Hashtag Controversial Radical Flaming Hottake of the year incoming, but Elden Ring? Great game! That said, I’m also massively into story-based games, so let’s see how Elden Ring stacks up so far (been playing for around a week)… But first:

More Highlights: I rode through a pasture and spent 5 minutes looking for an NPC calling out to me before giving up on the assumption that he’s invisible!

Rodericka’s an odd lass, but hope her training pays off.

The best thing about not knowing how to upgrade things for a long time is by the time I figured it out, I was just sitting on a dump-truck of smithing stones and didn’t feel guilty about boosting my katana like the filthy weeb I am!

Being greeted with Caelid after trundling about a labyrinthine cave gave me an existential crisis, I liked it a lot.

I beat Margit The Wonky Stick Waggler yesterday, a nocturnal knight with a flail, a creepy-crawly knight with more in common with Usain Bolt than The Mountain and a smattering of other mini bosses.

My Experience With The Story: The game starts off with an opening storybook-style cutscene explaining the key inciting incidents as to why the world is how it is. I’m no lore expert, so apologies if I misinterpret anything, but the opening, as I understood it:

Long ago, the people of the Golden Order lived together in harmony. Then, everything changed when some plonker broke the Elden Ring. Lacking the necessary receipt for a refund, the next best thing was redistributing the broken pieces to other major lords and powerful folk of the lands. The broken pieces corrupted those who took them on and you’re a bright-eyed bushy-tailed bloke or bloke-ette trying to become the new Elden Lord by defeating the current Elden Ring shard owners because that turned out so well for them… Swear I’m only being drippingly smug for comedy’s sake, I was actually very intrigued, despite possibly not following on everything.

Side note, the opening cutscene mentioned a political assassination of sorts called ‘the night of the black knives’. That made my ears perk because I’ve heard of a similarly-named real world historical event, the night of the long knives, a series of assassinations of political opponents to Hitler.

While I have enough intrigue in the story to not be apathetic, I’m personally not a huge fan of the detective-style “piece things together by vague clues and item descriptions” storytelling approach… Except in Hollow Knight, for reasons unknown even to me (my review’s here)!

With that said, the intrigue that does come up does make me very enthusiastic to find out more! At the Roundtable Stronghold, some relatively innocuous rich bloke seems to have a good relationship with his servant (according to him) and asks you to find her. Few hours later and I find out Castle Morne is experiencing it’s own slave revolt from a blind noblewoman begging me to save her daddy- I mean father.

The other NPCs aren’t much to write home about so far (of the one’s I’ve encountered at least), besides Rodericka and Phia. Rodericka’s story (so far) is a nice dash of wholesomeness amongst hours of getting smashed by 10-foot Dilf’s stick! Same for Phia, sometimes all a brother needs is a hug and that can help more than you know.

Overall thoughts: Not thrilling, but nice, with a chance for something greater. I’ve heard that George RR Martin did the worldbuilding and Miyazaki the storytelling, but I think they should’ve done things the other way around in my humble opinion.

Product Poems:

Nioh, not to be confused with Neo or knee- Oh! You hit me!

Mortal Kombat 11 with Revenge of Scorpion. Win-win.

Tsushima samurai-ninja-boy. Bathe, fox pets and Haiku.

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The post Elden Ring Story Review So Far! The Ballad of Samurai Stefan first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Controversial BOILING Hottake incoming, but Hollow Knight is a great game! Yeah, an indie darling that got good reviews definitely needed the input of a random Breadtube Leftist 5 years after release.

Jokes aside, I’m glad to be writing about this game. If I had to sum up Hollow Knight in one sentence: Complex without being complicated.

A Beginner-Friendly Soulslike? In my humble opinion, Hollow Knight is a great combination of Dark Souls difficulty and user-friendly introductions to mechanics. You still have to use a healthy dash (literally and figuratively) of creative thinking with the mechanics to progress at times, but every basic skill you learn is tutorialised in a fun way. The only thing the game doesn’t explicitly tell you is holding down the jump button longer or shorter is extremely useful for dodging many boss attacks.

As you explore the world, movement throughout it also becomes more viscerally enjoyable. Discovering dashes, wall-climbing and more skills drastically influences your gameplay style, like adding a new topping to the proverbial digital pizza!

First learn stand, then learn fly: You start off with nothing but a sword and ‘soul’ gauge. Hitting most non-boss enemies pushes you away from them slightly in a way that encourages a pattern of forward-moving rhythmic slashes at first before paying more attention to attack patterns as time goes on. Every time you slash some unfortunate chibi bug-creature, your soul gauge fills up a little. On a full tank (upgrades notwithstanding), you can heal up to three ‘masks’ (your healthbar system). I like this system because although you won’t be able to get through parts of the game without hitting a certain skill ceiling, it encourages exploration of the vast world. Exploration leads to finding useful items or skills. Useful items and skills lead to you becoming more powerful. Let’s talk about those items, shall we?

Charmed to make your acquaintance: Throughout the game, you can buy or unlock charms. You can only use a limited number of them depending how many notches you have (which can be increased with future unlocks). Alternatively, you can ‘overcharm’ yourself by turning yourself into a charmed Everything Burger to use all the skills at once with the added risk of taking extra damage.

Different charm combinations offer different powers and advantages in gameplay, so I highly recommend experimenting with them. In addition, some bonus areas in-game can be unlocked by wearing a specific charm to a location, usually one that matches the aesthetic of your charm. Among my favorite charm combinations is the Defender’s Crest and Glowing Womb, which gradually drains some of your soul in exchange for a… Mutually beneficial explosion, let’s say.

I play for the plot… Wait- NO, not that one! Which is to say, most of the Soulslike games I play don’t have the best story delivery. Reading item descriptions can unfortunately feel like homework at times and needing that baseline knowledge to understand what the NPC locals are on about can be a pain, which is a shame because I really like story-based games. I imagine my mild story-based gripe with Bloodborne is because reading item descriptions can feel like busywork that’s cutting into your gameplay time, rather than a diegetic moment of exposition… So why on God’s green earth do I think Hollow Knight does that in a way that’s fun!?

Hard to articulate in a way, but I can’t express enough how much the world of Hollow Knight evokes a sense of wonder and curiosity. You have one brief opening crawl at the beginning, a hauntingly ominous cutscene where your character looks like a traumatized soldier, then boom. The music kicks in, you talk to the local (soon to be locals), and off you trot throughout the world. Finding a new character out in the wild really feels like an oddly wholesome affair, even when some interactions leave you dreading whatever’s being foreshadowed.

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The post Of Bugs and Men: My Hollow Knight Journey & Review first appeared on Get2Gaming.

Dauntless is a free-to-play co-op based action game that sees players team up in groups of four to take down big scary monsters! So not unlike the Monster Hunter games (psst, which we have alot of! Plus one with an OLED Switch). The game is currently available on Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4 and Xbox One.

Dauntless is developed by the folks at Phoenix Labs and has been announced to come to Xbox Series X/S as well as PS5 on December 2nd with a slew of graphical improvements. Dauntless has technically been playable on PS5 and Xbox Series X/S for a while due to backwards compatibility options, but now there will be explicitly console-specific versions of the game available with all the bells and whistles they can load in.

The Bells and Whistles:

PS5 and Xbox Series X consoles will run the game at 4K and 60 FPS, while Xbox Series S will be at at 1440p and 60 FPS. I’m a bit of a graphics commoner considering 720p on YouTube videos is crisp-looking by my standards, so your mileage on the differences may vary.

All console versions are also boasting 90% faster loading times and assorted visual improvements.  New lighting, improved draw distances, volumetric fog and other environmental effect improvements to trees, grass, water and shadows. The PS5 version is also set to support 3D audio and DualSense adaptive triggers.

36 new achievements and trophies will be added to Dauntless. Cross-play and cross-progression will be available across all console versions.

Click here for a peak at the Next Gen trailer for Dauntless.

Dauntless Review: The game starts you off in a tutorial area to get your bearings of the controls. It took me about half an hour of stick-fiddling to wrap my head around the controls, but once you get the hang of the camera, you’re a-okay. The combat itself is also fun while encouraging strategy and caution, since most of the boss monsters don’t stagger easily outside of when you take a specific amount of their health. It’s worth experimenting with the 7 different weapon types, but even if only one works for you, different enemies have different elemental weaknesses, so hanging onto different weapons is a must. Each weapon also has a unique extra skill tailored to it, as well as comboners for days! You’ll have to do a handful of short mandatory quests before you can play with others, but that’s a small price to pay for salvation. Overall, Dauntless is a fun time with friends, very much recommend.

Product Poems: 

Snakebyte. Snakebet. Snakebute? Snakebaet? Alexa, play Despacito.

Wasteland 3: Day One Edition. Please buy… No? Fetal position.

Whoop, whoop. It’s the sound of the police. Here, they lie. Here comes the judge.

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The post Dauntless on Xbox X/S and PS5 Coming Soon + Review first appeared on Get2Gaming.