When the past was around is a beautiful indie point and click game about dealing with the loss of a loved one.
You play as Eda and the story is told through memories interlaced with puzzles, the game has a lovely hand-drawn art style and a violin tune that plays whilst you enjoy the story.
You move the cursor around to interact with objects or collect and place items. The puzzles are not too difficult but you will need to remember sequences and decode patterns. There is also some back-tracking through previous rooms to complete certain memories. If however you do get stuck you can press triangle which will show you objects you can interact with in each room.
This is a short game that can be completed in just over an hour but you may need to replay some chapters if you want to get all the trophies. When the past was around is a good game to enjoy that will make you remember the loved ones you have lost in your life.
Control Ultimate Edition was added to PlayStation Plus in February, it was one of the few games I did not get round to enjoying on the PS4. You play as Jesse Faden who arrives at the FBC (Federal Bureau of Control) to find out what happened to her brother. The building is not all that it seems with many hidden secrets to be found and mysteries revealed during the campaign.
I enjoyed the story with its nice selection of characters and the plot slowly peeling back, it felt almost like a season of X-Files with its super-natural themes. The gameplay is action-based and skills will unlock that allow you to get an advantage over the hiss from shield, launch to seize which allows you to take control of enemies. The skills can be upgraded by ability points which are rewarded from missions or going off the beaten path and finding hidden areas.
Control is a metroidvania game where everything on the map is slowly defogged when you unlock new skills or complete main chapter quests. There is a fair bit of revisiting locations but fast travel can be unlocked by taking over control points around the map. Outside of the main campaign there are a few side quests which will purposely take you into unexplored area and randomly generated alert missions which are time limited, these are usually the kill all enemies or protect soldiers challenges that reward you will materials. You will need a fair bit of materials to upgrade weapons or purchase mods, although I just used the various mods I collected throughout the game.
There are some great set pieces/boss fights in the game and one in particular has you dashing around to a thumping soundtrack whilst killing the hiss. Control has been a great game to play coming in at just over 30 hours, I had no issues on the PS5 with fast load times, smooth frame rates and beautiful visuals.
I will leave it to Jessie to give a quick summary of the game “That was awesome”
Sometimes a simple idea can make an enjoyable game, in Donut County you control a hole across many stages swallowing everything you come across. The more you swallow the larger the hole grows until everything is gone.
Mira works in the local donut shop with her friend BK who is engrossed in a mobile app trying to gain enough points to unlock a drone. The story is intially told via flashbacks, all of the town residents are sat round a campfire deep underground having a conversation about what happened and why?
You will get to meet the various residents from a Chef whose restaraunt is infected with Bugs to Salt and Pepper, siblings who constantly fight. Each level will introduce a new gameplay element for you to figure out. There is nothing too complicated in the game but you will need to use the hole for different purposes from filling it with water to putting it on fire.
Accompanying the gameplay is a lovely soundtrack that will have you humming along with some great tracks, I especailly enjoyed the Gecko Park level & would reccommend listening to the soundtrack on Spotify.
I am sure like myself you will enjoy this short indie game in one sitting, coming in at just over an hour, there are some small challenges you can complete during the game but you may want to try these after completing the game and using the level select. Enjoy and have a garbage day!
I only got back into playing Fortnite because my daughter
wanted someone to play Duo's with her, 4 weeks later and I have completed the
100 level battle pass!
Everyone knows the Battle Royale formula and Epic have
perfected it to a fine constant loop, keeping you playing for that next target.
Be that a level upgrade, quest completion or daily task. If the dice rolls in
your favour and you have luck or skill on your side, you can go all the way and
get the fabled Victory Royale.
The enjoyment for me has come mainly in playing with my
daughter, nephew & niece. I am constantly in awe at their skills to either
single handily take out a squad or build a Burj Khalifa skyscraper in 4.6
seconds. The unlocks from the battle pass reward you mainly with cosmetic items
but occasionally you will unlock a new Skin or Emote that you will enjoy.
For me,
this season just starting with The Mandalorian and upgrading his beskar armour was enough but at level 100 you are also rewarded with Baby Yoda. There is also an enjoyable Predator
quest line which will unlock the skin for you to play.
The many years of playing multi-player FPS games like Quake,
Unreal, Halo & Call of Duty has taught me to just go for the kill which
works until I come up against a wall built of wood, stone, or metal. I hate
builder players; they will build a box around them in seconds or a tall
skyscraper before you can reload your gun. Hopefully in my inventory I carry
fireflies or grenades and just destroy or cook these builds in seconds but on
most occasions, I have neither and then end up dying whilst trying to figure
out where the opponent is in their build.
With advice from my daughter even with my poor building skills
I managed to get 13 Solo Victory Royales this season, I especially
enjoyed the win where I destroyed the last remaining two opponent’s skyscraper
builds and they fell to their deaths.
Getting to level 100 is not that difficult of a task because
you are rewarded with xp for even the smallest action, collect an apple 25 xp or open an ammo box 100 xp. With the daily quests and
weekly quests you can very easily run through
the levels to complete the battle pass. I also have to thank the rllmuk members on the Fortnite thread who have given me advice and helped me complete the battlepass.
The current season ends on the 16th March, what will happen to Zero Point & what will the new season bring in
terms of rewards. I will be there next season screaming
"Yes Fam" when we get our first win.
Just one more try, before you look up it will be 1am and you have work in the morning. Slay the Spire should come with a warning. The monsters in the game will chomp away at your health but this game will devour your time.
You start the game with The Ironclad character and play strikes & block cards to defeat monsters. Along the way you will unlock new cards, open treasure chests to receive a relic, gain a boon, receive a curse & even visit a merchant to spend your hard earned gold. At some point eventually you will die usually at the hands of the end of act boss fight or an elite monster. Thus begins the one more try loop, let’s go again and see how far we get this time.
After a while you will unlock two more characters in The Silent a huntress who uses daggers and poison and The Defect a machine who uses elemental orbs to attack. There is also a fourth character called The Watcher but you need to complete a run before she is unlocked. I prefer to play with The Silent and if I get some poison cards I can get a decent run together.
I usually play games that have a story and an ending because the time I can spend on video games is limited. Therefore I avoid rogue like games or as I like to call them timesinks like Spelunky, Binding of Isaac and FTL Faster Than Light because of the amount of hours you have to play to either upgrade or get lucky to complete a run. Although at some point I am looking forward to playing Hades.
Slay the Spire is no exception to this formula, after 30 hours playing I finally made it to Act 3! & promptly died at the first fight. I read a post on Reddit recently where someone mentioned they had played for 300 hours and had still not completed the game, that made me stop and think about the time commitment this game needs and whilst I won’t quit just yet it is time to move on. I will continue to slowly chip away at Slay the Spire and if I’m lucky I may just complete a run before the PlayStation 6 is released.
I’m going to start playing The Pathless an open world action game developed by Giant Squid who also made Abzu. Just let me have one more try on Slay the Spire.
Gorogoa is a short puzzle game where you have four frames that you can move tiles around. You can click in certain areas in a tile to progress the puzzle & you can also stack tiles on top of each other to trigger an action.
There is no guide in the game to help but a hint feature will highlight which areas you can interact with on a tile, some of the puzzles will need quick movement with the tiles so you can carry on the motion of an action. You may get stuck on a few puzzles I certainly did on a shelf puzzle that took me a while to figure out.
Overall Gorogoa is a nice game to tax the brain muscles that you will complete in about an hour & if you fancy an extra challenge there is a trophy for completing it under thirty minutes!
Next for me is Slay the Spire a roguelike card deck building game and I've also gotten back into playing Fortnite with my daughter (JerryBean) & nephew (Mr T).
Lost Sphear by Tokyo RPG factory is a love letter to the SNES/PS1 era with a beautiful art style, no spoken dialogue but a ton of written probably more than the entire Harry Potter books and a familiar turn-based combat. Be warned there is no fast travel which can be annoying because certain dungeons do not have shortcuts and you won’t get the airship until much later in the game.
You play as Kanata a swordsman from the village Elgarthe who develops an ability to restore lost structures from memories. You are very quickly joined by Lumina a melee combat fighter and Locke a long range archer. The game slowly introduces other characters who will join your adventure along the way to a maximum of eight but you can only select four in your battle team.
The game introduces two new features, the first is Spritnite where you have to equip a skill to use in combat but you can then link a momentum effect to each skill like recover HP every time you use that skill in a battle. In combat each skill will have a cool down timer which will reset after a number of a turns. The second is Artefacts, there are various locations on the open world where you can build a structure to give you a boost. For example the Mystic Eye artefact will give you a world mini-map showing you to see locations of dungeons you have visited.
There is no random encounters in the game, all combat is within dungeons. During combat you build up a momentum meter by performing attacks, moving you character or using skills. Once you have built up a momentum charge you can use it in combat and it will usually rewards you a critical or double hit. With certain characters it can be an advantage to ensure they move around the battle area so you can line up a multiple hit attack. Equally you need to be careful to ensure your characters are not too close together so the enemies can’t get in an area attack. Make sure you especially pay attention to your movements during boss fights which are slightly more challenging.
I won’t spoil it in this review but later the game introduces a new combat mechanic which I did enjoy using quite a bit but I had to have constant supplies to recharge or regularly rest at inns. Overall Lost Sphear is a nostalgic trip back to the 90s JRPG formula but remember the game is not finished once the credits roll. I had no issues at all playing this game on the PS5, next for me is a small indie puzzler Gorogoa.
Desperados 3 is a tactics game released on PC, Xbox One & PlayStation 4. I have been playing on the PlayStation 5 and apart from a couple of game crashes I have not experienced any other issues. I played the demo on the PlayStation store which lets you enjoy the first campaign mission using two of the five characters in the game. Cooper is your double revolver shooting cowboy & McCoy is your long range sniper. My main concern with any strategy title on console is how does it play with a controller. You switch characters with R1 and use their abilities with L1/L2 and square. The camera has two options with a follow the character mode or manual control which I preferred instead allowing me to scan the area and plan my strategy. There is also a great quick save ability, by just tapping the touchpad and believe me you will be using it a lot!
After enjoying the demo I had to purchase the full game and enjoy its remaining 15 missions. With the full game you also get to enjoy the other three characters in Hector your trap wielding heavy, Kate who via a disguise can distract enemies and my favourite character Isabelle who can mind-connect two enemies and kill both at the same time. You can also use various items on the map from dynamite, boulders and mine carts.
There is an execution freeze time mode in which you can chose multiple characters to perform certain actions to take out a group of enemies. This is very satisfying when you manage to pull it off.
If you are up for a tougher game you can play in hard mode which will help you unlock one of the completion badges per mission and there are various badges targets like speed run, using no disguise or no kills. You will also unlock Baron Challenges which gives you a smaller map to complete with certain characters and conditions like no alarms raised.
In summary then it is a great strategy title that plays very well with a controller and I will definitely be picking up developer Mimimi Games earlier title Shadow Tactics which is a similar strategy title set in Japan Edo period. With Desperados 3 completed, next for me is Lost Sphear a JRPG by Tokyo RPG Factory.
I went back to Astro's Playroom to finish off and collect all the jigsaw pieces & artifacts. It's a lovely introduction to the PS5 controller and a great love-letter to Playstation gaming history.I've also completed The Last Campfire where you are an Ember helping lost souls move on by solving puzzles. Nothing too difficult although a couple did have me pause for thought to figure them out.Next, I tried A Plague's Tale but found it difficult to get into not sure why but the poor character animation (looked very janky) did not help. So I've gone back to messing around with Dreams & will start Desperados 3.
There is no need to buy new games for a new console when you can still enjoy all the games you own thanks to Backwards Compatibility!
So I started the life of the PS5 enjoying Ghost of Tsushima, an open world samurai adventure game released on the PS4 by Sucker Punch (Infamous/Sly Cooper). You play as Jin Sakai who fights againsts his samurai code to defend the island of Tsushima against a Mongol invasion.
I've been hoping Ubisoft at some point would visit Japan for their Assassin Creed series but thankfully they never delivered and Sucker Punch instead produced a great world to explore and enjoy. I love that there is very minimal UI in the game and no on-screen world map.
The main quest focusus on Jin's relationship with his Uncle Lord Shimura but there are also lots of other characters that are given substantial time to shine, I especially enjoyed the adventures with con-artist Kenji & Monk Norio.
There are other activities in the game from collectables like artifacts, vanity items to paying your respects to Fox Den shrines. Scaling the damaged shrines brought back Tomb Raider memories.
Overall a great single player campaign, brilliantly voice-acted with an epic culmination.
Certainly up there with the great open world games this generation like The Witcher 3 & Horizon Zero Dawn. I have just completed my Game of the Year.
Some initial thoughts after playing for a few hours.
The controller really is special and the bundled Astro Playroom really shows off the new features from adaptive triggers to the haptic feedback. The game itself is a trip down Playstaion memory lane with lots of nice touches and nods to classic games.
The console itself is heavy & tall but most importantly very silent. Hopefully it will forever stay quiet and the days of PS4 turbine gaming are gone. The dashboard feels very slick, fast & responsive.
I've not purchased any other games on launch because I have an extensive PS4 collection to still enjoy starting with Ghost of Tsushima.
I've had an itch to enjoy a racing game for a long time and nothing could scratch it until Need for Speed Payback was added to PS+ in October.
Yes it has a really bad story but where it matters most in the driving it is great fun with four different classes in Drag, Race, Off-Road & Drift. Lots of events for you to complete which follow the main story arc in taking down various car leagues. There are also chips to collect, billboards to smash and tons of challenges from top speed, drift zones, jumps etc. In fact there are too many of these challenges that just litter the map!
To upgrade the cars you can complete events which you can replay if required to earn a card that will upgrade one of six components of your car. You can also visit a tuning shop to purchase these cards using the credits earned during the game. It is not too difficult to get cars up to the max level 18 and 399 rating.
When driving around you may get lucky and find a bait crate. These are great fun, you collect the crate & have to race to the destination with cops chasing you down.
Overall a great fun racing game that I enjoyed playing & it has definetly scratch my racing itch!
I wanted to take a break from playing Need for Speed Payback to enjoy Sayonara Wild Hearts, Its a short experience just over an hour to play through this musical album. Game play has different sections on endless running, shooting, flying & driving. There is a score challenge to get gold rank on the stages which is very difficult to do on the first attempt but can be achieved with multiple playthroughs.
