lol, that video is ridiculous. Not up my alley, but I'm glad you're enjoying it. Kill some heretics for me!

I'm mostly playing Horizon: Zero Dawn. Not much else to say. It's a decent game, but not mind-blowingly awesome. Better than Assassin's Creed.

Oh, I purged plenty of heretics for you and many others to spare, don't worry.

I finished it yesterday after a few days of medium to heavy play. I'd give the game a 7.5 to 8 out of 10. It's got good gameplay, level design and gets the whole 'space marine fighting chaos hordes' 40k vibe right. But it felt a little like it outstayed its welcome, some weapons felt a bit underwhelming and there's a really frustrating mid-game boss battle that didn't have nearly enough pickups to get through without a lot of reloading. I beat every other boss battle after that with ease, including the final boss, with much the same weaponry. So there was definitely something off about the difficulty there.

But like I said, very enjoyable retro shooter. Didn't like it as much as Ion Fury though!

Palworld released on Gamepass on Friday. I was a bit skeptical of it from the trailer (like everyone thought it was just pokemon with guns). It's more like Ark with cuter graphics. Happy to post a little review if anyone is interested. I can definitely see Satis and Shiny playing it. It is early access on Steam as well.

Considering the graphics of the game, I can see Satis playing it only when Shiny holds him hostage with something. As far as I recall Satis preference it is much much more towards the 'realistic' side and Palworld is all 'cutey cartoony colorvomit' side.

Haha well that's where I can see them both playing. Shiny will love the super cute critters. Satis will love the fact you can literally enslave them to run your base, shoot them with guns, butcher them if you need meat and probably a dozen other nasty things I haven't discovered yet.

Also a lot have really dark Paldeck (pokedex) entries. Like a pokemon that loves to hang humans. Or one that... um... enjoys sleeping with other pals. Whether they want to or not. And has developed a taste for humans. It's a pretty fucked up game considering the 'nice' look!

I have actually eyeballed it and asked Shiny to see what she thinks. Shiny being Shiny, I'm sure she promptly forgot. Peltz is right about me and the graphics... that kind of art style typically annoys me. Still, I may be willing to give this one a shot. All to say, please do give it a review, Pevil.

For myself, I finished Horizon: Zero Dawn. I liked it, but it could've been better. The DLC expanded area (the frozen area) was more annoying than fun. The story was interesting, but a lot of the gameplay was repetitive. Oh, and collect the item quests are annoying, especially when the rewards are really underwhelming. I'm glad I played it, but I'm also glad I skipped on collecting things (mostly), skipped on the hunter trials, etc. I may have missed out on some good hunters lodge quests / story, but I doubt it. I'll probably pick up Horizon: Forbidden West at some point in the future when it's heavily discounted.

Currently playing Loop Hero (8 bit card-based roguelite). All of those genres are not in my wheelhouse, yet I somehow end up getting sucked into them. Also playing Deathloop. Apparently it's a month for playing games with "loop" in their name. It took me a bit to get into Deathloop, but it's not bad. There are only 4 maps, but they change based on the time of day, so there's some variety. I imagine it'll get boring eventually... hopefully I complete it before then.

Ok here goes. There's plenty I haven't done yet in Palworld as I've only played about 15 hours so far so I'll describe what I can. As you guys don't have Gamepass (I think anyway) I'd wait until it's had a few more patches released if you are interested. I think it's $30.

First off, it doesn't play remotely like Pokemon. If anything it plays more like Ark. The graphics are very cutesy but they hide a dark side. Paldeck entries often refer to things like "This pal takes babies home to its next to look after them. Once fat enough the pal will then eat the baby". The gameplay has a typical survival loop. Establish a base, upgrade your base, fend off attacks from raids (no PvP yet but there are NPC raids), find clues to the story via notes scattered throughout the world, kill bosses and collect pals to help with all this.

Collecting pals does work sort of like pokemon. You attack a pall, knock it low on health, perhaps try to stun it to increase your capture chance, then lob a 'pal sphere' at it in the hopes it gets caught. There are various strengths of pal sphere that you unlock as you level up to increase capture chance and you can also upgrade your own ability by collecting "Lifmunk statues" and giving them to a structure in your base. You can share pals among tribe members.

Pals don't evolve but they do have variants. There are 'alpha' variants which are world bosses and are bigger (possibly stronger too) than normal versions. You can also get 'lucky' variants which are hard to miss; they sparkle and give off a tinkling noise when they're nearby. They usually have extra skills and better attributes so they're worth capturing if you find one. You can level up your pals by using them in your base or fighting with them in your party. You can also use the same structure that upgrades your capture chance to increase a specific pals attributes. Finally, you can find 'skill fruits' that will teach your pal different moves. They can learn multiple moves which you can change when not in combat, but only 3 can be active at any time. They don't seem to be limited so you could teach one of the early pals you find that is grass type dragon, lightning, water and fire moves.

Combat is real time and relatively simple but requires some tactics. Pals have elements and thus strengths and weaknesses. You can have a team of 5 pals with you but only 1 out at a time. You can attack the pals yourself, with clubs, spears, bows and guns. Your pals get 3 skills they can use and they will use them independantly of you while they're out so if you're trying to catch one, make sure you put your pal away before it kills it. You can dodge and you can switch pals partway through a fight. As you get higher level you can unlock and craft 'pal gear' which allows you to use partner skills depending on the pal. For example there's a fiery fox called Foxparks who you can craft a harness for. This allows you to pick up the Foxparks and use it as a flamethrower. Others have saddles which allow you to ride them and use their three skills yourself, as well as block and attack with your own weapon (no dodging though).

Bases and crafting are similar to Ark and Conan. You get points on level ups that can be spent on new technology allowing you to build better things. Currently there is only stone and wood crafting I think but there are the standard foundations/walls/roofs/stairs tilesets, plus some furniture tilesets too such as plants, standard furniture, bars. I haven't played around much with those yet. Just like other survival games stronger materials are better. Wooden houses will get burnt down if a fire pal raids your base.

Your base starts out with a 'pal box' where you store your pals. As you complete missions by building certain structures this box levels up, allowing you to assign more pals to it and eventually to have more than one base as well. You can place functional buildings down and assigned pals will work at them so you're not having to spend much time harvesting or making items. In my main base I have some berry farms to keep the pals fed, a logging area, a quarrying area and a ranch, where certain pals go to drop wool, eggs, pal spheres, arrows and more. I also have various workbenches and if I queue up jobs the pals will do those for me. I regularly queue up a few hundred berries on the cooking fire then go off exploring. When I return, one of my fire pals will have cooked them all for me. When you get to a higher level than I am you can make entire conveyer belt set ups and leave them working hard for you. You can also put a podium down telling them to work normally, hard or extremely hard. The harder you make them work the more upset they'll get and they might riot or slack off. I leave them on normal but I had one pal (who had a negative passive skill anyway) start getting stressed regularly. After a few times of getting stressed it said he was over eating due to being stressed. A short while later it said he'd developed an eating disorder! They all need places to take a break, such as a hot springs to relax in, or they will start to slack off or refuse to work at all.

Each pal species has its own work skills so some are transporters, some can grow things, others can mine. One beauty of crafting is anything in your base storage boxes is available to be used from that. No more hunting through all your storage to find that extra 3 wood you need for a recipe; just try to craft something and it will tell you if you have enough or not. Unfortunately each base is separate. I set up a second base last night purely for mining up ore and had to set up a berry farm there too to keep the pals fed, a hot springs to keep them happy and a storage box. And I had to bring all the materials over by hand to do it. Luckily you can fast travel between your bases.

You can also butcher pals to get meat and items from them if they're no longer useful or you just feel a bit sadistic. The part Shiny will like is you can breed them. You can't breed for colours like Ark unfortunately (not sure if that's planned to change) but you can breed different variants, some completely unique pals or just make your ultimate worker/fighter. I haven't reached breeding yet but from what I gather you can breed passive skills down so you could breed all +attack skills, or increase their worker levels. Breeding helps with partner skills too; people have bred up high attack Lifmunks then use their partner skill, which turns them into a machine gun, to utterly annihilate bosses!

There are various factions of humans in the world. Some are villages with people you can trade with (sometimes buying pals on the black market). Others are enemies who will always attack. You can also catch them in pal spheres so if you really wanted you could set up a slave camp filled with humans. Fighting the factions is a good way to get ammo and other items especially early on when your own resources are more limited.

Bosses come in two or three forms at least. Story bosses seem to be hidden in towers. I've fought one so far and it was pretty tough. It was a few levels below me but it killed 3 of my pals before we got it down. There are the alphas, who are regular pals that spawn in particular areas and can be fought for items or captured. These respawn roughly every hour so you can farm up rare items from them to build certain things. I've also found big blue glowing areas that look like they have some sort of boss there but I've steered clear of them so far.

The world is pretty big. It's filled with old castle ruins and huge mountains. There seem to be a few biomes, grasslands, forests, ice and desert areas. You need to stay warm or cool and find ways to traverse. You can find your pals for speed, some can fly and some will help keep you cool or warm. You can also get grapple guns and gliders to help you move around. There are statues to find that you can fast travel between. Chests are scattered around the world with useful items in and they respawn. Some require keys to open that you'll often get from lesser chests. The skill fruits previously mentioned are found on shining trees throughout the world and you can also find random eggs to hatch at home; these can be a great way to get powerful late-game pals early. There's a huge world tree you can get close to as well but seems to be blocked off for now.

Overall it's a pretty fun game. Ark x pokemon is how I'm seeing most people describe it and I'd agree. There have also been mods already (one doomed one that changed the pals to pokemon models so that's already been taken down) so you never know, there may be one at some point to make it look a little less 'sunshine and lollipops'. I tend to prefer more realistic graphics myself but when it comes to cute animals I can look past that. I've only had one crash so far, it seems pretty stable for the most part. Occasionally I'll get a pal rubberband or have issues with pathfinding, and I only play offline so not sure how the servers are. I did have one raid bug out, which I was grateful for as the pals were twice my level but they basically spawned then just sat there for a couple of minutes before poofing into nothing.

Thanks for the info. Shiny was game so I bought us both a copy and set up a dedicated server. I think the server browser is bugged or there's something wrong with my setup because we can only connect via direct IP, but otherwise it seems to be going ok. No major bugs, though our Pals regularly get confused and don't eat. Considering this is early access, I'm not too concerned. I just hope they keep updating the game and don't pull a Valheim.

Has Valheim fallen by the wayside then? I played it that first week of release and haven't even looked at it since. I was mildly put off as Palworld's previous game, Craftopia, has been in early access since 2020... but also it had an update last month so it clearly hasn't been abandoned. Either way I still haven't paid anything for it yet, but tempted to get the steam version simply as it's updated faster. I have heard others saying the server search is buggered right now.

I just unlocked breeding last night but have no space to put the breeding ranch, it's huge! So time to do a base rearrange, maybe even move where it's located.

Regarding Valheim, we played it for quite a while as the devs promised rapid updates. Like 6 months later there had been nearly no movement and we stopped playing. I think they've released some content updates since, but I can't be bothered to go back. They probably took their massive earnings and had a really long vacation.

I'd heard the server browser for Palworld was messed up as well. Hopefully they'll fix it. When we built our first base we didn't know how it worked, so built it in a really bad spot with the Palbox right at the edge of a cliff. Our second base we built in a better location. Once we get the third base unlock I'm really considering just moving all the stuff from base #1 to 3 and then destroying and relocating the first base. We'll see. Still enjoying the game at around level 20, though it's become a bit more grindy at this point.

Sounds like we're at similar points. I'm about level 24 now I think. My first base, like virtually everyone, was right by the starting area. I made a second one near the boss chillet purely for mining ore. I've broken down my first base when I couldn't fit a breeding farm in there and moved to just north of my ore base where there's a huge flat area on a beach. Moving bases is a bit of a chore, though boxes can exist while not in a base. You can break your old palbox down, go place the new base, then travel back to the old spot multiple times to grab your stuff from boxes. Might've been slightly easier if I waited for the third base unlock but being near that first fast travel point meant it was still pretty easy to do.

Most of my play at the moment ends up with me flying around looking for lifmunk statues and eggs. I've hatched some much later-game pals from random eggs I've found.

Well, Shiny and I got bored with Palworld and picked up Enshrouded instead. The Palworld server is currently shut down and waiting on us becoming re-interested. Enshrouded's pretty decent, but the way progression works in multiplayer is weird. Essentially all the main quests are server quests, rather than individual, so if you do them while people aren't online they miss out on the story. It's also a bit rough around progression, but it's early access so that's to be expected. Considering it only came out a few weeks ago, there's a surprising amount of content.

I've spotted a few people on that. I gave it a go a while back when they had a limited time demo and it seemed interesting. I'll probably pick it up at some point. I'm still deep in Palworld. Got to 28 on my singleplayer game then found out my manager also plays it so been jumping online with him each evening and back up to 18. Third time lucky, maybe I'll finally hit end game at some point

I finished playing Signalis, a very good but overly artsy survival horror shooter game.




Then I tried to get into Cyberpunk + expansion again, but felt overwhelmed again and didn't really enjoy it very much. I think I just need to get past my initial hesitation but it's taking me a while. I'm just looking at this huge world, all the options and things to do and places to go and thinking....ooof so much work. That's not good.

In the meantime Solium Infernum came out - it's a remake of my favorite (turn-based) multiplayer strategy game of all time. So I'm playing the offline scenarios in that against the AI to refamiliarize myself with the intricate game system, so that I'm ready to dive back into hell with worthy human opponents soon.



Foir some context: the throne of hell lies vacant, and you and other archdevils and demons are vying for control of it through diplomacy, deception and battle. It's absolutely amazing to see the alliances, betrayals and surprises you get when you're playing this game with human opponents.

I finished playing DeathLoop. It's actually a pretty solid game, so long as you don't mind playing the same levels over and over again. It's basically set on an island where the same day repeats forever. There are 4 areas (maps) and 4 times of day, which greatly change the maps. The point is to figure out what's going on and then break the loop. I played the game a bit too long... I was playing around trying to figure out the variety of side puzzles and stories and eventually the repetition became a bit boring. Still, the story is interesting and I definitely think it was worthwhile. Just beware... if you're easily bored by repetition, this may not be the game for you.

Started playing Death Stranding. This game is just... weird. I haven't gotten very far in yet, but jeez.

Also started playing Guardians of the Galaxy but haven't gotten very far. I think the banter is supposed to be funny, but mostly it's annoying. I expect I'll be playing this one for a bit to get a feel for it, but it's not looking good. This may end up retired young. At least it was free.