Put me down as someone who really enjoyed it too. Looks lovely, plays well, it’s like a playable Saturday morning cartoon.

Just finished R&C too. It is a stunning game, and is a great showcase of things to come.

It definitely got better for me as the game went on, some cool set pieces and each planet felt different. Invisible walls suck but I certainly enjoyed exploring the open world levels more than the linear ones.

I also enjoyed the battle arena challenges - i'd take more of those. 

Solid 7 from me.

...and yet, Eternal bests it in every way possible.

b0r1s wrote:

Really? I thought people were saying it was over complicated. I’ve got it installed but will go on to something more sedate next.

No it is the connoisseurs choice. Only cack-handed idiots prefer DOOM 2016.

Ok will see if I’m cack-handed in a couple weeks.

You part of the Cack Hand Gang, Muzzy?

It is complicated. But it's also absolute genius, and the pacing of the introduction of all the different skills and systems is an absolute masterclass in game design. That an old fart like me could get their head round it all speaks volumes.

g.man wrote:

...and yet, Eternal bests it in every way possible.

It's a very different game from 2016. I just found Eternal to be too gamey, like the whole thing feels like a special arcade challenge mode that's given up all pretence of trying to make the experience feel somewhat grounded in a reality. I much preferred 2016's balance in this regard. Eternal feels like challenge for challenge's sake which I'm not really into.

I enjoyed the way 2016 allowed the player to be slightly less switched on.  Eternal gives the player additional systems to consider/juggle/manage and it works superbly but the arena loops in the reboot were more of an arcade rush, hence my heart belonging to 2016.  They're both great, it's the best difference of opinion since sitters vs standers.

I'd actually really like to see them go in the other direction just for kicks, and attempt to make a hyper realistic Doom, with queasy levels of simulated gore and dismemberment. I know you can kind of blow pieces off of demons in the new Dooms, but I'd like to see that taken further like where you can properly blast legs off and see them try to crawl and stuff. Would be proper horrifying but would make for quite an interesting experience I think, more like a survival horror perhaps than a twitch shooter.

I never played Doom 3 but I get the impression it went in that direction somewhat.

afgavinstan wrote:

I'd love a new game in the Doom 64 engine, tbh.

Thats a good idea. There is almost certainly people out there making new levels and shit as PC mods.
Hire them up Sonic Mania style. It would be a cheap but popular Gamepass thing.

I can't cos I am console baby, remember

They both look fantastic though.

Monument Valley - Popular highly-aestheticised puzzler for mobile. Historically, I've been a bit frustrated by the discourse around arty-farty games - they seem quick to become sacred cows despite them often being highly flawed. With this, it's not so much that it meets the hype but that it counters being highly pretentious in some areas with being a fairly light, unpretentious experience in others. It tries very hard to have a beautiful minimalist art style that would appeal to mature tastes but it doesn't try to write a cheque it can't cash in terms of narrative. In fact it's almost semi-humourous and whimsical at times - I was quite fond of Totem by the end of the bonus levels. The difficulty really hit a sweet spot for me - it's not particularly challenging but it's still intellectually stimulating while always stopping short of being genuinely frustrating. And it's only £3 (plus a bit more for the bonus levels). Recommended.

Rise of the Dragon - Mega CD - I was chasing the high of Snatcher and this sounded vaguely similar. It's a cyberpunk-themed point and click. For the Mega CD version, a lot of text-based dialogue was removed and replaced with pre-recorded audio, which gives it Snatcher-style presentation. The voice cast is led by Cam Clarke, the voice of Liquid Snake, as Blade Hunter.

I really wanted to like this as a lot of aspects of it are quite good - there's a nice gritty aesthetic to the dystopian setting, the presentation with the audio is really quite nice and there's some nice '90s cyberpunk-style admin in there (you have to pop in an ID card every time you want to use a computer or access Blade's apartment, which has the potential to be annoying but is an amusing and harmless throwback to an older era of game design, playing it in retrospect).

However, it's really flawed to the point I would find it difficult to recommend - the design is very obtuse with the game being difficult (and overwhelmingly tedious) to complete without a guide. As you play through the game, it also becomes clear that there is not much going on beneath the surface - it's a very generic action plot about busting some gangsters with a cyberpunk gloss and no real sci-fi ideas or social commentary. To make matters worse, the gangsters are dodgily accented Chinese gangsters and there's more than a hint of racist Orientalism in there. The game also ends on a low, abruptly abandoning its point-and-click gameplay for a dire shooter-platformer section.

I was quite excited by this game when I started it and, to be honest, was a bit sick of it by the end. It probably is worth a look if you're desperate for something to play from the Mega CD catalog or want to play a retro cyberpunk-themed game, as it is a fairly short experience. It's not a great game though - perhaps a 5/10.

Spiritfarer - In essence, this is 2D Animal Crossing mixed with what is supposed to be deep, emotional storytelling. The 2D Animal Crossing aspect works very well - the game looks great, with charming, well-animated cartoon-like graphics and the gameplay loop is genuinely great. Travelling about from destination to destination to progress story quests and explore, you maintain the equivalent of your Animal Crossing village on your ship during the journeys. With multiple objectives on the go at any one time, and limited time available during your journeys before you reach your destination, there is always something to do, a constant sense of busyness - in a positive, satisfying way. Unlike Animal Crossing, which can become unsatisfying outside of its intended 15 minutes a day, this is very addictive and can be played for hours at a time. The biggest flaws with the gameplay are that in a couple of spots, the gameplay becomes extremely bottlenecked around progression of a particular objective and thus you kind of struggle to move forward with anything until one particular thing is done (for example, everything you need to build requires a particular resource that's in an area you can't reach yet because you need to progress the story to let you build the thing that lets you get to the new area that contains the resource). Additionally, the game slightly overstays its welcome on the gameplay side - the game is backloaded with a bit of random pointless busywork for some reason (oddly one of the last spirits you encounter burdens you with irritating busywork and serves little other purpose in the game). Also, two of the Achievements drop an absolute clanger - towards the end of the game you have to make a decision - the consequences are relatively minor but there are mutually exclusive achievements for each option. The only way to get both is to faff about with brute force quitting and you need to know in advance to do this (and the Achievements are both secret ones) - or pointlessly replay most of the game a second time (and this is very much a one-and-done type game - the game design here is inexplicable).

Unfortunately, the emotional storytelling aspect doesn't quite pan out. Your 'villagers' in this game are actually the spirits of the dead and after completing their quest pathways, you ferry them to the Everdoor, where they finally disappear for good. It wouldn't be accurate to say the writing is bad exactly but somehow none of the characters ever felt fleshed out - in one case I just had no idea what the character's basic deal was meant to be. It doesn't help that you don't actually engage with characters that much before they disappear. A lot of the time it felt like characters appeared, you'd get a few lines of dialogue to indicate what gritty real-world issue afflicted them and then they'd be off. Also, in the back half of the game, most of the characters are just genuinely unlikable twats. The game didn't elicit much of an emotional response from me, to be honest.

On another level, the actual overarching story is rather poorly explained - your character actually met many of the spirits in the game in life but the details of this, and your character's backstory are vaguely conveyed through pictures - but these pictures are hard to parse, particularly because the spirits you encounter appear as animal familiars that look nothing like their real-life counterparts. It seems as though this was an issue for many players because with the Lily update they have essentially done a Mass Effect 3 Extended Cut on the ending of the game - your sister now appears to explicitly explain the story at the climax of the game. I do think this is an improvement but it does feel like a 'Whoops, we done goofed' move, just as it did with Mass Effect 3.

Overall, I did get quite a bit of enjoyment out of this but I don't think the storytelling works anywhere near as well as intended. I played this via Game Pass and certainly for anyone that's hankering for Animal Crossing but doesn't have a Switch right now, I think this is an easy recommendation. Likewise, anyone that's tired of New Horizons but wants a new Animal Crossing experience will likely enjoy this. However, for anyone that's on the fence about Animal Crossing but is hoping that the narrative aspect might tip the balance in the game's favour... I think they are likely to be disappointed and I would struggle to recommend. I'd put this in the upper end of 7/10 - I don't think I can quite justify an 8.