MetalCaveman

It's that time of the year again! Game of the Year (But not really because it's DLC): MORE Elden Ring, that's all I wanted, all I needed, all I could ever ask for, and it delivered. Found some of my favourite weapons and armour in this DLC, the bosses were pretty cool for the most part, the soundtrack was amazing. A most excellent addition to an already awesome game. Game of the Year (this time's for real): The Emperor is pleased. First one was fun, but with some issues, this sequel improves on pretty much every aspect while still keeping what made the original so fun to play. Tons of enemies, lots of cool weapons to fight said enemies with, customization, co-op, everything is here! The story is pretty decent, and all I could ask for in a game like this "here's a cool/badass reason for you to go somewhere and kick ass".

Co-op action game, normally I'd be pretty let down by this, but it looks really cool and it's more Elden Ring, so I'm pretty hyped.

If you've watched Secret Level then you'll be familiar with this new version of Pac-Man lol Got extremely hyped and then my heart broke

Tosin has looked like that for a while lol, dude saw John Petrucci and went "Hold my 8 string" lol. For drummers yeah, Halpern only played on their first album iirc, it's been Gartska on drums since... 2012(?)

The Evil Within 2 Brief but accurate summary: This one definitively felt better to play, it is overall the better game, but the first one is the better survival horror. Not to say this one isn't scary, it does have some really creepy parts, but the general atmosphere and feel of this one doesn't quite reach the same heights. The story was pretty cool Overall, this is a game I would totally recommend to anyone interested in the series, there's plenty of QoL and gameplay improvements, although at the cost of some of the horror, still pretty creepy though. Grade: A

ROCK AND STONE

The Evil Within Several years late to the party, but I finally beat this one. A real rollercoaster, where the highest highs are excellent but the lowest lows made me question why would anyone play this. The atmosphere, music, and monster designs are top tier, super creepy and scary with a nice mix of combat and horror. The story was cool, it really puts the psychological in psychological horror. Can't wait to start 2, see where this goes. Starting around chapter 9 however, there's some serious issues, it really likes to throw insta-death stuff at you, one of the more annoying ones being capable of teleporting and appearing right in front of you, combine this with enemies and traps around the area and it ended up being a really frustrating encounter, specially since the best way I found to deal with that was to just run around in circles until it went away lol, that kinda kills the atmosphere. There's also this room in one of the later chapters that was a nightmare to deal with, all the traps in the universe gathered in a single room. Overall, it was a really good survival horror, though I don't know if I'd recommend it, it does require some patience, both to deal with some technical issues and to make it through some of the more annoying sections. If you do have that kind of patience, then yeah, definitively worth it. Also if you link your Bethesda account, you get access to a bunch of extra stuff including infinite ammo mode. Might be a fun way to do a NG+ run, specially with some of the stuff you get for beating the game once. Grade: B+

\m/ \m/ October brought the best albums of the year lol, add to this list Trollslayer from Wind Rose.

Control multiplayer game, 3 player co-op, looks like it could be fun.

Got it for free on Epic Store so I don't have the DLC lol, but yeah I'll try to check those out at some point, also got TEW 2 for free on EGS lol, so that might be next for Spooky Month, depending on how long it takes me to go through the first one.

The Evil Within, man this game goes from 0 to 1000000 real fast lol. Only a couple of hours in, but so far it's pretty good, even though it has a fair amount of jank.

The Callisto Protocol Gonna start with the summary this time: I felt like I wasted my money on this game, and I got it for free. The story was pretty meh, the way it's set up and specially the ending feel like it would have been better as a PvPvE battle royale where you play as a prisoner trying to escape Black Iron while having to fight other prisoners and the monsters and security robots that roam the place. The melee combat starts out OK, but it doesn't handle multiple enemies well, and completely falls apart for certain boss fights. Ammo is too scarce, specially in the later parts of the game, not in the survival horror resource management kind of way, rather, once the first boss is introduced, the game just spams that same boss several times, with not enough drops in between to properly replenish resources. Movement is constantly interrupted by areas where you have to squeeze, shimmy or crawl though in order to move forward, at first I thought this was a way to hide loading times, but there was a particularly ridiculous part where it goes shimmy->crawl->shimmy just one after another, for no reason other than to waste time. Some animations also take too long, though this is for the sake of jumpscares (going down a ladder in particular). The biggest issue, is that it's just not scary, all the creepy scenes, the jumpscares, the monster encounters, none of it is scary or tense, part of it is the gameplay issues, part of it is that everything feels way too predictable, way too by the numbers, so you can tell when and where a jumpscare is going to happen, when an enemy is going to attack, when some creepy sound is going to play, it doesn't take long to figure out its formula and then it loses all tension. The good: the graphics, everything looks pretty good, the acting and mocap is pretty neat too. I wouldn't recommend it, unless you really, REALLY want to see what it's all about for yourself, even then, I'd say try and play in that new dismemberment mode, supposedly makes things easier, but it also makes the combat feel better. No achievements in that mode though. Grade: F

343i Is no more, now they're Halo Studios, also, they're moving to the Unreal Engine.

At 51:50, that demo of their new MegaLight system is pretty cool, nanite for lights, running on PS5 (not Pro, base PS5), nanite for skeletal meshes is pretty cool too, some interesting features, though they're experimental for now so def not ready for production work. On the not so positive side, with Fab (their new marketplace), access to megascans stuff is no longer free for UE5 users, supposedly you'll be able to claim some stuff for free when Fab launches but I'm not sure how much of it will be available. Fab has some other issues, written reviews, Q&A and other stuff will not be available on the new store either. Don't know if they'll also keep doing the "free for the month" thing.