Does the PS5 controller have a touchpad?

Yes, the PS5 controller has a touch pad still- it's slightly better than the PS4 one even. I just despise touch controls for games though and would prefer that Erica had standard controls instead of forcing use of the touch pad.

Virginia (XSX)

Well, that was weird.

Broken Sword - (original version, W98)

A classic, top 10 adventure games.

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Mirror's Edge Catalyst, Apr 12 (Xbox Game Pass)-It's solid fun running and jumping around the city. I don't remember enough about the first game to make a good comparison but this game was enjoyable. The combat was rightfully clunky and difficult as you should be focusing on evading and running away. Which makes the 3 forced fights feel even worse. Graphics and voice acting was good. Plot was fine. I skipped most of the side missions as I typically do. Game seemed to glitch in the very last section and got really dark, didn't notice that on a let's play video.

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Signalis (XSX Game Pass)

I completed it to the "Leave" ending. I'm not entirely sure how the endings are arrived at, apparently hidden stats are kept by the game- such as deaths how many heals etc. I seem to have got the ending I did because of my ultra slow, conservative play style. It took me 12 actual play hours to complete, with quite a few more idle on top of that 12 hours, whilst I sat there working things out like puzzles. I think no deaths, little healing and few enemy kills is what defined my ending, but I'm not certain.

It's a really fine game, maybe a bit more puzzle oriented than I prefer these days. It's most like an early Resident Evil game- but with a more grounded dark Sci Fi story. So, the enemies look way more normal compared to the Resident Evil types- you know the ones that always look like someone got some random animal and pulled it inside out through its butt hole.

It has awesome mood, especially the sound and creepy minimal cutscenes that only appear at story milestones usually- and not as part of gameplay. After some research I now know that there is a secret ending that can only be completed using a second playthrough. I'm not playing it again, at least not for a few years maybe- when I forget some of the details. So for now, there won't be any secret ending for me. I have no real technical complaint other that a tendency for the hotspots around doors to sometimes be hard to click on when you're in a rush. Other than that, no performance issues or bugs to report.

"Blacksad - Under the Skin"
https://www.gog.com/en/game/blacksad_under_the_skin

Playtime: ~10 hours.
Ending: not the best possible - but hey: life is life, and we won't all make it through, right?

I thought, the story was ok.
But the game has a way of dragging things out, respectively makes it unnecessary complicated to interact with.

Like the "combination of thoughts/clues".
Whoever thought it would be a good idea to have the "thoughts/clues" float in a wobbly circle and trying to connect them by circling through them along that circle, should be shot on the spot.

Why not simply have a note book (like you have with the details on the characters) in which the thoughts/clues are written down, and then connect them there via checking boxes attached to each thought/clue?
That would be straightforward. Without dilly-dallying. None of my time wasted.

Also on the negative side: the QTEs and (some of) the time constraints that came with (some of) them.

I have missed to react to a few QTEs, simply because I registered too late, that a QTE had popped up on the screen, and that my input was demanded.

When I noticed and wanted to do the QTE (usually by (very) quickly hammering "X") - the window of time in which the game would have recognized my actions, had closed already.

At some other times, you have four possible answer/reactions to choose from - but the timer rushes through so fast - there's no chance to even see/read your choices, much less to choose one deliberately.

Would I recommend the game?

Yes:
- if you like "Noir" stories,
- if you like "point-and-click"-like adventures (hotspots without hotspot indicator - you have to stand at the right position, facing the general right direction to find them),
- AND if can live with the other issues mentioned above.

But if any (or even all) of these things are turn-offs for you: better stay away from this game.

It took some time, due to me being much more busy, and spending more time with Assetto Corsa Competizione, but the main story boss of Tales of Arise on my PS4 has been finally beaten today. I have been very positively surprised of the game, and I have enjoyed it much more, than the JRPGs I have played in last few years. It's probably only on par with Tales of Berseria. I have enjoyed the story full of plot twists and surprises, and had my fun with the decent gameplay as well. Although, it was simplified a lot compared to older Tales of games, it was still good enough, to not drag the enjoyment down. The only negative, which I have encountered, was around the time, when I have arrived at Niez to fight against the fourth Renan Lord. At that point, the story progression hit soft experience wall, probably to incentivize purchase of XP and money DLCs. So once in a while, in order to progress further, I had to start to go after all possible sidequests and needed to do little bit of extra grinding for money, as the consumables were hard to find and cost arm and leg at the shops. Still it was much more manageable than some Ubisoft games, and I have never felt that I was forced to do it. It just made the fights with bosses less stressful.

Full list of my finished games, can be found HERE :)

Suggestion Box - always free (itch)
Your goal is to sort through terrible customer suggestions and approve the least bad. There are no good suggestions here. Anyway, one of the suggestions that can popup is to produce smart phones for cats and while you don't get to see the cats themselves, you can see the end result of approving this for yourself here.

https://imgur.com/a/jExhTiT.jpg



The Cat in the Hijab - always free (itch)
This is a short game where all the characters are cats. Sorry, I forgot to take a screen shot.



Alexandra Fortune: Mystery of the Lunar Archipelago is a hidden object game that I got on a bundle disc with a bunch of other games. The plot is a bit trite and dialogue is silly, but it's still overall a fun game. The only negative is that it isn't particularly hard, but the trashed up ruins theme of the hidden object screens means that the game isn't a total junk pile. In fact the few places where you do encounter junk piles, they involve an NPC who is obviously just a total slob.

The first cat appears in a hidden object screen. While you cannot interact with him, the black cat moves and cat sounds could be heard. The second is a statue.

https://imgur.com/xFXOxcy.jpg
https://imgur.com/AM8hTHc.jpg

Just beat Forspoken on PS5. I saw it rather cheap in a store and spontaneously decided to snatch it and see whether the game deserves its terrible reputation and bad sales performance.

"A motherfucking dragon!" That's how the game was introduced to the public and it is easy to make fun of. It's a game where a seemingly normal 20-year old African-American woman from New York, Alfre "Frey" Holland, is thrown into a fantasy realm, gains super powers and of course turns out to be that world's last hope. One thing I've seen a lot on the internet are legions of incels losing their shit over how "woke" this game is and jacking off to the fact that it has scored and sold badly. The game's "wokeness" really does not extend beyond having a black female protagonist and one has to be fucked pretty badly in the head to have a problem with that.

It is pretty unfortunate, though, that the developers decided to make her curse non-stop while literally everything else about the game is rather suitable for teenagers, though admittedly it does help in making her seem more like an outsider in the traditional fantasy world of Athia which is an essential theme in the story. It's even more unfortunate that they decided to play the reluctant hero trope so hard that it regularly just makes her utterly unlikeable - and those moments often come out of nowhere and feel out of character at that point. BUT: I think as a whole the story and her character development actually work and you actually get a pretty nice epic fantasy saga here with a decent lore, a bunch of likeable characters and strong emotional moments.

Admittedly the game starts out pretty badly with a really long introduction that's of weirdly low quality. You get introduced to Frey while she's just a normal if troubled girl in New York - the city looks like it's from two console generations ago, as do the facial animations, there's really awkward parkour and it's one of those games that display tutorial popups for every single action even if it's just a one-time thing. Things get a bit better when you finally enter Athia but you still get some nasty stuff like a completely faked stealth sequence and an utterly boring hub city where every action takes two times as long as it should. But THEN it finally turns out that Forspoken is actually a pretty good game.

I'm under the impression that Forspoken gets so much shit for what it isn't that most people just totally miss what it actually is and that's a pretty good action adventure about freedom of movement and intense arcade combat in a massive world. The game actually has a combo counter! Yeah it has a "boring" world in that it doesn't make you drown in a swamp of quests written by interns in a basement. Inside the hub city of Cipal you get a few abysmal quests and beyond its walls the only thing you get, besides the rather basic main quest line, is a shitload of monsters and all sorts of combat challenges and other collectable stuff. But you know what? I think that's okay. I enjoyed speeding through the landscapes, running up cliffs and engaging in intense and rather demanding battles against hordes of monsters where I have to use a growing and eventually ridiculously large set of powers against all sorts of weird creatures. If you enjoyed Prototype, Infamous or heck, even Returnal, this game might actually be for you. What the combat actually reminded me the most of, probably, is Control.

Admittedly even once you have accepted what the game is about it could be better. It's sad that it's extremely focused on combat and almost never uses its platforming aspect for actual challenges, only for quickly traversing the world and for maneuvering during fights. There are no puzzles to speak of other than a recurring and trivial sliding tile mini game. The world could do with a bit more variety and recognizable locations. The progression system is just okay when it comes to powers and it's pretty shoddy when it comes to items with a seriously flawed crafting system which is sadly the focus of the game's loot. And yeah, even the combat could have a little bit more depth.

Finally: the Cuff. Frey quickly acquires a haughty talking wristband that's her sole companion throughout most of her adventure and they almost constantly engage in banter. Personally I appreciated this a lot - I found many of their lines to be rather funny and their relationship interesting. It's not even remotely God of War level stuff but I think it gives the game a lot of life. For whatever reason some players seem to be very annoyed by it but frankly my only complaint is that some of their lines repeat a lot.

Anyway, Forspoken is not a great game but I think it's a good one. It did get a bit repetitive at times but before actual boredom would set in I would end up in an engaging fight or a nice story moment would remind me why I'm playing this and keep going, having a good time in the process. I just felt comfortable playing Forspoken and that's honestly not something I can say about all AAA open world games.

Broken Sword II (PC)

Ended in this Easter holidays. Worthy successor of the first game. The story is not so attractive as Templars but ok in general. Only at the end there are some unnecessary parts Great game.

FALLOUT 76 - completed all quests in 240 hours. Got it in Humble Monthly. Enjoyed my time with it.

Five Dates

Decided to go with horror tonight. ;P And I actually survived! I'm not sure if that's enough to consider the game completed, seeing that that's only one successful date out of five, and there is still a lot of FMV footage and choices I haven't seen yet, but with how well the story went despite all, I wonder if it wouldn't feel weird now to go back on it and try to "win" other dates, thereby diluting the experience. I know that's how these Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games work, just feels weird to me to approach this with a completionist "gotta catch 'em all" mindset this time, concerning the setting. So maybe I'll just leave it at that? Probably also because the character you guide through the dates is not a blank slate but played by an actor, too. So on my next playthrough, I couldn't easily imagine to roleplay a different person, and instead it would feel like erasing this character's story from the first playthrough.

I guess that's both the forte and the weakness of the game. On the one hand, this way the game can show chemistry (or lack thereof) between the characters and it makes the situations feel more real, like you're watching a story that could actually happen, instead of playing some "dream girl" dating sim fantasy. On the other hand, as said before, it reduces the replayability if you don't feel like making the same character try to get together with different women (and acting wildly different in order to achieve that), and it also restricts the game to a heterosexual male perspective.

My one playthrough was about 70 minutes and most of the time I was just passively watching and listening, not really doing anything, but it was interesting enough, because it wasn't as superficial as one might expect and seemed pretty realistic, not shying away from showing possible issues of the dates and also allowing the main character to roleplay some of his own - and the game does so without judgement while not sugarcoating anything either. I thought the dialogues and the acting were quite good, even in portraying awkwardness (which was part of what made it feel realistic). They managed to keep me entertained even when I wasn't really interacting with the game. So I suppose, for what it is, I liked it.

EDIT:

Well, I did give it another try after all, and as suspected, it felt less good. Still entertaining, and a plus point for being able to skip scenes you've watched already, but I began noticing discrepancies that made it seem less believable or satisfying, e.g. with one date you can choose to say you're vegan, and then with another, the main character just talks about making a mean roast, and it's completely out of the player's control. Or you get the chance to ask where a date has to be off to or choose not pry, and next time the main character asks about the birthday party she went to, even if you decided not to pry and so you couldn't even know about it. This exemplifies how the game has difficulties to decide whether you are meant to roleplay someone or accept that he's a fixed character already.

Also, it was interesting to learn unexpected things of the dates that I had missed in the first playthrough, but they were not always believable (e.g. someone needing to be available at all times and having next to no downtime due to their demanding job being a hardcore gamer - okay - but also having cosplay costumes and going to conventions as a hobby? That doesn't seem very compatible. Or someone stressing honesty and then playing mind games herself, pretending something she isn't just to see how you react. Okay, maybe that's not too unrealistic, but the game doesn't even seem to be aware that this could be seen as a problem.)

Bugsnax, Apr 18 (Xbox Game Pass)-What a weird little game. Its like Pokemon if the Pokemon were food and the means of catching them was action based instead of TBS. From the opening minutes it makes you feel bad for catching these creatures and feeding them to the various grumps. The first few you encounter waddle around saying their names and hide in bushes when you get near. Later on they are quite violent towards you but in the first 3 areas they are all pretty oblivious. The game constantly hints at a darker meaning although none of the other characters suspects a thing despite some very cartoony body horror stuff happening. Some of the means of catching the various critters felt a little fiddly in the later levels. It didn't hold my attention that long but it was amusing for a bit. It reminded me of Tinykin but more action and less platforming and also a lot more sinister.

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