BadgerFarmer

3 hours ago, Timmo said:

Personally I’m moving to Turkey and taking my PS5 provided the reviews are decent enough. Embargo is today, although I don’t know what time. 

Very soon (11am).

OK then.

Yeah, great effort. Thanks for putting the time in.

Yeah, there's an item called willow branch you can use. Not sure if you have it right at the start though.

Worth noting that weapons also have a parry difficulty stat. Choose ones with a higher percentage to make it easier.

And (perhaps obvious), it's always worth tracking down all the flags before facing a boss to ensure your starting level is higher each time you fail.

I also think it's easier to beat bosses at times without a companion character. It becomes easier to concentrate and makes them behave more predictably. 

I chose Throné. Great thieving skills.

I think Ochette may have been the better choice in terms of having an all-round fighter locked into the party. A bit like H'aanit in the first game.

6 hours ago, Lying Cat said:

 

It's also worth noting that you can hold Block and still Parry, which hugely reduces the punishment for missing a Parry.

Yeah, this is key. You can get away with a late parry, effectively. Although blocking drains spirit and red attacks can't be blocked.

Parrying to reduce the enemy's spirit and then stunning them is the way to wreck enemies quickly, especially bosses. It can be the difference between chipping away at a tough enemy for ages or destroying them in seconds.

Fantastic demo, and it sounds like the rest of it will really go places. Love it.

The Tower of Sisyphus is well worth some time too.

32 minutes ago, Paulando said:

Scores:

 

  Reveal hidden contents

Fire Emblem Engage: 7

Season: A Letter to the Future: 9

Jett: Given Time: 8

High On Life: 5

Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator: 7

Dragon Quest Treasures: 6

Hyper Gunsport: 8

The Forest Quartet: 7

Lone Ruin: 5

 

I think the story is as much about the repetition and the frustration and the madness of the time loop as it is the milestones. I don't think it would be as effective emotionally if it was placed in a structure of constant progression. It's rare that game design matches the experiences of its characters so well.

Even the save and suspend feature, which was ultimately essential in practical terms, still detracts from the purity of the vision somewhat, in the sense that it encourages you to value a single life in a situation where you have infinite lives, none of which are significant individually.  

16 hours ago, Mike S said:

Can someone on PC let me know if this has full Dual Sense support?

Yes. It does.

(Select 'Disable Steam Input' in the controller settings to make it work.)

13 hours ago, fragglerock said:

Gita's review

 

https://www.polygon.com/reviews/23603142/hogwarts-legacy-review-harry-potter-jk-rowling-transphobic-ps5-pc-xbox

I like that. The only review I've read that doesn't either ignore the issues or discuss them at a tangent, but instead works them and the background context into the critique of the game itself. 

I wish there was more room for reviews to break out of the conventional formula. It certainly helps in this case that there's no score at the end, and that Polygon decided not to race to meet an embargo.

20 hours ago, Flanders said:

The snootier UK games media more or less don’t get Returnal, which is one of several reasons I don’t treat them as any barometer of what’s good anymore. 
 

Too wrapped up in praising tedious point and click adventures and FMV games that remind them of the 90s to appreciate a genuinely next gen game when it stares them in the face. 

It's nothing quite so sinister - merely a case of a certain game not clicking with a certain reviewer. I write reviews for PCG sometimes and if I'd got this one it would have been a much more positive writeup. Overall, though, surely you want different perspectives out there, and that's what you get when you look at Robin's review alongside the more glowing ones.

I got to review it again on PC for RPS, and I'd say it's a great port as long as you've got a powerful enough machine. Mine pretty much matches the recommended specs (RTX 2070) and managed a fairly steady 60fps at 1080 on High settings. You don't want to go lower than that, though. because it drops down in quality quite noticeably if you play on Medium, and it's the sort of game that really benefits from having everything turned up to Epic with as many bells and whistles on as possible.

16 minutes ago, bradigor said:

I thought I was going insane with my thoughts looking at some of the hype. Thanks both for saving my sanity

I was getting suspicious when they actually showed the combat in detail in one of the trailers. If anything, it wasn't quite as bad as it looked, but that's not saying much. 

I also think it's basically rubbish, but it does have a trashy charm. There's a lot of shitness in the combat to put up with, but I can't say it didn't make me laugh.

https://www.gamesradar.com/wanted-dead-review/

14 hours ago, Benny said:

Card Shark (which is brilliant by the way and criminally missed out on the awards this year - go play it)

Extra pos for this. 

I have a PS5. It's always good to have a console with enough grunt to run the latest big games well, and it certainly does that. The lack of loading times is a game changer too. But whether there are enough games that justify the upgrade is less clear. A few more Returnals wouldn't go amiss.

Currently, any Xbox needs are covered by my PC, even though it's less powerful than an X, so I'm in no hurry to get a Series console.

I don't think Wired reviews are on Metacritic, by the way. They only review the occasional big game, which isn't enough to get on MC.

Also, as far as I'm aware they don't usually do scored reviews at all, so this seems to be an exception.

I've stopped playing this myself, but a friend of mine pointed me to a version they made, which I thought might be of interest here.

https://confusle.positronicarts.com/? 

It's called Confusle and the twist is that after each guess, when it shows you which letters are correct/in the word/not in the word, one of the pieces of info is incorrect.

It makes sense when you try it.

Nice.

Gestalt: Steam and Cinder is pretty good if you fancy a pixel art Metroidvania type thing.

I recommend giving Shadows of Doubt a go. It's a procedurally generated open-world detective game.

58 minutes ago, Alex W. said:

We’ve got plenty of experience with how games media, and film and music media, review the output of Problematic individuals, companies and brands. For EA Spouse to Jared Leto. People were giving Roman Polanski’s films positive write-ups in to the late 2000s. We will mostly get some oblique comments on how there are “issues” with the brand, occasionally get a review which doesn’t comment at all or makes it a central thesis, and have a sprinkling of op-eds.

 

If the games review cycle can crank out a half dozen reviews of games about maintaining NATO military hegemony in the developing world featuring brand approval from arms manufacturers and the military-industrial-entertainment complex every single year, this is not going to move the needle.

If the option is there for a publication, the best thing to do would be simply not to review it, I think, and explain why. As a reviewer, I've kept well away from it, although that wasn't especially difficult as I have little interest in Potter stuff anyway. I do the same with Call of Duty and the like, too.

But when it comes to reviewing this kind of stuff, it's always a bit damned if you do, damned if you don't, and it's difficult to judge how much a controversy should factor into a critique of the experience. Ideally I'd want to do two linked pieces - one a 'straight' review and a then a follow up discussing the issues. Like the way Edge does when it follows reviews with a 'postscript' piece.