).

P.S. I didn't post all the good things, but there are definitely quite a few.

[Wellsy]

I used to be a PC guy but I don't really play games so much any more so I can't really justify the investment.

I think that I probably enjoy this the most out of FS games personally with the possible exception of Bloodbourne, which truly was a masterpiece.