And so i finally reached a point where i can call Nioh beaten. Wow, that was a long one. Why do JRPGs have a tendency to turn into a single-player live service game near the end? (maybe i'm generalising a bit). Nioh is a(nother) game following the souls-like model, coming from the folks who made the Ninja Gaiden series. In addition to the fundamental souls structure (bonfire-like save points, loss of upgrade currency on death, higher than normal difficulty), there's.. well… a lot.

We've got a combo system, specific to each weapon class and unlocked through skill trees, which feels slightly out of place in combat that's more focused on animations and stamina.
There's three weapon stances, which let you adjust your combat style between fast dodges and hits but low damage, to slower but heavy hits - a neat system that allows a skilled player to switch more effectively between defensive and aggressive play, but i imagine most people just stick to one stance for most of the game, like i did.
You can optionally spec into ninjutsu and onmyo magic skill trees, which are functionally equivalent to the spell systems from the Souls games. It's nice that you can dip into these for the ones you want, but a lot of it does feel a bit extraneous.
Weapons and gear follow a Diablo-style loot system, which feels so out of place to me. I've complained about this feature inclusion in other games so it might be a personal thing, but i think the randomness just leads to overall chaos, which is not exactly what you want in a souls-like

Story-wise you follow William, who travels to Japan in the Sengoku-era, intent to reclaim the guardian spirit stolen from him (guardian spirits are another important game-play mechanic). While there, he gets entangled in the battles of the warring states, and a cast of side characters. Some of these characters and events seem drawn from real-world history, with the yokai, spirits, and magic providing some supernatural flavour

The game is mission-based, rather than being set in a single connected world, which i was initially apprehensive of, but it turned out to have some of the best level design i've seen in a while. It will be contained to that level, but you've got the twisty interconnected-ness, with shortcuts and level gimmicks that i've actually been missing from souls-likes, as well as pretty good thematic design, which keeps each mission mostly distinct. At the end of every level is a boss to beat, and the combat design is slick enough that this is mostly a good time, but can sometimes veer into frustration

There's so many other mechanics and systems that i've left out, or didn't dive too deep into the details of. Nioh is definitely a well put-together game, but has a lot of these extra bits and pieces that make it feel messy. I still enjoyed myself though, and i'm looking forward to if/how Team Ninja have improved this formula in their later games

Already played this one (on PS3, a lifetime ago), and i guess i bought it to replay on PC at some point, but it was only the recent achievements added that really pushed me towards it.. i think i was also just in the mood for an uncomplicated Ubisoft open-world

Far Cry 3 still has a good bit of style; you can see they were flexing their creativity a bit, with the vibes of The Beach, sprinkled with the Alice in Wonderland references, and the light commentary on video-game violence being enjoyable (even if that enjoyability ends up making it sound a bit hollow)

Gun-play is still pretty solid, and Vaas is still such a believably unhinged villain. I haven't played any other Far Cry after this, as they all seemed like they were just trying to recapture this one.. maybe i'm being prejudiced though

Was also expecting to replay Blood Dragon, but my achievements synced across as soon as i opened it, since i actually played that one before on PC

Vampyr is a decently made game, with an interesting gameplay dilemma at its centre - kind of like Unsighted in a way, that i played last month

The gameplay is fundamentally a souls-like, although with no blocking, the gun off-hands, blood all over the place, and the Euro-gothic aesthetic, it skews closer to Bloodborne than any of the ones with souls in the title. The shake-up here comes from vampire "spells" fueled by blood taken from enemies - which also fuels your healing ability. Opponents are always resistant to one or two of the four damage types, so it makes sense to mix these moves into combat effectively. Not a world-shaking change to the formula, but combat does end up having a nice back-and-forth between sourcing blood to casting these spells

While it doesn't transform the souls-like base a whole lot, Vampyr prefers to use it as a solid structure to hold up the narrative. The main plot concerns the Spanish flu in Britain, wrapped up with secret vampire societies and ancient druidic gods, but far more interesting to me is the dilemma of the main character. You're a doctor who wakes up as a vampire, so right off the bat your oath to help the injured conflicts with your need to feed.

How this translates to gameplay is the interesting bit: as a doctor doing the night-shift (naturally), you'll spend a lot of time talking to patients and hospital staff, listening to their stories, solving their problems and occasionally crafting medicine to remove their illnesses - classic side-questy stuff. As you do this though, their "blood quality" goes up, which makes them more valuable as vampire food, and at pretty much any time they can be mesmerised into a quiet corner for such things.

I generally do the good boy route in games, so i resolved to not eat anyone at all, but XP comes in much slower from other sources, and the enemy levels don't wait around for you, so once you hit a hard spot of combat, seeing these literal bags of XP walking around with enough for a good health upgrade, really starts to look quite tempting. The characters you interact with are often clearly there to test your willpower as well - this guy is a violent criminal, surely it's fine to take him off the streets? or hey, this guy is a filthy landlord profiting from the crisis, isn't it better for all if he was gone?

The combat also being a bit janky doesn't help this conflict though (or maybe it helps it more, in a weird way ?), with dodges being a bit unreliable, and sometimes feeling like you got stun-locked to death out of nowhere. There were some very frustrating moments in my playthrough, and part of me wished i went for a "eat everyone" run - or just a few chomps at least, for some much needed health/stamina

An alright game overall, plus i feel like we need more of these double-A type games in circulation

Bomb Rush Cyberfunk is a simple, stylish skateboarding game that draws heavy inspiration from Jet Set Radio, a cult classic from the Dreamcast generation. You'll spend most of your time grinding rails, finding graffiti spots to spray over, and escaping from the cops

The story is fairly simple - but goes to some unexpected places - and the primary drive is to beat each area's rival gang. First, you'll need to find enough graffiti spots for Rep to challenge them, which pushes you to explore the area and map out some ideas for trick chains. Then it's a score battle against the other team, probably using those routes you planned earlier

The scoring system is a little odd to me, as while you get points for tricks as normal, you build your combo multiplier (which is essential) by leaning into the corners of grind rails. Landing on the ground resets it, so you have to hold a manual to keep it going. Each corner can only be used in a combo once, so the more ridiculous scores (see: achievements) often need you zig-zag your way through as much of the level as you can in a single combo

If the goal was to re-create Jet Set Radio in modern times, BRC easily "understood the assignment", as they say. It gave me all the vibes of a game from that era, where things could just be a focused skateboarding game with no extra fluff and frills. Perhaps i'm just spoiled by modern games, but i kept feeling like something was missing, that it could be rounded out with some extra mechanic or idea

Definitely a well-made game, and oozes style from every piece, but i think i was just not exactly in the mood for what it was bringing right now. Took me a while to write this up because i was struggling to find the words…

Yeah High on Life is pretty much what you'd expect from the co-creator of Rick & Morty - lots of similar humour, and even the same"wild space-time shenanigans" basic premise

Having your guns be your companion characters is an interesting idea, and also kind of neat because it puts their characters front-and-centre. Very few total guns to compensate for being voiced, although each gun has a few different shooting options, as well as movement abilities that unlock new areas, both adding flavours and expression to gunfights as the game progresses

I had an alright time. It gets points for being a focused experience, and not hanging around too long, but your enjoyment mostly hinges on how you find the writing and dialogue, because it's constant. I don't mind it that much - and even had a chuckle now and then - but if you find it annoying, you probably won't make it through, although there is always the mute button

Not much to say to be honest, and this is another added to the pile of games waiting for DLC to finish properly

This was an interesting one. Unsighted is a top-down metroidvania, which is mildly unusual on its own, but it's unique selling point - and most divisive feature - is the timer: almost all characters in the game, yourself included, have a literal countdown ticking away until they die (or become Unsighted technically, but it's functionally the same)

So obviously this is a pretty hard sell, and they're aware of it, warning you very clearly near the beginning of the game, and even offering the choice to disable it entirely right then. As someone who takes really long to do anything in life (not just games), this feature was definitely a concern. After checking there wasn't anything critical locked behind keeping everyone alive, i decided to keep the timer on, at the very least just as an experiment, to see how it influenced my play

Basically, it did and it didn't. The beginning was just getting used to the game, so as expected, but as everyone's hours started dropping, i found myself sprinting everywhere, rushing past enemies and sloppily fighting bosses; anxiously debating whether it's worth spending the time to explore, because i could find some of the rare item that extends timers a bit, or maybe a shortcut for speedier navigation, but i could just as well waste a bunch of time.

The first few characters deaths sucked, but kind of expected. A few guys start with remaining time so low that i'd be surprised they didn't die on anyone's first play-through, so i made my peace easily. The next few were a bit harder because they were either useful or charming. One character teaches you to fish, and you find them around the map along your travels, so i was pretty sad to find one of their spots empty all of a sudden. It hit the hardest when the floating fairy-guide character that had been with me the entire game eventually disappeared, but it was also a turning point; death was now normal, characters were expendable, and i had to keep myself alive most of all

Mechanically, Unsighted is impressively well-designed, and seems to be built for sequence breaking. At the start, you're given five bosses to kill, and a recommended order, but the map is technically open already, if you know how. Moments i found particularly surprising were when new traversal mechanics were revealed, but with items you already had for a while - making you realise how many spots you thought weren't accessible, actually were. Clearly the game wants you to use this knowledge to absolutely unravel it on a new play-through

Unfortunately, the narrative is where things slump a bit, which is an extra shame because it makes it hard to feel much when the characters disappear, as they don't leave much of an impression anyway. The overarching plot is a pretty basic defeat-the-evil-and-save-this-world type deal, except you're all robots, and the humans are bad - i don't know, it didn't matter to me. Nailing good story and characters is obviously easier said than done, but getting that right would've put this game into near perfect status, in my opinion, so it's a real shame

Real good game though, and interesting "experiment" that they tried out here

I'm just kidding, i really liked Journey, although this is definitely more engaging mechanically.

Jusant is a nice, short game about climbing a giant, cliff-like tower. You have to manually grip the wall at hand-holds, and can do a short jump/scramble for spots out of arm's reach. There's always a rope keeping you safe while you do this, but it's probably a good idea to place a new piton if that jump looks a bit sketchy

Various one-off mechanics are added in, and sometimes dropped, but they all work off the above fundamentals. Limiting your traversal is a stamina meter, with a slower degrading max that i thought was quite neat (stamina can be restored while climbing, but max stamina only once you fully stop). It felt like a good way of expressing the difference between short term recovery and long term rest

The game is clearly gorgeous (and knows it) with a lovely art style and lots of attention to detail. Get your screenshots ready (or browse the hundreds already uploaded). The setting seems like a dried up sea, with the tower previously populated, but all having left to find water some time ago. You can find notes that give a window into that past, but otherwise all you have is environmental storytelling and silence while climbing

Overall, a nice game (and completion!) to start the new cycle with