Be Excellent To Each Other

Currently playing through a selection of games on PS+ and Control seems to be the one that’s settled in. Largely streaming this to my PS Portal

I have vague recollections that this was a really well reviewed title a few years ago. Anyway, it’s good. Brutally fucking hard on a joypad to start with, so I tweaked some of the settings to make it a little easier for me, but still challenging. YMMV
Looks good, it’s set in a brutalist style massive concrete and wood edifice circa 1960s. Shady government back plot involving some dodgy supernatural phenomena having over run this building. No idea what’s going on, I just do what I’m told. It isn’t too hand holdy or too “wtf am I supposed to do now”, either
Plays well, looks good

Fallout 4 (Steamdeck) this has turned into my “20 mins to kill” game. And y’know what, I might actually finish this bloody game one day. It’s been installed on my deck since I bought one and the real tangible beauty of this device is the near instant “on” and playing functionality of it. It’s transformative to have a device that you can pick up and be playing again within 5-10 secs when a lot of the consoles can and do take minutes at best.
Anyway. I’m level 57 and a wasteland badass, just perambulating about mopping side quests up while pondering which faction to side with for the first run at an ending.

There are many more games I’m nibbling at, such as Avowed, Dragon’s Age, Returnal, metaphor rephantasia or whatever it’s called

Control seemed to have a lot of potential but it didn't stick with me in the end. I think I did a few hours on it. Probably one that I need to restart if I go back to it (which I probably should).

How are you finding the PS Portal?

It nails the feel for sure but it's arguably ten hours too long.

There's some DLC coming for it that's a rogue-like thing based in the OCP tower. So that might be more shooty, less talky. You play as the non-Robo Murphy at some point in it too.

Control had me until the first "boss" fight. The difficulty spike stopped it being fun for me and I never went back

Yeah, an annoying boss battle and a poorly timed checkpoint is all it takes for me to fuck games off. Life’s too short for that shite.

I’m liking the Portal. It seems to work as intended, particularly for streaming games from the PS+ catalogue.
I’ve used it while away for the weekend and this function appears to work better than streaming an actual game from your PS5. The problem with that is there’s little or nothing you can do if it decides it can’t connect to your PS5

So. It’s a little niche, tbh, but I like it

Oh, I definitely tweaked the settings as it’s very hard otherwise. It’s made the game far more enjoyable. The map system isn’t great. But then, a lot of games have shit maps
Anyway, I’m only a few hours in and nailed that first boss fight second time. The thing is, there is a lot of secondary info you pick up, so slowing down and reading the stuff you find basically tells you what to do

Still stuck with the two boss fights in the Elden Ring DLC. But I’m pootling around and mopping up other bits I’ve missed, including grabbing some oddball gear.

I really dug Control, the setting and the story took a few beats to click for me, but once it did I was really into it. Super atmosphere, that unsettling feeling of creeping dread and the sinister undercurrent were very well done.

Very atmospheric and a few of the set pieces were incredible. Once the player starts getting new skills and items it really opens up gameplay-wise. There were a few tough bits and a few I ended up really cheesing my way through.

I really like how the companions chat and fill in some of the back story and respond. It was cool when I went wandering off and one of them went 'hey, the objective is over here' and the other said 'oh it's ok, he loves looting and will come back'

Another time, a companion said 'hey you don't miss anything do ya' as I was busy hunting for chests. It was really cool and immersive - a simple touch but impactful.

Yeah, I've just finished the main story and thoroughly enjoyed the whole game. There's a section of map that opens in vanaheim after a certain point, the level design is amazing, I just love wandering around doing all the side missions and trying to figure out all the paths.

As I finished gow, I am playing jedi survivor, the fighting feels so woolly after gow, and maybe even compared to the previous game, but blimey, the graphics are amazing. It's like being in Star wars.

It was too unsettling for me. I’ve become less resilient to that kind of thing (or realised if I’m not enjoying it, why bother).

RoboCop Rogue City is in the PS Monthly games for April, so I downloaded it and had a go.

It's really atmospheric and the presentation and design are great, it looks, sounds and feels like a shabby run down city. The voice acting is quite well done, I thought. The devs clearly had love for the project but a relatively low budget.

But the graphics are a bit glitchy and the character models seem janky and inconsistent, especially the cutscenes which do seem pretty glitchy and jarring. In some cutscenes Robo looks undersized, like basically the size and stature of the other police just with some tin foil trays taped to his legs and chest, but in other cutscenes he looks like a proper hulking giant.

It doesn't seem like a hard game but you do have to keep an eye out to manage health and repair kits a bit. I'm really considering putting it on easy mode so that I can blast through it without worrying much, so that I can feel like RoboCop blowing away the bad guys and mowing through the baddies.

Robocop: Rogue City really captures the feel but it is let down by going on for way too long. To me it felt like it could have been ten hours shorter. I didn't even bother with maxing it either. I was just playing through the story. It didn't need to be that long. A bit like Alien: Isolation. Far too much fat on it.

I didn't think it was all that long and I have pretty minimal patience with games at the best of times.

Admittedly, I don't tend to have a lot of patience these days for really long games. I'm happy to play a 20 minute game (like Brotato) for hundreds of hours but playing one game for 20 hours feels like a chore. 4 minute tunes, 4 hour games, 90 minute films. That's where I'm at!

If you like Rogue City, there's some DLC coming soon.

So I’m knobbing around Game Pass after clocking Nine Sols looking for my next game to play, and end up downloading Indiana Jones: The Great Circle.

The intro is great and it’s fun revisiting the temple of doom opener. And one of the characters got an actual chuckle from my face. Not bad.

Then it’s a punch up with Candyman. And it’s rough. The combat was terrible. Then there’s a puzzle bit afterwards that’s a bit boring.

Then it’s onto the meat of the game with one big stealth level. It’s alright I guess. Picking up bits, bottles, whacking folks with a spade…bit boring but alright.

Then it’s onto Vatican City and, um, more stealth. My interest was really waning by now. Then it wanted me to photograph some things. I did three and I’ve got, er, 4 left… and then it dawns on me… this is actually really tiresome. I turned it off and uninstalled. It’s pretty but pretty fucking dull.

Oh, but then I played Mullet Madjack.

Brilliant music, eye melting visuals and hotline Miami like FPS blasting. I doubt I’ll stick around the finish it but, fuck, the hour I spent on it was ace!

Currently playing Sociable Soccer '25. It's got some Sensi lineage as it's designed by Jon Hare. It's an odd one really. I just reviewed it and the review was twice as long as it probably needed to be because it's me absolutely criticising a myriad of boneheaded decisions by them but with the caveat that it's still a lot of fun. But terrible. But good. But stupid. But fun.

I remembered that I had Mass Effect LE on my Steamdeck. So I zapped through 1&2 in about three weeks, which is very fast for me. Enjoyed them both
I’m now playing the Horizon: Zero Dawn remaster on PS5
It looks lovely and feels suitably tweaked gameplay wise. I’m enjoying it a lot

Carrion, love it! Needed something like this gaming wise.

Metroidvania style were you play the part of an escaped monster. Love the crazy animation as you slither/climb your way about.

Tentacally brilliant. Only £4ish on PS Store.

Remember Dimrill saying how much he loved it too

I struggled to get on with Carrion. I liked the 'Thing'-ness of it and it was a lot of fun at first but I found navigating the world to be really irritating. It was a big maze that all looked the same. All grim and dank looking. I was constantly lost. The movement of the monster thing was great though.

I've had to uninstall Brotato. I beat all of the characters on the hardest setting on the new map, which was harder than the old one, and it took hundreds of hours. But after that I kept going back and doing endless runs which was stopping me playing games I was meant to be reviewing and ignoring all my other games. Still probably my favourite ever game though.

Fired up Halls of Torment on my Retroid handheld thing. Essentially a darker version of Vampire Survivors. Seems alright but a bit slow and quite difficult (these games always are until you level up a lot). Will probably stick with it though.

I’d really love to play Go Go Town, but despite being nearly a year out on Steam and all the other platforms, it’s still not been released on Switch. Ot was always supposed to be released on Switch and the reviews are amazing, but it was going to be last quarter of 2024, then Q1 of 2025, now a date just seems nowhere

I played some of that Atomfall last night which is billed as Fallout in Britain. Gotta say, on the Worlds Most Powerful Console, there’s a lot of fucking screen tearing in 2025.

And as novel as hearing a character say “ee by gum” next to a red telephone box is, it wasn’t doing much for me. Having an old swish dial telephone for the loading icon gave me a laugh but the gameplay was pretty bland and uninspired. Maybe it gets better but it was a fairly dull western RPG. When the first mission involved just collecting “scrap” and crafting bandages in dark corners of a room I was bored so the thought of doing it for 50 hours was enough to just convince me to uninstall and play some Madjack Mullet instead.