Well I wrote a review on Steam a while ago, I'll paste it here:
Abzu is more of an interactive experience than a conventional game. There's exploration and hazard avoidance, but that's not the reason to play this. The reason is that it's an astonishingly beautiful digital art piece, showing you life underwater in a way nothing else ever has.
It's a story-based game but there's no dialogue - this means things aren't spelled out for you, so your reading of the events may differ from another player's. According to Wikipedia it draws on Sumerian mythology, and it sees you on a quest to restore life to the ocean.
The technical achievement is extraordinary. If you watch a lot of nature documentaries, you probably have an instinctive sense for how a school of fish looks when it's evading a predator or how a shark's movements relate to someone it's watching. And that's exactly what you see in Abzu - it's a computer game that bridges the uncanny valley. That's despite using graphics with minimalist texturing - it's all in the 3D models, their animation and the AI governing them. Vast amounts of marine life can be on-screen and behaving in an entirely believable way. It really is like being down there. Albeit, as you follow the story, Abzu's environments become far more populated than the strained ecosystems of the real world.
So, you restore life to the ocean. You can explore sunken classical-style cities. You can watch dozens of species of fish, cetaceans and chondricthians, interact with them and even hitch a ride on their fins or flanks. One particular animal that's been maligned in pop culture has a starring role, which hit me right in the feels. Another big emotional hit was discovering extinct species, all perfectly restored and exhibiting individual behaviour traits, seeming almost real - I'm a palaeontology enthusiast so in all honesty I'd gotten teary-eyed by this stage of the game. That may have been aided by an emotive soundtrack which fully deserves the numerous awards it's won.
Downsides? The control scheme is quite clunky - it takes a while to get used to, and even then, you're aware there's room for improvement. Intentional challenge is virtually absent, although that's beside the point as Abzu is more about the immersion than anything else. And it's short, although those few hours are by far the most memorable ones I've spent with a screen recently.
The game's a dream come true. If you have any fondness for animals, the ocean or raw artistry, I can't recommend Abzu strongly enough.
i have played through axiom verge twice and loved it both times. it felt like playing a new old metroid game.
i am currently playing through hollow knight and absolutely adoring it. it's deceptively difficult, somehow super cute and kind of gross, and the music is fantastic. it's also only $15 on the switch store.
Been playing this game for a few hours each night for about the last week. It's fantastic. I stopped playing RPGs a while ago, but this one has sucked me back in. I lose track of time and have a hard time putting it down each night to go to bed, lol.
Fantastic game. Any fan of old SNES RPGs like Final Fantasy, Breath of Fire, Chrono Trigger etc needs to check this game out immediately. Cannot praise this game enough.
I've been doing a chapter a day (so far). It's great.
the pre-patch launched last week (tuesday) for World of Warcraft which introduced the new talents for the next expansion (which is going live on August 14) and along with that other changes.
now i get it, changes are going to be made here and there and thats fine but...the thing blizzard took away was Fullscreen mode.
Windowed fullscreen is still there and so is windowed mode but the proper Fullscreen mode is gone and it god damn sucks!
now people are claiming this is a Microsoft decision because they made changes from DirectX11 to DirectX12 but theres tons of games out there with Fullscreen mode so... WTF blizzard...
oh my god i can't stop playing hollow knight. i felt kind of stuck tonight and then out of nowhere i found the wall-jump ability and i got on such a roll. i basically just had to make myself stop playing because it had been about 3 & 1/2 hours tonight (after playing for many hours yesterday).
Lots of Hollow Knight love on here
I wish God of War would go on sale, but it's not going on sale at all. My backlog is huge, so I can wait but...I've heard that it's so good.
picked up the Street Fighter Anniversary collection. So dope
I love playing the SFIII games
Goat Simulator, and all its many variants (Vegas, zombie outbreak, outer space, etc). Steam had a great sale a while back where you could get every variant in one big bundle for like $4. So worth it.
I need to go on an Easter egg hunt to see if I can find a copy of Mega Man X Legacy collection in the wild. That's my Tuesday plan.
x-com enemy within on ipad
-louie
I always enjoyed No Man's Sky, but the latest update is great, the new visual pass, particularly the skies are stunning, and the gameplay changes make it almost feel like a new game in some areas, while the loop remains the same. I can see myself getting lost in it again, but alas, I've been real busy, so will settle for watching my partner rinse through Fallout 4 while I do work! (by work I mean paint Games Workshop figures as I've gotten big into Warhammer again...)
Silent Hill HD collection. God I loved these games growing up. It's been so fun to play them over again.
I really hope there's another one, one day.
Fallout Shelter is a gateway drug to full-blown OCD
I was always hesitant to pick that up as i heard there were some unforgivable issues with it.
https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/d...silent-hill-hd
Curious what you think about all of that, it sounds like you're really enjoying it so would you still recommend checking it out?
It sounds like the PS3 release was the worst between it and 360 though.
I been playing Metroid Fusion (GBA) and JESUS it's good, like almost as good as super metroid.
Also, I'm one of those gamers who just never really handled the switch from 2d to 3d. And I'm noticing that a LOT of the games I love on my hacked Wii are GBA games: they kept making the kind of games I like the most.
I've never played a DS game and am currently considering a ds emulation solution. They have a 2d castlevania in the vein of Symphony that garnered near perfect reviews on its release.
I wanna play THAT shit, REAL bad.
Sorry for double post but @Dr Channard , not YET with FF7. But it's on my PS3 and I'm almost certain I will love it.
When it came out, it seemed too different from 2(4) and 3(6) so I didn't bother. But as the years have gone by, it seems to have a hell of a lot more in common with the SNES titles than any other FF game.
every time i think i'm stuck, i go back to an area i thought i explored fully and find something new. i keep getting my ass handed to me by a few different things but i'm working my way through it. i've been playing A LOT. like, i'm afraid to see a log of how many hours i've put into this haha
was enjoying Zelda, bitch your breath is wild, but gets grindy, thinking of getting doom, sky rim and Mario cart so far i like the switch, good travel gaming device, taking the place of my overdue for retirement psp.
-Louie