dreamylittledream

7. Metro Exodus (PC) So back to getting my monies worth out of Xbox Game Pass, this was a game I was quite excited about on release, but didn't quite get around to it at time, and then being very pleased it appeared on Game Pass, before the slightly desperate realisation it might get removed before I get around to play it. Its the new subscription service stress, will I play this before it vanishes? But anyway I managed to get to it. I have a soft spot for the Metro games and their oppressive atmosphere; I get a real Half Life 2 vibe from them somehow, along with shades of the Resi games and say Dead Space. I've never played the Stalker games but apparently they owe a lot too (I do actually own these too but lets face it these are games on are on the Steam pile of never never). Anyway both the previous Metro games were classy, pretty, story heavy and very stressful corridor shooters. The shooting wasn't great but the atmosphere was second to none. I enjoyed them both immensely. This makes an attempt to break for the horizon and take the stabilisers off, although interestingly the game is most successful when it sticks to the previous formula. Ultimately this is more of the same but with better and more varied environments, with an occasional side order of some open world busy work. We get a very scripted opening sequence that may ways irritate many, particularly when it leads into an infuriating stealth sequence with a sequence of seemingly unavoidable deaths. But the suddenly it all opens up once you reach the Volga and it suddenly all goes all Far Cry. Which is fun and all that but the game plays its best hand in its heavily sequenced story sequences, we get some wonderful claustrophobic slices of game where you navigate your way through an underground substation and a train terminal. And then it goes all Rage with updated graphics and again we have some open world navigation where we can explore, but its the scripted sections that lead the game play off. In some ways I enjoyed the latter half of the game better where it abandons the freedom of the earlier sections (which is some what frustrated by some god awful vehicle navigation). The incredibly beautiful forest section and then finally a return to the Metro in another city which was probably my favourite section of the game. I got the good ending I think (my character lived) but the mechanics for this seemed a little forced. I am not a stealth player and made extensive use of lethal weapons for taking out enemies without being seen. I never killed an NPC who surrendered and I rescued everyone I met who needed it. But I only managed to save 2 out of 3 member of my crew playing in exactly the same fashion. Stealth got just too frustrating during the forest sequence, so I gleefully murdered people, despite feeling bad as they were kids who didn't know much better but still saved my crew member by not killing one critical character and saving some people but during the previous level I just killed a couple of slaves (who were trying to kill me at the time) and got the adverse outcome. Dunno the stealth stuff doesn't quite fit with the way the game plays best, Artyom is clearly not a pacifist. At its best this was fantastic, tense, beautiful and well scripted - at its worse it pisses about without going anywhere. Performance wise, a year after release its still a bit broken on PC. Despite running this on a 1060 and an i5 8 series processor I could only get a decent frame rate on medium setting (still looks amazing mind) and the game was minded to crash within 15 minutes of running before it offered to run in safe mode and then behaved itself perfectly fine - bizarrely couldn't tell the difference once I changed the resolution to 1920 x 1280... great post apocalyptic zombies / 10 Previously

Origins has some slightly Tomb Raidery moments when you explore the pyramids etc but both of them are more like The Witcher 3 with added parkour and assassinating then either of those games. Origins is great mind, finished it recently after spending 80 odd hours and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not played Odyssey but by all accounts it’s even more of the same but in Ancient Greece rather than Egypt

I'm not convinced the reported speed of download is terribly accurate as it seems to flit randomly from 80mb to a couple of kb for me - things do seem to come down in a reasonable timescale though- this is on a wired 80/20 connection that normally maxes the reported speed.

I really loved this game (and Enslaved for that matter). Almost feeling nostalgic enough to try and seek out a cheap Steam key to give it a replay

May The Division 2: Warlords of New York (PC) So after my two month epic run though of AC:Origins, what better way to pallet cleanse than with erm another Ubisoft open world game. To be fair, The Division plays pretty differently from the AC series in basic gameplay loop and well I'm a sucker for Ubi's open world formula anyway so I like the familiar whistles and bells. Anyway The Division 2 was one of my highlights of last year, it basically it took what the first game did and basically did everything (from a PvE single player sense anyway) significantly better. It is probably the best 3rd person cover shooter I've ever played, with crunchy gunplay, a real emphasis on battlefield placement and of course guns lot of guns. I spent 80 happy hours in the game and played every piece of single player content all the way to World Tier 5, all 3 episodes and even the Kenley College stuff; and loved pretty much every minute of it. The Division 2 is a curious game in that it wants to be an endless loot/MMO shooter but it packs so much genuine new single player content that even those who have little interest in grinding get far more than their money's worth. So after the year 1 content (which was generously largely free, the season pass only granting some extra side mission (pretty decent ones) and a bit of exclusive high end gear; its paid expansion time. As I have Uplay+ this was all available for me day one on release day along with the season pass, but 25 notes if you are purchasing; which is not cheap for an expansion pack. However, this is a fairly generous expansion. We get the setting moved back to the superior environment of |New York (the base games biggest weakness being Washington DC is not quite the iconic city NY is) and exploring a new section of the map in lower Manhattan that the original didn't cover (spoilers yes you do get to visit a certain statue, although no gun fights in the torch which seems a missed opportunity). This is a decent slab of new content - we get 4 new areas which is about a 3rd of the base games map, and each with their own control points, SHD caches and bounties to complete. The new campaign takes in 6 new main missions, all of them taking an hour or so to complete and another 7 side missions which are somewhat shorter. They are almost all good and the new main mission are perhaps the best content in the game to date, taking in an oil refinery, an underground park and the previously mentioned statue as eye candy for the battles. In a slightly surprising turn, this time we get some actual boss battles with personality and unique game play mechanics (although rogue agent numero uno Keener is a flipping irritating battle). Its very much more Division 2, and this was absolutely fine with me. We get the fun of starting again with the loot grind as you level from 30-40 (definitely the best bit of the original), the new map is an impressive post apocalyptic environment (this time in the Summer but following a hurricane) and all the mission are great fun to play through. As a devoutly solo player, I happily progressed through without significant difficulty (which is just as well as only a month after release matchmaking for the campaign on story wasn't really happening); the SHD caches have developed significantly from the base game with almost all of them presenting a slight environmental puzzle to solve. And so 20 or so happy hours were spent - perhaps slightly annoyingly its fairly easy to reach level 40 before reaching the climax of the campaign but the new levelling system doesn't kick in until you finish...there's a story reason for this but yeah, meh. The plot such as it is serves its purpose but the conclusion feels rather empty given the shadow Keener has cast to date and the new big bad really comes out of nowhere but lets face it no one plays The Division for the story. Perhaps most disappointingly the post game gives little reason to play on; I was all ready to give the new season content manhunt a go but it basically consists of replaying content I've just done or did previously with no alterations....yeah nah. There is sadly no equivalent of the WT levels of the base game or the remixed missions that offered. But I did thoroughly enjoy this return to New York and the rock solid foundations of the series - I will be back but only when there is something new to play. Lots of fun but maybe not £25 worth of content / 10

The available options for redemption do tend to reappear and disappear. Gamepass will probably be back, and you are normally best to wait for the option to be on special offer anyway unless you need to extend your subscription now. If so I think Live gives the best conversion to Gamepass ultimate from the options currently available but best waiting if you can.

My PS plus expires today. This has not encouraged me to subscribe

It’s back and two episodes in its just as blood thirsty and engagingly dark as ever. A little quicker from the get go than season 3 to grab the attention too (I got a bit bored with all the Skade stuff which felt like a plot line going no where which turned out to be the case). Bloody great cliff hanger ending to the second episode too...getting a real Ramsey Bolton vibe to Utred’s newly discovered cousin

Hurrah, finally I can inflict on my Star Wars dodging wife a full watch of the new trilogy in preparation for our Disneyworld trip that is almost certainly not happening this summer. (or perhaps more realistically me and the eldest will watch it again and thoroughly enjoy it because flawed as it is, it’s still a very enjoyable movie).

Thanks guys. I managed a fluke win last night in the end, my opponent surrendered after about three turns. Definitely spent way too much time on a 50 point quest but needed it for the 1000 point one

Anyone still need to do the Worms WMD quest for a quick surrender swap? Turns out after many years away I am utterly terrible at Worms so it seems winning a match may be beyond me

Woke up to an email from Nvidia telling me they had extended my founders free subscription an additional month. Wow, that's generous - wonder what prompted that. Oh https://www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2020/4/20/21228792/nvidia-geforce-now-microsoft-xbox-game-studios-warner-bros-remove-games?utm_campaign=theverge&utm_content=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&__twitter_impression=true This is the equivalent of the major publishers hammering the nails into the coffin now

Yeah in some ways there really is just too much of it - although the exploring and finding some of the hidden stuff like the tombs and the hermit spots were also some of my favourite bitts so I don't regret playing it the way I did. Turned out I seriously underestimated how much content was left last time I posted at the 60 hour mark; the story end game takes you to the Libya side of the map with another huge city and about 20 side quests to do. So I did them. Then I ended up mopping up every last question mark and uncovering the whole map, because well it needed to be done. The last quarter of the map the map is much emptier - the deserts don't have a huge amount going on in them as it turns out - but they do have some tombs and one very stunning view high in the Black desert. Oh and then I went on to both bits of DLC, which are well doing and actually have better leads plot threads then the main game. The Curse of the Pharaohs in particular is well worth doing - although I'd maybe recommend returning to it after a break - after 95 hours of this game I'm a bit burned out and I won't be charging headlong into Odyssey straight away...

April 5. Assassin's Creed Origins + The Hidden Ones + The Curse of the Pharaohs (PC) Well that's one way to slow down my completion rate for the year, play a game that literally feels like it will never end. In a good way mind, although after 95 hours of it I'm very ready to play something else. So literally two months it has taken me to get through this, and that's with a weeks annual leave in lockdown not doing a great deal more than play it. This is, if you let it be of course, a ridiculously long game. I've only a passing acquaintance with the AC series, still harbouring a slight resentment for the fact it killed off my beloved Prince of Persia games. I did play the original at the time of release and was not wildly impressed. Looked stunning but not a huge amount to do. I also plated the sequel on release but found it took an inordinate amount of time to get going, too long in fact so I got bored and gave up. Fast forward 10 years or maybe more, late to the party with the PS4 my new console came with a copy of Syndicate. And I finally completed my first AC game, and really enjoyed it too. Anyway, I've had a thing for classical and ancient history (and a degree to show for it) since I was a kid, so had been meaning to play this for a long time. I was attracted by the the RPG stylings and the reports of many of the irritants or past AC games were a thing of the past (tailing etc - although some of the sub Benny Hill chase sequences that I experienced in Syndicate were probably worth the price of admission in their own right). Anyway, this is all largely true. This doesn't feel an awful lot like the earlier games at all. In fact it comes across more like a third person version of Far Cry (endless enemy camp infiltrations), with some incredibly expansive exploration in a fascinating and incredibly realised period of history. Playing on a pretty decent PC, its hard to underestimate how pretty this game looks. It captures Ptolemaic Egypt perfectly and the extent of the world map is just stunning. The plot does rather stumble along, rather lost in the fun you have from uncovering question mark after question mark, exploring long forgotten tombs in the wilderness, skating down Pyramids, climbing temples and dealing silent death from above to the guards. The game is neatly simplified and tweaked to make the core gameplay; get to area, scope out with your bird, silently dispatch the guards being sneaky a la Batman Arkham or with some carefully placed arrows and then killing your quarry and then go explore some more endlessly inviting. One can not stress just how huge the map is; even after finishing the main quest line I still had a third of the map to explore. The plot is slow moving for the majority of the game and then suddenly accelerates in a slightly odd tangent but this ultimately matters little given the engaging nature of the game loop. The two leads however are unusually well developed, even if I didn't see the eventual twist in their relationship coming. And even more surprisingly the DLC is almost equally as well done as the main game. The Hidden Ones is a nice little expansion to the main game but clearly more of the same but Curse of the Pharaohs' is arguably the best content of the entire game - Thebes, and what they did with the tombs of the kings being a massive highlight. Perhaps playing it all through was a little too much of a good thing, I have Odyssey all lined up but I need a break for now, but this was cracking stuff. Hidden Blade / 10

Yes it is fab. And I watched it at time of broadcast being a naughty dirty pirate but I also now have paid Disney a years subscription to their service as soon as they offered it. I don't feel morally superior by having done this, I just find it amusing those who berate those who pirate and then do this sort of thing. My point, is that people being precious about piracy but happy to exploit any other loop hole are no better then those they berate and I'm kind of lost as to the logic.