Continuing our regular feature with quick-fire reviews and impressions of what I’ve been playing this week, old and new and a bit of both…
I’ve never played a Halo game before because I’ve never owned an Xbox before, but ironically on the same day that my day-one PlayStation Plus membership expired, along came Halo Infinite to lead me into this brave new world. I’m not massive into shooters, but this is a good one and it’s been polished to hell and back! Tons of stuff to massacre as you travel between fairly linear areas and almost open-worlds, which offer a bit of chaotic creativity, especially when hijacking some of the cool vehicles comes into play. Not sure I’ll need any more than the most direct route through the solo campaign to have my fill, but it looks and feels great so far!
A very long time ago I picked up underwater walking simulator Abzu very cheap on Switch and finally got around to playing it! All a bit arty-farty, but occasionally impressive and even mildly exhilarating, and a very pretty way to zone out for a couple of hours.
I played through a demo this week for a little game called Metroid Dread, also on Switch in case you didn’t know already, but as good as it plays, I’ve never been into Metroid enough to spend full-price Nintendo game money on it. Glad to have had a sniff of the party though, and maybe one day… Conversely, I also played an hour or so of Ori and the Will of the Wisps on Xbox Game Pass – visually jaw-dropping metroidvania, but I binned off the first game about half way through (which was too much to bin off and still grates!) because I was fed up of the way it felt to play, and this was very much more of the same, so I saved myself the bother this time. Get a move on please, new Hollow Knight!
I loved the Spectrum and Atari ST versions of Robocop, but first time playing the arcade game this week and it’s great! The sampled speech and punchy sound effects are a real highlight, but the whole thing captures the character perfectly, although I’m not sure he would have found it such hard going! Tough but fair, and patience is rewarded despite the timer. I think I might have a proper bash at this…
Speaking of Atari ST, I’ve always wanted but never owned Buggy Boy on there. Until now! And not only is it absolutely fantastic, to the point that it might even be one of the best racers on there, but I also got a nice new-old TV to play it on when I inherited the one from our bedroom! And that’s now two games from this week that you might be hearing a lot more about here soon. In the meantime, next week we’re heading deep down into Nosferatu the Vampyre on ZX Spectrum, so see you there!
Retro Arcadia 