As someone who has, for the past five years or so, needed to come to terms with the fact that I do not have time in my life for long-winded RPGs.
Particularly JRPGs, Mato Anomalies has breezed in to scratch a very specific itch.
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Midnight Suns is a big game and it came to us late in the year. So we thought it was best to let Dylan and Guy have a crack over their Christmas breaks. They put their heads together and well, at the least, I feel seen…
Thanks to 2k for supplying the codes and the team for putting in the time.
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Whether or not you initially gel with LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga will depend on your starting point.
When presented with the option between Episodes I, IV and VII, I initially chose The Force Awakens. Mainly because my brain figured that – given this is something of a remake of the prior LEGO Star Wars Everything titles – this would represent the newest offering from Traveller’s Tales.
As it turns out, not liking the newest Star Wars movies also equates to not liking their LEGO game versions.
Once I switched to A New Hope, I found myself far more open to Skywalker Saga’s somewhat haphazard presentation.
Covering all nine films is no easy feat, let alone rewriting prior LEGO games.
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Full disclosure: I’ve not played any previous Rune Factory games.
I’ve read that they employed a top-down view and that this is the first time RF has moved to 3D. I like Harvest Moon and I’ve played a bit of Stardew Valley, so I’m familiar with the idea of a farm/village sim.
I was keen to check out how Rune Factory 5 also brings monster fighting into the mix.
A review code was supplied for this coverage
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Weird West is truly is a weird one. Ostensibly a Western, yet nary a gee-tar twang or corny rattle of spurs. Instead, a strange, electronic ambience, a strong leaning towards the supernatural, and a distinct lack of darn-tootin’ voiced characters.
Weird West immediately puts you on the back foot, subverting expectations. For instance, I initially shot at a circling flock of vultures early in the game, collecting their questionable meat to cook at a fire for a health boost.
Only to realise that each bullet is precious in this world, and I had wasted all of mine.
A code was provided for review
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By the time I got an Elden Ring review code, it was release day. I was at work and couldn’t download it until Friday night. Which meant I couldn’t play it until Saturday night, time and TV access permitting (which is not always a thing).
Life is busy, full of commitments that don’t align with a From Software title. Notorious as they are for not allowing the game to be paused.
This review approaches Elden Ring differently.
(An Xbox code was supplied by Bandai-Namco)
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Following on from the 2017 fan favourite Dying Light, we sent Dylan into the darkness to fight for his right to Stay Human.
See what he had to say after the click.
Dying Light 2 offers serviceable missions, an overwhelming collection of distractions, and a large city that is impressive to behold yet ultimately repetitive to traverse.
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Call of Duty : Vanguard, being the 2021 annual entry to the series Dylan takes us back to WWII to battle latency, with or without Zombies.
Until Vanguard, my relationship with shooters has simmered the last few years. I used to love them. Loved those AA and AAA shooters. I loved CoD 2 – the house-to-house fighting still jostles inside my gaming memories for prime position.
I loved Wolfenstein and Rise of the Triad and Doom and Quake and Singularity and even Timeshift. I’ve enjoyed quite a few Calls of Duty. I even got sent to LA to preview Black Ops 3.
We played MW3 on the morning of my wedding to take our minds off the day. But since then, I’ve just kinda . . . not played many.
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Switch code for Diablo II Resurrected because I don’t need to see it in 4k. Also, I don’t need whiz-bang-Direct-38-high-dynamic-apples. I am happy to play a 20-year-old game in my hands, and I like Diablo a lot without being hardcore about it. I regularly peek into Diablo forums and am greeted with gobbledy-gook terms and verbs that mean absolutely nothing to me.
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Death’s Door has certainly piqued some interest in a relatively short space of time. Fortunately Gerard and Dylan were keen enough to follow up our preview with a deft 2-winger Death’s Door Review.
Site regulars, the boys share some interesting insight into the game.
It’s great to see how Death’s Door has bucked the norm in its genre and made its challenges enjoyable in a very nuanced way.
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I wasn’t prepared for Persona 5 Strikers to be such a Persona game. By that, I mean that when I heard this was a mash-up of the Dynasty Warriors combat with Persona 5.
My assumption was that it would be primarily an action title, much like the recent Hyrule Warriors franchise. Do not fall into the same assumption.
This is a lengthy Persona 5 sequel with the turn-based combat swapped for more action-oriented engagements.
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