Back in 2020, in a kneejerk type reaction to a drop off in Gamerscore collection (in 2018 months had passed with little activity due to illness, and 2019 was a year of just playing for fun) I embarked on Crapfest… the mass playing of games purchased just for the Gamerscore, that were cheap and, most importantly, piss easy.

In these bursts of hammering out tripe for points even a couple of visual novels were “played” along with some other truly awful titles like Super Wiloo Demake and Woodle Tree Adventures… no more, I’ve even sworn off playing any “updates” to titles where an additional 1,000 has been added for more mindless tasks.

What I have done is to be way more selective in my choice of Indie titles… still purchased in sales (or played through Gamepass) all these titles seem to have something different about them, even if it’s just a different graphical style.

While I’m not chasing Gamerscore anywhere near the way I used to, there’s still the need for a palette cleanser type game, something to act as a buffer between big titles, or to play as a distraction occasionally if a big title is in danger of becoming a little too much of a grind.

Now… I’m a sad bastard who likes a good spreadsheet, I’ll be rating these titles throughout 2024 on a number of criteria to give me, at the end obviously, my Indie title of the year… doesn’t have to have been released in that year, just played in that year… because there have been some Indies I’ve played that have been a real blast… The Gunk, The Artful Escape, Ravenlok and Bramble are all deserving of a mention and praise.

I’m not going to include games where I’ve already played them before on a different console (so were I to replay Ashina: The Red Witch on PlayStation it would be omitted) but all newly played titles, regardless of which console, will be included.

Each game to be scored on the following elements;

Graphics: Obviously… with these being Indie titles I’m not expecting something that looks photo-realistic, but does the game look nice, does the graphical style used suit the game?

Sound: Do the sound effects and music suit the game? Could there have been more/better use of sound?

Story: What I’m looking for most with some of these, a good story told in under 2 or 3 hours can be highly effective… does it drag towards the end?

Gameplay: You can have a great story with mind boggling good graphics that count for nothing if the gameplay that has been added is awful… while I’m enjoying the story in Jusant say, the mechanics of having to maintain your grip as you climb is occasionally really annoying.

Trophies/Achievements: Are these well thought out? Or are they generic guff like clearing Level 1, 5, 10 and so on? Hopefully, as I’m avoiding games purchased just for points, there shouldn’t be any bland level completion unlocks… but that doesn’t mean a game can’t mess up here.

There are times with a backlog of games, where deciding what to play next can be a bit of an issue… nothing really screams out to be played, and depending on your mood some good experiences can be passed over for months… it took me over 6 months to play Forspoken and I had a great time with it, even if the writing and story were a little mediocre.

Having finished what I can realistically milk out of Forspoken, I stagnated a little… what to play next… and, through my own impatience and incompetence, had that decision made for me.

I routinely work through the Reward tasks each week, it’s never usually anything huge, play a game for 5 points (where play is basically just loading it up) and launching a Gamepass title each day for a few more points… but each week they unleash a biggie… 250 points for something that takes a little effort.

Say… collecting 100 Candy in Costume Quest 2, driving X miles in a racer, being killed 10 times in Limbo… recently it was “use 11 effort in Torment: Tides of Numenera” which I hadn’t played.

Often, I’ll avoid these as they mean popping an Achievement in a game I haven’t played and don’t really want to, so I check before I jump in to make sure I won’t unlock anything… and, in this case, it can be done without popping any Achievements.

Only I got to click happy and impatient, and instead of landing safely in the intro level, I plummeted to my death… pop… 15 Gamerscore and the game is now, permanently, on my account.

Torment: Tides of Numernera is an RPG from 2017, it’s one I’d certainly looked at playing before, but never with any real commitment to the cause, it was also £24.99 which is more than I was willing to pay to try it out, and I hadn’t realised it was on Gamepass.

So maybe unlocking that Achievement was fate or destiny pushing me towards playing it… I’d been struggling to decide what to play next, I can’t go back to Jusant at the moment as the spare room where my Series X is has been transformed into Santa’s workshop with all the gifts we’ve bought and have yet to wrap up, so it’s not really accessible unless I want to sit on the floor and play (and I’m the wrong side of 50, sitting on the floor is not a good idea… mostly over getting up again) and I’m restricted to the One X under the TV that acts as our DVD/Blu-ray player… why not give this old RPG a try?

December 3^rd

Why not?

Because I have very limited experience with an RPG like this, and even with a guide I’m struggling to get through it… and at times, the guide itself isn’t that helpful.

It assumes that any interaction which requires a bit of luck, such as a conversation option where you have to try and be deceitful, that you will succeed… even if the option is marked as having just a 15% chance of success… so before every interaction I’m scanning the flow of the conversation and checking for any % items and quick saving before I start… if I fail (and on a 15% chance of success that is obviously high) reloading and trying again… as I’m playing on the One X this is taking longer than it really should… and I’m quick-saving often.

In the one instance of combat that I’ve come across, the guide seemed to assume that I knew what I was doing and I failed it, as the guide expresses the importance of sticking to it rigidly I reloaded, only to find that this meant I had to pretty much restart the game.

Again… as the first time I got to this combat part it crashed on me.

On a couple of occasions, the guide states that you need to fail the task/interaction as this will give a permanent stat boost… and, despite a 20% chance of success, I had to reload several times as I’d been successful in my efforts.

The guide also makes it clear that some tasks are time sensitive and failure to complete them quickly enough leads to some very bad consequences… which sets my inner panic alarm off somewhat, even though I know this just means to be completed without making use of a “Rest” area to refill all my stats.

The game is very text heavy, and I won’t pretend that I’ve been reading it all… I’ve been reading some, but only where it seemed to be important… in one of these cases I’ve handed a young girl over to her slave owner (and gotten some bad vibes from my travel companions) only to recruit another companion and set off to buy her back.

The new companion is important here as, rather than pay for the girl, he offers to spend an hour with the owner in exchange for her, confident in his prowess as a swordsman… so to speak.

I’m around 3-4 hours in, every Achievement that pops, appears to be a rare one (no surprise looking at the sparsity of the unlocks on TrueAchievements) and it’s okay… by all accounts actual combat will be kept to a minimum in the walkthrough and I’m thankful of that… turn based, strategy type combat leaves me cold.

December 18^th

A smaller session, but I’m starting to get the hang on the way you move equipment between characters, but I still Quicksave before I allocate anything to anyone or level up any abilities.

There have been instances where the % chance to succeed in a conversation option is lower for me than the guide and I have no idea why… I’ve levelled up everything as per the guide, and only missed out on 2XP when I fumbled a conversation option… but I doubt that would have such a grave effect on my chances.

Before I advance the game too far I scan through the guide making notes when to Quicksave before any conversation where you use an ability… even though some have a 60% chance of success say, I’ve had to replay those 3 or 4 times for them to work, so the % chance itself seems random… also if there are 2 such instances in a single conversation, being successful with the first seems to guarantee the second will work as well, even if the % chance is low.

Having checked I’m on Page 43 of the 135 page guide… only one combat encounter thus far… and I know, from the intro to the guide, that there is a point where I need to save and keep that save as a sort of “fork in the road” point in the game… one play through heading in a very dark direction, the other more serene and light… so am I approaching the halfway mark of the story itself?

December 20^th

I finally hit some combat phases in the game… and while I’m clearly still learning the way the game works, I manage to get through them relatively unscathed… but it does focus my attention on the drawbacks of using a guide.

Up until this point all my characters equipped items are as per the guide, as it made a big thing of the player having to stick with its instructions throughout to have the best chance of completing the game 100% this seemed… well… important.

So, I haven’t adjusted any equipped items unless I was told to.

Before the first combat encounter the guide had a run down of what each of the 4 characters was equipped with… and I was way off… weapons on the wrong characters, clothing on the wrong characters, cyphers (which appear to be stat boosts) on the wrong characters… I spent 5 minutes allocating everything to be as per the guide… but surely this is the sort of stuff that needed to be covered before I got to this point?

My main character had a stat debuff as she had too many cyphers equipped and this was making her ill… which may explain why some % chances of succeeding in some conversation options were different to the guide.

I get through the first easily enough, but the second was a different story… here you don’t actually want to kill what’s attacking you, but to reach the 3 terminals that would shut them down… nothing to say what these terminals looked like, or any detailed description of where they were… and the area this took place in was not the easiest to navigate.

Suddenly I don’t feel confident of unlocking the full 1,000 points here.

It’s almost become a tradition… that I start writing this in February when the first big name game releases that I pick up on release that I have a great time playing… last year it was Horizon: Forbidden West… this year it’s Hogwarts Legacy.

So… that’s the bench mark game for 2023… do I like it more or less than Hogwarts Legacy… a game that, at time of writing, I’m only half way through, but one that I want to see more of… even if that means grinding a few of the more repetitive parts of the game.

Intro over… time to crack on with the games…

Hogwarts Legacy (PS5)

Hot take… JKR is guilty of nothing other than pointing out that the rights of Women are/were in danger of being trampled on in the defence of the rights of transexuals… while she was mocked at the time for her example of this “not being something that will ever happen” at the start of 2023 we saw a perfect example of what she was talking about… a male on trial for rape claiming he was transitioning (with no evidence of this and no history of anything like this being said or acted upon) and thus, he was detained at a female prison… what could possibly go wrong there?

Okay… opinion aside… it was nice to see the game review on merit rather than anyone’s opinion of JKR… it was also fairly shameful to see some websites refuse to review it at launch (and when they do review it, late, make a real dogs arse over it... only 30 hours were spent on that game… never enough to see and do everything), but were more than happy to publish guides for collectibles and tips for players starting out… hello Gamespot, hope you’re ashamed of yourselves.

Whilst it appears to be aimed at kids, it’s nice to see an open world RPG style game not have you slaughtering thousands of enemies in cold blood, not glorifying blood lust for the sake of it… it’s gentle, it’s about helping out your friends… and even someone who couldn’t care less about the Harry Potter books or films, can enjoy the game a hell of a lot.

Sure, it’s a 70-80 hour completion, but you will be entertained… a perfect game for the start of the year that has set the bench mark for what I consider to be a good game in 2023.

Star Wars: Jedi Survivor (Xbox)

Now this lost all its chances of winning this when the traversal got overly complicated… dashing, double jumps, wall running, grapple points, extended grapple with long extended leaps at the end… and then including “challenges” in the shape of “Force Tears” which ramp up the difficulty… not a chance I was going to work through them for the full 1,000 points.

And not a chance I’d hang onto the game once I completed it… Ebay bound while I could still get a half decent price.

It took me around 40 hours to see all I wanted to see, which was pretty much all the story stuff and side quests that had Achievements linked to them… but if the traversal wasn’t enough to stop it winning here, the disappointing final boss (both the fight itself, and their identity) certainly knocked it out of the running.

Vampire Survivors (Xbox)

I’ll admit seeing such a huge Achievement list put me off… there’s something very daunting about seeing a game with 120 Achievements off that bat… great for collecting the 50 Reward Points for popping an Achievement in a Gamepass game each day… but on the whole it looks way, way harder than it actually is.

That the game won “Best Game” at the BAFTA’s in 2022 seemed odd… this is the same year that saw Horizon: Forbidden West and God of War: Ragnarok release… high praise indeed.

It wasn’t until I saw someone play, who was new to the game, being guided through the early stages by an experienced player that I jumped in… and I’m glad I did… it’s not as hard as you imagine it to be, and the controls are simple as you like (just move whilst auto attacking) and while early on you’re happy to hit maybe 10 minutes of play… when you get fully levelled up and have all the weapons unlocked and flying around you, it’s immensely satisfying.

Let’s be clear though… this was never in the running for my game of the year… but it’s worthy of a mention for being an absolute blast.

Starfield (Xbox)

Well… it had to get at least a mention… at time of writing I’m 56 hours in and Level 29, which is strong enough to enjoy the game and there’s plenty to enjoy… once you get past the first few hours and it all opens up.

The various storylines outside the main quest (Freestar Collective Crimson Fleet, Ryujin Industries and UC Vanguard) start slow enough, but once they get into the swing become much more action packed, the Freestar Collective penultimate mission is a wonderful tour through an abandoned Mech factory tracking a Mercenary is one of the best missions I stumbled across at the time, closely behind the hidden base Miscellaneous quest that gives you a great Spacesuit and Ship at the end.

I put just over 100 hours into my first complete playthrough… I know I hadn’t done everything there was in the game, but I’d completed all the major factions, collected maybe 80% of the powers on offer, married two people because the first was killed in a mission… and started New Game Plus.

But… I had no desire to replay it, not straight away at least, maybe after a palette cleanser or two, or a big game to make me want to go back… all in all Starfield is a great game… but not a Game of the Year title like I’d expected.

Cyberpunk: Phantom Liberty (PS5):

Played on PS5 for two reasons… one, I was just off 4 solid weeks of Starfield on the Xbox, and two… I lent my Xbox copy of the game to someone at what and they still have the game so I’d need to get it back to start.

Cyberpunk is, in reality, one awesome game… the gunplay feels spot on, the visuals look incredible (and one part here where I was swimming through pitch black water guided by a flashlight looked unreal) and some of the story missions and side content are a blast.

Sadly, in Phantom Liberty, the side missions feel a little tacked on… they don’t have the same quality of writing and content as those found in the main game, and while a couple show promise… they haven’t managed to see it through to the end properly.

The main story on the other hand is superb… with more than enough to keep you entertained… not quite in the same league as the DLC for The Witcher 3, but a worthy piece of content… bit pricey though.

Forspoken (PS5):

Here’s a game I never expected to make this piece… started partly because I felt obliged to as it was a gift from my other half for my birthday… I spent 34 hours completing the main quest and enjoyed them all… the combat is as varied as you make it with a wide variety of spells to unlock and use.

The writing is terrible in places, but it isn’t the worst I’ve seen this year (granted the others were all indie titles played for points) but this has reportedly been dialled down since launch… the game was clearly rushed, the route to tackle the first 2 bosses takes a long while, whereas the last 1 and the final (real) boss wraps up way too quickly, and there are huge areas of the map you won’t go near in the process… so they clearly had plans to use these land masses more later in the game.

At present I’m in clean up mode, hunting down photo shots, combat trials, monuments, spell pools and such like to unlock a few additional Trophies… not something I always do in PlayStation titles… but this is enjoyable enough to take the time with.

Indie Delights:

While not in with a chance of being named best game I played all year, there were some wonderful Indie titles I’d recommend… “Ravenlok” and “Bramble” were two wonderful titles I played via Gamepass and I’d happily recommend them both, “Coffee Talk 2” is probably more of an acquired taste… being a Barista is probably not for anyone when the main mechanic of the game is severing drinks, and if you get the chance the bizarre “Turnip Boy Commits Tax Evasion” will pass an afternoon in a very pleasant manner… also check out “A Juggler’s Tale” which helped me get within striking distance oy my 500,000 Gamescore landmark.

Indie Horrors:

Purely my own fault for whoring Gamerscore and Trophies these… while I did replay some great Indie titles on PS5 such as Heal and My Big Sister there was also the appalling “Black Death: A Tragic Dirge” which was well named, “The Light in the Darkness” which tells a truly tragic story in a terrible manner… there were also two stupidly simple “Space Explorer” titles that cost pennies and were over-priced… but the worst has to be “Lady In A Leotard With A Gun” which was appalling, even by Indie titles… for all the dross that you see on Xbox with games being updated up to 5,000 Gamerscore… there is nothing so appalling as this PlayStation exclusive.

Final gripe before I reveal the winner, my disappoints for the year… Far Cry: New Dawn which should have stuck to being a DLC for Far Cry 5 as it was intended to be… the usual Far Cry mechanics are solid, I like the idea of building up your base through liberating resources and recapturing outposts, I liked taking out the new, mutated, wild life… even the protagonists were fine… but the main story is way too short, and the final boss battle mindless.

Biomutant also, sadly, failed to grasp my attention… I unlocked 2 trophies… and I could (probably should) have ejected the game before I unlocked any… I knew when it was going to unlock, and up to that point it was clear that it wasn’t going to be my thing really, but I persisted and played on for too long… so I have a very incomplete title on my PS Card to rival such games as Dead Rising, F.E.A.R., Resonance of Fate and Sunset Overdrive on my Xbox Card.

And the winner is...

All done… long slog I know… but my “Game of the Year” goes to Hogwarts Legacy, which captivated me more than I expected it to, and made me want to keep going through the 100+ Merlin Trials, the broomstick time trials, finding all the book pages and outfits, growing the plants, brewing the potions… while some may disagree with the Harry Potter author (and I personally think the books are utter dross) the whole Hogwarts universe is a good place to set a game and I wouldn’t mind seeing a sequel.

If you’d asked me at the start of the year Starfield would have been an early favourite, but when it released it wasn’t the huge leap forward I (and many others) had hoped for, it’s good… but not great, the engine has been over hauled and this has been done well… but the barren, randomly generated, planets are a case of quantity over quality… I’ll keep plugging away to see the reported many variations on the game that appear with each New Game plus variant, and there’s DLC that I already paid for, but it’s not a contender for me… a sequel, which polishes out the rough edges and resolves the issues with the exploration and bare maps, is something to look forward to.

There’s always something very satisfying when one group of fanboys start to hype up an exclusive game… that releases to an absolute mess of reviews… and this works both ways… here we have Forspoken, a PS5 exclusive game much anticipated that landed with a very similar splatting sound that awaited the Xbox exclusive Redfall.

The back tracking from the rabid, console loyalists is always amusing to see… how they always thought it looked dull and uninteresting but nobody listened to them, okay so they can’t quite remember where they posted a comment saying that, but they definitely did… it’s amusing and sad in equal measures.

But in both cases, there are people out there who will find enjoyment playing those games… now occasionally these people will tout them as potential “game of the year” candidates despite the critical lambasting they received… those people are mad.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a game that scores 5 or 6 out of 10… but don’t try and bestow honours on it that it clearly doesn’t deserve… if that’s your game of the year maybe you need to play more games.

So… here we are, on the second part of my journey through a 6/10 title… Forspoken, that was a gift game that I took 6 months to start, but have enjoyed immensely to this point, nowhere near where the game supposedly drops off and starts to look rushed, but so far so good…

November 19^th

Having spent around 28 hours up to the point where I took out the first 2 Tanta’s it then took me less than 6 to complete the story… rushed much?

After 30 minutes of story Frey leaves the city in a mood… you’re headed towards the area you first landed in to confront your mother, only to be whisked away back to New York in a huge illusion which you need to break to escape from… nice mechanic and this part was pretty decent… back in Athia it’s off to another castle to confront the Tanta, who you discover is already long gone.

*** MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD ***

As you approach the body and expect the new corpses power to be added to the spell sets you already have… nothing happens… and the true villain of the peace becomes apparent… the Cuff on your arm that has been offering so much sarcastic advice throughout.

Seems the one you find is that of your Mother Cinta, that, and the others from Sila, Olas and Prav, each contained part of a Demon set on destroying Athia… you’ve inadvertently been putting him back together and now, complete, he intends to destroy the city of Cipal… it was his influence on all of them that started the corruption to spread throughout the land.

Cue a long story section as you learn your heritage with flashbacks about the fall of the Tanta protectors, and how, as the daughter of a Tanta, you have your own powers… steadily you regain the powers you lost and the final set from Olas… off you go to fight the Demon and save the day.

Your mother helps… in her new form as the Dragon you fought early on in the game… with this battle done you finish with a Cuff tattoo on your arm as he becomes bound to you.

You are returned to the game, clean up is all there to be done along with a few small side missions to help out the townsfolk… this may take a while… I have no intention of hitting the platinum (the grind for the spell upgrades is too much) but most of the rest seem achievable even if they do take a while.

November 26^th

After a further 16 hours of clean up I’m done with the game… 49/54 Trophies unlocked, my idea of hitting 50 scuppered by a side quest I missed meaning I missed out on a Necklace so I can’t unlock the Trophy for collecting all the gear.

I did manager to find all the cat familiars, complete all the combat trials, find all the spell pools and unlock all the spells.

Getting the 50 photos and defeating the 4 abominations was a different matter.

Not far from the main city of Cipal is an area of the map described as being “Nowhere” which contains my final phot spot and the final abomination… it’s a treacherous cliff top pass and isn’t easy to get to… not made easier by there being a breakstorm happening at the same time.

Now these crop up as you travel the land of Athia, after a couple of minutes combat they peter out and you can continue… I spent close to 20 minutes fighting here and still they came… so you have to complete the climb up the mountain path, leaping from one side of the “drop down and your dead” gap to the other, when you can barely see and are constantly under attack.

This almost broke me… at one point I deleted the game in a defiant “F**k It” moment, only to reinstall and complete it later when I discovered I was about 80% of the way through and that the final 20% was a couple more jumps and a run to the end.

This done you then have the final real boss battle of the game in the 4^th abomination which was a doddle in comparison.

All this is quite annoying… with the corrupted Tanta’s now defeated… why do these breakstorms still keep appearing? They have to be the least fun mechanic in the game… and this final one was just a step too far for me… while I may have had thoughts of keeping the game and picking up the DLC when/if it goes on sale I’ve just lost any interest in keeping going.

And that final paragraph shows why the game scored as low as it did, there are some illogical story beats, some rough gameplay decisions and mechanics, and a very rushed second half of the game… which has ultimately lead to the break-up of the team and the death of any chance we had of a sequel that could have worked on the weaker points of the initial release.

All in all, I spent around 51-52 hours here, which is way more time than I would have guessed at when I played the uninspired demo at the start of the year and all the low review scores were coming in… it could have been more… I was around 25 hours or more in by the time I had dealt with the second of the 4 Tanta’s… I had expected this whole account of the game to stretch to 3, maybe 4, separate pieces… but the rush to release is visible in the later parts of the game… which is a shame.

There’s always something very satisfying when one group of fanboys start to hype up an exclusive game… that releases to an absolute mess of reviews… and this works both ways… here we have Forspoken, a PS5 exclusive game much anticipated that landed with a very similar splatting sound that awaited the Xbox exclusive Redfall.

The back tracking from the rabid, console loyalists is always amusing to see… how they always thought it looked dull and uninteresting but nobody listened to them, okay so they can’t quite remember where they posted a comment saying that, but they definitely did… it’s amusing and sad in equal measures.

But in both cases, there are people out there who will find enjoyment playing those games… now occasionally these people will tout them as potential “game of the year” candidates despite the critical lambasting they received… those people are mad.

There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a game that scores 5 or 6 out of 10… but don’t try and bestow honours on it that it clearly doesn’t deserve… if that’s your game of the year maybe you need to play more games.

So… here we are, on the second part of my journey through a 6/10 title… Forspoken, that was a gift game that I took 6 months to start, but have enjoyed immensely to this point, nowhere near where the game supposedly drops off and starts to look rushed, but so far so good…

November 19^th

Having spent around 28 hours up to the point where I took out the first 2 Tanta’s it then took me less than 6 to complete the story… rushed much?

After 30 minutes of story Frey leaves the city in a mood… you’re headed towards the area you first landed in to confront your mother, only to be whisked away back to New York in a huge illusion which you need to break to escape from… nice mechanic and this part was pretty decent… back in Athia it’s off to another castle to confront the Tanta, who you discover is already long gone.

*** MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD ***

As you approach the body and expect the new corpses power to be added to the spell sets you already have… nothing happens… and the true villain of the peace becomes apparent… the Cuff on your arm that has been offering so much sarcastic advice throughout.

Seems the one you find is that of your Mother Cinta, that, and the others from Sila, Olas and Prav, each contained part of a Demon set on destroying Athia… you’ve inadvertently been putting him back together and now, complete, he intends to destroy the city of Cipal… it was his influence on all of them that started the corruption to spread throughout the land.

Cue a long story section as you learn your heritage with flashbacks about the fall of the Tanta protectors, and how, as the daughter of a Tanta, you have your own powers… steadily you regain the powers you lost and the final set from Olas… off you go to fight the Demon and save the day.

Your mother helps… in her new form as the Dragon you fought early on in the game… with this battle done you finish with a Cuff tattoo on your arm as he becomes bound to you.

You are returned to the game, clean up is all there to be done along with a few small side missions to help out the townsfolk… this may take a while… I have no intention of hitting the platinum (the grind for the spell upgrades is too much) but most of the rest seem achievable even if they do take a while.

November 26^th

After a further 16 hours of clean up I’m done with the game… 49/54 Trophies unlocked, my idea of hitting 50 scuppered by a side quest I missed meaning I missed out on a Necklace so I can’t unlock the Trophy for collecting all the gear.

I did manager to find all the cat familiars, complete all the combat trials, find all the spell pools and unlock all the spells.

Getting the 50 photos and defeating the 4 abominations was a different matter.

Not far from the main city of Cipal is an area of the map described as being “Nowhere” which contains my final phot spot and the final abomination… it’s a treacherous cliff top pass and isn’t easy to get to… not made easier by there being a breakstorm happening at the same time.

Now these crop up as you travel the land of Athia, after a couple of minutes combat they peter out and you can continue… I spent close to 20 minutes fighting here and still they came… so you have to complete the climb up the mountain path, leaping from one side of the “drop down and your dead” gap to the other, when you can barely see and are constantly under attack.

This almost broke me… at one point I deleted the game in a defiant “F**k It” moment, only to reinstall and complete it later when I discovered I was about 80% of the way through and that the final 20% was a couple more jumps and a run to the end.

This done you then have the final real boss battle of the game in the 4^th abomination which was a doddle in comparison.

All this is quite annoying… with the corrupted Tanta’s now defeated… why do these breakstorms still keep appearing? They have to be the least fun mechanic in the game… and this final one was just a step too far for me… while I may have had thoughts of keeping the game and picking up the DLC when/if it goes on sale I’ve just lost any interest in keeping going.

And that final paragraph shows why the game scored as low as it did, there are some illogical story beats, some rough gameplay decisions and mechanics, and a very rushed second half of the game… which has ultimately lead to the break-up of the team and the death of any chance we had of a sequel that could have worked on the weaker points of the initial release.

All in all, I spent around 51-52 hours here, which is way more time than I would have guessed at when I played the uninspired demo at the start of the year and all the low review scores were coming in… it could have been more… I was around 25 hours or more in by the time I had dealt with the second of the 4 Tanta’s… I had expected this whole account of the game to stretch to 3, maybe 4, separate pieces… but the rush to release is visible in the later parts of the game… which is a shame.

I did have a whole intro written for this game months ago, about how it was a birthday gift that I just took ages getting round to play because it was a “back up” game gift wise… my better half usually gets me a game at Christmas or for my Birthday that I’ll play almost instantly because, one year, she got me a game I sat on for two years and then loved it when I finally got there so I don’t want to make that mistake again.

This one was different though… there was nothing out or coming out I really fancied that I hadn’t bought myself, and it had bombed review and sales wise so was dirt cheap at the time… so it wasn’t something I’d jump into, but filled the “gift game” slot of the special occasion.

I feel like I missed a trick… it’s not a great game, the animation seems off, the map is a bit of a pain and the dialogue from Cuff is as good as you’ve no doubt heard… but I am enjoying playing it… way more than I expected to.

Will I get the Platinum… unlikely, upgrading all the spells by completing challenges for each… way beyond my limits of patience… and there are 105 of them to upgrade… not happening.

But, even after 6 hours, it’s something I want to see the end of.

November 3^rd

I load it up for the first time, and play through the first part of the game… and, being honest, the start is not good… but when you enter Athia for the first time it improves, combat feels good, even on a low difficulty setting there are fights that are a challenge (especially foes marked on your map as Mutants) and the exploration works… not sure about the Trophy for covering 100 kilometres performing “Magical Parkour” but we’ll see.

Most of the characters seem well designed, even if some of the outfits look utterly impractical… seriously, the head dress worn by the Councillor who keeps trying to teach kids… that alone should get him put on some sort of register to keep him away from kids.

I’m assuming that, as I progress and learn more skills, some elements of traversal will become easier… too often I set a marker for a chest or location, to find it unreachable thanks to a huge cliff that I can’t climb as yet.

During the first few hours there are a lot of tutorials thrown at you, but not so many, or so complicated, that you’ll feel overwhelmed… which is a blessing… so gradually as you explore the first part of the map you’re thrown into, you feel more at home with the controls and combat.

One curiosity was when I stumbled over a “hidden labyrinth” which, according to the game, is a place where magical relics and equipment, and challenging combat encounters, can be found… they must have a different definition of “labyrinth” to me as I was forced down a straight corridor, through a couple of combat encounters, before facing a boss in a large, enclosed, room that once completed had just one way out… impossible to get lost or even take a wrong turning.

It feels like a 7/10 game… possibly pushing an 8/10… but I remember the reviews and hopefully it won’t drop of a cliff towards the end as some mentioned… but I will get there.

November 6^th

Further on and I’m unlocking new abilities at a rate of knots… the second open area I come across is awash with white swirls indicating Mana pickups and I’m able to unlock several more spells that get added to the rotation in combat… levelling them all up though may take longer.

A second Labyrinth does offer a slightly bigger challenge than the first as there are, wait for it, 2 possible paths to take to get to the end… granted 1 stops at a dead end as soon as you hit the next corridor, and the other leads to a room with just 1 option to move forward through… so it’s not exactly a gigantic maze, but we’re getting there.

I also stumble over my first Wisdom shrine and a timed/scored battle in an old fort… pops a Trophy and I pick up some crafting materials.

One downside is that enemies respawn… I made my way to a refuge and had a fight a horde of corrupted citizens to get there… after resting and upgrading my equipment, to get to the next location I’d marked I had to go and defeat them all again before I could get anywhere.

Now… I’ve heard from people who have completed the game that it does feel rushed for release near the end game, but you have to wonder how much of the online criticism from some quarters was based purely on the sex and race of your protagonist? Too many insecure “alpha” males feeling like they’ve been emasculated in some way? Too many fragile egos not able to take playing as something other than a gruff male with zero personality?

November 12^th

I finally reach the point of the first battle against one of the “protectors” of Athia… decent set piece battle if truth be told, but it took way too long to get there, even though I’m usually loathe to use fast travel systems in games unless I have to… I do use it to return to the city I departed from.

Beating the boss unlocked the second of the power/magic sets you get access to in the game… and it’s here I figure I’m not getting the Platinum for this game… partly because you have to level up all 105 powers you get in the game, partly because if the remaining 3 protectors I have to take down are as drawn out as this one, my patience will not last that far.

The combat is fun, traversal of the world is okay (and potentially just got easier with a new move unlocked) but another 30 hours of that? Not for me… I’ll work through the story, maybe do a little clean up on the map… but completing a grind of 105 spell upgrades, and there will be spells and powers in there I doubt I’ll ever use, is not on.

Thankfully, I’ve always tried to maintain an element of fun for gaming on the PlayStation rather than hunting down Trophies and score just for the sake of it… I have no problem with dropping a game I’m just not enjoying, so in the same way I was able to leave Valkyrie Elysium without grinding out all the weapons, I can happily finish this without grinding out upgrades.

November 16^th

I’ve reached the point in the game where I arrive at the location of the demo… and spend the best part of two hours ignoring the main quest marker and just unlocking Monuments, taking photos, learning spells, taking down mutants and more… after close to 18 hours of play I do finally work out the weapon wheel function rather than just having the game cycle through the spells for me.

The Platinum is still looking to be too much of a grind… not a chance I’m working through all the spell upgrades in combat, that just looks like an ask too far.

I’m guessing that I’ll end up sinking close to 80 hours into the game as it is, so grinding certain spells for hours after is just not on… I’ll finish the game and maybe grind a couple of Trophies in the process, but I’m not going to put myself through the ringer to do it.

As is often the case in these games any sort of urgency in a task is lost when you come to play it… I’m supposedly looking to find some tree sap that has healing qualities, but having arrived near the location so many markers appear on the map that I’m easily distracted… I had to push myself back to the main quest line as it is.

I’m not going to beat around the bush here… I rarely bother with New Game + whenever it rears its head in a game I’ve finished… often there will be a single Achievement or Trophy linked to it that doesn’t seem worth the both to collect or unlock… I’ve been trained, over the last 15 years of accumulating Gamerscore, to expect that small rush of adrenalin whenever I pop an Achievement.

Playing a game, that can take tens of hours, for one small hit doesn’t seem worth it.

This is why if I’m to replay a Cyberpunk, a Skyrim or a Mass Effect game it will generally be on a different console so that dopamine hit comes more often.

Even where the New Game Plus is going to offer something different, such as with Starfield here, it wasn’t enough to drag me back in straight away… I’d spent 100+ hours in the game, and sure there are some elements I’d change, or like to see a different conclusion for… but at that moment in time I was a little burnt out.

Having completed a couple of other titles, some DLC and the like, now is the time to see what it’s all about… first I think telling them about the Starborn from the off and seeing where that takes me, then replaying the main plot but siding with the Crimson Fleet and The Hunter at the end… maybe don’t allow the greedy Ryujin Corporation to continue working on the neural amp…

October 14^th & 15^th

I hadn’t planned to restart the game quite so soon… but I hadn’t planned on catching Covid again either… forcing myself into isolation to try and keep my better half from catching it from me (and ultimately this worked) I had a weekend in the spare room, which happens to be my games room, and a second run through of a long game seemed fine to me.

First NG+ attempt I went with the “I know all this, lets just collect the artefacts and visit the temples” route and within 3 hours it was all over… so onto NG++ for the rest of the weekend.

Second time around I decide to replay the main game… I work through the Terrormorph quest line, and basically try and find stuff that I didn’t do previously… this time I’ve married Sam Coe, because that’s a story line I never saw before… and I’ve just started on the Freestar Collective quest line.

I’ve hit Level 59 (2 days… 9 levels… hitting 100 is going to take a while) and while most of the game is the same, there are some tedious sections you can skip, invoking a “Starborn” dialogue choice because you already know some peoples motive for something so you can effectively “cut to the chase” end game… handy.

October 22^nd

The game continues apace… to be honest I’ve tried to avoid side missions where I already played through them… this time around I couldn’t give a flying toss about the sick tree in New Atlantis, the 200 year old ship sent to colonise a new world only to find it’s been claimed as a holiday resort planet, the lost construction worker at the base for rehabilitating prisoners… seen all those before.

Which doesn’t leave a lot of stuff to do… I know of one small mission to try and scare off tourists to a planet (and I really should do that one at least) but the bulk of my “mission list” is old stuff I’ve already done… I also know that if I were to return to The Lodge with the two new artefacts I have then I’d trigger the next part of the main quest which I’m trying to avoid.

So, with the Freestar Collective missions done I’m now replaying the Crimson Fleet quest line… I’ve hit Level 63 so slow progress is being made there at least.

October 29^th

I had thought, certainly hoped, that a complete second play through would get me close to hitting the Level 100 required… at this point I’ve done three of the 4 factions (and have no intention of doing the final one) and I’m about halfway through the main quest… and I’ve advanced a mere 13 levels.

When you get a paltry 300 XP for completing a large quest as part of a faction questline it almost feels insulting… more so when you need 6,000 XP to move onto the next level.

You can see why some people just farm animal kills on high-ranking planets instead… 300 XP for completing a huge mission for the Crimson Fleet, but 100+ XP for killing a single enemy in combat doesn’t seem right… and the level of enemies in some makes no sense… I’m still seeing very low level, we’re talking single digit level, enemies in combat.

The fact that there is a Level 100 Achievement does make me fear that in the DLC’s they’ll add other Achievements for hitting, say, Level 110 or 120 which would be an absolute grind.

November 1^st

Finally, a little bit of noticeable difference in the main plot… yes you can skip some dialogue options and the like but here was an actual change to the game… it’s reached the point where The Hunter would attack your base and kill one of your team, that can be, and was, totally avoided as I admitted that I knew what would happen… so no deaths for me this time around.

Once I returned to my ship to assemble the artefacts there The Hunter appears and a large chunk of the story changes… for a bit… the identity of The Emissary has also changed, with no character being killed this time around there is also no facial reveal, but the voice is that of Barrett.

Here’s the rub… while the game doesn’t have a morality system of any note, there are clear good and bad choices throughout… do you give the huge amount of cash from The Legacy quest to the authorities or the Crimson Fleet? Do you allow the dodgy, greedy corporation to continue their mind control technology? Do you side with the Emissary (clearly on the side of good) or The Hunter (clearly the dark half of this argument) for the end game?

I’ve gone Emissary on all three occasions… may have to see what the dark side feels like next time through… may also give the huge amount of cash to the pirates as well, just to see how that turns out.

With such a fast turnaround of main quest missions I’ve also managed to jump up to Level 66 from 64 in the space of an hour… if I can hit somewhere near 70 by the time the credits roll I may start, what would be, NG+++ and just complete the bare minimum of quests which ought to get me to 75… but that’s a long way off.

November 9^th

Credits roll for the third time on NG++ and my second full run of the actual game as opposed to just rushing straight to the end… disappointingly I don’t manage to progress beyond Level 68 by the end… starting to think that I may have to resort to farm animals on higher level planets to boost that a little… something that I’m loathe to do.

The alternative is 3 (possibly more) full runs of the game and the various faction quests… and some of the factions just aren’t fun when you’ve already done them… the Ryujin Industries one wasn’t fun first time around and thus I avoided it like the plague this time through.

I could go full chaos, give the cash to the Crimson Fleet at the end of that quest line, take the cash not to say anything about the dodgy fertiliser in another quest line, maybe try and romance Barrett as he’s the only one of the four characters I haven’t done so far, and side with The Hunter at the end for a change… but I need a break before I embark on another full run.

I did restart what will be NG+++ and came clean so it’s just unlocking temples and the final mission again… I can’t recall if there were any/many changes to the end game with the knowledge of a previous run… but with so little actually happening on a run like that there’s not much time for them to change anything.

Back in the dark days when I was playing games just for the Gamerscore, I stumbled across “My Big Sister” in a sale, a retro looking adventure published (and I’ve since learned, ported to consoles by) Ratalaika Games which I played as part of Crapfest 1, the 8^th game I waded through and the longest on the 29 titles I played during the whole “Carnival of Crap” I subjected myself to.

I loved it… seems during the collection process for the initial Crapfest, I also found “Just Ignore Them” the prequel title which, again, I had a great time with… I’ve since played “Red Bow” and consider these 3 titles to be amongst the highlights of the 100 titles the Crapfest sessions have covered.

Since then I’ve literally bought the T-shirt of Stranga Games (the original Steam developer) and even exchanged a few Twitter messages on the subject of the next title and its eventual release on consoles, and replayed all 3 titles on PlayStation when they were on offer for under £1 each… when the new title “Ashina: The Red Witch” launched on console I bought it day one to show my support… landing a day or two before Starfield meant it would find its way to my backlog until the time was right… and now the time has come.

October 13^th

A couple of short play sessions whilst struggling a little with my second bout of Covid… what I do like about Stranga Games titles is that, when it comes to Achievements or Trophies, they are well planned out… too many Indie developers are happy to knock out a title with just a dozen or so Achievements… here we have 44 in total and after just over an hour’s play (spread over a couple of days) I’ve picked up 11.

I’m following a guide which has skipped (or edited out) all the dialogue and cutscenes, but as a fan of the developer I’m watching and working through all of them to get the full story… so while I’ve played for around 70 minutes, the guide I’m following is at 18 minutes.

I recognise characters from previous games (My Big Sister, Just Ignore Them and Red Bow) and believe this to be set before those, so setting the scene for the other games… whether this is correct remains to be seen.

October 29^th

Well… I had forgotten how much talking is involved in these games… the guide I’m following edits out all the long conversations and cut scenes… and clocks in at around 72 minutes… I’ve been playing well over 2 hours and I’m around 35 minutes into the guide.

A lot of that is because I’m a huge fan of the developer, bought the T-shirt and all that, and I love to see the stories they tell… so I don’t want to skip the dialogue… which does make a 2 hour completion a near 5 hour completion for me, playing in small bursts as I’m also trying to knock out the Level 100 Achievement on Starfield.

Add in that I’m intrigued to see how this ties in with the other titles… I know Ashina was the witch in My Big Sister who was jealous of, and stole, her sisters long legs… and here your character is Ashina and references have been made to how tall her sister is, there’s also reference to your mother Roh, who if I remember correctly, was your character in Red Bow.

November 1^st

Another character from previous titles appears, Sombria who is obsessed with being told she looks pretty… my love for the developer increases as the story reaches its conclusion and more story elements are revealed.

I played the previous 3 titles as part of Crapfest, and they all scored highly… one of the metrics for the scoring used to be the Achievement pictures, the square image used for each Achievement that appears on sites and the listing for the game… I detest when a developer used the same image for each, something drab and with no sign of imagination… to me, a collection of nicely designed images for the Achievements was an indicator of how much effort they had made, it was one more tiny detail that could make a game shine.

The Achievement icons here are superb, each a character from the game that do indeed show the attention to detail that has gone into the whole package.

November 7^th

Credits rolled… and all the leads into the other titles are complete… yes, it is the Ashina from My Big Sister, but she didn’t steal the legs of her sister, they were forced on her, she sits in the bath permanently because if she leaves, she dies, the Tina in the basement is not there because her sister commanded it either… both are where they are as a result of the witch Yoko’s curse.

With the way all the stories tie in nicely I can’t help but wonder what Stranga will come up with next… is there any scope to shoehorn another game into the mix? Or do we get a whole new story, but set in the same game space.

My overall play time clocked in at around 4 hours… I didn’t want to skip any of the story as the dialogue makes these titles, even the old school graphical style works for the story they’re telling… for an Indie game it’s the whole package.

Hands up who was stupid enough to think that Cyberpunk 2077 would work well on a base Xbox One or a standard PlayStation 4?

Right… all those with your hands up… a secondary question… why?

There was a reason they only ever showed it running on an Xbox One X or a PC… and it doesn’t take a brain surgeon to understand why that was.

My first run was split between the Xbox Series X and an Xbox One X and, while it crashed a lot, I never experienced any serious game breaking bug at any point in around 110 hours… a year later, playing the PS4 version on a PS5 it crashed even more despite a years worth of patches… texture pop in was rampant, especially on long car journeys, and it crashed once during the closing credits.

A year later and my third run through, on the actually PS5 version was a slightly better affair… not so many texture issues, far less crashes… a second Platinum Trophy on my card… and even though I’d played it all twice before, there are elements of the end game that still had an emotional effect on me.

For all the criticism (somewhat deserved, but partially also the fault of anyone who answered yes to me original question) CD Projekt Red had given us a very, very good story.

Now it’s time for the DLC… a little late to the party perhaps… but something I’m prepared to play, and potentially double dip on across at least 2 versions available to me… I’m starting with the PS5 version, after Starfield I need a change of controller.

Entering Dogtown

Not going to lie… that the location for the DLC was already part of the map feels a little bit of a con, and that the size of said location is fairly small doesn’t do it any favour either… and given the size would it have been so hard for the Presidents jet to crash land elsewhere?

It takes a while to get used to the new skill set up, and to get used to the game again after a while away… I was looking for my favourite hacks in the skill tree, forgetting they weren’t there in the first place.

I can still use my old tactic of trying to take out most groups of enemies without even going near them… something I used extensively when it came to stealing a medical truck and delivering it to the fixer… too many cops chasing me, so second time around I took out all but 2 of the guards from distance (and running out of tracing range after each attack) which made the whole thing much simpler to complete.

What I hadn’t forgotten is that Cyberpunk is a damn fine looking game on PS5 and Series X, it looked pretty decent on the Series X before the “next gen” version released to be honest.

Naturally I’m ignoring the main plot as much as possible, but I’ve hit the point where that isn’t much of an option… the 2 side missions I haven’t done yet won’t unlock till near the end of the game, so it’s main plot from now on.

I know already that I need to make a save before I complete one of the main missions if I want to see all the possible endings and unlock the 4 Trophies… as there is also a changed ending to the main game if I complete 2 of the 4 that’s also on my to do list.

What feels a little off is that, while old Idris Elba is in there in character and supplied the voice work, everything else about him screams River Ward… down to the swagger as he walks and he’s dressed in a fairly similar manner and drives (may be wrong here) the same make and model vehicle.

And that feels a little cheap.

Some reviews have mentioned that the side missions aren’t of the same standard as the main game… which I have to agree with… and part of that is that the main game gave you a host of companion type quest lines that played out wonderfully… Judy, Panam, Kerry and River… there’s nothing like that here… and that hurts it.

One involving a Braindance user who, due to a power cut as he was mid dance, now believes he’s the actual person he was acting out in the Braindance… made more amusing by the character being a female punk and him… well… being almost the polar opposite… had potential, but ends terribly… it’s clear that the same level of care and attention put into these in the main game, hasn’t been applied here.

Nor are there any side mission quest lines like the candidate for Mayor who’s being brain washed, no equivalent to Sinnerman, nothing as absurdly funny as the guy with the penis implant that’s getting ready to explode… could this have been rectified with a whole new, bigger, play area added? Probably.

All this is a shame as some of the side quests in The Witcher (and the main game) are where the developers really shine… whereas, thus far, these feel like they’ve been shat out to pad the main story.

Sure a few other quests have been added to beef it up, stealing cars to order is one, but these all fall into two categories that I can see… one where you have a time limit to deliver it, one where you have to shake off a tail… I did have a single instance of being asked to bring it back in good condition, but I wasn’t informed of that till I was within sight of the drop off point.

Is it worth the £25 that I paid for it? Not really, sure it’s a big chunk of content, but how much of that was the revamp of the skill system? The removal of stat boosts for clothing? The cooldown for healing items and grenades?

Speaking of which, how come I ended the old game with 40-50+ health packs and now I’ve only got 3 of them?

Robbery I tell you… robbery.

Anyway… next session will be pushing onwards to the end game… where I feel I’ve barely scratched the surface so far.

October 2^nd

Not sure if this was the way I played through the PS5 version as a whole, or just since I picked it back up… but my male nomad V is very much a “shoot first, ask questions later” type of guy… faced with a confrontation with a gang leader whilst helping out a boxer friend… straight in with the headshot before she had a chance to finish talking… faced with an Oil executive trying to expose a Brazilian agents indiscretions and it’s a head shot all day long.

Faced with over-helming odds on the way out of a party, in with the trash talk and out with the shotgun… lots of bodies being left behind… but killing people and looting them pays… at the start of the DLC my bank balance was under $10,000 and it’s now just short of $1million.

All the relic skills have been unlocked, the main story is progressing and I’ve a road map planned out to unlock all 4 endings in the DLC in the most time efficient manner.

October 3^rd

I’m within touching distance of the end game… or at least two of the four of them are… Songbird is out in the wild and full Cyber-pyscho material… as the authorities have captured her you can guess the next mission.

All side missions done, Mr Hands controlling the new “ruler” of Dogtown and I hit the level cap again, scarily quickly this time… but then the Level 50 cap was hit probably half way through the main game so that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

It’s time to start Save-Scumming the endings… although I won’t get the chance to finish the game for a couple of days due to commitments outside gaming and work have my next two evenings taken care of.

End Game

Due to illness, I get more time than I had expected and slowly work through the 5 endings (4 in the DLC, 1 new main game ending) over 2 days… got to say… none of them can be really considered to be “good” endings.

You can hand Songbird into the Government… either alive or dead, alive gives you the option to see the new main game ending… but involves way too much stealth for me… working your way through to the Core of an old facility, avoiding a large attack droid that will kill you… very quickly indeed, and there are times you have to hide and wait… despite all my hacking prowess there was no way I could take it down… even shutting down the facilities security lockdown.

At the end of this you can save to make the two endings much easier to work through… all that changes are the dialogue scenes after where you hand the body over.

The other option is to help Songbird escape to a clinic on the moon to save her, because here you discover that the neural device you’ve stolen, which you believe would save you, can only be used once and she intends that to be for herself… you’ve been played.

This is much more a shooters ending, with an assault on a Spaceport to get her to the Shuttle… thankfully, there is another point you can save to work both endings… do you continue to help her, or do you turn her in for betraying you with the “once use” revelation.

Again, most of what changes are the dialogue scenes at the end, although if you help her you do get to shoot a Hollywood star before putting her in the shuttle… turning her in opens up the new main game ending as well.

And that new ending… turns out the device can’t help Songbird so they save you… at a huge cost, fast forward to 2 years later and a lot has changed, not just for you… Judy, Viktor, Misty, Panam etc have all moved on, some in massive ways… others accepting the hand they’ve been dealt… credits roll… the closing credit conversations with Rogue et al have also changed dramatically.

In the end it’s an enjoyable piece of content, reminding me why I loved the main game so much… but it’s let down by the really dull, almost bolted on, side missions that just aren’t a patch on those in the main game… where is the DLC version of Sinnerman?

It’s a 7/10 expansion… I’m not a fan of the way they changed stat boosts to being Perks and Skills from clothing items… the level of armour boosts I had in my clothing was obscene… all gone… not fair.

I’ll happily play a sequel… especially if they keep with the first person view which I thought worked really well… and it’s nice to see the game finally get the appreciation it deserves.

At this point I’ve spent over 90 hours exploring the Galaxy… I’ve destroyed the Crimson Fleet, saved the world from the threat of Terrormorphs, taken down an evil Corporation CEO killing farmers to cover up his own mistake and helped another evil Corporation continue the development of a neural amp that allows people to manipulate others to do their bidding.

About time I finished the game really… so I jog back to the main quest… but… I have saved a couple of XP grind methods on YouTube should I feel the need to wile away some time working on the Level 50 and Level 100 Achievements later on… main quest here I come.

21^st September

I knew that, at some point in the end game, there would be a situation where I had to make a choice between the two characters I have most affinity with… I just thought that, when the time came, I’d have the most affinity with the character I married rather than someone else… so I’m now here, approaching the end game, wearing my dead wife’s outfit and have committed my self to a relationship with the character I, apparently, get along with better.

What adds to the freakish nature of all this is that the Starborn who attacked me earlier in the game is an alternate reality version of my dead wife.

On the plus side to all of this, there will be some serious room for variations in the story when I come to play through it again.

I’m at Level 44 (and I want to hit Level 50 before I stop… the grind for Level 100 seems a step too far) and of collecting Artefacts again… a couple more Starborn have been offed and my stash of Quantum Essence is just 5 short of the Achievement number… and I have just 6 of those left to unlock for the completion.

Or 5 if I decide to pass on the Level 100 for now… maybe over the Christmas break I can grind away, or start a second run focusing on the main quests only as they hand out more XP than others… one XP grind method I found online requires a lot more skill points in a category that I have no real interest in following.

22^nd to 24^th September

A couple of nice touches that were noticed over the weekend… firstly, when you kill something what you find when you search the body is what you’d expect to find… so if you kill a robot there will be droid parts and ammo for its weapons, kill a solider and clothing, food, ammo again… maybe a med pack… kill a creature on a planet and you’ll get bones, hide, liquids.

None of this killing a wolf in cave and finding a book, or credits… or a hammer.

Searching the old NASA base on Earth (and you will find out what happened to it later in the game) and you won’t find anything that shouldn’t be there… no Credit sticks because they weren’t used then, no ammo for new weapons for the same reason… all good stuff.

Secondly… as the story progress’s you’ll meet two characters… the Hunter and the Emissary, who are also hunting the artefacts and have been doing for several cycles… once they’ve all been collected the cycle starts again… at this point they know how it will all play out so they practically follow a set of rules.

Seems they’ve been watching you as, each cycle, you usually get killed and they steal your artefacts and continue… this time it’s different as you survive.

Now, the second nice touch, had you visited the bar in the early part of the game you can speak to the Hunter, he’s been there since the early part of the game watching and observing.

Okay… spoiler time.

As the story continues the Hunter will attack to steal the artefacts… and you have a choice, the companion you have the most affinity with will be with you, and the character you have the second closest relationship two will be on The Eye… I had assumed I’d have the best relationship with the character I married… clearly not.

By choosing to save the artefacts in The Lodge, the character on The Eye, in this case my wife, was killed.

Her belongings end up transferred to a crate in the basement… which is how I ended up wearing my dead wife’s clothes.

I mourned for several moments… and figured then that, as I obviously had a closer relationship with a different character, I should marry them next.

All this happens as you collect the last few artefacts… and a shout out to the wonderful “Entangled” mission where an experiment on an artefact went wrong and has fractured reality… in one the scientist was killed and the laboratory goes into lockdown… in the other, he was the only survivor and the lab is now filled with deadly alien creatures.

You have to shut the experiment down, in both worlds, and chose which to save… there is a way, as seen on YouTube save both, but I didn’t want to try that this time around.

You have to navigate the facility switching between the two versions as needed… in the one you start with the automated defences attack you, turrets and robots galore… but you’ll reach a locked door, switch to the other and you can pass as the door is gone, but you’ll be attacked by creatures instead.

All very well though out, and one of the best quests I found (up there with the exploring NASA on Earth) in the game… if I go back and play again then I’ll see about saving both versions of the world.

With all but one of the artefacts collected, you team up with whichever you chose from The Emissary and The Hunter to collect the final piece, another good combat romp through a base to reach your goal and the face off with whichever you didn’t chose… I managed to Persuade myself through this so no final boss battle for me.

Once done you can assemble the device and fly to Unity and the end of the game.

I chose to collect a few more powers first, so I ended up with 18 of the 24, and to complete some of the quests I’ve had in limbo since the first part of the game… save the trees on Jemison, collect the drinks ingredients for the barkeeper… and eventually hit Level 50 and then onto the end game.

End Game

Passing through to Unity… no combat, no exploration… but a cool way of seeing what happened to those people you interacted with… so the fate of the Freestar Collective, the team who helped you take down the Terrormorphs, Ryujin Industries and their neural amp tech, Constellation and your wife… then you walk into the void and the game restarts after the credits.

None of that mining nonsense… you’re now Starborn with a ship to match, you land and enter The Lodge… the artefact you find in the mine has been delivered by Barrett and Vasco, because you went missing… the next decision is whether you want to replay the story, or tell them what you know and where the artefacts are… thus changing the game considerably.

But… that’s where I left it… do I replay the game making different decisions and romancing different characters or do I spill the beans and see what happens then?

Just over 100 hours all told, Level 50 with 49/50 Achievements unlocked… a pretty good game, especially when it was free thanks to Gamepass.