danielpholt

I'm onto the final boss/s in Sekiro, but I know it's going to require me to spend a bit of time learning the fight, so I'm taking a week or two off from it with the aim of playing a few other games for a bit. The Devil In Me: The final (?) episode of this current batch of Dark Pictures games. I'm about 2/3 of the way through and whilst the actual idea behind this game is kinda awesome, it takes a good hour or two before you get to that part of the game. They've also changed up some of the QTE's from previous games, although I'll be honest I'm not in love with a few of them, that's a preference thing however. I hope to have it finished in the next day or two, and I think it'll likely end up placing 3/4 in my ranking of these games (Behind Little Hope and House of Ashes). Kirby and the Forgotten Kingdom: I'm working through this with my daughter who absolutely loves it. For what it's worth I think it's kinda okay too.

If we're recommending content for From games then I can't recommend https://www.youtube.com/user/VaatiVidya enough. Always makes nice stuff with some great production values. Will credit those that he uses in his videos and isn't afraid of admitting when he makes a mistake or changes his mind. Also, he's got an incredible voice/accent.

Had this on my wishlist for a good year. Looks kinda fun.

Ran around for a bit and watched a few videos on what the game wants off of me. Lady B has since been dispatched. Took maybe 5-6 attempts but it's done, and it wasn't that much hassle once I'd figured out that I need to be much more aggressive than I would normally be. Amazing game 10/10.

Seven Ashina Spears and Lady Butterfly, more so SAS to be honest. I've spent the last 6 hours maining those two enemies and try as I might I'm not getting close. There's very little room to make a mistake, especially with SAS who's an absolute unit in terms of health, posture and sheer damage output; one mistake and it's over. **Update** Spent a little time playing this morning. I've been grinding the castle in an effort to level my guy up a little. I got hold of the 'Carp' upgrades and it made a massive different to the encounter with SAS to the point where I took him on once, was a bit more aggressive and ended him first time. I'm also going to ensure I've got as many Gourd Seeds as possible for where I am right now, then I'll take on Lady B again and see if I can't figure that one out.

I started Sekiro and it's absolutely kicking my arse and I genuinely don't know if I'm good enough, or even capable of being good enough to make any meaningful progress with this game. Which is a real shame because I can see myself adoring it, I just suck. And given I can't over-level to get around trickier fights, I'm afraid I've run out of rope. I've got Dark Souls III installed. Maybe that'd suit me better. I don't mind the challenge, it's just Sekiro requires such a level of mastery, and I'm old and tired and kind of incapable of giving the game what it wants from me.

Somerville - XBOX SERIES X Not sure on this one so far. It's got all the trappings of a game from some of the people who made LIMBO and INSIDE, but it's just not hitting those same highs. I've done lots of walking. I've solved a few puzzles after doing lots of walking. It's not bad by any means, it's just not...grabbing me in the way LIMBO especially did. And maybe that's an unfair comparison to make....unfortunately it is the one that will be made. I think I'm half way through, there's definitely some interesting things here, but right now it feels like a poor version of something that was done better 6 years ago.

I was perfectly fine with what they did with the first game. You had a sort of Mario 3D World type overworld to run around in, collect coins and talk to NPCs, but it didn't require anything of you in order to unlock the next combat encounter.

The Case of the Golden Idol Grabbed this after hearing The Beasties talking about it on their podcast a few weeks ago, they seemed to be really into it and I can totally see why; think Obra Dinn with more clicking and less exploration. I don't think it delivers it's story in as interesting way as Obra did, and the gameplay isn't nearly as interesting, but for the most part it lands what it's going for.

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope I'm not sure if it was the open world sections, the fact that I just got a Steamdeck (and the Switch feels like a 10 year old machine by comparison) or the fact that I don't have the time to play games that I have to force myself through anymore, but SoH is probably the biggest disappointment of the year for me. The original game is one of my favourite Switch games. The sequel never grabbed me in the same way, and I think a large part of that is down to the stuff that goes on around the combat scenarios; the open world stuff was at best boring, and at its worse it was a mind numbing slog that totally sucked any motivation I had to play the game. The characters are wonderful, the combat great...but getting to those moments requires spending far too much time doing other things that just weren't fun.

Mario + Rabbids: Sparks of Hope It builds on the first game in some nice ways; ditching the grid-based movement found in most turn-based games in favour of a movement zone that's a little more forgiving, getting rid of the star based ranking system and bringing in Sparks that allow for a little more customisation with regards to your characters and squad. It's far from perfect though. The 'open' hub-world thing they've got going on doesn't work at all for me; I've spent far too much time walking around these pretty uninteresting spaces, solving boring puzzles and trying to figure out how to get to my next combat scenario. All in all though I'm having a good time. Hopefully they find a way to make the next game more focused on the combat and less focused on the moving around between those combat scenarios.

You made it about as far as I did then. I spent the best part of 90 minutes trying to figure out the first major puzzle (you have to go up the elevator) and decided it wasn't for me (or that I didn't have the time to see if it would eventually be for me). To be honest I wasn't even enamored with the art-style which get's old, pretty quick. There's only so much time I'm wanting to spend in a world that's as grey, dark and grungy looking as Scorn's world does.

If we had a more solid constitution this could all be avoided. In the last 15 years we've had 6 different PM's and only *3 of them got elected to that position (I know we don't vote for a PM but yadda yadda yadda). I have no issue with the way we don't directly elect our PM, but I do think it's about time we had a rule that made it constitutionally guaranteed that within 3 months of a change of leadership, we get a GE. As with many things in this country, we need to seriously sit down and think about how our system works. Unfortunately we seem incapable of having calm waters for long enough to actually do that. We've bounced from one crisis to another since the Scottish Referendum and it's starting to really effect our institutions and our democracy as a whole. *Technically only one of them got elected PM without also being the incumbent. May and Johnson already had the job.

The saddest thing is that, despite all of this, you know they're going to get a not insignificant share of the vote when we finally get a GE. I think they time in government is over for the next decade or so, but I can't see them being wiped out entirely. I think they might lose a portion of their vote to the Lib-Dems, but eventually those True Blue voters will revert to type.

Amazingly the situation got even worse than it was on Friday. That's almost impressive.

Reviews seem super positive on it, so I'm more than happy to throw £40 at it, even though I know it'll go cheap pretty quick.

I went to a Church of England school no less. Shame on me.

Fire and Blood: For those of you who don't know, it's a prequel book in George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. It covers the first half (ish) of the Targaryen dynasty. The new House of the Dragon tv show is based upon this this work. The book itself is a real page turner, which i'll be honest, surprised me a little. The reviews are pretty positive, but there's definitely a group of people who struggled with the nature of the book itself. It's written as a sort of...history book. Written by an in-universe historian who's collating accounts of the previous 150 years into one book. As such you end up with accounts that may be incorrect, overblown or just flat out falsified; the writer also adds his own opinion into the mix. All in all I can firmly say it stands up as another strong entry into this series. Truth be told, it's likely one of the more readable ones (I'm looking squarely at you A Feast for Crows). A Party With Socialists In It: I'm a Union member, a Labour Party member and a 'politico' so it only makes sense I should educate myself on the history of the Left inside the Labour Party. I'm roughly half way through, and whilst there's certainly a lot to take in (names, so many names), I'm finding it a very interesting read indeed. Nye Bevan seemed alright. Ernest Bevin less so.

Rollerdrome For those of you who aren't familiar with Rollerdrome, it's a really cool 3rd-person-shooter-meets-Tony- Hawk's-Pro-Skater, where instead of jumping over benches and police cars, you rollerskate around an arena 'catching air' and laying down some 'neat tricks' in order to earn ammo for your weapons, which in turn can be used to murder everyone. It feels great, the shooting is solid and the combat has a level of challenge to it that I think makes the game pretty replayable. It looks super nice too, even on the smaller screen of the Steamdeck.

What are we thinking?