Steam Summer Sale: Damage Report

I actually planned on picking up God of Boy when it originally released on PC back in January, but I just didn’t have time to get stuck into it. And, at the time of writing, I still kind of don’t, but I’m hoping to get cracking on it in early August before Immortal Empires for Warhammer 3 is released. That’s the plan, anyway.

House of the Dying Sun is a space combat game with VR support that I’ve had an eye on picking up for some time and, with the price dropping to under a fiver, I figured it was worth a shot. I don’t expect it to be as substantial in terms of content, or capable of matching the production quality of the more recent (and higher budget) Star Wars: Squadrons, but I’m hoping I’ll get a good few hours of space blasting fun out of it.

I recently played and quite enjoyed Ace Combat 7 but was rather disappointed at the lack of any official VR support. It prompted me to check out various VR flight combat games, but none of them really captured that arcade style of AC. But then I discovered Project Wingman. It’s Ace Combat in all but name. An arcade flight combat game but unlike AC7 it comes with VR support and that’s how I plan to play. It may be a little rough compared to the ‘real’ AC, but if it’s even half as much fun, I know I’m going to have a good time with it in VR.

Kayak VR: Mirage is a game (kind of) in which you paddle a kayak around a handful of different environments. I don’t really know why I picked this up and I might end up playing it for just a few hours before getting kind of bored of it. Or maybe I won’t. Maybe I’ll find it relaxing and fun to just pretend paddle a kayak down a river. There is a ‘racing’ mode included, but that sounds pretty strenuous. The environmental visuals look impressive. Might be a good ‘showcase’ game for VR immersion. I guess I’ll find out. I like to pick up something odd now and then, something I wouldn’t normally play just for the hell of it.

And finally we have Into the Radius VR. There’s been quite a few VR games I’ve played that I’ve described as ‘like X game, but in VR’. I guess Project Wingman is another one of those. ‘Like Ace Combat but in VR’ although in that case, it’s only VR support, so maybe it doesn’t really count. Anyway, the point I’m trying to make is that Into the Radius VR is pretty much STALKER . . . but in VR. That’s the impression I get, based on what I’ve seen of it. And if I get that, I think I’ll be happy.

Sekiro: First Impressions

Whilst all the buzz recently has been about another FromSoftware game – Elden Ring – I was actually more interested in playing Sekiro. It looked like a more significant departure from the ‘Souls’ formula. I don’t want to judge Elden Ring prematurely given I’ve not played it yet, but everything I’ve seen of it makes it appear to play like Dark Souls . . . but bigger.

Sekiro, on the other hand, appeared to be play quite differently, with gameplay focused more around stealth, and combat requiring a more aggressive approach. I’ve now played Sekiro for about 10 hours, so I thought I’d share my initial impressions of the game and what I hope for going forward.

I found the opening few hours of Sekiro to be pretty damn punishing. You begin the game with very little health and few combat options. It was, at least to me, a pretty nasty difficulty spike to get over. The combat just wasn’t quite ‘clicking’ for me. I felt frustrated. I turned the game off more than once because I was annoyed about what I felt was an unfair death.

But . . . I kept going back to it. I just had to grind my way through it and, once I’d cleared those first few areas, upgraded my health and gained some new combat tools, that’s when I really started to enjoy it. The combat finally ‘clicked’. I now had more options in combat. More tools at my disposal to approach encounters in different ways.

The first few hours of Sekiro were rough, at least for me. I’ve seen some people say the early stuff is the easiest, but I’ve actually been progressing more rapidly and easily since getting over that initial spike. I think part of the problem was how I was approaching the combat. I was trying to play it more like Dark Souls – standing off, dodging attacks, and then racing forward to strike.

But Sekiro isn’t Dark Souls and trying to play it that way is actually pretty detrimental to your success. Sekiro is a game where stealth is key. Every enemy I’ve encountered (so far) that isn’t a boss character can be one-shot with a stealth kill. So although you can try to fight each enemy in turn, it’s often easier and more efficient to stealth kill your way through an area. And stealth can also be used to great effect against certain boss characters who have multiple ‘lives’ in a fight, and an initial stealth attack will reduce this by one automatically.

And then we have the combat outside of stealth where it’s often more advantageous to remain close to your opponent, to use blocks and deflects, ready for a counter. Sekiro is a game that rewards aggressive play – it’s you who needs to be putting the enemy under pressure, not the other way around. Health isn’t nearly as important as posture and now that I’ve gotten the hang of it, I’m tearing through enemies that previously gave me trouble in seconds.

There is one big issue I have with the combat though and that issue is the camera and the lock-on system. There have been some pretty frustrating moments when, because I got too close to a wall during a fight, the camera shifts to compensate and I lose my lock on the enemy. This often results in me scrambling to readjust my view so I can reacquire my lock, and I’ve taken some nasty hits I couldn’t see coming as a result. It’s not happened often enough that it’s a major issue, but it’s happened enough that I need to mention it and I hope it doesn’t keep happening as I progress through the game.

I can’t say too much about the story at the moment, but I can’t say I’ve found it all that interesting. What’s really keeping me engaged is the exploration – finding hidden paths, optional bosses and entirely new areas. And I guess that’s what I want going forward. More cool locations, more cool enemies, and more unique boss fights.

Despite that frustrating beginning I really like what I’ve experienced so far of Sekiro and I hope it can continue to surprise, challenge and engage me going forward.

The Thief, The Mother & The Empress: Print Edition

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Now Playing: Ace Combat 7

This is the first time I’ve played an Ace Combat game so the usual caveats apply – I’m not the best person to say if it’s a good entry in the series or not and I can’t compare it to previous games. All I can do is review what I played. Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown is an arcade-style flight combat game which isn’t a genre I typically play or have much experience with. The game is set within a fantasy world but features real world aircraft – which feels a little weird, but I guess it doesn’t really matter.

The story is a little . . . messy. I don’t know how much it ties into or follows previous games / characters of the series but I don’t think you’d need to play / read up on them to follow what’s going on. I wouldn’t say the story itself is bad, more the way it’s told.

At the beginning of the game you’re introduced to a character called Avril who I initially thought I’d be playing as but instead we start the game as a mute, faceless pilot called Trigger. The story also focuses on an enemy pilot – Mihaly – who I also thought we might switch to at some point in the campaign to see the ‘other side’ of the conflict. But no, you only play as Trigger throughout the entire game.

Like I said, it’s not bad it’s just kind of weird when the game spends so much time on these other characters you’re not actually playing as. Oh, and I need to mention that hilarious moment when one character takes an entirely unnecessary and utterly bizarre parachute jump towards the end of the game. It’s supposed to be dramatic, but it’s so ridiculous and silly I couldn’t stop laughing.

The game also has a lot of dialogue cut in during missions which you can’t always pay the closest attention to because you’re in the middle of a fight so you’re left wondering what was said or what your new orders are.

Frankly though, I’m not going to pretend the story / character aspects of AC7 really matter all that much. They do the job of seeing you from one mission to the next and provide the context you need to understand why you’re blowing shit up.

The campaign of AC7 is fairly substantial with 20 missions to play and lots to unlock. I played through the entire campaign twice in a row which gives you an idea of how much I enjoyed it. I do feel like the campaign could be more guided in terms of unlocking aircraft that perform different roles for different missions.

The game just lets you pick whatever you want to fly (provided you’ve unlocked it) regardless of the mission type and whilst I think that’s good for subsequent plays, it might have been neat if you unlock different aircraft type the first time through.

For example, a bomber type for an air to ground offensive mission. It would just vary up the campaign a little more in the early stages when you’re restricted to only a handful of aircraft because you’ve not yet earned enough credits to unlock new ones.

The missions offer a good variety of environments and objectives. And the game looks and feels great to play. It is very ‘arcade’ in the sense that every aircraft can carry 80 or so missiles and you can perform high speed, break neck U-turns that would probably kill a real pilot, but I can’t say that’s not fun and I never really got tired of shouting ‘Eagle 1, Fox 2!’ every time I fired a missile at an enemy aircraft.

AC7 also has a great soundtrack that really pumps you up during certain moments of the campaign. Even if you don’t really care much about the bigger picture, you’ll still enjoy and be engaged by those individual moments.

There is a multiplayer mode in AC7 but at the time I played it, the mode is entirely dead so I really can’t comment on it. There’s also no VR support which is incredibly disappointing considering the game did have a few VR missions released for PSVR, but these haven’t been included in the PC release. I would love to play through this game again in VR. I know there’s ‘unofficial’ support, but it’s not exactly ideal.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ace Combat 7. It’s a solid, fun and engaging game with decent replay value that, with just a few tweaks here and there to the story and to the unlock system, could have scored even higher. Oh, and official VR support would have helped too. If you see it on sale, it’s worth giving a spin.

7/10