Old_Man_Harper

You aren’t really going to be able to scratch the surface of it in that short time! My playthrough took over 200 hours and there were quite a few side quests I didn’t do.

Yesterday was pay day so I bought Jurassic World Evo 3. If you’ve played the other games, it’s basically more of the same but better, which is fine by me.

I haven’t tried them all, but Ball X Pit is excellent, Breakout meets bullet hell.

They deserve their success, Helldivers 2 is a great laugh with friends, the best since Horde, although judging by the amount of friendly fire damage me and my mates manage to inflict on each other, we’d be incapable of running a back garden firework display without losing limbs.

I played a bit of The Casting of Frank Stone, but I wasn’t in the mood for something gloomy, so I switched to Ball X Pit which is very addictive. Might give Keeper a try tomorrow.

Good Lord, what a horror! Wasn’t the wolf spider bad enough?

More Subnautica. I have now constructed the submarine which I will need to go down to the deep depths and hopefully solve the mystery of this planet. However, it will still need strengthening to withstand the pressure and I’d really like to add some weapons too, because there are some right horrors down there!

This seems sensible to me, if they are going to release on multiple platforms. Give your own customers first bite at the cherry (and on Game Pass), then everyone else a bit later.

More Subnautica - really engrossed by this now and intrigued by the story you uncover as you progress.

Kind of cool that they are releasing it on Mega Drive.

For the King 2 looks interesting, it hadn’t been on my radar but I’ll give it a try.

I thought I’d try Subnautica again as I didn’t really get anywhere the first time I tried it, and lost interest, which bugged me as I know others had a great time. This time, having played Grounded and others, I’ve got a lot more experience with survival games and am finding it much easier to progress.

I can’t see past KCD2 for my personal GOTY. Honourable mentions to Lost Records and Helldivers 2. Some games I’d looked forward to - E33, Blue Prince - just didn’t click.

I bought it, so I can’t really review it on Game Pass, but I thought it was a pretty solid 8. The story is somewhat vanilla in comparison with the earlier games, but the combat is really good, apart from that flipping dragon that electrifies the ground. He took some killing.

A bit more Gears Tactics, which I’m enjoying, having not played it since back in 2020. May also try a little solo Helldivers 2, just to get a bit more experience and familiarity with the mechanics before the next session with my friends.

@Vordus That reminds me of when I bought Dark Souls 2. I bought it, spent an hour or so installing it, pressed start, watched the opening cinematic until I got control of the player, then thought “Do I really want to play another damn game like this?” and that was as far as I ever got with it.

I finally got round to playing it with my Thursday crew and we had a great time! There was rather a lot of accidental friendly fire, so God help us when we get serious weaponry….

I played through the first remastered game earlier this year and thought it was showing its age a bit - lots of corridors and courtyards and quite grey/brown to look at - so I don’t particularly fancy trying it again.

I thought I’d have a go on Gears Tactics - I’d forgotten how good it is, the three-move turns make it a lot more kinetic than (say) Xcom and it captures the feel of Gears well. I’ve got Helldivers 2, but saving it for Thursday when I can play with my usual crew.

Veilguard has the most vanilla story of any of the series but it isn’t that bad. It looks good and the combat is the best of any DA game.

I expect I’ll mostly be on Grounded 2, but I’ve installed the updated Hellblade 2 and will also have a go at that.

I’ve put some hours into it over the weekend. I now have my own ant to ride around on (I’ve called him Mortimer) and successfully defended my base against an attack by a mysterious insect force. In all that time I’ve barely ventured more than a metre from the snack bar area where you start. I’m having a great time! 🙂

Grounded 2 - after co-oping with a couple of friends last week, I’m back to soloing, which takes a lot more preparation and scouting. Hopefully I’ll be able to obtain and train a steed tomorrow!

I wonder if this would have happened if Concord had not been a failure? Either way, I’m saving up my reward points and looking forward to trying it - it’s a reasonable price too. I thought about buying it on PS5 , but my friends are all on Xbox and I didn’t fancy soloing it or playing with randoms.

@BacklogBrad Same here. I wanted to like E33, but the static turn based aspect seems so anaemic in comparison with something like BG3 that I found it boring.

I’m surprised Abiotic Factor isn’t getting more love. It’s a terrific game but hasn’t even had enough reviews to get a Metascore. 🤷‍♂️ Perhaps the old-fashioned graphic style puts people off, but they are missing a treat!

It’s not all that good. The bike is quite fun, but having to ride right across the map for a mission that was nothing more than a 1-minute cutscene was the last straw and I gave up on it. Also, in my experience members of motorcycle gangs tend not to be very nice guys.

Played a bit of Grounded 2 this morning - looks good - but mostly I’ve been on with Abiotic Factor, which I’m really enjoying.

@Ricky-Spanish Honey I Shrunk the Kids if it was flat-out terrifying! I never left my base after dark when the wolf spiders prowl…

I was going to jump straight in, but Abiotic Factor is totally scratching the survival itch at the moment and likely for some time to come.

I’m playing Abiotic Factor, which is really good - sort of Half-Life with crafting. Every item you pick up will give you an idea for something it could potentially be used for. Think about it (a mini game) and you get a list of items you’d need to craft it. Really engrossing once you get to grips with it, I can see this one eating up hours.

I waited for the 1.0 version of Grounded before playing, but I think I’ll be there from the start for this one. Hopefully the early access period won’t be as long as the first game, which was clearly lengthened by the pandemic, and we’ll get 1.0 quite soon.

I wanted to like the first one, but all I seemed to be able to do was survive on a day-to-day basis and never even got close to building the big submarines and underwater bases it promised, so eventually I lost interest and gave up on it.

Yes, a definite buy - in fact all my regular Horde crew are planning to pick this up. Looking forward to it - I would have bought it on PS5 but all my friends are on Xbox.

At 57 and with a presumably pretty lucrative career behind him… I’d have an eye on the ‘retirement’ door. I’m the same age as him and I’m definitely thinking about it!

If ‘The Initiative’ hadn’t managed to produce anything worthwhile in seven years then the writing was on the wall. I can feel sympathy when people get laid off if a game isn’t a success, but seven years and no result? There’s the door.

Looking forward to Grounded 2, I had a lot of fun with the first one.

1 KCD2 - a truly great game if you are willing to give it the time it needs.

2 Lost Records: Bloom & Rage - the second part didn’t live up to the first, but it more than made up for last year’s slightly disappointing LiS game.

3 The Precinct - good fun.

I’m enjoying it. Oddly, I prefer the nuts and bolts policing stuff - fining graffiti vandals, running license plate checks, pulling over drivers with outstanding warrants and such - to car chases and shoot outs, although there are plenty of those too.

It would be nice if it could be included on a free play day - I’d be interested to give it a go and make my own mind up.

I’ve been doing some law enforcing on Series X - The Precinct and Police Simulator. I’d say the former is more polished and makes it simpler to make decisions around arrests etc. whereas in the latter it’s quite easy to make mistakes like arresting the wrong person after a traffic accident, or wrecking my patrol car on the day I got it. 😳

Both let you do the deeply satisfying thing where you blip the lights and siren to get a car to pull over. 😁

I’m down to the last few missions in Crime Scene Cleaner which I’m finding very relaxing. I wish I took such satisfaction in tidying up my own place!

After that, I think I’ll have a look at The Alters. Hope everyone has a good weekend. 🙂

Obviously they should really try and get things in as good a state as possible before releasing, but I hate to see the sort of pile-on that it is getting and hope they can sort it out.

It was the developer’s choice to release on Game Pass. Nobody compelled them to do so.

The Alters looks interesting. It occurs to me that the last football game I played (apart from FM) was Match Day on the Spectrum, which came out 41 years ago, so maybe I should see if things have advanced since then! 😄

Grounded 2 was the nicest surprise.

Very excited to see that, I really enjoyed Grounded.

Unexpected, but happy about it because I enjoyed the first game.

I’ve been giving my PS5 at bit of love and replayed Last of Us 2 after watching the recent TV series. Still an all-timer, although I’m pretty familiar with it now. Might try and make inroads into my Game Pass backlog tomorrow with Atomfall, but I’ll see how I feel tomorrow.

Xbox Series X (with Game Pass) is the best console I’ve ever owned and I go back over 45 years to the Atari VCS and the ‘TV games’ before that. It’s fast, quiet, totally reliable and still going strong. Living alone in lockdown, winter 20-21, it was practically a life saver in terms of keeping me sane and occupied.