The "games that don't have their own threads" thread

Not yet, but I do have it downloaded, so I’ll check it out later today and let you know.

Full disclosure though, I’m a full Square fanboy so I’ll probably be biased.

Honestly, I don’t know what to make of it. It’s kind of a generic open world game by design. I like the combat systems, with the vast skill tree and different elemental magic, but I don’t like the controls (a lot of tapping R2 to attack). The “magic parkour” is pretty neat and stylish, but it’s reminiscent of Final Fantasy XV. A blend of FFXV and Assassin’s Creed is probably a good description, with the waypoint towers, defeat all the enemies challenges and treasure chests to open. I feel like for me, it might tide me over until Final Fantasy XVI releases, but I don’t see it being on my end of the year list once all the big hitters arrive. Also, the banter between the lead and her magic talking bracelet is.. not great.

Maybe my opinion will change with the full game, having the narrative as some context and as a drive to progression, but from the demo, I’m seeing a decent podcast game.

Watching a bit of FightinCowboy's Forspoken stream from last night - the magic powers actually look pretty cool, in a sort of Infamous-meets-Control kind of way.

The writing seems poor, but I'll reserve judgement on that front until I've seen some actual cutscenes.

Oh, and an incel popped into Cowboy's chat within the first 15 minutes of the stream, bitching about the protagonist being female; I'd love to be proven wrong, but I can see a *lot* of that shit coming from the usual suspects when the game comes out.

It seems as though you can tinker with the bracelet's chatter frequency in the settings menu, which is a nice option to have.

I've just seen that you get passive abilities in the game by painting your fingernails with different patterns - you can almost hear the pained howls of outraged douchebro incels!

I’m not sure the change in engine will improve things, as I just think Square Enix don’t understand what makes open worlds interesting. They seem to think it’s about busywork, when it should be about a sense of exploration.
And as you said, the dialogue was… eeesh. Which is a shame, because I really liked the banter between the boys in FFXV, but this is a different writing team. Led by Amy Hennig actually, so I really expected better, this being her first actual completed production after many failed attempts post-Uncharted. If there’s one thing that series had, it was character and fun dialogue.

Critical reaction to Forspoken - based upon a demo made available to journalists, not the one that went public last week - is pretty mixed, and consistently so. "Combat = good, writing = awful" pretty much sums up the consensus.

I don’t think Death Stranding has its own thread on here.

I still can’t quite figure out if I like it. I like the premise, but there is something about it that’s putting me off. The cuff link and mission screens are really busy and the writing is so small it’s really hard to follow what is going on. All the encounters I’ve had with Mules and BTs have been more annoying than enjoyable.

I’m relatively early on (just unlocked the and taken on the long delivery to .

Will stick with it for a bit to see if it clicks but might move on to something else soon.

It's definitely a game you should play just to experience it

Now they can make that F-Zero game Nintendo approached them about 10-odd years ago.

store.steampowered.com/replay/76561197984756139/2022

Guess I had a lot of free time in May.

I would link to my actual replay but my account is private, as the second I make it public I get hit by a billion scammer requests due to some rare shit on the account.

Old games which are now unlisted?

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Anybody play Deep Rock Galactic? Picked it up last week when it was £8 and it’s a good laugh played co-op. Been playing it with B-i-L