WHAT PLAY YOU!? Version 3.0

[RedTwoster]

11 hours ago, CleetusVanDamme said:

Nah. First Light is really good, don't get me wrong, but its best bits are between the action. The gunplay's mid (IO have still improved it a lot since Hitman though), the range of guns ditto, and you don't get much chance to use all of them anyway due to limited ammo/License to Kill sections. The vehicle sections are poor (even just comparing them to Blood Stone that I played recently). Overall, it's a good package though

I totally agree with all of this. The vehicle sections remind me of how unwelcome the Batmobile sections were in Arkham Knight - I groan every time Bond steps in a car. The gunplay is weak, but as soon as I realised the aim was usually not to get killed rather than to take out enemies, that stopped mattering to me. Using gadgets etc to do that can be good fun.

But you’re right - the best parts of the game aren’t the action sequences, it’s when you’re getting to be a spy, sneaking around or just bullshitting your way into places you shouldn’t be. There are almost always multiple ways to do that and you can get really creative in the process. It’s so satisfying when you manage to achieve your goal in a way that wasn’t signposted and seems like something you’ve broken the rules of the game, even though those solutions must have been built into First Light by the developer.

It’s definitely the best Bond game of all time - and the first 007 game that actually captures the spirit of what Bond is as a movie franchise. It’s also a Game of the Year candidate, and I’d love to see it win to hopefully dissuade Amazon from making future Bond games in house. What an enormous loss to gaming it would be if the team behind this didn’t get to make a sequel.

[DavidB6937]

I thought I'd want to bomb through it in a couple of days but I've actually forced myself to enjoy it in smaller bites. It really is an incredible game and I love how Bond it is, so I'm just taking it slow and making the most of it.

[Jazzy G]

FC26 appears to be free on Switch at the moment? Or there's an update they're selling and I already bought it in a sale previously. 

[Devon Malcolm]

Tried playing Sniper Elite III - controls were absolute shite so I gave up. I only got it for about 70p, thankfully.

Played UFO - Unidentified Falling Objects for a few days. Fun little puzzle game but not one I was likely to stick with for ages.

Shady Part of Me is the latest one I'm playing. Another sad puzzle platformer but really good. The dual character gameplay is really executed. Music's brilliant, too.

[Jazzy G]

On 6/13/2026 at 9:09 PM, Devon Malcolm said:

Tried playing Sniper Elite III - controls were absolute shite so I gave up. I only got it for about 70p, thankfully

I have a couple of these on Switch and wondered whether it was difficult because I was bad at it. Hearing the controls are janky make me feel relieved. 

I think people tend to get suckered in by those trailers where it shows them shooting Hitler in the dick from a mile away. 

I saw Gas Station Simulator was on sale. It's got a simple enough loop, but I feel like I'm doing some of the DLC stuff before I get properly into the game so may start again and try to pace it better. 

[RedTwoster]

I’ve decided to trade in my Steam Deck for a ROG Xbox Ally X or whatever the fuck it’s called. I’ll report back if it’s any good. The PS Portal and Switch 2 have been transformative for me as far as actually being able to game goes, I’m hoping this’ll have a similar impact. Screen time is very competitive in our household.

[Onyx2]

3 hours ago, RedTwoster said:

I’ve decided to trade in my Steam Deck for a ROG Xbox Ally X or whatever the fuck it’s called. I’ll report back if it’s any good. The PS Portal and Switch 2 have been transformative for me as far as actually being able to game goes, I’m hoping this’ll have a similar impact. Screen time is very competitive in our household.

You've sold me on the Portal - just ordered one.

[DavidB6937]

Can we stop talking about things that cost money. I'm weak and easily swayed.

[RedTwoster]

On 6/15/2026 at 10:25 AM, RedTwoster said:

I’ve decided to trade in my Steam Deck for a ROG Xbox Ally X

An update on this - in some ways it’s better than a Steam Deck, in others it’s not.

Performance wise, it’s leagues apart and I’m yet to find a AAA game that I can’t get working on it at - at the very least - a reasonable level.

It’s also far more comfortable to hold than the Steam Deck and is much easier to play for long periods without giving you hand cramp.

Game Pass is great on it - you can choose to install a game or stream it, and almost all games are playable with minimal tinkering, although you can make a few tweaks to get a better experience if you really want to - I’ve only had to do it with Forza 6 so far, and after a bit of fucking around it was a great experience after some initial annoying frame rate dips. 

It comes with Steam pre-installed, and if you download a Steam game it automatically appears in your Xbox library - same goes with games from the Epic store and I assume it’ll be the same with GOG should I install that. This is where the caveats begin - you can play more games than you can on the Steam Deck - I’ve been playing classic Lucasarts games, for examples - but they often require various levels of tinkering. This could be to get the controls working, or it could be to get it running in the first place. I’ve had no issues getting anything running so far but that’s not to say it’s always been straightforward to do so.

It also doesn’t have a trackpad like the Deck does, and I do miss that. However, it’s still possible to play mouse games without actually buying a mouse, either through using the touch screen or the analogue stick to move the mouse cursor, with the left and right triggers acting as the left and right mouse buttons. It works perfectly well. 

Modding is easier than the Steam Deck on account of it essentially being a Windows PC. Emulation isn’t hard, but feels a little less convenient than it did on the Deck.

In short, the Steam Deck is more user friendly and console like, whereas this is a portable Windows PC with a bit of Xbox tacked on. Personally, I’m glad I made the upgrade - but I could see a lot of people finding it very challenging, and the tinkering required at times to be frustrating.

I can play far more on it, and I can play all the games I had on my Deck, with saves carrying over. PC Game Pass is only £10.99 a month, and it feels like tremendous value for the library you gain access to. 

I genuinely don’t know whether to recommend it or not, but if you don’t mind a bit of tinkering and experimenting with your system (and I don’t) you’ll like it a lot - I certainly do. If that sounds like a bad time to you, maybe avoid this one. 

[Scratch]

@RedTwoster I did exactly the same and am glad I did, too.

It is a bit more fiddly as it’s basically a Windows PC as you say, but I’m loving it. Great D-Pad too.

 

Edited June 19 by Scratch

[westlondonmist]

Got given an 8 bit do pro 2 controller. Might take some getting used to after using Switch controllers for the past 9 years. I'm used to a high thumbstick and a bigger controller,its quite dinky. 

[gmoney]

Ended up getting First Sight 007. It's a good game, not great. Too much of the padding I hate in games.

'You've got to get to an area, it's over there, isn't it a long way? That's ok though, you can get there by following the extremely easily signposted way, and that's actually the only way you can get there. No - you can't climb that bit. Yes I know it's almost the exact same height as other things you've climbed constantly, but see? It doesn't have a bit of blue tarpaulin on it.' I don't know who this could be fun for. 

There's way less options to do things as compared to Hitman games, and the more actiony bits were a bit half arsed I felt. However, the story is fun, I liked most of the characters, particularly the mentor guy. I don't really enjoy a young, rookie Bond though. You need to have earned your quips, otherwise it just annoys. No one wants a wet eared scrote talking back to everyone. I hope whoever has the licence does a version at some point with a more experienced, lived Bond.

[Devon Malcolm]

I completed Shady Part of Me, which is a really good game. The story runs out of steam before the end and it's a bit of a damp squib ending but I enjoyed playing it.

I just started undertale and I can understand the fuss. I don't like RPGs but this one has a lot of other things going on that have won me over. Riveted by how Toby Fox manages to keep all the story strands in check, no idea how he's done that. I'm having a great time with it already, even when my 19yo is telling me what to do and spoiling bits, all because he's put about 800 hours into it and has cosplayed it.

[BomberPat]

I'm still playing Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth. It's an absurdly massive game. I'm 90+ hours in, getting towards what I assume is the end-game, and there's still so much story left, not even accounting for the games that preceded it, and any new stuff likely to be added in. Bonkers. I am enjoying it, though.

Two Point Museum is having a free weekend on Steam, and I got a couple of hours in when I had some free time, and I've really enjoyed it. I struggled with Two Point Campus, as a lot of the goals you had to meet were just busywork, and could be solved either by meticulously placing duplicates of the same item everywhere, or just fiddling with stats until something happened, and it wasn't fun. It was a nice idea, but they never quite managed to map the gameplay mechanics of what had basically been a faithful remake of Theme Hospital onto a university setting; the levels of emergency and strict deadlines just didn't work the same way. Museum has changed up the gameplay enough that it really works and feels fresh; I can see it getting old later into the game, but the couple of levels I played were a lot of fun, and I'll probably pick the game up properly at some point.

Speaking of freebies, Sonic x Shadow Generations is on PS Plus. It's a bit shit, but it's been my mindless killing a bit of time game for the last week or so. I think I hate every single character in this game. There's a time travel gimmick, where you can swap between young and old Sonic, which basically means old-school 2D versions of a level or dogshit 3D ones where you're running on rails and rather than being rewarded for exploring to find hidden items, it's just pot luck whether you happen to be running in the right place because you can't possibly have the reaction times to get them (and sometimes the camera is in front of you, so it would be physically impossible), so you effectively just have to memorise every level if you ever hope to find everything, and fuck that. The annoying part is that you have to do both versions of every level to progress. It's all mindless fun, but there's a better 2D game in there than the game it is. There's also Shadow Generations as sort of a separate game? No idea.

And I am now utterly addicted to Dorfromantik. Any time I get a spare five minutes I'll have a go on it.

[RedTwoster]

1 hour ago, BomberPat said:

And I am now utterly addicted to Dorfromantik. Any time I get a spare five minutes I'll have a go on it.

What is that exactly? I’ve seen screen grabs of the hexagonal grid and read a few reviews but I’m still no clearer on what you actually do!