What Was The Last Game You Played?

[Miguel Sanchez]

1 hour ago, GAD said:

Ace Combat 7: skies unknown. This game is fucking brilliant. Arcade action flying, with loads of different planes and weapons to pick from, and a batshit mental story set in some alternative world called Strangereal that has a space elevator. I didn't really follow it properly to be honest but the gameplay is fantastic.

I finally platinumed this last week and will post a review soon when I go through the story again. It's ridiculous, amazing and has genuinely unmatched writing and music:

 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Hotshot Racing (PS4, 2020)

Hotshot Racing is an arcade-style racing game. It has all the classic arcade racing tropes you want - bright visuals, drifting mechanics for going round corners, checkpoints you need to pass to keep a race going, and races short and close enough that you always want one more go. 

I might as well finish my review here to be honest, because there's very little substance. There are several game modes. GP mode is a four race championship. You can do single races in the Arcade mode, along with other special modes like Drive or Explode, where you need to keep your car above a certain speed or... well, something happens. That's it. There are twenty different tracks in four different settings. I think every lap can be finished in under a minute, so races (usually 3 laps) are fast and frantic. You can do all of this online too, but in the time I was playing I never found anyone else so you might struggle unless you're playing with friends. 4 player local multiplayer is also available.

There are eight drivers to choose from with four cars each. Usual arcade racer rules apply, there are all-round cars then one that's good at speed, one for acceleration and one for cornering. These stats are all matched though so races are never uneven, and you're almost always in with a chance of a win. Several of them are clearly modelled after real life cars, and driving cartoon-like versions of classic race cars is a nice buzz if you're like me and have spent most of your life playing Gran Turismo.

I say you're almost always in with a chance of winning because every now and then on the harder difficulty some of the AI has a tendency to t-bone you in the middle of corners. This is because the difficulty level is mainly based on the speed the cars can go at rather than your opponents being faster. As a result there's very little challenge even on the highest difficulty, things just get a bit more hectic. This isn't a bad thing, but it doesn't help with the sense of the game feeling a bit shallow.

That's pretty much it. I managed to put around twenty five hours into it trying to unlock all of the customisation options for all the cars because it had trophies. By this point I started resenting it, so if you don't care for trophies or achievements you might not be bothered as much by this. I need to make special note of the terrible menu system for those customisations though. After finishing everything I was missing some colour schemes for each car and couldn't find them. Anywhere. I go there eventually with the help of a friend but the menus leave a lot to be desired. 

Now, that's definitely it. It's fun while you're playing it. It's usually on sale for very cheaply. It has online if you want to play your friends, and a time trial mode if you're a perfectionist. You'll have fun, then you'll leave it.

[GAD]

2 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

I finally platinumed this last week and will post a review soon when I go through the story again. It's ridiculous, amazing and has genuinely unmatched writing and music:

 

Can't believe I didn't mention the music, you are right, absolutely top notch.

[Miguel Sanchez]

9 minutes ago, GAD said:

Can't believe I didn't mention the music, you are right, absolutely top notch.

This series is good value:

 

[GAD]

3 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

This series is good value:

 

I will get that watched when I'm home. One other thing I'll say about it before you give us the proper review is that it's a game that genuinely had me shouting "yasss!" At the telly at times. Often my hands were aching from gripping the controller so hard. Last game that had me in that sort of state was Doom Eternal.

[Boostin' Kev]

Secret of Mana on a snes emulator been hooked since I started it 2 days ago. 

[Miguel Sanchez]

Batman: The Telltale Series (PS4, 2016)

Looking at my PSN profile and all the games I've played, I don't think there are any genres defined by a game's developers. If I call something a "Rockstar sandbox" or a "Ubisoft sandbox" anyone reading this thread would be able to understand the distinction and the nuance, but they're not really unique enough to exist as clearly defined terms. The closest any developer has really come to establishing themselves as their own description over the past couple of console generations is Telltale Games. Which is convenient for the easy description of their output as Telltale games, of which Batman is an example. A cross between point and click adventures and quick time events, you control Batman as he does Batman things, then Bruce Wayne when he's pretending he isn't Batman. 

I lied earlier, I've played Tales from the Borderlands. That said, I like the general format of Telltale games. From what I understand of the rest of their output the writing and characterisation is good, so you're pretty much guaranteed to get an engaging story. The quick time events during combat are just enough interactivity to keep you awake between conversations, and given Batman is a character renowned for hand to hand combat the visuals here are engaging enough, and appropriate given the game's art style gives it a comic-book feel. There are a few sections where you investigate crime scenes by looking at stuff and connecting the parts that are related to one another. There's not much complexity to it but it's a nice nod to Batman's roots as a detective, and something different to the rest of the game.

The real heart of a Telltale game lies in its dialogue options and moral choices. As conversations happen you have a choice of responses, and you can occasionally choose to go somewhere or do something which will all, as the game constantly reminds you, affect how your story plays out. I've mentioned before when I've played Quantic Dream games (is that a term worthy of being fully capitalised?) that I enjoy this format of storytelling. You can unequivocally get a unique story and unique results, assuming the game is well-made enough that everything works out effectively no matter what an individual player chooses. 

Batman falls short on some of these fronts. The game puts you in several positions where you can  make a choice between excessive violence or restraint. In one notable moment early in the game you can beat someone up after a fight at the top of a skyscraper or you can handcuff them and hang them from a wall. I went for the tame option and later on I'm interrogating a guy who says we all saw me beating him up. There are some choices which force you into paths which feel somewhat contrived. I can't tell if the game's trying to make you both-sides it or if it's just the result of trying to contain several different action paths, but aside from that instance which feels more like a technical glitch the game runs into the perhaps inevitable problem where you find yourself asking why you can't just say this, or just do this, or just explain something rather than pick the limited options available.

On a technical level the game isn't very good. For something which is mostly quick time events in terms of gameplay there are several things that just don't work properly. The frame rate dies frequently even when you're not in combat. Some characters don't load properly, one had a face but no hair, so she looked like a doll that had been sliced in half. Sometimes you'll be watching a news report on the TV and the newsreader will be fine, but the rest of the screen will be out of focus. The best case I had was a character who didn't actually appear at all, and I didn't realise at first because I thought she was hiding behind something because there had been a gunfight. To me it seems like the art style and interactive cutscene-based gameplay would preclude some of these issues, but apparently not.

My biggest criticism of the game itself would be the episodic format that Telltale is also known for. I don't know that I could play a game like this in the five episode structure that they usually come in, with each episode releasing separately every few months. I'd never remember what had happened whenever a new one came out. You can also get through each episode in 1-2 hours at the very most, so it doesn't seem like a very engaging format to follow unless you can binge them all in a day or two. It also doesn't help in this case since each episode is directed by a different person or team, and this is noticeable in subtle ways like the tone of the dialogue or the events that take place. The game doesn't start strongly in this respect, and I think a lack of consistency from episode to episode is noticeable and to the game's detriment.

Aside from the gameplay, my biggest issue was with the story itself. I've never really been a big superhero fan. I've spent more time with Batman than any others, and I realise there are different stories and different versions of the character. The thing is, I struggled to take all of that in when I was playing this. There's Bruce Wayne and Harvey Dent and they sound remarkably like Nathan Drake and Sully. Fine, I can get past that. But I'm watching what's going on and spending the whole time thinking "this isn't Batman." It's not Christian Bale confiding in Michael Caine. It's not Gary Oldman trying to keep Gotham's police force honest. I really struggled to take the game and the characters seriously for about the first half while I adjusted to them not being the way I perceive them in my head when I think about them now.

I realise this is my problem much more than the game's. The story and the characters are pretty much universally praised in reviews, so I assume they did something right. Is this a positive or benefit to superheroes as a character, being able to reinvent and reuse characters in different ways? Batman's origin story is altered quite significantly in this game and I spent most of it feeling the same way as Bruce, not being able to believe what was going on. Are characters and tropes stronger or weaker for being able to be altered and manipulated like this, from platform to platform, era to era, writer to writer? Maybe you need to be a more dedicated fan of them to appreciate them all appropriately in your head at the same time, or to switch from one to the other, but I'm not sure how well I've managed it. I see people talk about the trailer for the Uncharted movie having Spiderman in it and I'm just confused, thinking "that wasn't Tobey Maguire." Am I now old, Abe Simpson not knowing what 'it' is anymore?

There you have Batman: The Telltale Series. A technical embarrassment which is enjoyable in the way most of their games are, with an added existential crisis thrown in at the end. There's another Batman Telltale series and I'm going to get that when it's next on sale, so I guess this one must have done something right.

Edited October 31, 2021 by Miguel Sanchez

[Chris_the_rover]

The fifth one is the spin off with the two female characters isn't it? B it shorter but I really enjoyed that as well.

Also played the first trilogy in a oner and they're excellent. Among my favourites.

Yeah, someone described it as uncharted 4.5, sort of glorified DLC,

There were a couple that were exclusively released on psp too I think

[Chris_the_rover]

Ace Combat 7: skies unknown. This game is fucking brilliant. Arcade action flying, with loads of different planes and weapons to pick from, and a batshit mental story set in some alternative world called Strangereal that has a space elevator. I didn't really follow it properly to be honest but the gameplay is fantastic.

I played ace combat years ago, I couldn't follow the story and years later found out it was because they didn't port the story over from the Japanese version

Was great fun though

[Chris_the_rover]

Started Deathloop tonight so will see how it goes

[NotThePars]

Started Deathloop tonight so will see how it goes

Let us know how you find it I’m interested in getting it at some point

[well fan for life]

On 01/11/2021 at 00:05, Chris_the_rover said:

Started Deathloop tonight so will see how it goes

11 hours ago, NotThePars said:

Let us know how you find it I’m interested in getting it at some point

 

Deathloop is absolutely class and I'm gutted I've finished it tbh. 

I've been playing Hollow Knight on PS5. I had it years ago for the Switch but couldn't get into it (possibly down to the colossal stick drift my joy cons were developing). This time around I'm hooked. The boss fights are hard as nails but very fun to play and the platforming sections are class if massively frustrating. 

[Gianfranco]

Finally completed RE5 tonight. Another brilliant game but I had to change to the easiest level for the final boss fight as I simply didn’t have enough ammo to defeat Wesker or enough gold to buy more. Chris’ partner was a bit useless in the final fight too. She just followed me about instead of going to the other side.

[Miguel Sanchez]

Metro 2033 Redux (PS4, 2014 - originally PC, Xbox 360, 2010)

Looking at my PSN profile and all the games I've played, I don't think there are any games explicitly adapted from a book. Things like BioShock have literary influences and I know there are games based on Walden and Metamorphosis, but I get the feeling they'd be little more than walking simulators. Plus I've never really cared for Kafka. Going back further than that I think the only games based on books I've ever played are the Harry Potter games, and even then I don't think I got past the third one.

This opening paragraph is partly a lie, because I've played Metro: Last Light before. That's not as directly related to a book as Metro 2033 however, which I've played now. Based on the book of the same name by Dmitry Glukhovsky, the year is 2033 (I know) and things aren't so good. Nuclear war in 2013 destroyed most of the world including Russia, forcing what was left of civilisation into the underground Metro system. Things developed over those twenty years and there are different factions and even states from station to station, with a whole new societal structure emerging. You play as Artyom, a man from Exhibition station who eventually has to leave as the mutant creatures that live on the surface force him into going to deliver a message to someone in another station. Along the way he meets communists, Nazis, lots and lots of mutants, and he starts having strange visions about what's now going on in the world. 

Gameplay is mostly standard FPS survival horror stuff, with a few interesting stealth options. There are a range of weapons you can find in the tunnels or the surface, and there are stalls in some locations where you can exchange ammo for weapons and upgrades. Shooting and throwable weapons are mostly okay. There's a tremendous amount of satisfaction in the pneumatic weapons that fire ball bearings or darts. You have to pump it up to build the pressure, then you can slot someone silently from miles away. It makes the act of shooting enemies feel very manual and deliberate, as it would be in reality. An inspired design choice. 

Enemies take on an almost quiet/loud approach as if the entire game is a giant post-rock album. Tunnel sections featuring human enemies almost always have the option of stealth and non-lethal takedown options. Like most games with optional stealth mechanics these are tremendously satisfying when you get them right. If you don't, there's a healthy checkpoint system. I didn't realise until near the end that your wristwatch lights up if you're visible to enemies, which I could have done with earlier. These sections definitely reward patience and exploration, which good stealth gameplay should.

If that's the quiet, the loud parts aren't always as fun. Usually they involve mutants. A lot of mutants. There are a few different types, but the standard Lurkers usually show up in a pack of about fifty. There's nothing to do but just stand and shoot until you're done. As I played through the game twice I really got to notice how out of place these encounters felt, as if sheer volume was supposed to overcome the lack of any need for tactics or strategy from the player. If you can keep moving long enough to reload, or have some fire grenades to throw to buy yourself some space, you're pretty much fine. 

In addition to the pneumatic weapons there are lots of nice gameplay... I don't even know what to call them. Necessities? Additions? Things which make the experience feel more real. You carry a gas mask for when you go to the surface or an exposed area. If you get damaged the mask cracks, the filters don't last as long and you can change it if you find a non-broken one. Your wristwatch (difficulty dependent) will show you how long your filter will last, so you know when to change it. If you kill an enemy that's close to you blood will splatter across your mask, and you need to wipe it off. You carry a charger with you that you need to use to charge your torch when it runs out. Although there aren't lots of things you need to do there are just enough to keep you immersed and involved and remind you that the world you're in is difficult. I compare stuff like this to my semi-frequent attempts to play Red Dead Redemption 2, and there's really no contest.

I've not read the book, so I don't know how closely the game's story follows the original. I'm not going to insult myself by calling the story linear, so I will say that at times it can be hard to follow. Artyom starts off with one objective to travel to a certain station and meet a certain person. On the way there he visits several stations and is led around by several people, most of whom are killed. Even playing through the game a second time and picking up all the diary entry collectibles, it can be hard to keep track of who and where everyone is. It doesn't help that Artyom is silent outside of a brief voiceover before the start of a new level. Artyom is an interesting character for reasons I'm about to outline, but it feels like an effort to try and discover most of that detail.

Metro 2033 features something I don't think I've ever technically seen in a game I've played. A functioning, logical moral choice system. We all know what moral choice systems in games are now, and we can all think of a game we've played where we fell foul of one. Here though, I'll quote the game's Wikipedia article: 

Throughout the game, there are certain moral choices that can be made. If the player is compassionate to the people living in the tunnels, they may be able to watch a different cutscene at the end of the game. These moral choices are never explicitly mentioned, and it is possible to play through the game without knowing of their presence.

I played through the game twice for trophies. The first time I played I tried to get the good ending and was genuinely surprised when I didn't. I hadn't, to my mind, done anything bad. Then when I realised how many good points there were I realised how stupid I was and how great the game's system is. Rather than present a bunch of obvious binary choices the game simply rewards you for looking around and doing things. Talking (or listening) to people. Interacting with things. Not interacting with other things. Paying attention to the various characters and cutscenes that tell you things aren't just good and bad. It's genius. The endings themselves are quite sudden, which isn't helped by the revolving cast of supporting characters, but the path of getting there makes complete sense and the game deserves massive credit for providing that platform for the player to explore. 

If nothing else, Metro 2033 is a game which really proves how valuable trophies are to my game playing habits. If I didn't have to play this twice to get two endings and to play on different modes (there are various difficulty levels and gameplay modes which change enemies and resource amounts) I would never have been able to appreciate how complex and subtle the world is. I probably wouldn't even have finished it the first time, I got lost in one of the tunnels with a vague objective about blowing something up and was getting really annoyed until I figured out what to do. I'm writing this on the day a new Call of Duty is released and it's refreshing to think there are FPS games with a degree of intelligence about them. It must be the literary influence. 2033 and Last Light are usually on sale for a very small amount on the PSN store, so they're definitely worth buying.

I always try to sum up at the end of these without actually saying that's what I'm doing, but I feel sick and I'm not writing very well. I'll be quick. Gameplay - good. Combat - good and bad. World building - excellent. Graphics - average and probably not helped by me generally playing games with the brightness several notches above recommended levels. Implementation of established video game tropes and mechanics on a unique story - subtle, intelligent, rewarding. There you go. I guess it's time to read the book. 

[NotThePars]

Metro is a series I always preferred thinking about than actually playing. The third was one a big disappointment after it opened with a ton of promise. Would like to see more games with interesting little twists on well established premises as well. And anything influenced by Roadside Picnic (however small) is good to me.

[Miguel Sanchez]

9 hours ago, NotThePars said:

Metro is a series I always preferred thinking about than actually playing. The third was one a big disappointment after it opened with a ton of promise. Would like to see more games with interesting little twists on well established premises as well. And anything influenced by Roadside Picnic (however small) is good to me.

When I was looking them up I was surprised to see Exodus is more open-world. I get the feeling I'll get around to it eventually.

[NotThePars]

16 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

When I was looking them up I was surprised to see Exodus is more open-world. I get the feeling I'll get around to it eventually.

Aye from watching Waypoint play Stalker I have the feeling that they're like the levels in that albeit much larger and intricate due to the greater processing power of the newer consoles. Just big expanses of forest, snowed under wasteland or deserts with a load of landmarks, enemies and places of interest to pursue largely at your own initiative. 

The levels themselves are cool and the world-building through the UI design is still cool. Marking locations with your binoculars and marking them on your wee map is a great touch. They do gradually get less interesting though IMO I think that largely because the game opens on such a tantalisingly interesting proposition that the game completely fails to live up to. 

Also if you loved the opaque and unique morality system then that is ditched in favour of a more straight forward "don't shoot these guys, shoot them" system that makes the good ending much, much easier to intuit and achieve.

It's alright though, I did enjoy it enough to finish it in two sustained bursts I just expected more from the opening premise. It's some dunt to be cowering under a bridge, making a break for the train and getting scooped up by the flying demon things and flung to your death. More open world games should make traversal the wild actually dangerous.

[Miguel Sanchez]

The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game (PS4, 2017)

I have a confession to make. I lied to you in a recent review of the Batman Telltale game. Sort of. In the list of game genres defined by their developers, there are few as unmistakable as the concept of the Lego game. I actually surprised myself when I realised the Lego Star Wars games went as far back as the PS2 era. Since then the same basic formula has been expanded into every money making franchise possible, to the point where surely making one of these is as simple as changing the skins on characters and making new cutscenes. In this case, I can happily report that I hated every second of The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game and I'm going to make myself feel better by tearing it to bits.

The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game is a video game about the Lego Ninjago Movie. I assume such a thing exists. The Ninjago are a bunch of teenagers led by a mysterious old Chinese man who gives them special ninja powers. They protect Ninjago City against the evil, four-armed Lord Gano...Ganodar? Gamodar? I want to carry on not remembering to show you how little I care but it'll annoy me too much. Garmadon! I could've written out ten joke answers and not got there. He lives in a volcano nearby and attacks the place every week.

If you've never played a Lego game, the premise is quite simple. An assortment of mostly linear levels lie between you and the end of the game. There are two playable characters, but if you don't have any friends the AI will control the other one when there are puzzles to solve or doors to open. There's an assortment of combat, puzzles and platforming between you and the end of the levels and different characters, which you can switch between in-game as necessary, have different capabilities to deal with these. Enemies and environments are made of Lego too, and most of the environment is interactive and destructible. Although the games are largely aimed at a younger audience, in my experience of the Star Wars games there's enough charm for older players to not get bored. 

The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game has no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Let's start with gameplay. The game starts with you in a training Dojo learning the three different ways you can press square to make enemies go away. Each of these methods has a fancy name, but when enemies appear all you'll do is spam a mixture of jump and attack until they've stopped. The different Ninjago characters have different weapon types but none of them differ functionally in any way. If you do run out of health you'll just respawn, so it's at least easy to keep playing if something happens to you.

It's been a long time since I was a child but I don't think this game would appeal to me at any age I've ever been. Wikipedia tells me The Lego Ninjago Movie had its screenplay written by six people and its story by seven, and I can only assume that lack of focus is what's responsible for the terrible characterisation and narrative in The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game. Initially I thought it was going to be somewhat self-aware. The game starts with Garmadon attacking the city. As stuff starts getting destroyed and people run around you see someone saying "so what? he attacks the place every week." Ah, I think. It's a post-modern reflection on the nature of Lego as a toy, where you can endlessly play out different scenarios on your own and then constantly rebuild to start again. Very clever. This comes up again when the Ultimate Weapon that's somehow relevant to the plot turns out to be a laser pointer that causes an actual real cat to jump into the city and start destroying stuff, but these are the only interesting moments throughout The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game. 

I have no idea what the game's plot is. The objective seems to be to stop Garmadon, as the Ninjago learn their Spinjitzu elemental powers along the way to interact with different puzzles in the environment. But then Garmadon gets captured by them halfway through. We then get a flashback scene where Garmadon meets a woman on a battlefield and they turn out to be one of the Ninjago's parents. I genuinely don't even remember the ending. Do they drive the cat away? I'm not sure. Either way, what story there is just sort of happens, with the levels having very little relation to that. 

As I played through The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game I kept wondering what my problem with the environment was. When I dug out my copy of the Star Wars game I realised. There's too much of it. There's Lego everywhere, and it all looks the same. In the levels set in Ninjago City absolutely everything is made of Lego, and most of it is exploding. Playing through this game me a good idea of what it must be like having ADHD. It's impossible to know what's going on or what you're doing half the time. Is this supposed to appeal to kids? It doesn't help either that the game constantly interrupts you when you unlock an upgrade and brings up a screen to let you pick which one you want. It was barely possible to follow the game to begin with, now you're throwing up these things every time I enter a new area? The level design should be a strength it the entire experience is so overwhelming I just ended up resenting it.

To pad out what's a much shorter game than it feels, The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game offers free play of its levels. Like previous games, here you can choose from any of the characters you've unlocked to access areas which might not have been accessible the first go round. Let's look at some previous Lego games and see what they have in common. Star Wars. Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter. Batman. Aside from being established, long-running media which have an established, long-running audience they all have characters. Lots and lots of characters. Lots of different types of characters, who can do different things.

The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game, in what was about seven hours to complete the story, has 101 for you to unlock. You might remember me mentioning the Ninjago teenagers (five of those), the old man and the bad guy. Where do the others come from to make up the final total of one hundred and one? I've no idea, but they're in there. Snakes, ghosts, robots, guys who can throw explosives, they're all in there. So is Garmadon dressed up like Dwight Schrute from The Office. If you thought a flimsy story that's constantly being broken up was enough to break interest, it doesn't help when there's a seemingly endless cast of characters you can play as who don't actually feature in the game at all. Who the f**k are these people? Why should I care?

Since in addition to The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game there's a Lego Ninjago Movie and a Lego Ninjago Animated Series, I'm going to assume that watching all of those and owning the Lego sets themselves would make players more familiar with the world and the things in it. That doesn't excuse the game being as consistently off-putting as it is. If anything it makes the entire enterprise feel even more cynical, a self-repeating and perpetuating cycle designed purely to make you spend more money to try and understand what's going on. This, unsurprisingly, doesn't make for a good video game. Regardless of what format or platform something takes it needs to survive on its own merits. You can't turn a book into a film and leave out details that are important to the story.

Vaguely related to that point, I need to mention the cutscenes. These are animated in what appears to be the modern style, that is to say computer animated but made to look as realistic as possible. As if it's actual Lego moving around and talking. I don't like this. Aside from these sequences being just realistic looking enough to make me understand what the Uncanny Valley is for the first time in my life, I just really do not like this style of animation at all. I'm old enough to remember when Shrek and initially Toy Story were groundbreaking, and to see films like that compared to the classic animation which was more prominent at the time you can see the progression. You can see the detail and the intricacies of it, and the possibilities that arise from not having to hand-draw every frame. Here though, there's nothing. I don't even really know how to describe it, it just looks completely unremarkable. It's not that it looks so real as to be unreal, it's more that it doesn't actually register in my head as something I've seen and paid attention to. 

The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game is a bad video game, but not just for all the reasons I've described. To my mind it barely feels like a video game at all. It feels like a harbinger of some hideous corporatised future, where the only focus anyone in society has is in making you consume with no thought, only ravenous appetite for more content on a particular theme. If you consume media which is technically about one subject you will and you must consume as much of it as possible in as many different formats as it can be transplanted on toy. The less objectionable it is the better as this makes it easier to take in for as wide an audience as possible, with nothing to challenge anyone or make them think about anything critically, even the things they're presently occupied with. For a video game based on a toy which is so well-loved because of the endless possibility and replayability, it's genuinely remarkable how little this is reflected in the final product. 

I don't remember the specific details, but I got The Lego Ninjago Movie Video Game for free at some point in 2020 during one of the world's various pandemic-related lockdowns. Were I a cynical person I might look to my last paragraph and think this was part of Their plan to keep everyone at home, as docile and unthinking as possible. Free was an overpayment. I wasn't expecting it to be a harbinger of societal and artistic erasure, but here we are.

[MuckleMoo]

Forza Horizon 5. Not really into racing games but this is an absolute blast

[Dunlop Don]

Not posted here before so here goes on a couple of recent completes:

Ghost Recon Wildlands

In spite of the 6 or 7 out of 10 reviews for this game i was always drawn to it so went for it.  Good decision.  I thoroughly enjoyed it (single player not co-op).  Good enough storyline, good set pieces, interesting world.  I think this is my first open world where i have literally hunted own every single collectable and side mission.   I have seen an accusation of the game being repetitive and i can see what is meant but didn't affect my enjoyment.

Very good and now trying to work out which other Tom Clancy games i should play.

9/10

Horizon Zero Dawn

Another signed up member of the fan club here.  I only played it because it came out on PS Plus.  Excellent game with lots going on.  I thought the story line was boring and actually fairly unnecessary as this game is all about the machines.  Game maybe got slightly grindy later on but just a brilliant gaming experience and well worth taking on.  

9/10