Content from Last 48hrs

Lords of the Fallen (2023) Easily one of my favourite non-FromSoft Soulslike lol, but it also has a bunch of issues. One of the biggest ones is how it handles item descriptions, yes, lore being hidden in item descriptions is not a new concept, but this game takes it to another level, by locking the actual content behind stat checks lol, this results in my favourite bit of lore in any Soulslike ever: Riveting. It's not a low requirement either, put about 30 points into inferno and I was still getting that message, don't know what level you need to reach before it actually tells you stuff. Boss fights were pretty disappointing too, either strength is super OP or bosses are just pathetically easy, in three playthroughs I only died a couple of times to bosses, first one was from a boss with attacks that fill the entire screen with effects, making it impossible to see what's going on, second was when I used the wrong buff on my weapon, my attacks were barely making a dent, when I switched to the right elemental buff the boss melted in less than a minute lol. Some pretty cool designs here, but the actual fights are disappointing. There's this area that's super dark, and it's by design so cranking the brightness in both the game and my tv did nothing, that place was hell to go through, though a recent update did increase brightness in that area so that one's been fixed. Enemy variety is super limited, and not helped by the fact that most of the bosses you fight will be immediately used as normal enemies. There's also some technical jank, crossbows have this line that helps you aim, except for me it would disappear every other shot, making sniping enemies take way more ammo than it should lol, there are also some spots were your character can get stuck, not even when going off the main path, just when following the main path you'll run into, "there's this one spot in these stairs that's home to some kind of gravitational anomaly" kind of thing. The endings (there's 3 endings) are also pretty lame, one of them is lame all around, with nothing cool or interesting happening, the other two are more interesting, specially the radiance one, with all the Adyr stuff, but the main issue is that for all endings, all you get a is short cutscene, all the cool stuff, the actual ending, happens in a black screen with some text describing what happened next. There isn't much variety either, one is just "Everyone dies and gets eaten by monsters", another is "Everyone dies because you're all sinners!" and the last one is "Everyone and everything dies, the end". In spite of all this, I still liked it a lot, when playing, the combat and exploration brought me back to Dark Souls, in a good way, it was cool to explore a side path, find a ton of stuff and then end with a shortcut to the beginning of the area, combat felt good, with some cool systems, like how ranged weapons use ammunition, instead of having a bunch of each type of arrow or bolt, you can use anything you want, and it all uses the same items to recharge. Spells being tied to buttons instead of having to cycle through them made buffing before big fights way faster too. There's also some cool armours and weapons here, really liked my last playthrough, with this cowboy-crusader style: Overall, it's a much MUCH better game than the previous Lords of the Fallen, but not without some issues, that it released in a pretty broken state and so close to Lies of P and Shadow of the Erdtree didn't help, still, if you're looking for that classic Souls feel, I'd recommend this one. Sequel is looking pretty cool too. Grade: B+

Ha, I was just thinking it was a shame they didn't get it out for October. I've been waiting for this before touching my copies of 2 and 3. I know what I'll be doing on the 30th!

Hades II I don't like these games. I do like the Hades games. I'm not sure why that is, but I bet it's got something to do with the constantly feel of progression, the stunning art direction, the entrancing story and obviously the super-tight gameplay mechanics and overall loop. Hades I was one of my favourite games of the last few years, and it looks like Hades II is going to top it in that regard. It's taken what was so good about the OG game and improved upon it whilst also bringing new mechanics to the table that make the loop even more satisfying to play through time and time again. And maybe it's just me, but I feel like few people are talking about it? I wonder if that's down to it being a sequel, the fact that Hollow Knight came out a few weeks prior to it or (more likely) the fact that I'm not as invested in the gaming space anymore??

Anbernic have one coming out in the coming months too. Seems to be a bit cheaper than the Thor/PocketDS models that are launching now, and that's a good thing. I've been considering getting a cheap 3DSXL for a while, but with these three on the market early next year, I'm probably going to go down this route instead. The DS/3DS is a system I basically skipped because ...well handheld games weren't my jam. Until now.