Game Diary: Big Game Season

It's been a few weeks since my last update, so I thought I'd better let you all know what's going on.  Since I uploaded my review of Cosmic Star Heroine, I'm afraid I've dropped the ball with the Summer Backlog Challenge a little bit and have been playing other things, so this is just a regular game diary. As of today there's only three weeks left to go before the challenge ends, so I need to get on with things and try to finish Pyre at the very least, plus Hob if I can possibly manage it.  I do also intend to finish Battle Chasers, Odin Sphere and Growlanser: Wayfarer of Time but they will be outside of the challenge at this point. I can take my time with those but I do want the get to them sooner rather than later - I really don't want another 5 or so years to have gone by before I finish them.

I had a week off work last week though, and the busy gaming season really got underway, so today I'm going to go over what I've been playing recently.  Before my break, I got back into Assassin's Creed: Origins - particularly the DLC.  I finished The Hidden Ones, which I thought was solid but rather dull, and also pretty brief.  Then I started Curse of the Pharaohs which is much more exciting, and pretty huge as well.  You're looking at least 20 hours of gaming if you intend do everything.  I haven't quite finished it yet - I still have two Pharaohs that I need to lay to rest which involve exploring the afterlife and completing some quests before doing battle with them.  The boss fights in this DLC have been pretty challenging so far - they have a lot of hit points and hit hard, so you really need to be patient, use arrows to charge up your meter and then let loose with a powerful attack, then rinse and repeat.  I was struggling because I kept running out of arrows half way through one of the fights, but then I realised I had two other bow types which each had their own unique arrow counts.  The arrows do negligible damage but they do charge up your meter from a safe distance which is the key factor.

I also got the urge to play a Diablo style game again, but I didn't really want to just play Diablo 3 again, as I have done that to death at this point. I almost chose to play Grim Dawn, and I still want to eventually, but for now I returned to Path of Exile.  While I played through the single campaign a few years ago on the PC, a great deal has changed since then, with a whopping six new acts being added and loads of new features. I'm also playing on the Xbox One X this time, which has been great.  The game runs really well and Grinding Gear Games have done a great job in making the controls work on the Xbox controller.  I didn't really enjoy the Incursion league and it's new feature where you go into the past and open up rooms within a Vaal Temple, as you only get a very limited time to try and take down a boss and open some doors before you're wrenched back into the present.  If you don't manage to open the right doors within the temple, it's pretty much a waste of time exploring it for real when you finally get the opportunity because you won't be able to get to the boss.  The brand new Delve league begins today on consoles though and I would like to check it out - it involves exploring an infinitely generated mine with only the protection of torch that trundles along beside you on a cart.  Move too far away and you will be consumed by the darkness, though of course the best loot can be found just out of the safe zone.

Moving on to brand new stuff, Two Point Hospital was released last week, and it's every bit as good as I was hoping it would be.  Anyone who played Theme Hospital 20 years ago and loved it should rush over to Steam and buy a copy right now - it's only about £20 which if you ask me is a bargain! I've only played the first level so far but I have heard there are about 25 in the game total which is loads of quality gaming right there.  It does play pretty much identically to the classic game but with much nicer graphics and plenty of quality of life improvements.  The in game radio stations are great too with some really catchy, cheesy music and hilarious dialogue from the DJ's. The terrible puns and dad jokes are also in full force and will have you groaning and chuckling in equal measure.

The other new game that I've been playing an absolute ton of is Yakuza Kiwami 2.  This may be the fourth Yakuza game to be released in the west within the last two years, but I have been waiting patiently for my chance to finally play Yakuza 2 and here it is at last.  I was tempted to start the PS2 version last year, but I'm glad I waited because this enhanced PS4 remake adds a load of extra content, such The Truth of Goro Majima mini campaign, hostess club management, a tweaked version of the Clan Creator from Yakuza 6, and a saucy photo shoot mini game.  Just playing the hostess club mini game is enjoyable enough, let alone all of the other content! This game is my main focus at the moment, but I will have to cut back on my play time a little bit in order to finish off the Summer Backlog games.

Looking to the future now, another two massive games are just about to come out.  Tomorrow finally sees the arrival of Dragon Quest XI in the west, a game that I have been longing for since before it was announced.  We didn't get Dragon Quest X as that was an MMO released on the Wii and Wii U, two consoles that were either being phased out or weren't successful enough for Square Enix to bother bringing the game over, so it's been years since a new mainline game in the series was released outside of Japan (VII and VIII on the 3DS were nice, but they weren't new). While it will be extremely tempting to dive in to the game as soon as it arrives tomorrow, I shall try and resist until I have the Summer Backlog Challenge is over, and I have wrapped up the AC: Origins DLC and Yakuza Kiwami 2.  It will be tough but I can do it!

Finally, at the end of the week we have the release of Spiderman on the PS4. I wasn't planning on buying it just yet, but the hype has gotten to me so I have pre ordered it from Amazon. While it does looks like a very good game, I am less excited about it than the other games I've already mentioned today, so it will probably go on to my backlog pile for a while.  After that I have a bit of breathing room until October. There is also Shadow of the Tomb Raider in September but I still haven't finished Rise of the Tomb Raider yet, so I don't really feel compelled to pick it up just yet.  If I can hold out until the Christmas holidays I expect it will have come down in price by then (something I really should have done with Spiderman, but oh well). Let me know what you're playing at the moment, and what you're looking forward to from the months ahead. There will be another video up on the channel tomorrow, and hopefully another Summer Backlog Challenge update here on the blog quite soon. That's all from me today though, so I'll see you again later, and in the meantime, take care!