What Games Are You Playing?

Been playing Daxter. Originally came out way back when in 2006 on the PSP. Never played it as kid as never owned a PSP, and initially quit Jak & Daxter after Jak 2 angered me greatly. But now it's on the PS5 in 4k so why not~

Interesting to play now; so long removed from the 3D platforming/collectishit era. Jak infamously ditched platforming to be a GTA drive/shooting wannabe thing with Jak 2, and Daxter is set between 1 & 2; filling in the blanks. That said, the story is threadbare to nonexistent - Dax working as a (metal head) bug exterminator, whilst forgetting to rescue Jak - but the gameplay has aged surprisingly well. Once you get the 'bug spray gun' (reminds me of Luigi's Mansion) that doubles as a flamethrower, it becomes a lotta fun as it also triples as a hover-glide tool to stay airborne. The combat is shoddy, often limited to spraying and then mashing melee, but jump-exploring is always satisfying.

Given it was made for the PSP, cutscenes and voice acting are limited. A pity, since Daxter's never-shut-up humour is mostly muted here, bar a few interactions with a sexy walking woman that gives him gun parts he flirts with. But the level design and variety is mostly excellent: an underground train station with moving trains jump on being a highlight, plus a huge construction site, and even a few vehicle stages.

My only real complaints are the music and QTE mini-games. Not having the Crash/Jak composer is a huge loss 'ere, as his tribal jungle bongo beats and more moody dystopian driving tunes defined the main series. Daxter has more a... repetitive & forgettable U/PG13 whimsical soundtrack. And as for the mini-games, they're ALL dpad/face-button rhythm things. The mini-game dreams where Daxter cosplays as Neo from the Matrix, Indiana Jones and LotR Gandalf are... of their time but amusing. The more forced tedious hacking story stuff, less so.

Pretty good for a Jak & Daxter game not by Naughty Dog, and a nice way to end things by returning to the series' platforming roots (/Lost Frontier does not exist). It even looks quite impressive, upscaled.
 
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For over a month now I’ve played through Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition courtesy of the new NSW2 edition.

For the most part I had a good time with this, exploring the world and doing endless sidequests as my expanding crew levelled up. What almost killed the game for me was the grinding involved, mainly towards being strong enough to take down the hardest enemy in the game and complete the map once and for all. That alone took 10-15 hours extra. The music also became a bit monotonous after a while, especially the songs that plays throughout the New Los Angeles hub area.
 
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HWR said:
For over a month now I’ve played through Xenoblade Chronicles X Definitive Edition courtesy of the new NSW2 edition.

The music also became a bit monotonous after a while, especially the songs that plays throughout the New Los Angeles hub area.
Click to expand...

Sawano doing a game OST, back when I was into his 🎵, will always be special to me. Many of the tracks are as epic - and familiar - as his anime stuff. One of his better works, I'd say. That said, the lyrics in NLA are... unforgettable.

Actual Lyrics:
uh yeah, uh yeah, uh uh uh uh yeah uh yeah, uh uh, uh, uh yeah yeah (yes) yeah, uh UH, uh yeah, yeah, uh yeah, uh, uh yeah, yeah uh uh uh yeah (yeaah!), uh yeah, yeah uh uh, yeah yeah (yeah) uh yeah woooooooo yeah, uh yeah, uh, uh yeah, yeah uh uh uh (yeah) yeah, uh yeah, yeah uh uh uh, yeah yeah, uh yeah, yeah yeahh uh uh, gibberish (yeah) yeah, uh yeah yeah (yeh) uh yeah (yeh) uh uh (yeh) yeah, uh yeah wooooooo (yeah) yeah uh uh, gibberish (yeah) yeah, uh yeah YEAH, uh yeah UH, uh Yeah (yeah) uh uh uh (yeah) yeah, uh yeah, uh yeah, uh yeah, uh uh uh

Saw a few angry reviews about the NLA music on Amazon, back in the day.

Did they ever fix the Definitive Edition Switch 2 Edition Upscaled Edition btw? Was gonna go back to it after buying but saw reports it blurry/a mess.

Edit: Linked to correct part for lyrics to match, 2m33s.
 
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I can’t say I noticed too many visual flaws during my playthrough, certainly nothing that hindered my experience, though I played the game exclusively Docked, and it was apparently a more prominent in handheld mode (from what I’ve read anyway.)
 
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Game #26 - inFAMOUS (PlayStation 3)
Acquired: 24.04.2021 - Started: 20.07.2026 - Finished: 26.07.2026 (Story), 30.07.2026 (Playthrough #2 + Platinum)

After a brief break from gaming and the sudden news that Sony will once again close the PlayStation 3 store, another piece of information appeared and that came from Sucker Punch themselves, the developers behind Sly Cooper and Ghosts of Tsushima that the online servers for their inFAMOUS games will be concluded by the end of August which means the Platinum trophy will be unobtainable for two of the games released on the console.

Because of that news, it was time for me to finally take a look at this popular action game that is still stuck on the PlayStation 3. Surprisingly was never remastered on modern PlayStation hardware, but then again neither was Killzone and Resistance. The first game doesn't have online trophies but they're story driven so I wanted to experience them in order.

inFAMOUS is an interesting game because when it was first released it was often compared to Radical Entertainment's Prototype which had a similar concept and were literally released a month apart. I have played Prototype first on Xbox 360 as a rental but not to a big extent so I can see why the comparisons were made.

inFAMOUS focuses on our main character Cole who suddenly wakes up with electrical powers after an explosion caused by a device called the Ray Sphere and as a result, the city that he lives in has put into lockdown and a group of gangs have hijacked each district. Along the way you have the choice to become a good hero or an evil villain which adds a lot to the game's system and replay value. After playing through the game twice; one Normal difficulty playthrough as a Good character, and another on Hard difficulty as an Evil character, inFAMOUS has held up really well for the most part.

Cole can drain electricity from various devices and doing so also helps regenerate your health which is super useful in tough situations. He also has slots that he can ultilise to pull off any electrical special moves, whether it be shooting grenades, rockets or sniping enemies from a distance. He can also pull off a Thunder Drop move by jumping/falling from a big distance and smashing the ground, electrocuting anyone nearby. You can also use gravity in a way by pushing enemies and objects out of the way in front of you and glide onto other buildings and slide to each area using the rails which are a lot of fun.

The game is semi-open world and you can access each district as the story progresses, but you will also need to take over each district from the enemies that are pre-occupying them and to do that you need to complete various side-missions. These missions vary from defeating enemies, protecting a train to get from Point A to B, following enemies without being noticed and grabbing their shards, or taking out people for the fun of it.

What made inFAMOUS stood out to me was how it uses the karma mechanic. It's not an original idea in a sense considering Mass Effect and other RPGs have this but I would think the game populated the idea more for a wider audience. Being a good person makes you feel more like a hero to the civilians around you, who cheer you on and even throw stones at enemies the better the reputation you have. You can also improve your good karma by healing people and taking on the Good side missions that support the police in the area.

Being an evil person will slowly turn you into a corrupt individual with electric marks and red energy on your body. The civilians will start to fear you and throw stones at you the worse the reputation you receive. Killing people and destroying everything in front of you as well as taking on the Evil side missions that are connected to a side character in the game's story will also improve your evil karma. Being a good or evil person also impacts the game's story which is interesting and allows for fun replayability to see differing outcomes.

The main core part of the story is still the same but there will be differences in the dialogue and cutscenes. That said, you will have differing abilities that will change up the gameplay a bit, adding benefits depending on whether you're good or evil. Evil is best suited for the harder difficulty because you can take advantage of not trying to restrict yourself when you're attacking enemies in the wide open, because civilians can get in the way at times. After playing both playthroughs and their respective outcomes, I found the evil route to be better for gameplay but the good route to be more canonical to the game's overall story and outcome.

With the side missions, collectibles and different enemy factions in this game, it reminded me of the Crackdown franchise over on Xbox 360 which was a lot of fun. Speaking of collectibles you have dead drops that are satellite dishes that add more story lore for one of the side characters that you interact with during the second half of the game, and blast shards which are all over the map and there are over 350 of them which you can find using the dial on your map or using a guide to carefully make note of which ones are left to collect. I recommend saving the shards for post-story on a Normal difficulty playthrough and grab them at your own pace on Hard difficulty playthrough.

In terms of flaws, inFAMOUS does have clunky gameplay especially during climbing segments. Cole will automatically grab onto ledges and sometimes climbing up walls is pretty rough. The gameplay also feels like a third-person shooter because that's his main attack move which is strange but his melee attack is pretty weak. There are a lot of frustrating moments but fortunately the checkpoint system is very generous even on Hard difficulty so I'm not too bothered by that. The characters are decent but the twist at the end feels a bit underwhelming if I'm being honest. The journey was good and the comic book style art style was a nice touch to the narrative.

I did manage to get the Platinum trophy after two playthroughs which was achieved over the course of 10 days (with most of my day being at work or in town, so an average of about 3-4 hours of gameplay per day). Annoyingly there's no time tracker but I speculate that my first playthrough was about 15 hours of playtime with an additional 4 hours for post-game collectibles followed by a 12 hour playtime for the Hard difficulty mode.

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Game #27 - inFAMOUS 2 (PlayStation 3)
Acquired: 01.06.2021 - Started: 02.08.2026 - Finished: 07.08.2026 (Story), 09.08.2026 (Playthrough #2 + Platinum)

Next I play the second mainline game in the inFAMOUS franchise which was released in 2011. inFAMOUS 2 continues the events of the first game (though its not clear on which was considered canon between the Good and Evil routes but I speculate it's probably Good or Neutral) as the story moves away from Empire City towards New Marais which is inspired by New Orleans in terms of aesthetic and design.

Alongside Cole, Zeke also returns from the first game and he's been given more character and a change in attitude this time compared to the first game as he's more of an engineer who crafts items and spies on enemy opponents to support Cole and others throughout the course of the story. There are references to a few other characters from the first game but for the most part the cast are new.

So the story this time is that The Beast is coming and is heading towards the location where Cole is at and he needs to be prepped and ready. Like the first game, inFAMOUS 2 has three big areas you can explore; the first island which has stores and big buildings but not like Empire City, and the second island which is split into two parts; one being flooded with damaged buildings and another more fuel factory focused. The first island is just as good as the first game with its surroundings while the second island does change it up with the environment but it can feel like a chore at times especially with the amount of water that's in the way (since Cole can't touch water otherwise he'll take damage or die instantly).

inFAMOUS 2 also upgrades Cole's abilities. So each of the abilities from the first game do make their return but have been expanded so you can get different variants for each type which changes up how you want to play the game. The Karma system also returns and continues to change up the abilities you can earn depending on which route you take which are more elemental (fire and ice) this time around. I do like the variety of abilities though I do feel it doesn't cause as much of an impact in terms of damage compared to the first game. That said, the addition of the Ionic Vortex is a pretty neat feature as very handy in terms of taking care of numerous enemies in your way (it's this game's equivalent to the Ionic Storm from the previous game).

The story was better and surprisingly as bleak as the previous game, with better cutscenes and an interesting direction for the final act. The karma system was more generous this time because you can technically get both endings on the same playthrough by changing up your karma but you're better off starting a new playthrough which is what I did. Like before I chose the Good route for the Normal difficulty and the Evil route for the Hard difficulty.

Another new addition to inFAMOUS 2 are the types of Good and Evil side content you can do to build your karma. Good route includes deactivating bombs, saving people from being captured or executed, and healing people. Evil route includes assaulting protesters and musicians, attacking police and stealing shards from people. Like before, the Good and Evil side missions also return but are more story focused this time and feels more relevant to the main story, and by completing one it does remove a slot for the other.

One last bit of mention is the User-Generated Missions which is this game's online service where players can create new missions for everyone and it's a really cool idea to help expand the experience for your playthrough and I will say they have been pretty creative on what you can do. It's gotten to a point where trophy hunters have managed to take advantage of them to speed up some of the trophies that would normally be a struggle like collectibles.

Yes, the infamous shards from the first game is back and I was able to get all of them in this game in a matter of seconds thanks to the UGC missions. One less headache to deal with. The karma system can also be sped up with these missions but the developers did update the setup so you can't get tons of XP from doing this constantly. I will mention that part of the reason I started playing these games sooner was because of the news that the online servers will be shutdown on August 31st which impacts the trophy list for this game.

And like before I was able to obtain the Platinum trophy which was technically easier this time around and it allowed my progression on Hard difficulty to be much faster than anticipated. Like before, two playthroughs over the course of about 7-8 days (an average of about 3-4 hours of gameplay per day until the last two days where I was focused on getting the second playthrough out of the way as soon as possible). Annoyingly there's no time tracker but I speculate that my first playthrough was about 12 hours of playtime with an additional half an hour for a couple trophies followed by around ~8 hour playtime for the Hard difficulty mode.

Overall inFAMOUS 2 was an improvement to the original. Whilst the change in environment, extra variety of abilities and story were really solid, the AI and combat at times does set the game back a bit as I felt it wasn't as enjoyable as the first game in parts and that may be due to the power of the abilities themselves because you don't feel the destruction that it does unless it's the Vortex one. Also the amount of times that enemies kept shooting grenades and rocket launchers even in your face was pretty ridiculous.

A couple enemies were also pretty spongy in terms of health and were so tedious to take down it felt like the pacing was being impacted in some instances, which was mainly during the second half of the game. That said, I do think that inFAMOUS 2 is still worth a play as it also concludes the story surprisingly well (like how God of War Ragnarok concluded the Norse saga) and was a fun Platinum run.

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Game #28 - inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood (PlayStation 3)
Acquired: 10.08.2026 - Started: 15.08.2026 - Finished: 15.08.2026 (Story), 15.08.2026 (100% Completion)

Rounding out the marathon of inFAMOUS games is their standalone expansion released a few months after their second instalment. Festival of Blood is a fun non-canonical adventure as Cole ends up becoming a vampire and must do what's necessary to become human again before sunrise. The game takes place in the same location as inFAMOUS 2 but it's very vague on when the events take place considering how the ending of the previous game turned out - that said it does mean you can technically jump into this without having any knowledge of the previous games.

One notable difference with Festival of Blood is there's no karma system involved so you can attack civilians by sucking their blood and kill other vampires in the game and it won't cause any impact to how people see you. Not long after the first few missions you can freely explore the city by fighting vampires in their packs and collecting items scattered throughout the map that build your blood meter. The blood meter allows you to turn into a series of bats and traverse through the area pretty quickly which was pretty fun. You do need to suck people's blood to refill the bar, as the other abilities are done using electricity which Cole still has.

There are limited abilities in this game and you can unlock them from defeating enemies, finding collectibles and completing the User-Generated Missions which by August 31st would have the servers closed which would render the 100% trophy completion unobtainable and even a few power-ups locked behind the online system.

The story is also pretty solid and a fun take on the vampire concept, though you do have two User Generated Missions that are manually there by the developers which do feel out of place because its a different format to the others but overall it was very enjoyable. The difficulty is also pretty tough as you can find yourself getting hurt and killed much faster than you would expect which was pretty tedious during the final battle so you do have to be careful about your surroundings especially when dealing with dozens of vampires in front of you.

inFAMOUS: Festival of Blood is a pretty short game overall as I was able to complete the story and acquire all of the trophies in just 2 hours 35 minutes in total, but I do think this was worth the trip as it was a fun creative take on the mainline series. The game was released as a digital only PlayStation Network title so while you can acquire the inFAMOUS Collection in the US this is still a download code (whereas in comparison Killzone HD is available on-disc in the Killzone Trilogy release), so you have until July 2027 to purchase a license to this game before it disappears.


I've been distracted lately but thankfully I got my summaries of each of these games sorted. Next game I'm currently playing is...

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Game #29 - Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls (PlayStation 5)
Acquired: 06.08.2026 - Started: 16.08.2026 - Finished: 20.08.2026 (Story)
After watching Spider-Man: Brand New Day and anticipating the release of Avengers: Doomsday, I've been going through a mood to check out some Marvel content and a majority of that time had been rewatching the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe which was a fun revisit. Around the same time I also spent a good number of hours playing the new Arc System Works fighting game Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls which Sony published for their PlayStation platform (as well as PC though you need a PSN account to access it).

Developer Arc System Works are known for BlazBlue and Guilty Gear as well as a number of others like Battle Fantasia, DNF Duel, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Granblue Fantasy Versus and Sengoku Basara X so they have tons of experience with the fighting genre. I've played a bit of the original Guilty Gear and I do own Guilty Gear Xrd Revelator but it wasn't on my priority list to check out in the backlog, so in a sense Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls is my first proper venture into their gameplay style.


What stood out to me the most was its control scheme. You have the traditional low, medium and high attacks but whenever you pull a basic combo it unleashes a special attack which eats up the meter at the bottom of the screen. This does change up how you want to play because it basically tells you that you need to avoid simple button-mashing moves if you want to defeat your opponent. It's why in a lot of the battles that I've played that I try to go for unpredictable style move sets whilst also trying to pull off some special moves here and there. Each character has their own style of combat but the general idea remains the same.

The special moves themselves are very flashy and fun and its helped by the anime art style that Arc System Works have gone for here. From what was said in the game's official reveal, they went for a Japan style approach than a Western one and for that I think it ages pretty well especially with its 2.5D style approach that they also used with their recent Guilty Gear games and Granblue Fantasy Versus games. You also have the original Japanese voices included with the option to handpick which character should speak in another language which I think is amazing as it makes the interactions more fun to watch and it gives people more freedom to choose which voice they prefer.

Going back to the special Unique Attack moves you have three types based on how many points you have. The 50 point attack does a good number of damage and then it gets flashier with the 100 point attack followed by the 150 point attack. The bigger the points you earn, the better damage you can deal with your opponents.


Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls ultilises four characters in your team at a time against your opponent's team so you can swap to a different character if needed, though you can only do this a finite amount of times and sometimes it's not perfect in how you want to switch to a specific character during combat. But there's a special move, Tōkon Assemble, that has all four characters in your team come together to deal tons of damage to your opponent which is fun and it does have different outcomes depending on who's the leading character (i.e. which one you're currently playing as).

The base game roster is pretty neat because it's a good mixture of well-known characters as well as obscure but getting popular characters. In the Avengers team you have Iron Man, Captain America (Steve Rogers), Hulk and Black Panther (Shuri). In the Amazing Guardians team you have Spider-Man (Peter Parker), Ms. Marvel, Star-Lord (from Guardians of the Galaxy) and Peni Parker (whom you may know from her appearance in the Spider-Verse films). In the Unbreakable X-Men team you have Storm, Magik, Wolverine and Danger. In the Knights of Doom team you have Doctor Doom, Magneto, Carnage and Green Goblin. And in the Samurai Outriders (Midnight Suns) team, you have Ghost Rider (Robbie Reyes), Blade, Deadpool and Loki.

It's a cool mix and each of them play pretty well plus there'll be more joining the roster in the season passes, but what this roster basically shows is that they're able to grab characters across different parts of the roster especially considering in the past X-Men and Fantastic Four characters were sometimes left out for licensing concerns or something.

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My preference from the character roster has been Magik, Ms. Marvel, Peni Parker and Doctor Doom but I also add Danger and Ghost Rider from time to time. Forgot to mention that the voice cast for the English dub is really good too and even though I've switched a few to Japanese, the voice work in general is still solid overall.

The game offers a variety of modes, one of those is Story Mode which was surprisingly good as it gives you five different perspectives of the first half of the story with five different outcomes depending on which team you play. In addition, each team has a different artist from both Japan and the west which is a great way of connecting the two together in terms of the fandom I feel. The main villain of this game is the Champion and he's simple but effective with what the game offers. The Promoter is also very fun to see. The story took about 90 minutes for each team if you keep the cutscenes going in-between fights, and the final few chapters is where the game really throws in the difficulty curve which can be very challenging if you're not familiar with your character's move sets and how the combos work.

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In addition to the story and online there's the Versus mode and various others available for single player users like myself; Arcadia Rumble is a multi-player party type mode where you control a chibi character with the aim of obtaining the most amount of points in a mini-arena against other characters - and there's a couple rounds with some rounds being the traditional fighting style but how many KOs you can do within the time limit. It's a decent mode that works better with other players.

And then we have All-Star Arena which has two types; a survival mode where you defeat as many opponents as possible with a rogue-like card system available to support your team during the endurance. It's pretty solid and good for those who want a quick play. The other is arena mode where you have a grid that gives you a choice to choose between two paths which leads to unlocking stuff for each character in the roster. This mode is the best route to go after completing story mode in my opinion as it's good fun.

Overall I've had a great time playing Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls and whilst it's not a 100% completion, I have completed the game's story mode and played the various modes available. Trophies are achievable but it's not the main focus for me personally. Definitely got my money's worth and I may check out the season passes later down the line. Playtime overall is about 10 hours at best so far and I plan to play a bit here and there.


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Game #30 - Toy Story 3: The Video Game (PlayStation Portable via Classics version on PlayStation 5)
Acquired: PlayStation Plus Premium - Started: 04.09.2026 - Finished: 05.09.2026 (Story), 05.09.2026 (Platinum)
After taking a week off from PlayStation as part of the PlayStation Blackout (as I was using that time to also rewatch the Marvel Cinematic Universe films), I remembered that the PlayStation Portable version for Toy Story 3: The Video Game was being delisted at the end of September due to the remastered version of the PlayStation 3 version arriving the next month after, and wanted to check it out since it's not included in the new release by Atari and Digital Eclipse.

Back in the day, licensed video games have had different versions depending on the format you're playing because of console and budget limitations. LEGO Star Wars and Spider-Man had different results for example between console and portable, and Toy Story 3: The Video Game is no exception because the PlayStation Portable and Nintendo DS versions are a different experience to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions. Many will no doubt remember the console versions but the portable versions can also be pretty engaging.

The PlayStation Portable version was developed by Asobo Studio, who are more known nowadays for the A Plague Tale franchise, and it's a very interesting but short experience. The main story mode is divided into 13 levels and each level is a part of the film's story, from the dream sequence at the start all the way to returning home to Andy at the end.


The graphics were fine for what it is and controls were simple but effective. What's very interesting to see is that this game featured no enemies from start to finish, with the only exception being small stealth segments where you need to avoid humans from seeing you. If you get caught you're back to the start of that little segment with no punishment whatsoever. What this means is that you can blitz through the game without any form of challenge which will alienate those who like a fight during their journey.

You have collectibles along the way that unlock items that you can use for other modes and there is voiced dialogue featuring the same cast who have worked on the other non-film properties for the franchise. I will give credit to one level near the end of the game where you have three Aliens in different lanes and you need to switch between each one to solve the puzzles in front of them, and this reminded me of From Software's The Adventures of Cookie & Cream (Yuri Kuri Mix) which was a lot of fun to play.

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Overall the PlayStation Portable version for Toy Story 3: The Video Game is fine as a game but it's a very short experience. You can beat the story and unlock the Platinum trophy in just over 2 hours of playtime and there's no difficult segments at all during the game. As a portable experience I can see this keeping folks pre-occupied for a short journey and that's about it. Still worth checking out at least once.

Coming soon to the 2026 backlog we have Onimusha: Way of the Sword, Centennial Case: A Shijima Story, CONTROL Resonant (in October) and more.
 
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