Forspoken (PC/PS5)

Still picking it up. I liked the demo, I liked the idea and had a bit of fun with it. And that's what I'm after in gaming, fun. Immortals Fenyx Rising took the Ubisoft open world formula and made it fun, for the most part. I game to get away from real life, so it mimicking real life (in difficulty or narrative) puts me off. If the game manages to transport me to their world, they've won most the battle with me already.

The only issue I see is with the power progression, and by the time you have everything at your disposal, the game ends. But I'm a one and done anyway and it's only to tie me over until PSVR2 and Hogwarts Legacy. I'm not expecting a GOTY contender.

ACG was very critical in his review and he's usually spot on I find.

I've maybe 10 hours put into this. It's nothing fantastic, but im enjoying it so far. The world looks amazing, when not covered in fog, which is when you're in the fog... but, it looks good imo.

I'm playing on performance, which is the only 60fps mode. I tried the other 2, which are basically the same, but the drop to 30fps was immediately nauseating. But in performance its buttery smooth most the time. Its a fast enough game that rewards quick and acrobatic play, so it needs that 60.

Combat is fun. Takes a getting used to, but slowly getting there. Only having got the Edge last night, I have mapped the dash O and jump X to the back buttons so kinda relearning that and getting used to using 8 fingers for the first time on a controller. Fun! Using the paddles which feel better for this, the nubs were too high for the constant use. Combat is fluid, still learning and unlocking. Still only 1 power. But fun and different.

Traversal is grand, but im looking forward to unlocking more to make it a bit quicker. World is littered with traversal options yet to be unlocked, and it looks massive! Thought I uncovered a good bit. Realised the zoomed out map button. Nope! Huge. So get me that hoverboard thingy quick!

Loads of stuff to collect, lots of lore. I'm reading as much as I did for Mass Effect. Each little bit adds some more world building or lore, stories. Take it or leave it, most icons are clearly marked so you can avoid the ones you're not interested in. If you fancy a virgin attempt at it, you can turn them all off and just wing it. Encounter things as you see them. Option is there.

Characters are alright, budget Paul Bettany being the standout so far, but most giving a good crack at it. Most. Free is alright. Angstry angry teen with a sad backstory, nothing new. Yeah, she curses, sometimes unnecessarily but she is from New York. And I curse just as much, and would probably curse more in her situation. I would just curse at different times..I also imagine they're developing her, so I'll wait and see.

So far, I'm enjoying it. Its a popcorn game, turn off the brain and try and get immersed and just enjoy it. It may give me open world fatigue, but im in for now at least. Enough to keep me going forward. It has until Feb 10th anyway.

Maybe I'm just not noticing it. I'm not expecting AAA, I went in with low expectations and it's surprising me. Its nowhere near the quality of God of War, but I've experienced far worse. It's more than passable imo.

This will definitely be a marmite game, but it seems lots of people are just jumping on the hate train too.

€79.99 but that's the price of new games. We're only now getting up to how much SNES games cost (factoring in for inflation) and we're getting far more value for money nowadays.

Very few games reach the levels of God of War, and I don't expect that from any other dev right now. No one else has proven they can provide that imo so my expectations are tempered. Again, I think people expect far too much from games these days. Yes, it's not the best, but it's far from the worst out there. It already has more hours than I've put into Cyberpunk.

Maybe I'm just more forgiving. Maybe its because I've witnessed every generation of console gaming and can remember what games were/looked like/played. Forspoken is visually amazing compared to other games, and not so much compared to other ones again.

I still think people are hating on this because it's the cool thing to do right now. But just like films that are bad enough to be good, this is one of those imo, but only time will tell.

Played 2 hours and enjoying so far. Combat is decent and all reviews point to that improving much more as you go on. The character isn't as bad as came across on the trailers and the cursing is far from the worst ( looking at you GTAV, that was f#cking cringy with all the curse words in comparison). The only complaint I have so far is when there are speaking narrations you're forced to stand still and listen and can't start moving towards the next area until dialogue finished. But i'm certainly feeling so far the reviews have undersold this one, no glitches or bugs and seems pretty smooth in performance mode. Looking forward to diving further in over the next few days.

Yeah, I came on to say what Jim said, the forced standing still while they talk is jarring and annoying and is my only complaint so far. It happens after every conversation or event, which is quite often and does pull you out a bit. Not sure if that can be patched. But I'm still enjoying it.

Ventured further down Praenost, ticking all the boxes on the way. I think if you turn down the chatter to the lowest, remove all map icons and play on a harder difficulty, you'd have a different experience. But I've learned i'm a box ticker, so I need to do all the things even to the detriment of my enjoyment at times. So I've turned off just the treasure chests icons, and that alone makes a fair difference. I've also turned down the chatter when they had the same 2 sentence "conversation" 3 times within 15 minutes. So I can see where people with a lot more hours are coming from with the annoying chatter. Still not as annoying as the above mentioned forced standing still.

There's a great game there, but it's far from perfect. I'm still enjoying it, and I'm nearing my second power I believe so will freshen things up again. I'd imagine it will be very busy combat once you have 4 powers. Some fights with the 1 power are already quite visual and hectic. Just unlocked the Accelerate movement skill so making traversing a small bit quicker. Gimme my damn hoverboard already, the map is big enough to need it early enough!

It doesn't have long until Hogwarts Legacy is out, so I'm hoping I'll at least finish the main story before then, because I just feel nothing else will get much of a play between Feb 10th and22nd, and then PSVR2 will take over some of that time...

Yeah, I'm about half way through, and you'd get over the meh story because the gameplay is fun. When it works it works well and I've still lots to unlock. But the constant starting and stopping for everything, the same little cutscene for every similar interaction, there's a great game in there but it's held back by bad decisions. Serious kudos for the near instant fast travel though. Quite impressive in fairness.

There's grappling? 0.0

Ah, that. I'm finding that useful, great for not hopping off the ground from a height, although that looks like it'll be replaced by something from Tanta Prav, just have to go collect it. Got my hoverboard! But it has limits thus far. I am enjoying it, and there's as much to read as there was in the Mass Effect games. It really goes into detail for everything, and that's why I'm annoyed at the story we're given. Scope for so much more, and you can see the real effort they went to for the world building. Not sure on the ending, but I assume it would leave itself open for more.

Slightly off topic, but I can't imagine it's easy to write a new, interesting story these days. Like movies/tv shows, someone has more than likely already done "it", so must be hard to be new. Most games follow the same story beats anyway, just presented differently; love, friendship, cooperation, good wins bad loses. Few stray, and a lot who do just don't hit the mark.

Yeah, I took from my brief view of trailers there was a hoverboard, but it could have been the water slide thingy. Could have sworn she was floating through the air in it though... Bad memory!

Gonna trade this myself too. As I said previously, not as bad as the mist scathing of reviews, and enjoyed the first half dozen or so hours. But tedium has started to grate that it would just be a slog without enjoyment to finish it. Main thing being that whenever there's been a good battle or combat scene, the game then decides to slow things right down, which just takes away all momentum. Could of been so much better, and as PM says maybe will be with some patches. Here's hoping, for when it hits Plus at year end ;-)

I finished the main story and for the last couple of days I'm exploring. There is a lot, I mean a whole lot, of map to explore outside of the main story, there are sections that you don't even come close to in the main missions. So it's either a strange design decision to have so much space not used in the main story, or there was a lot cut from the main story.

Yes I got the mana magnet but I already had about 500 mana points that I couldn't use anymore. Now I've 1000+. That shop is out of the way of the main story and by the time you get there there's nothing useful anymore.

And I appreciate the diversity of magic and melee and ranged attacks, but the selecting system is crap. Why not provide slots to equip them, like virtually any other game?