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243	<article id="post-2991" class="post-2991 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog category-game-development category-my-projects category-technology category-video-games">
244		<header class="entry-header">
245						<h1 class="entry-title"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/07/27/27-07-2026-2026-stream-layout-finished/" rel="bookmark">27/07/2026 &#8211; 2026 Stream Layout Finished!</a></h1>
246			
247						<div class="entry-meta">
248				<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/07/27/27-07-2026-2026-stream-layout-finished/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2026-07-27T16:58:36+01:00">27/07/2026</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/author/adamlutt/" rel="author">Adam Lutton</a></span></span>			</div><!-- .entry-meta -->
249			
250					</header><!-- .entry-header -->
251
252				<div class="entry-content">
253			
254<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">New Stream Layouts</h1>
255
256
257
258<p>After months of work, the new stream layout is finally finished. Instead of going with two distinct themes for the gaming and game dev side of things, I decided to create one environment. I figured that this would save me time in the long run. As it turns out, it took a bloody long time anyway. But let&#8217;s take a look at the new scenes.</p>
259
260
261
262<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-2 wp-block-gallery-1 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
263<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-17.png"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" data-id="2997" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-17-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2997" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-17-1024x576.png 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-17-300x169.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-17.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
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267<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-25.png" target="_blank"><img decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" data-id="2994" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-25-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2994" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-25-1024x576.png 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-25-300x169.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-25-768x432.png 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-25-1536x864.png 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-25-500x281.png 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-25.png 1920w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
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269
270
271<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-35.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" data-id="2995" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-35-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2995" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-35-1024x576.png 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-35-300x169.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-35-768x432.png 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-35.png 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
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273
274
275<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-39.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" data-id="2996" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-39-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2996" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-39-1024x576.png 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-39-300x169.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-39-768x432.png 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-07-20-15-43-39.png 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
276</figure>
277
278
279
280<p>So the gaming scenes focus mostly on the TVs and work as a sort of faux streamer setup. Remember that I use a 3D avatar on screen, so I can just place it over the scene. I&#8217;ve added a variety of new shaders into the layouts. Including drop shadows, CRT filters, and my personal favourite, an adaptive lighting shader.</p>
281
282
283
284<figure class="wp-block-video"><video controls src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2026-06-08-22-29-48.webm"></video></figure>
285
286
287
288<p>As you can see, as I&#8217;m playing the game, the lighting on the little window where my avatar is changes. I think it adds a bit more immersion.</p>
289
290
291
292<p>As for the game dev scene, well, it&#8217;s actually not that much different from the last layout.</p>
293
294
295
296<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-2 wp-block-gallery-2 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
297<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-12.png" target="_blank"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" data-id="2998" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-12-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2998" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-12-1024x576.png 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-12-300x169.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-12-768x432.png 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-12-1536x864.png 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-12-500x281.png 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-12.png 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
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299
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301<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-38.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" data-id="2999" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-38-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2999" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-38-1024x576.png 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-38-300x169.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-38-768x432.png 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-38-1536x864.png 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-38.png 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
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305<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-44.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" data-id="3000" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-44-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3000" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-44-1024x576.png 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-44-300x169.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-44-768x432.png 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-44-1536x864.png 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-58-44.png 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
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309<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-00.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1920" height="1080" data-id="3001" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-00.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3001" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-00.png 1920w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Screenshot-2026-06-10-15-59-00-300x169.png 300w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1920px) 100v
309w, 1920px" /></a></figure>
310</figure>
311
312
313
314<p>There are new backgrounds for the AFK and chatting scenes, but the idea remains the same.</p>
315
316
317
318<p>However, I am now using Advanced Scene Switcher for two things: To better switch out windows when changing applications to require less manual adding of windows to the old scene switcher and also to swap out the backgrounds based on the time of day. Yes, that&#8217;s right. The backgrounds change every hour. It&#8217;s a very sudden transition, but at least it works.</p>
319
320
321
322<p>Now, I will be making adjustments, of course, but I&#8217;m fairly pleased with how it turned out. Especially considering that I am not great at modelling things in Blender. Which I&#8217;m looking to improve on in the relatively near future.</p>
323
324
325
326<p>Now I just need to make a new avatar. That will take even more time.</p>
327
328
329
330<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Updates On Tur</h1>
331
332
333
334<p>I&#8217;m not working on a video update for Tur, but I&#8217;ll fill you in on the most recent progress.</p>
335
336
337
338<p>I&#8217;ve been continuing the process of optimising, refactoring, and generally improving the code. Breaking things up into reusable scripts, especially to minimise having to change multiple things all at the same time. Things like the skill system and battle system have had major overhauls; more on that in a bit.</p>
339
340
341
342<p>I have removed the status icons from the map screen and redid the UI for the stamina, hunger, and tiredness bars. Players can still access the status menu via the Select button menu. I did this for one reason, to make larger, more detailed maps. Surprisingly, although the game is stuck inside of a loop, the camera still follows the player. So large maps are back on the table. Although to get this to work, I had to use a well-documented trick involving setting the parallax scrolling for the UI part at the top of the screen to zero, fixing it in place while the rest of the map moves.</p>
343
344
345
346<p>But with larger maps comes a new problem: more detailed tilesets are now required. I&#8217;m still working on it, but I have made some additions just to make it a little less repetitive in the visuals.</p>
347
348
349
350<p>Getting back to the battle system, I&#8217;ve made a number of changes to it. In regard to skills, the MP usage is now dynamically adjusted based on the strength difference of the player and enemy. So weaker enemies require less MP to damage, and vice versa for stronger enemies. I did this to both make easier battles less of a resource hog and to make harder battles make you reconsider using skills.</p>
351
352
353
354<p>But on top of this, player classes are now weak and strong to particular enemy types. I&#8217;ve broken it down to three categories: slash, magic, and pierce. Here&#8217;s a breakdown of how it affects each class:</p>
355
356
357
358<figure class="wp-block-image size-full"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/image.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="586" height="91" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/image.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3011" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/image.png 586w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/image-300x47.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/image-500x78.png 500w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 586px) 100vw, 586px" /></a></figure>
359
360
361
362<p>Now you may notice that each class also has an attack type. As you might have noticed, the default attack in the game dealt the same amount of damage to everyone. This has been changed also. So now certain enemies will be strong or weak to the default attacks of specific classes. Except the mage, where only the spells matter.</p>
363
364
365
366<p>This has had the side effect of completely scrambling the previous difficulty curve. It&#8217;s far more random now, and the player is likely to suffer random instant death. Which is both a good and bad thing. It makes the game harder, but it could be considered unfair. Unfortunately, it&#8217;s also quite difficult to balance around. I&#8217;ll likely make changes once I get more feedback after the next demo comes out.</p>
367
368
369
370<p>Lastly, there&#8217;s been a variety of adjustments to make the game more challenging and prevent cheesing. Notably, camps now check to see if you&#8217;ve actually been engaging in combat. If you skip battles now, you won&#8217;t gain any benefits from resting. Although, I have yet to fix the problem of the dialogue box reappearing when re-entering the map screen. I&#8217;ll get around to it eventually.</p>
371
372
373
374<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Cybersurfer Progress</h1>
375
376
377
378<p>Progress on Cybersurfer has been minimal, unfortunately. Although I have managed to create some things.</p>
379
380
381
382<p>First off, missiles. Lots of missiles.</p>
383
384
385
386<figure class="wp-block-video"><video controls src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/2026-04-15-15-
38651-19.webm"></video></figure>
387
388
389
390<p>Simple thing, just a model that aims towards a target and then blows up. However, getting those targets placed properly on the track did lead to a minor headache, as I forgot the correct way to transform the points from local spline to world space. And to top it off, it&#8217;s my first experiment with object pooling, a technique that should hopefully save some memory and processing power when I need to display a large number of objects at once.</p>
391
392
393
394<p>I&#8217;ve started enhancing the game&#8217;s graphics with some custom shaders. Currently it&#8217;s just missiles and boost pads that use them, along with the track that I already did some time ago. I&#8217;m affecting both the textures and the vertices. The missile spins using the shader, and the boost pad has constantly moving verts. There&#8217;s more to come as I create more assets.</p>
395
396
397
398<p>I&#8217;m starting to add sound into the game. The hoverboard now has a low hum that gets distorted as you move around; there&#8217;s a sound when grinding, and the missiles have a whistling sound followed by an explosion when they hit the target. All the audio mixers have been set up, so getting new sounds added shouldn&#8217;t be too hard. It&#8217;s really just finding the right sounds that&#8217;s the issue.</p>
399
400
401
402<p>I&#8217;ve been fiddling with post-processing in order to improve reflections in the game, but with no luck. I also tried moving from the default renderer to URP, but this didn&#8217;t help at all. I guess what I&#8217;m trying to do with reflections perhaps requires a more custom solution or upgrading my Unity version. Post-processing does offer screen-space reflections, but it&#8217;s very visually noisy, and the range on it is limited. A camera-based solution would likely be better, but I&#8217;m not quite sure how to go about doing it.</p>
403
404
405
406<p>Currently, I&#8217;m relearning aspects of Blender so that I can properly use LODs for objects and to recreate the character model, as that one I have is very misproportioned, meaning that the animations look a bit off. Furthermore, other issues have arisen with animations causing verts to go haywire. Seeing as the model wasn&#8217;t mine to begin, I should just make my own and do it properly.</p>
407
408
409
410<p>But I need to properly learn how Blender works and improve my workflow before doing so. Which is my current objective.</p>
411
412
413
414<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Heatwaves and Football</h1>
415
416
417
418<p>In other news, it&#8217;s been really hot. This has caused my stream schedule to go a bit awry, as it is very difficult to stream when it is nearly 30°C in here. Having my window open invites both bugs and noise pollution, so I opted to wait until the heatwave had died down a bit, which it now has.</p>
419
420
421
422<p>During all this, the World Cup was occurring. England lost against Argentina, of course, but beat France in the 3rd place match, which was fun to watch. Although I only caught the second half. This time around, I decided to not watch the matches as they were airing because, quite frankly, sitting through those games has become agonising. So I choose to watch the highlights on YouTube instead and spend my time doing other things. But I still got to appreciate the good parts. Bellingham did a very good job in a lot of those games.</p>
423
424
425
426<p>Finally, my friend has informed me that Iceland sells Vanilla Coke. The proper, full fat, UK version. Every other store seems to only stock the Coke Zero version. Needless to say, I purchased some. Although my friend also brought a bunch over at my request from a wholesaler that Iceland runs. Which means that I now own 40 cans of it. Or did; I&#8217;ve drunk a few since.</p>
427
428
429
430<p>I don&#8217;t know if they&#8217;ve always had them or if it&#8217;s just a limited run for the summer. Hopefully it&#8217;s the former, but who knows. Knowing how much the government loves banning and taxing things, I suspect it won&#8217;t last. Which is why I was buying it from import shops the last few years.</p>
431
432
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434<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide"/>
435
436
437
438<p>I&#8217;ve noticed that my updates for this blog seem to be rare these days. Maybe around 3-5 posts in a year. That&#8217;s not really good enough. Perhaps I should make posts about the gaming videos I put up. Although I don&#8217;t think that would be a good use of bandwidth. I&#8217;ll try to post more, but you know I probably won&#8217;t.</p>
439
440
441
442<p style="background-color:#a30003" class="has-text-color has-background has-white-color">-Adam</p>
443					</div><!-- .entry-content -->
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457	<article id="post-2896" class="post-2896 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-anime category-blog category-the-den category-video-games">
458		<header class="entry-header">
459						<h1 class="entry-title"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/07/20/admans-den-january-june-2026/" rel="bookmark">ADMAN&#8217;s Den: January &#8211; June 2026</a></h1>
460			
461						<div class="entry-meta">
462				<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/07/20/admans-den-january-june-2026/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2026-07-20T11:21:53+01:00">20/07/2026</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/author/adamlutt/" rel="author">Adam Lutton</a></span></span>			</div><!-- .entry-meta -->
463			
464					</header><!-- .entry-header -->
465
466				<div class="entry-content">
467			
468<p>Apologies for the lateness in this one. I&#8217;ve been so busy lately that I outright forgot to update this post.</p>
469
470
471
472<h1 class="wp-block-heading">ReCore</h1>
473
474
475
476<p>This was one of those games that was meant to be a selling point for the Xbox One, but much like that c
476onsole as a whole, it&#8217;s kind of shit.</p>
477
478
479
480<p>It&#8217;s an incredibly boring game. Moving around is slow and tedious, with few fast travel options and no way of covering large amounts of ground quickly. The combat is horrid. It&#8217;s a third-person shooter where you just dump ammo into fast-moving robots and then pull out their cores once they get low enough. It&#8217;s extremely repetitive. Also, the enemies have levels, and many high-level enemies are in the same areas as low-level starting enemies. So if you take a wrong turn somewhere, you&#8217;ll either get minced or spend forever dumping ammo into someone.</p>
481
482
483
484<p>The platforming sections are decent, but the crappy movement mechanics don&#8217;t do it any favours.</p>
485
486
487
488<p>And the cherry on top of this shit pile? Shit tons of crafting bullshit that feels like a serious afterthought.</p>
489
490
491
492<p>I did not bother finishing the game. It&#8217;s a complete waste of time.</p>
493
494
495
496<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Uncharted: The Lost Legacy</h1>
497
498
499
500<p>One of the two Uncharted games I hadn&#8217;t gotten around to playing yet, the other being the Vita game, Golden Abyss. I went with the PC version of the game, as I quite frankly cannot be arsed to turn on my PS4 these days. The PC version seems to be mostly fine. I know it&#8217;s received multiple updates since its launch, which have greatly improved performance, among other issues.</p>
501
502
503
504<p>The easiest description of this game would be that it&#8217;s the &#8220;buddy cop&#8221; film of the Uncharted series. Chloe from Uncharted 2 &amp; 3 returns along with Nadine, the big afro lady from Uncharted 4, who is in the running for the worst-written villain ever. Nadine is still the worst character in this series by a long shot. She is a perpetually pissed woman who refuses to relax or even reconsider her mistakes.</p>
505
506
507
508<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260115200001_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260115200001_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2936" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260115200001_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260115200001_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260115200001_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260115200001_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260115200001_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260115200001_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
509
510
511
512<p>The two characters are constantly talking to each other in the modern video game way. Which is to say, it is extremely annoying.</p>
513
514
515
516<p>One chapter is a very large area where you get to drive a Jeep around, going to various points on the map. This was probably the most interesting section of the game. Going to different places in any order to fulfil a main objective. Each area being its own puzzle or challenge. There&#8217;s also a hidden monkey temple you can access by finding a collectable specific to this area.</p>
517
518
519
520<p>The gun combat is still not great. It&#8217;s always been a bit weak in this series. Swimmy controls and aiming, general lack of precision, and bullet-spongy enemies are something Naughty Dog refuses to improve on.</p>
521
522
523
524<p>Finally, the villain. He&#8217;s just a collector looking for more stuff and becoming greedy about it. And of course, he has a private military at his fingertips. The easiest way to describe him is &#8220;half-arsed.&#8221;</p>
525
526
527
528<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260116211332_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260116211332_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2937" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260116211332_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260116211332_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260116211332_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260116211332_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260116211332_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260116211332_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
529
530
531
532<p>That&#8217;s not to say I dislike the game, but I wasn&#8217;t that impressed with it either. There are some good ideas, but I&#8217;ve gotten so sick of modern video game tropes that Naughty Dog practically pioneered that it lowered my opinion of the game as a whole.</p>
533
534
535
536<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT5Q90DkL2QUlJw6uSGeefDU">Full playthrough here.</a></p>
537
538
539
540<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii</h1>
541
542
543
544<p>Yet another spin-off in the Like A Dragon / Yakuza series. This time, everyone&#8217;s favourite one-eyed crazy man, Majima, becomes a pirate. Which is possibly the most hilarious and fitting premise for him. Unfortunately, the execution is a bit disappointing.</p>
545
546
547
548<p>Majima starts the game with amnesia and meets a young boy named Noah, who has a dad who&#8217;s a bit of a drunk. After Majima beats the shit out of him and the people harassing his bar, one thing leads to another, and we end up running a pirate crew on a ship. This is then followed by going to the island from the end of Infinite Wealth and meeting the religious group there. After that, you get wind of treasure and go off on your merry adventure.</p>
549
550
551
552<p>Noah is a bit of a drag. He can&#8217;t do much, as he is both a child and an asthma sufferer. I generally hate kids in games, so I won&#8217;t waste much time on the point. I just don&#8217;t like him much as a character.</p>
553
554
555
556<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260109210404_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260109210404_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2944" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260109210404_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260109210404_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260109210404_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260109210404_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260109210404_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260109210404_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
557
558
559
560<p>Majima in general seems like he doesn&#8217;t care about what&#8217;s going on in the plot. He acts uninterested a lot of the time, or worse, uninvolved. Giving off a &#8220;Why am I here&#8221; kind of vibe.</p>
561
562
563
564<p>Getting into the gameplay, it&#8217;s an action game again this time around. They&#8217;ve added a jump button, meaning that Majima can do aerial attacks and juggling. I hate to say it&#8217;s some &#8220;anime shit,&#8221; but there&#8217;s not much else I can compare it to. Combat styles return. You have his standard Mad Dog style and then the Pirate style. The latter gives you a gun and a grappling hook. It&#8217;s certainly interesting, but it doesn&#8217;
564t really provide the variety this series desperately needs.</p>
565
566
567
568<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260121194003_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260121194003_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2942" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260121194003_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260121194003_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260121194003_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260121194003_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260121194003_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260121194003_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
569
570
571
572<p>The ship combat is certainly new and inspired heavily by Assassin&#8217;s Creed IV. But unlike Black Flag, I struggled to enjoy it that much. It&#8217;s really slow, there&#8217;s a lot of annoying micro management, and the colosseum battles relating to it are bloody awful after a while. I&#8217;ll give them credit for trying to do something different, but it really sucks after a while, especially if you&#8217;re the type that tries to do all the side stuff.</p>
573
574
575
576<p>At 5 chapters long, you&#8217;d expect the game to be short. And for a Yakuza game, it is. However, it&#8217;s about 50-60 hours if you want to do EVERYTHING. And once again, side quest hell is a thing. But it seems to be fully encapsulated inside of chapter 2. Or rather, everything gets dumped on you then. No other side stories appear in the later chapters; it&#8217;s all dumped then. My playtime at the start of chapter 2 was 10 hours-ish; by the end of the chapter, it was closer to 40 hours.</p>
577
578
579
580<p>This was also a bit of a problem in Infinite Wealth as well; I would spend so long on side content, I&#8217;d completely forget the main plot.</p>
581
582
583
584<p>With all that said, the lead up to the ending seems very quick. The progress made in Chapters 4 &amp; 5 ends up being fast-tracked, and then it&#8217;s all over.</p>
585
586
587
588<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260201214500_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260201214500_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2943" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260201214500_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260201214500_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260201214500_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260201214500_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260201214500_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260201214500_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
589
590
591
592<p>Before I get to my concluding points, the Minato Ward Girls side quest ending was a fucking fever dream. Basically, you gather a handful of girls to meet your first mate, but what follows is a fully live-action dating show-esque nightmare, complete with watching the real actor for your first mate bathing himself. What the fuck.</p>
593
594
595
596<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260208193902_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260208193902_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2941" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260208193902_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260208193902_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260208193902_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260208193902_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260208193902_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260208193902_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">I&#8217;ll spare you the images of him bathing.</figcaption></figure>
597
598
599
600<p>Anyway, I&#8217;m hoping that they&#8217;ll finally move on from these characters. I&#8217;m praying Stranger Than Heaven changes things enough and is successful to the point where they can finally put these characters to rest. Majima has stopped being the sinister, crazy, and loveable man that he originally was but is also not the cool-headed man he was in Zero. He&#8217;s basically a clown at this point. And clowns are not fun to hang around with long-term.</p>
601
602
603
604<h1 class="wp-block-heading">LocoRoco 2</h1>
605
606
607
608<p>I remember liking the original LocoRoco when I played it on PSP many eons ago. Unfortunately, this one got on my nerves after a while.</p>
609
610
611
612<p>Don&#8217;
612t get me wrong, the visuals, music, and overall vibes are still very solid. All the LocoRoco, NPCs, and enemy designs are nice and vibrant. Seeing all the various things animate is neat too.</p>
613
614
615
616<p>That said, it comes at a cost. Emulating the game is surprisingly demanding. It runs like a tortoise through sludge at 1080p, and I was only able to get it to run stably at 540p, which is around the resolution of a PS Vita.</p>
617
618
619
620<p>But I digress, my issues with the game. Predominantly, the physics-based platforming becomes extremely frustrating, especially near the end of the game. And having that borderline OCD thought process where I have to collect every single dude to make myself bigger, taking damage, which would cause me to lose them, due to some wonky physics enraged me more than it should have.</p>
621
622
623
624<p>Furthermore, most of the levels have areas that you can&#8217;t access because you lack the skill to do it. But these skills are just randomly tutorialised to you at points in the game and are not an item or anything. They just show you the controls, but for some reason, you&#8217;re not allowed to use them until that point. This is more annoying in context, as I saw the tutorials and thought, &#8220;Why couldn&#8217;t I do this before?&#8221;</p>
625
626
627
628<p>However, by the time I finished the game, I lost all motivation to go back to get the rest of the collectables. I was so fed up with the game.</p>
629
630
631
632<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT4uYeQL6vk8GRGSUOMy1rWU">Full playthrough here.</a></p>
633
634
635
636<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2</h1>
637
638
639
640<p>SPACE MARINES?! The Sequel. After many years, they made a sequel and actually added proper co-op this time. Not that I played that way; I stuck to single-player.</p>
641
642
643
644<p>That said, it&#8217;s about as repetitive as the first game. There&#8217;s a real lack of enemy and gameplay variety. All the guns feel the same, all the melee weapons feel the same, and most of the enemies die in the same way.</p>
645
646
647
648<p>The swarm is impressive technology-wise, but actually fighting them is quite brain dead. The forgiving parry system for every single attack that they try renders the enemies little to no challenge at all. However, once you get later into the game, the swarm is replaced by Chaos Marines. But this does not alleviate my criticisms. They&#8217;re no fun to fight either.</p>
649
650
651
652<p>If I were playing in co-op, perhaps I would have had a more enjoyable time, but as-is, I found the game to be very average. Also, I only played the main story campaign and did not try the co-op-specific missions.</p>
653
654
655
656<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT7RqYKrsl3fpJe-x5qEA8Jd">Story campaign playthrough here.</a></p>
657
658
659
660<h1 class="wp-block-heading">LEGO BrickTales</h1>
661
662
663
664<p>One of my biggest pet peeves about Lego games is that more often than not, it is Lego objects inside of a normal world, and rarely do we ever see a <strong>fully</strong> Lego world. Where <em><strong>everything</strong></em> is made from Lego. And I mean <strong>EVERYTHING</strong>.</p>
665
666
667
668<p>However, Lego BrickTales falls into the latter category. Every object, every world, and every character is Lego, no matter how big or small.</p>
669
670
671
672<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260303195050_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260303195050_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2950" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260303195050_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260303195050_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260303195050_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260303195050_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260303195050_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260303195050_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
673
674
675
676<p>Anyway, the game is about travelling to different Lego worlds in order to find crystals that power up a machine that helps you rebuild your grandad&#8217;s theme park. And the key selling point is that you are the one building the structures inside the game.</p>
677
678
679
680<p>At various points in the game, you&#8217;ll get asked to build bridges, helicopters, and various other things. Once complete, they&#8217;ll exist in the world exactly the way you built it. And it can actually be somewhat challenging at times. During your first time doing the puzzles, you&#8217;re given a limited pool of pieces to use. And once you make your structure, the game then runs a simulation on it to see how sturdy it is and if it can withstand a player walking on it or if they get stuck at all.</p>
681
682
683
684<p>I really like it conceptually. But it&#8217;s a bit of a boring collectathon outside of that mechanic. You can get a free-build function after finishing each puzzle, but I rarely bothered to do it unless I really wanted to improve the look of something.</p>
685
686
687
688<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT4NaHtiexY5t62gKYU8aPDf">Full playthrough here.</a></p>
689
690
691
692<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Rise Of The Ronin</h1>
693
694
695
696<p>This game takes place at the tail end of the Shogunate&#8217;s reign in Japan. And follows the story of Sakamoto Ryouma. But unlike Yakuza Ishin, you don&#8217;t play as Ryouma himself. Instead, you play as one of two twins from a secret ninja clan that are trying to stop the evil gaijin menace from ruining Japan.</p>
697
698
699
700<p>Basically, you get to make your own evil twin because during the first mission you have to choose which one you get to play as, and then for the rest of the game they betray you and play the villain for the rest of the game.</p>
701
702
703
704<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260226092323_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260226092323_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2955" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260226092323_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260226092323_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260226092323_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260226092323_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260226092323_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260226092323_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
705
706
707
708<p>Getting back to Sakamoto Ryouma for a bit, he&#8217;s a fun character. Very likable, extremely supportive, and caring for the main character. Unfortunately, if you know your history, you know 
708what happens to him. Or so you would think. As it turns out, the story changes based on your decisions and what missions you do. So you can change his fate, along with other characters.</p>
709
710
711
712<div class="wp-block-group is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-core-group-is-layout-ad2f72ca wp-block-group-is-layout-flex">
713<p>Basically, you can choose to side with Shogunate or Anti-Shogunate forces. Your choices will determine what missions you&#8217;ll get and even change out the bosses. It&#8217;s more significant than I expected, but not as in-depth as it maybe could go. But being an open-world game, perhaps it&#8217;s better to hold back a bit.</p>
714</div>
715
716
717
718<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308155631_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308155631_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2956" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308155631_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308155631_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308155631_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308155631_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308155631_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308155631_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
719
720
721
722<p>There are three chapters with three areas to explore. Yokohama, Edo (Tokyo), and Kyoto. Each one taking place during different points in the timeline.</p>
723
724
725
726<p>To get around, you obtain a glider. Which is a bit far-fetched, but hell, it&#8217;s a video game. You also get a horse. And this game does a small thing that I really appreciate: when you call your horse, you immediately mount it. It doesn&#8217;t just stand there or run past you. Eat your heart out, Red Dead.</p>
727
728
729
730<p>But let&#8217;s get into the combat. It&#8217;s not quite Nioh, but it does have different combat stances. There&#8217;s a jump button and a parry button, but not quite like Wo Long. It&#8217;s a very robust combat system. Certainly way better than Ghost Of Tsushima, as it is way less floaty and weird. Loot is also part of it, but again, it doesn&#8217;t go crazy like Nioh does, but there&#8217;s a good amount of stuff. But once you get orange gear, you basically stick with it.</p>
731
732
733
734<p>Tsushima does have one thing over Ronin: far more interesting exploration. Ghost Of Tsushima&#8217;s puzzle shrines are far more interesting than most of the explorable places here. That&#8217;s partly because Ronin isn&#8217;t great at rewarding the player. Tsushima gives you a specific key item; Ronin just gives you another piece of equipment that you more often than not have a better version of anyway. Like getting another sword. More often than not, I was hunting down cats for a particular NPC. A quest line that only gives a couple of cosmetic rewards that are worth having.</p>
735
736
737
738<p>That said, exploration is certainly beneficial. I became so overpowered that most encounters were outright trivial. So I decided to challenge myself for a few of them and fight them non-lethally, either using wooden weapons or fighting people barehanded. Which was a lot of fun. You can play the entire game like this, and in certain conditions, it can affect the outcome of a mission.</p>
739
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741
742<figure class="wp-block-gallery has-nested-images columns-default is-cropped wp-block-gallery-3 is-layout-flex wp-block-gallery-is-layout-flex">
743<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308203720_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" data-id="2958" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308203720_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2958" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308203720_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308203720_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308203720_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308203720_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308203720_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308203720_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
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746
747<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308210235_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" data-id="2959" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308210235_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2959" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308210235_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308210235_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308210235_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308210235_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308210235_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260308210235_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
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751<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260228202322_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" data-id="2960" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260228202322_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2960" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260228202322_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260228202322_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260228202322_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260228202322_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260228202322_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260228202322_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
752</figure>
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754
755
756<p>Finally, there&#8217;s a romance system. It&#8217;s nothing crazy, really. But you can get into a relationship with someone, break up with them, and then get into a relationship with someone else. I do somewhat regret playing as a female character, but the game does let you romance both male and female characters regardless.</p>
757
758
759
760<p>Rise Of The Ronin is an underrated game. The performance problems certainly bring it down a bit, but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with the game and played it damn near constantly for several months.</p>
761
762
763
764<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Death Stranding 2</h1>
765
766
767
768<p>Norman Reedus going for a really long walk, the sequel. This is certainly an improvement to the original game. Some of the jank has been polished away, and the game now showers you with tools and weapons early on to make your life easier and faster. As opposed to the drip feeding of them in the previous game. You get vehicles and suppressed guns in the first area if you&#8217;re willing to 5-star the people there.</p>
769
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771
772<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260327213222_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260327213222_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2967" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260327213222_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260327213222_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260327213222_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260327213222_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260327213222_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260327213222_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
773
774
775
776<p>Also, there are non-lethal guns now. I can&#8217;t remember if they were a thing in the original, as I think I stuck to using the bola gun. But it makes encounters a lot easier to deal with at any rate. Plus, there are suppressed weapons as well, so stealth is back on the menu. The game does give you quite a lot of weapons and tools, but I didn&#8217;t use that many of them. Popping people in the head seemed the most effective method. One last note on guns: you can input a code, and it will make any gun lethal. But I never used that.</p>
777
778
779
780<p>Except when it comes to BTs. The most effective way of dealing with them? Summoning your own BT like a goddamn Pokemon! That&#8217;s right, the nightmare tar creatures, which, upon touching a human being, will cause a nuclear-tier explosion, can now be pulled into a BT fight to assist you. Except they&#8217;re horribly overpowered. What&#8217;s worse, there&#8217;s no limit on which ones you can capture, including bosses. So every time I had to deal with a BT, I would summon &#8220;The Tar Lord&#8221;, a BT you can obtain from a submission about 2/3 of the way through the game, and it would just smoke whatever I was up against.</p>
781
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783
784<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260328162247_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260328162247_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2968" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260328162247_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260328162247_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260328162247_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260328162247_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260328162247_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260328162247_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
785
786
787
788<p>There are roads to be built, of course. And I spent so damn long building them. Along with monorails. It does make getting around easier, but the sheer amount of resources and time spent building them, only to not really see the fruit of your labour until the very end of the game, takes its toll.</p>
789
790
791
792<p>For every main order or new facility added to the map, I probably spent about 2 to 10 hours just doing infrastru
792cture building and levelling up the facilities. I&#8217;d find myself going from one end of the map to the other and then back again, and then back again, and then back again, and so on. Each time with cargo from either new orders or just picked up from the ground. I likely extended out the game&#8217;s playtime by several dozen hours.</p>
793
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795
796<p>Unfortunately, this had the side effect of completely pulling me out of the story and slowing the pacing to an absolute crawl. Now perhaps it&#8217;s partly my fault, but keep in mind, I would have to do these upgrades after the end of the game anyway, and I would always prefer to do most of the content before the end rather than after, because once I get to the end, I basically lose interest in playing any more.</p>
797
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799
800<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260410212337_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260410212337_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2970" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260410212337_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260410212337_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260410212337_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260410212337_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260410212337_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260410212337_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
801
802
803
804<p>On the subject of the end of the game, it&#8217;s a cool set piece, but it&#8217;s completely unplayable. It&#8217;s entirely a cutscene. But as a kick in the shin, it&#8217;s the kind of thing that was playable in MGS4. If you know what section I&#8217;m talking about, you would understand why I&#8217;m not happy about it.</p>
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807
808<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260403212501_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260403212501_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2969" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260403212501_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260403212501_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260403212501_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260403212501_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260403212501_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260403212501_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
809
810
811
812<p>Overall, I enjoyed Death Stranding 2. But it is a podcast game, a very long podcast game. It refines much of the first game&#8217;s mechanics and ideas, but the novelty of it has long since passed. I don&#8217;t know what they could do from here, but I think they should explore other aspects of the world and perhaps other gameplay ideas. I think a co-op big BT hunting game could be neat.</p>
813
814
815
816<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Crimson Desert</h1>
817
818
819
820<p>I originally jotted down this game with the expectation that I would play more of it. Alas, I&#8217;ve only put in maybe a dozen hours at most. Considering the game is about 300 hours or so long, what I&#8217;m about to talk about is from very early in the game.</p>
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823
824<p>The game starts with a character who is a Greymane, which I think is the game&#8217;s equivalent of being Scottish. As such, everyone hates you for some reason. After a tutorial fight, you&#8217;re killed and then brought back to life again. And then I get dragged to some town where I have to do a bunch of boring side quests, including cleaning a fucking chimney. Which I end up keeping the broom from because inventory management is a nightmare.</p>
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826
827
828<p>The controls are a complicated mess. Combat requires literal fighting game inputs. Talking to people requires you to aim at them and then press a button. But sometimes it&#8217;s a hold instead of a press because this game is very inconsistent. And then God forbid you need to pick something off the ground. Because you can pick up EVERYTHING, so if there are multiple things on the ground, you&#8217;re going to be grabbing all of it in the struggle.</p>
829
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831
832<p>The map is massive. With a huge fog of war covering all of it. There are bells in the world you can ring to clear the fog, but the game does a bad job of highlighting them on your map. Likewise for fast travel points. Which not only do not get highlighted 
832when nearby but also require you to step on them for multiple seconds to activate them. So if you&#8217;re looking to fast travel to a town and wondering why you can&#8217;t, that&#8217;s why.</p>
833
834
835
836<p>You do get the ability to fly and glide early on, but it&#8217;s incredibly slow. There are flying mounts and even jet packs, but I&#8217;ve not run into those yet.</p>
837
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839
840<p>As for performance, well, after several patches it has improved a bit. But initially, my PC was struggling even at low settings. Now I can get a good mix of medium and high with some help from DLSS. Although the early days were rough. Flickering lights, LODs being broken, and more. It&#8217;s certainly in a better state now.</p>
841
842
843
844<p>Input is a problem; there&#8217;s a delay to everything, and the character feels sluggish to move around.</p>
845
846
847
848<p>Generally, the game is a mess to figure out. It&#8217;s like they piled on a hundred and one ideas without thinking about the consequences to the controls, the gameplay, or the player&#8217;s understanding of both. Sometimes more content is not the solution. And it certainly isn&#8217;t a replacement for Dragon&#8217;s Dogma that I was hoping for. But I&#8217;ll keep chipping at it when I can.</p>
849
850
851
852<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Ryse: Son Of Rome</h1>
853
854
855
856<p>Do you yearn for Rome? For me, not so much. More of a British Empire guy myself. But anyway, this game was an Xbox. One title back in the day that eventually got a PC release. Developed by Crytek.</p>
857
858
859
860<p>Starting off with performance. Initially, it was terrible. Constant stuttering and a lower than ideal framerate. After a few config file changes, I got it running smooth as butter.</p>
861
862
863
864<p>Being a Crytek game, there&#8217;s an expectation about graphics, and I&#8217;m happy to say that the game still looks pretty good. There are some dated models and textures here and there, but overall, it&#8217;s still quite impressive what they managed to achieve.</p>
865
866
867
868<p>Now is the game good? Not really. But it&#8217;s not exactly bad either. It&#8217;s very mediocre.</p>
869
870
871
872<p>The game is extremely one-note. There is combat and nothing else. I hope you like X, X, X, Y button mashing with colour-coded finishers, because that is the entire game. And I do mean the entire game. Every encounter is just combat. The only changes are times when you have to gang up with your Roman comrades to build a shield turtle to assault a position and when you have a reason to throw a spear at someone.</p>
873
874
875
876<p>No puzzles. No deeper combat mechanics. It&#8217;s mind-numbingly mundane.</p>
877
878
879
880<p>As for the story, there&#8217;s a subplot involving gods pulling strings to manipulate things, but primarily, the plot is about the main character getting revenge for the death of his family. And if that sounds like the plot of Gladiator, congratulations, you&#8217;ve figured out the game&#8217;s main point of inspiration.</p>
881
882
883
884<p>It can&#8217;t recommend the game, but it is at least pretty. Also, there are elephants at one point.</p>
885
886
887
888<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT5M4yApeRpue-wBqdC17sNZ">Playthrough here.</a></p>
889
890
891
892<h1 class="wp-block-heading">Resident Evil 4 Remake</h1>
893
894
895
896<p>I really enjoyed the original RE4. It was very whacky in places, but that is part of the charm. The significantly more serious remake has disappointed me in several places.</p>
897
898
899
900<p>The core gameplay, the combat, especially the shooting, is considerably worse than the original&#8217;s. Less accurate, more randomness, and a lot more weight. The animation priority system also gets in the way, throwing me off my target or letting an enemy grab me from several metres away. It&#8217;s considerably more infuriating than the original in my opinion.</p>
901
902
903
904<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260426142525_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260426142525_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2977" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260426142525_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260426142525_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260426142525_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260426142525_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260426142525_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260426142525_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Ashley is better looking in this game, but I suspect the haircut is hiding her massive monkey ears.</figcaption></figure>
905
906
907
908<p>There are many similarities in the maps. Some feel mirrored from the original, while others have been condensed down. But there are many sections just missing outright. Remember the lava level in the castle part? That&#8217;s gone. Plus, several boss fights have either been removed or changed over to Ada&#8217;s story.</p>
909
910
911
912<p>Ada&#8217;s story is actually longer than the original but is lacking some key fights. The horrid Krauser fight is completely omitted, but the fight against Saddler has changed in location and is a bit more interesting. Although it&#8217;s also harder due to being able to get stun-locked easier.</p>
913
914
915
916<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260430204927_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260430204927_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2979" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260430204927_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260430204927_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260430204927_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260430204927_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260430204927_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/20260430204927_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
917
918
919
920<p>I wish I had more to say about the game, but it&#8217;s so lacking in the charm and humour of the original that it ends up being forgettable. I had more fun playing Resident Evil Village and RE2 than this. And I certainly enjoyed the original way more. But that&#8217;s not to say it&#8217;s a bad game. I could easily recommend it, but I can&#8217;t say that it&#8217;s better.</p>
921
922
923
924<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT4gSzk_5aJGERg-9Ubng
9241fh">Full playthrough here.</a></p>
925
926
927
928<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Other Games</h1>
929
930
931
932<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Planet Of Lana 2</h2>
933
934
935
936<p>The first game was a fun little experience in the same vein as Limbo and Another World. The sequel maintains the quality of the music and art while expanding the world a bit. There are new biomes like a snowy mountain, a jungle, and even a city. However, you&#8217;re never really in these locations for too long. Which is fine because it keeps things varied and helps the pacing. The game ends on a cliffhanger, so I suppose a third game is planned.</p>
937
938
939
940<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT59NNNUjUSM65-RLofY7OPH">Playthrough here.</a></p>
941
942
943
944<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Forza Horizon 6</h2>
945
946
947
948<p>This is just the same game as the last four, but now it&#8217;s in Japan. The cars still drive like a boat, the events are incredibly stale, and I outright muted the game because everyone still talks like an utter prat. But hey, now it&#8217;s in an incredibly corporate, sterile, lifeless husk version of Japan! Where basically no one is Japanese.</p>
949
950
951
952<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Forza-Horizon-6-Screenshot-2026.05.23-23.55.08.70.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Forza-Horizon-6-Screenshot-2026.05.23-23.55.08.70-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2982" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Forza-Horizon-6-Screenshot-2026.05.23-23.55.08.70-1024x576.png 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Forza-Horizon-6-Screenshot-2026.05.23-23.55.08.70-300x169.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Forza-Horizon-6-Screenshot-2026.05.23-23.55.08.70-768x432.png 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Forza-Horizon-6-Screenshot-2026.05.23-23.55.08.70-1536x864.png 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Forza-Horizon-6-Screenshot-2026.05.23-23.55.08.70-500x281.png 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Forza-Horizon-6-Screenshot-2026.05.23-23.55.08.70.png 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">Guys live like this. There are no problems, this is fine. You don&#8217;t need anything more.</figcaption></figure>
953
954
955
956<p>I haven&#8217;t been arsed to even finish it, as I ran out of races to do, but the game wants me to do dumb events like speed traps just to be able to get to the last part of the game. But I&#8217;m too damn bored of it.</p>
957
958
959
960<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Replaced</h2>
961
962
963
964<p>Some years back there was a pixel art cyberpunk game that caught everyone&#8217;s attention called &#8220;The Last Night&#8221;. This isn&#8217;t that, but it does tick some of the same boxes. The combat is very Batman-esque, but the animation priority often causes you to take damage in the few frames between finishing an animation and gaining control again. You also can&#8217;t break out of these animations, but you can be damaged during them. Which breaks the flow and causes it to become frustrating.</p>
965
966
967
968<p>The story is lame. Basically, you&#8217;re an AI inside of a human brain, and that causes all manner of issues, so now you have to go back to the lab to try and fix it. Meanwhile, you&#8217;re being chased by everyone. The writing feels like a teenager wrote it. The characterisation is lacking as well.</p>
969
970
971
972<p>And lastly, there&#8217;s a side quest involving a girl repairing old arcade machines that you can play. And they&#8217;re all terrible.</p>
973
974
975
976<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT68rxBmHC5TgszHXVcNyjwk">Playthrough here.</a></p>
977
978
979
980<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-large-font-size">Anime Corner:</h1>
981
982
983
984<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Needy Girl Overdose</h2>
985
986
987
988<p>What the fuck did I just watch?</p>
989
990
991
992<p>I would like to leave the summary there, but I&#8217;ll continue to explain. This is an anime adaptation of an indie game, but instead of retelling the story, they added a bunch of new characters and significantly more backstory. Although it starts off a bit pretentious, it gets weirder and weirder. With wild art style changes and getting into some pretty nasty subjects. There&#8217;s a lot of bodily fluids on display as well. Not for the faint of heart, but an interesting watch if you can stomach it.</p>
993
994
995
996<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide"/>
997
998
999
1000<p>Once again, I am late with this. Try as I might, I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ll improve the situation. Other blog posts will return soon, and the next one of these will be at the beginning of next year.</p>
1001
1002
1003
1004<p style="background-color:#a30000" class="has-text-color has-background has-text-align-center has-white-color">ADMAN</p>
1005					</div><!-- .entry-content -->
1006		
1007		<footer class="entry-meta">
1008			
1009										<span class="cat-links">
1010					<span class="entry-utility-prep entry-utility-prep-cat-links">Posted in</span> <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/anime/" rel="category tag">Anime</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/blog/" rel="category tag">Blog</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/the-den/" rel="category tag">The Den</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/video-games/" rel="category tag">Video Games</a>			</span>
1011							
1012										
1013			
1014					</footer><!-- .entry-meta -->
1015	</article><!-- #post-2896 -->
1016
1017				
1018					
1019	<article id="post-2900" class="post-2900 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog category-game-development category-my-projects category-video-games">
1020		<header class="entry-header">
1021						<h1 class="entry-title"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/03/16/16-03-2026-a-major-update-for-tur/" rel="bookmark">16/03/2026 &#8211; A Major Update For Tur!</a></h1>
1022			
1023						<div class="entry-meta">
1024				<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/03/16/16-03-2026-a-major-update-for-tur/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2026-03-16T14:13:18+00:00">16/03/2026</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/author/adamlutt/" rel="author">Adam Lutton</a></span></span>			</div><!-- .entry-meta -->
1025			
1026					</header><!-- .entry-header -->
1027
1028				<div class="entry-content">
1029			
1030<p>There&#8217;s a new demo! I also made a video about it!</p>
1031
1032
1033
1034<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
1035<iframe loading="lazy" title="A Major Update! | Tur - March 2026 Update" width="584" height="329" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/mTdRAWi0Zoc?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture;
1035 web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
1036</div></figure>
1037
1038
1039
1040<p>You can play the new demo in your browser here:</p>
1041
1042
1043
1044<iframe loading="lazy" frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/3685244?bg_color=97d18b&amp;fg_color=000000&amp;link_color=193d3f&amp;border_color=529365" width="552" height="167"><a href="https://sgtadman.itch.io/tur-hunger-pain-and-monsters">Túr: Hunger, Pain, &amp; Monsters by ADMAN</a></iframe>
1045
1046
1047
1048<p>I&#8217;m not going to go into details about all the new features; both the video and the dev log on the page do that already.</p>
1049
1050
1051
1052<p>But the project is in a good state. It&#8217;s nearing pre-alpha, I would say. The main cornerstones of the game&#8217;s design are in place and functional. Those aspects being battles, stamina and survival systems, camping, shops, and the most recent addition, recruiting new party members.</p>
1053
1054
1055
1056<p>The game is still lacking in the <strong><em>fun</em></strong> department. Battles are a bit monotonous; the repetitive music doesn&#8217;t help, and the movement is quite sluggish. The game is also lacking in variety of gameplay and random nonsense that breaks up the repetition.</p>
1057
1058
1059
1060<p>I&#8217;m thinking of adding some risk-reward type of mechanics. Like a pseudo-gambling mechanic. Like an NPC who facilitates a Wheel Of Fortune type of mini-game that can reward or punish the player. The problems with that come from both implementation and also the balance of positive to negative effects. It should seem like it&#8217;s fair, even if I want to skew the balance a bit.</p>
1061
1062
1063
1064<p>The map screen is also next to get revamped. Bigger maps and whatnot. With the new status screen, I&#8217;m able to remove the UI on the left of the screen. I&#8217;ve come to realise that there&#8217;s no need to have that information on the screen at all times, as you only lose health and mana in battle. You can heal outside of battle, but it doesn&#8217;t warrant the screen real estate to display the number going up. So with that gone, and the stamina bar stuck on screen using screen parallax set to 0, I could potentially have larger, scrollable maps.</p>
1065
1066
1067
1068<p>This is purely hypothetical at the moment. There is one issue, and that&#8217;s the movement being stuck inside of a loop. This loop exists to limit the player&#8217;s movement to one tile at a time, making it easier to calculate stamina use. However, I don&#8217;t know if camera tracking will continue to work while inside the loop. Several elements of GB Studio do not function properly when the player movement is stuck inside a loop. As previously mentioned in my last Tur video, triggers don&#8217;t work, so I have to look at the precise tile location of the player to trigger events.</p>
1069
1070
1071
1072<p>I am still experimenting with changing how the input system works, so perhaps I will get around this should issues arise. But I would like the use of triggers back.</p>
1073
1074
1075
1076<p>Anyway, the rest of the year is likely going to be focused on Cybersurfer. It really needs to get into its full production stage at this point. It needs to get to an early access state this year, or it&#8217;s just not going to be finished. Working on multiple projects is not helping, plus all the Twitch and YouTube stuff that I want to do as well.</p>
1077
1078
1079
1080<p>On the subject of YouTube, I am considering moving the game development streams to my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@adamlutton_gamedev">game dev YouTube channel</a>. Currently, archiving stuff from the Twitch channel to the YouTube channel is a pain, as I have to swap the account the Twitch channel is linked to. So, doing it there would mean I don&#8217;t have to swap stuff around. But I haven&#8217;t solidified this decision yet, so just take it as cautionary for now.</p>
1081
1082
1083
1084<p>Right, as usual, here&#8217;s the updated plan for the rest of the year.</p>
1085
1086
1087
1088<div class="wp-block-group has-background" style="background-color:#260300"><div class="wp-block-group__inner-container is-layout-constrained wp-block-group-is-layout-constrained">
1089<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Spring 2026:</h2>
1090
1091
1092
1093<ul class="wp-block-list">
1094<li>New stream layout</li>
1095</ul>
1096
1097
1098
1099<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Summer 2026:</h2>
1100
1101
1102
1103<ul class="wp-block-list">
1104<li>PID with Quaternion rotations video</li>
1105
1106
1107
1108<li>Video about the Project Fighting Styles</li>
1109
1110
1111
1112<li>C# Godot networking test project for others to use</li>
1113</ul>
1114
1115
1116
1117<h2 class="wp-block-heading">Later in 2026:</h2>
1118
1119
1120
1121<ul class="wp-block-list">
1122<li>Cybersurfer Early Access launch</li>
1123</ul>
1124</div></div>
1125
1126
1127
1128<p>Hopefully the video projects don&#8217;t eat into my development time like they did last year. I&#8217;ve changed the production pipeline to speed up the voice recording stuff. I wish I could spend more time on fancy effects, but I neither have the time nor the motivation to really learn DaVinci Resolve&#8217;s visual effects stuff.</p>
1129
1130
1131
1132<p>That&#8217;s enough for now. See you in the next one.</p>
1133
1134
1135
1136<p style="background-color:#a30003" class="has-text-color has-background has-white-color">-Adam</p>
1137					</div><!-- .entry-content -->
1138		
1139		<footer class="entry-meta">
1140			
1141										<span class="cat-links">
1142					<span class="entry-utility-prep entry-utility-prep-cat-links">Posted in</span> <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/blog/" rel="category tag">Blog</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/game-development/" rel="category tag">Game Development</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/game-development/my-projects/" rel="category tag">My Projects</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/video-games/" rel="category tag">Video Games</a>			</span>
1143							
1144										
1145			
1146					</footer><!-- .entry-meta -->
1147	</article><!-- #post-2900 -->
1148
1149				
1150					
1151	<article id="post-2887" class="post-2887 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-blog category-game-development category-game-jam category-my-projects category-technology category-video-games">
1152		<header class="entry-header">
1153						<h1 class="entry-title"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/02/17/17-02-2026-global-game-jam-2026/" rel="bookmark">17/02/2026 &#8211; Global Game Jam 2026</a></h1>
1154			
1155						<div class="entry-meta">
1156				<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/02/17/17-02-2026-global-game-jam-2026/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2026-02-17T22:33:03+00:00">17/02/2026</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/author/adamlutt/" rel="author">Adam Lutton</a></span></span>			</div><!-- .entry-meta -->
1157			
1158					</header><!-- .entry-header -->
1159
1160				<div class="entry-content">
1161			
1162<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-resized"><a href="https://globalgamejam.org/games/2026/secrets-damn-secrets-hidden-urges-8"><img decoding="async" src="https://ggjv4.s3.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/files/styles/sidebar_full/s3/games/2026/91853/featured/GameLogo.png" alt="" style="width:614px;
1162height:auto"/></a></figure>
1163
1164
1165
1166<iframe loading="lazy" frameborder="0" src="https://itch.io/embed/4246851?bg_color=410026&amp;fg_color=ffffff&amp;link_color=e59adf&amp;border_color=a72982" width="552" height="167"><a href="https://sgtadman.itch.io/secrets-damned-secrets-hidden-urges">Secrets, Damned Secrets &amp; Hidden Urges by ADMAN, PLKDTCHCB</a></iframe>
1167
1168
1169
1170<p>Somehow I managed to make it into the middle of February before remembering to do this blog post. But yes, my friend and I made yet another game for Global Game Jam.</p>
1171
1172
1173
1174<p>This year&#8217;s theme was &#8220;Mask&#8221;. The reveal video showed off a few different ideas around it, from face masks to masking tape to camouflage. My friend and I came up with an idea each. I wanted to make a sniping game, and my friend wanted to make a Mario Party clone.</p>
1175
1176
1177
1178<p>His idea was too difficult to make in the allocated time, and I felt my idea wasn&#8217;t original enough.</p>
1179
1180
1181
1182<p>So he suggested instead a game where you go around a mansion, talking to people, acquiring masks, and gaining entry to other areas. A bit like Hitman in an Eyes Wide Shut scenario.</p>
1183
1184
1185
1186<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
1187<iframe loading="lazy" title="I Wasted My Time, But Made A Game Anyway | Global Game Jam 2026" width="584" height="329" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4BWnuoH1qFU?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
1188</div></figure>
1189
1190
1191
1192<p>I&#8217;ve already made a video about the game, so you can check it out there. It covers most of what I want to talk about anyway.</p>
1193
1194
1195
1196<p>After thinking about it in the weeks since, I&#8217;m not that impressed by what we made. One, it moved away from the idea we had due to time constraints. Two, it became far more comical than originally intended, although I&#8217;m not as bothered by that because it made it more fun to play. But lastly, I just don&#8217;t think what the player is doing is that much fun. It&#8217;s yet another prop hunting game. Which is a genre I already did back with the ThreeThingGame game <a href="https://sgtadman.itch.io/keep-warm">&#8220;Keep Warm&#8221;</a>. If there was more time, I probably would have implemented the original idea of wearing masks and a more in-depth dialogue system. Just to make it stand out more.</p>
1197
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1199
1200<p>Anyway, Godot is improving, but I still get hung up on some of its design decisions. But I cover that in the video.</p>
1201
1202
1203
1204<p>I suppose I should elaborate on the point I made near the end of the video about not doing it next year. Well, there are a couple of reasons. Firstly, every year I join the Hull University site for it. However, I haven&#8217;t been a student there for more than a decade. And as much as I get along with my old lecturers, I really shouldn&#8217;t be hanging out with Uni students who are a good decade younger than me.</p>
1205
1206
1207
1208<p>Secondly, I&#8217;m planning stuff for next year. I can&#8217;t say too much just yet, as I&#8217;ve only just started working it out, but I will say that if things go according to plan, I will be far too busy to take part. I have a lot of research to do, so I won&#8217;t make any further comments until I am absolutely certain it is happening.</p>
1209
1210
1211
1212<p>And just an additional point for being too busy for things, I still have Tur and Cybersurfer to work on.</p>
1213
1214
1215
1216<p>Anyway, at the beginning of that video, I mention I did some work on a networked C# Godot project to use as a testbed for the jam, which ended up not happening.</p>
1217
1218
1219
1220<p>Well, I&#8217;ve done a bit more work on it since then. Unfortunately, I haven&#8217;t found a solution to a problem with it. Basically, I can run a dedicated server, but if I try and make a peer-to-peer game, problems start occurring. Currently it doesn&#8217;t work at all, but previous issues included the host working for everyone, but clients not being synced. Clients working for the host and other clients, but the host not working for the clients. And finally, duplicating players.</p>
1221
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1223
1224<p>I&#8217;ll continue to work on it, but I have no timeline for when I&#8217;ll publically release it.</p>
1225
1226
1227
1228<p>That&#8217;s it for now.</p>
1229
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1231
1232<p>I&#8217;m hoping to have a new demo for Tur out in early March, but this might get delayed to May. I&#8217;ll keep you updated.</p>
1233
1234
1235
1236<p style="background-color:#a30003" class="has-text-color has-background has-white-color">-Adam</p>
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1242					<span class="entry-utility-prep entry-utility-prep-cat-links">Posted in</span> <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/blog/" rel="category tag">Blog</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/game-development/" rel="category tag">Game Development</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/game-development/game-jam/" rel="category tag">Game Jam</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/game-development/my-projects/" rel="category tag">My Projects</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/technology/" rel="category tag">Technology</a>, <a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/category/video-games/" rel="category tag">Video Games</a>			</span>
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1251	<article id="post-2659" class="post-2659 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-anime category-blog category-the-den category-video-games">
1252		<header class="entry-header">
1253						<h1 class="entry-title"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/01/02/admans-den-july-december-2025/" rel="bookmark">ADMAN&#8217;s Den: July &#8211; December 2025</a></h1>
1254			
1255						<div class="entry-meta">
1256				<span class="sep">Posted on </span><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/01/02/admans-den-july-december-2025/" rel="bookmark"><time class="entry-date" datetime="2026-01-02T16:39:40+00:00">02/01/2026</time></a><span class="by-author"> <span class="sep"> by </span> <span class="author vcard"><a class="url fn n" href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/author/adamlutt/" rel="author">Adam Lutton</a></span></span>			</div><!-- .entry-meta -->
1257			
1258					</header><!-- .entry-header -->
1259
1260				<div class="entry-content">
1261			
1262<p>I played quite a bit in the second half of this year.</p>
1263
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1265
1266<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Call Of Duty: Ghosts</h1>
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1270<p>When Call Of Duty: Ghosts came out initially in 2013, it was absolutely dogpiled on by everyone for being mediocre at best. Some even went as far as to say that it was trash. I do n
1270ot share this opinion. The biases from around that time are likely due to how frequently games in the series release, and people just being sick of the same general formula.</p>
1271
1272
1273
1274<p>Well, more than a decade later, and after a relatively long detachment from the series, I can say that Ghosts is a reasonably OK game. The set pieces are relatively well done, and the story is actually somewhat interesting. But I would say that the lore behind it is lacking explanation and details. It also ends on a cliffhanger that quite obviously has yet to be resolved.</p>
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1277
1278<p>Gameplay-wise, it is more COD. You shoot dudes, move forward, and shoot more dudes. There are a few more stealth sections thrown in there this time. Overall, however, I did enjoy my time with the game. The gunplay is a bit floaty and recoilless compared to the current handling model, but you get used to it.</p>
1279
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1281
1282<p>But to cover the biggest memes from this game, the dog sections are better than I was expecting but front-loaded and don&#8217;t appear later in the game. And the fish do in fact swim away if you get close to them.</p>
1283
1284
1285
1286<p>You can watch my playthrough <a href="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT5FTo0zaTq8wRYLma1f4ZiY&amp;si=7JmkDBUrSE7pHyt3" data-type="link" data-id="https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT5FTo0zaTq8wRYLma1f4ZiY&amp;si=7JmkDBUrSE7pHyt3">here</a>.</p>
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1289
1290<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Vampyr</h1>
1291
1292
1293
1294<p>Where do I even start with this game?</p>
1295
1296
1297
1298<p>It takes place in London during the latter part of WWI, in 1918. The city is stricken with influenza, and parts of the city are quarantined. This game was made before COVID, but the restrictions that were around during the time the game is set are unsettlingly similar. But you can do your own research into that.</p>
1299
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1301
1302<p>Anyway, the main character wakes up in a pile of bodies after being turned into a vampire. And now has to deal with vampire hunters on top of the now increasing numbers of &#8220;Skals&#8221;, a mutated vampiric strain. For the record, we are considered an &#8220;Ekon&#8221;. I don&#8217;t know if these are real terms or not in actual vampire lore, but that&#8217;s what the game says.</p>
1303
1304
1305
1306<p>As a vampire, the player has several restrictions placed on them. They can&#8217;t go out in the sunlight and cannot enter people&#8217;s homes without their permission. But they do get the powers of mesmerisation, along with other combat-specific powers. That said, I found little use for those powers. I&#8217;ll get back to the combat in a bit.</p>
1307
1308
1309
1310<p>Being a doctor in-game, you spend a lot of time running around the city talking to people and giving them medicine. In speaking with the inhabitants of Southwark, Docklands, Whitechapel, Pembroke Hospital, and the West End, you obtain information about all the other characters, often in the form of gossip. However, this information opens up new talking points, which can provide a few alternative ways through encounters. Furthermore, as you unlock more information about a character, the more XP they&#8217;ll be worth should you decide to drink their blood.</p>
1311
1312
1313
1314<p>The gossip is humorous at times, and I will be using the expression &#8220;He is of lesser lineage&#8221; in the future, but the characters are extremely downtrodden and gloomy most of the time. I know there&#8217;s a war and a pandemic on, but the complete lack of traditional British dark humour and wit is noticeable. But seeing as this game was developed by French developer DONTNOD, I can&#8217;t say it&#8217;s terribly surprising.</p>
1315
1316
1317
1318<p>Getting back to the gameplay, this is where pretty much all the complaints start piling up. It&#8217;s a pseudo-Soulslike. Perhaps more akin to a bargain-bin Bloodborne. You&#8217;ve got stamina, health, and blood meters on screen, the last one of which acts as your mana bar for vampiric powers. Enemies are damage sponges to start with, although they become more of a pushover as you get better weapons, at least the general mobs do.</p>
1319
1320
1321
1322<p>Enemies have levels, and they tend to go up considerably as you progress through story beats. To level yourself up, you need to rest at a hideout and dump XP points into abilities and stats. However, this respawns every enemy on the map. So if you need to go from district to district healing the residents, because they have a tendency to get sick every time you rest as well, you have to clear out the enemies again. This gets extremely tedious, doubly so when they start spawning tougher monsters at higher levels later in the game.</p>
1323
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1325
1326<p>And don&#8217;t even think about fast travel. It doesn&#8217;t have any whatsoever. You have to leg it around the map.</p>
1327
1328
1329
1330<p>The crafting system provides minor improvements to weapons. You&#8217;re better off finding the best weapons in the game first before dumping resources into them. Said resources are a bunch of chemicals with really long names. I don&#8217;t think there&#8217;s any actual scientific process involved in the upgrade materials; I think they just picked whatever was &#8220;close enough&#8221; to what might actually be useful.</p>
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1332
1333
1334<p>The game&#8217;s difficulty is one of the biggest issues. The level gaps near the end of the game get quite large. The last boss fight in the game had a 10-level difference between us. It makes those larger fights more of a chore than they need to be and requires more of a reliance on cheesing them rather than engaging with the combat properly.</p>
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1337
1338<p>Unfortunately, unless you want to literally kill everyone in the game for their blood, you&#8217;re not going to get enough experience to be able to match them.</p>
1339
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1341
1342<p>Although I enjoyed the social mechanics in the game and the story was good enough to keep me tagging along, the gameplay and other mechanics just make it too tedious to recommend to most people. But you can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT4IVAKEI0DomWSDgSnLTZ_5">watch my playthrough here</a>, if you&#8217;re interested.</p>
1343
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1345
1346<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Sushi Ben</h1>
1347
1348
1349
1350<p>I was really excited for this game and had high hopes for it. It&#8217;s originally billed as a VR game set in a remote Japanese sea town. You are here to help out a local sushi place get back on its feet. Unfortunately, there&#8217;s a real estate agent that&#8217;s buying up all the property in the area, driving people away and sabotaging the procurement of ingredients for the sushi.</p>
1351
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1353
1354<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919144044_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919144044_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2762" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919144044_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919144044_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919144044_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919144044_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919144044_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919144044_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a><figcaption class="wp-element-caption">The game gives you an option to work for this woman, but it always leads to a Game Over screen.</figcaption></figure>
1355
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1357
1358<p>This real estate agent treats her subordinates as a method of transportation. Walking all over them, using them as a motorcycle, even as a helicopter. A fun character, but barely in the game.</p>
1359
1360
1361
1362<p>As you can tell from the screenshot, it has a very Mega Man Legends-esque look. It&#8217;s what drew me in initially. As you can imagine, performance in the game is fine. It didn&#8217;t stress my PC out at all.</p>
1363
1364
1365
1366<p>I previously mentioned that it was billed as a VR game. The fact of the matter is that you can in fact play it on desktop. And I would highly recommend doing so, as the VR implementation seems to be abandonware. Strewn with bugs and issues not found in the desktop version. Plus, all the activities are infinitely easier on desktop. Fishing, archery, the lot. Table tennis is probably the only one where it&#8217;s mostly the same.</p>
1367
1368
1369
1370<p>On the subject of archery, they originally drew a curve to show where your arrow would land, which worked well in VR. But then they changed it and made it a dot. Which made archery in VR significantly more of a hassle to use.</p>
1371
1372
1373
1374<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919154227_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919154227_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2763" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919154227_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919154227_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919154227_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919154227_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919154227_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20250919154227_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
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1377
1378<p>I&#8217;ve also had my fair share of bugs and softlocks with the game. Halting progress and often requiring a restart. It got better after a few patches, but it does add to the many annoyances I had with the game.</p>
1379
1380
1381
1382<p>But the biggest problem with the game? It&#8217;s boring. The mini-games aren&#8217;t fun; most of the story missions involve walking slowly across the map to talk to someone, having your annoying frog statue thing turn into some item, and walking somewhere else. Then you go back to your apartment for the night. It becomes tedious, and as fun as some of the characters are, they&#8217;re a bit flat, and you can&#8217;t interact with them outside of their usual story beats.</p>
1383
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1385
1386<p>And then to top it off, it ends on a really crappy cliffhanger. An utter disappointment. You can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT4dthM-HdsOPKmb0a55ExVR">watch my playthrough here</a>.</p>
1387
1388
1389
1390<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Resident Evil 4 (OG)</h1>
1391
1392
1393
1394<p>I had never played the original Resident Evil 4. My primary experiences with the series involve the remakes of 2 &amp; 3, RE7, and Village. All of which I enjoyed. Seeing as it was Halloween, I decided that it was the perfect time to finally play it.</p>
1395
1396
1397
1398<p>I did not play it as is, however. I decided to install the HD Texture mod pack and an additional mod that added some tweaks and options to the game, particularly removing the QTEs. I must say, the improved textures are most welcome. They were painstakingly recreated from original sources and replace the old ones near perfectly.</p>
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1401
1402<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251024143309_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251024143309_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2773" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251024143309_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251024143309_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251024143309_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251024143309_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251024143309_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/20251024143309_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
1403
1404
1405
1406<p>Considering the age of the game, you&#8217;re probably wondering how it holds up to modern scrutiny. Well, the tank controls certainly don&#8217;t feel great. Turning your entire character around when you move in a direction. But the game was designed around that, and I 
1406never found it to be too intrusive. The gunplay, on the other hand, holds up quite well. I&#8217;m not sure if the RE4 tweaks mod makes any changes to it, but I had no issues landing headshots. Not being able to move while shooting wasn&#8217;t as much of a burden as I was expecting either; I tend to stand my ground when I shoot in games anyway. Probably a holdover from when I played Counter-Strike: Source.</p>
1407
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1409
1410<p>Inventory Tetris is about as fun as it is troublesome. Not a huge deal, but I wish there was an automation feature. Finding the space for items can take a while at times.</p>
1411
1412
1413
1414<p>As for the game itself, the story is fun enough to keep me hanging on. There&#8217;s an appropriate amount of cheese and weirdness to keep me interested. The enemy variety is not too bad either. There are certainly some enemies that are awful, those flying bugs you have to deal with once you get to the castle, for instance, but generally it does a good job at keeping you on your toes.</p>
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1417
1418<p>Babysitting Ashley wasn&#8217;t too bad. Some of the heavier combat sequences let her hide in a box or something while you take care of the enemies. Some of the sequences in the castle can get stressful, as you have to look after both her and yourself simultaneously. The actual annoying part of it is if she gets grabbed, you have to make sure you&#8217;re not aiming at her directly, or you&#8217;ll kill her. As friendly fire is very much present. Once you complete the game, one of the unlockable outfits you get is a full suit of armour that makes her completely invulnerable, likely trivialising the whole game.</p>
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1422<p>Ada is awesome. Absolutely bewitching from the moment I first saw her in a cheongsam doing a cartwheel kick during the first cutscene with her and Leon. She has a whole campaign that becomes available after finishing the main game called Separate Ways. It&#8217;s a shorter story, only 5 missions. It takes place concurrently with the main story but covers Ada&#8217;s side of it. This includes cutscenes from her perspective, also containing secret cutscenes that you could only view in the main story if you did certain things.</p>
1423
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1425
1426<p>Her story also has unique boss fights, including against the main bad guy. As well as turret sections and more. Her fight against Krauser is a bit of a stain on her campaign. It&#8217;s a very small arena, and you have to constantly dodge his attacks. If I didn&#8217;t have auto-QTE turned on, I likely would have died multiple times.</p>
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1429
1430<p>You get good guns from the get-go in her campaign, so the merchant doesn&#8217;t get used much.</p>
1431
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1433
1434<p>Speaking of good guns, the RPG is completely overpowered. It one-shots almost every boss. So it&#8217;s good to have one on you at all times so you can instantly win against any tough enemy it throws at you. But it does make the story bosses an absolute joke.</p>
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1437
1438<p>I enjoyed the game from start to finish. The pacing is excellent, with exploration and puzzles breaking up the high-octane action. There are a few sections, particularly in the caves and sewers, that I didn&#8217;t like as much, but thankfully, they don&#8217;t last that long. The castle section was easily the best part and looked amazing with the HD Textures mod. I see why this game is held in such high regard.</p>
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1441
1442<p>You can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT7ge5rVSW_buLDdow9BcWxc">watch my playthrough here</a>.</p>
1443
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1445
1446<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Ninja Gaiden 4</h1>
1447
1448
1449
1450<p>Ninja Gaiden is a notoriously difficult series. I have been beaten by the first level of Ninja Gaiden Black and Sigma multiple times. It&#8217;s put a serious hamper on my progress through the series. But I decided to play through Ninja Gaiden 4, as it was on Game Pass and was developed by Platinum Games. External developers for the series haven&#8217;t been positively received in the past (Ninja Gaiden Yaiba springs to mind), but Platinum have done good before.</p>
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1453
1454<p>You play as Yakumo, a generic fuckboy ninja dude. He starts the game by rescuing some lady, although he was sent there to kill her, and then spends the rest of the game fighting bosses to bring back the Black Dragon, some super powerful monster whose sealing has led to constant rain and miserable weather in the area.</p>
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1458<figure class="wp-block-image size-large is-style-default"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-2.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-2-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2810" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-2-1024x576.png 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-2-300x169.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-2-768x432.png 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-2-1536x864.png 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-2-500x281.png 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-2.png 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
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1461
1462<p>Let&#8217;s start with the good points.</p>
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1466<p>Firstly, the game runs well. I was getting well above 60 FPS on high settings. I was using DLSS, but it wasn&#8217;t required if I wanted to keep the smooth framerate.</p>
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1470<p>Combat is mostly good. The animations are smooth, and attacks can be quite visceral. There are two main stances: normal attacks and then a more powerful stance that can be used to parry enemies&#8217; unblockable attacks. Guarding is extremely powerful too, but the game really wants you to learn how to parry, despite it.</p>
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1473
1474<p>As for the negatives, well, there&#8217;s a reason why I said the combat is &#8220;mostly good&#8221;. Starting with the hitboxes, they&#8217;re absolutely massive. The first boss has an attack that completely goes above the character&#8217;s head but hits for full damage. And there&#8217;s hit stun too. So this attack that visually misses you, stuns you, and then further attacks follow quickly, and you die in three hits. Enemies also have absolutely abhorrent tracking, Dark Souls 2-tier even.</p>
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1478<p>The lock-on system is absolute dogshit, and you should turn it off immediately. In multi-enemy fights, it will always choose the enemies furthest away from you instead of the ones right next to you. It also prevents you from parrying or blocking incoming attacks from other directions. It&#8217;s simply broken.</p>
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1482<p>Parry windows are not explained at all. The timing on them is a mystery to me, and the tutorials the game gives you on them do not even remotely help. If there was some kind of visual indicator that could assist me in figuring out when to attack, like a circle or on-screen prompt, it would make it considerably easier to understand.</p>
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1486<p>But even that wouldn&#8217;t help, as the animation priority system is the largest dictator as to whether or not you eat shit during a combat encounter. Even if you try to attack or block during an enemy attack, the game will ignore it, as the animation for your character being hit begins several frames before actually being hit. This basically means that parrying becomes virtually impossible. It never works properly for me.</p>
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1489
1490<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-3.png"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-3-1024x576.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2811" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-3-1024x576.png 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-3-300x169.png 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-3-768x432.png 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-3-1536x864.png 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-3-500x281.png 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/image-3.png 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
1491
1492
1493
1494<p>I still managed to power through and finish the game. And I don&#8217;t hate it, but I spent most of the game swearing at it for very annoying things. These issues on their own would not warrant that much ire, but combined, they led to a very stressful and irritating experience.</p>
1495
1496
1497
1498<p>Anyway, if you want to watch my playthrough, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT5W2mPJc0TXRXDm23hziIfW">
1498you can do so here</a>.</p>
1499
1500
1501
1502<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Wanted: Dead</h1>
1503
1504
1505
1506<p>Christ, what a pile of shit this was. I finished it out of sheer spite. The worst part is that I don&#8217;t know if it was made to be bad deliberately.</p>
1507
1508
1509
1510<p>The combat is awful, gun and melee. Bullet-spongy enemies make firefights a chore, and melee combat has the same problem Ninja Gaiden 4 does with animation priority, but made even worse. I barely get ammo for the guns that I use, and the gun customisation stuff is nonsensical, with longer barrels on guns giving you less velocity and changing sights somehow letting you do more damage.</p>
1511
1512
1513
1514<p>That said, I could probably deal with the melee combat on its own, but when most fights centre around guns, it just makes me wonder why it&#8217;s even there. They tried to do both and made both mechanics weaker because of it.</p>
1515
1516
1517
1518<p>This also extends to the boss fights. The first boss is a giant spider tank that&#8217;s easy enough to defeat, but the second boss is a dude with a gun for the first phase and then fights you unarmed for the second. But he has attacks that track your position and stun-lock you to death. It was about as fun as using fibreglass as mouthwash. There&#8217;s a fight with a sniper with an invisibility cloak that was somewhat better, and the final fight isn&#8217;t too difficult as long as you know when to dodge their instant death attack.</p>
1519
1520
1521
1522<p>So what&#8217;s the draw of this game? Why did I finish it?</p>
1523
1524
1525
1526<p>Well, I finished it out of spite as a driving force, but I also needed to know how much worse it could get. The combat wasn&#8217;t the only awful thing. The story is completely nonsensical, and the dialogue sounded like they just grabbed a bunch of random actors and had them read out all their lines on the first take.</p>
1527
1528
1529
1530<p>That doesn&#8217;t bother me that much, however, because at least that is entertaining. The silliness of the game is certainly something to behold. For example, this is the loading screen:</p>
1531
1532
1533
1534<figure class="wp-block-video"><video controls src="https://media.tenor.com/Sx5XVKTjzIQAAAPo/110industries-cat.mp4"></video></figure>
1535
1536
1537
1538<p>This is a parody of a well-known GIF that&#8217;s derived from a lesser-known parody rap battle from the mid-to-late 2000s. It&#8217;s a bizarre addition, but the only one. There&#8217;s a bunch of anime cutscenes that are related to the main character&#8217;s backstory, but like the rest of the plot, they lack any kind of coherence.</p>
1539
1540
1541
1542<p>To top off the lunacy of it, there are mini-games. There&#8217;s a claw machine, a ramen-eating rhythm mini-game, a karaoke mini-game, and an arcade game. The first and last of which are probably the only ones that aren&#8217;t an abomination. The latter two have issues with timings, dropped inputs, and just being overly difficult and complicated with their inputs. But they are at least fun distractions. The arcade game was reasonably competent. Debatably the most polished thing in the game.</p>
1543
1544
1545
1546<p>One final annoyance worth mentioning is that the collectables do not stay collected if you die and get reset back to the checkpoint. It&#8217;s a massive pet peeve of mine, and it&#8217;s present in this game too. Just one of many problems with it. Also, the woman who played Quiet in MGSV is in this game; she doesn&#8217;t do too much, but she&#8217;s there.</p>
1547
1548
1549
1550<p>You can watch my <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT4uVnjCEwadsWnsxT6Ck0mo">shambles a playthrough here</a>.</p>
1551
1552
1553
1554<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Call Of Duty: Black Ops 7</h1>
1555
1556
1557
1558<p>Black Ops 7 is a bad video game but interesting in its concept. First of all, it requires people to enable TPM and SecureBoot, which I couldn&#8217;t be arsed to do. Instead, I streamed the game over both XCloud and GeForce Now. XCloud ran quite well, with only a bit of latency. Although it didn&#8217;t feel like the frame rate was actually 60FPS. GeForce Now ran below 60FPS, and I had frequent lag spikes. However, after finishing that session, I realised I had left something downloading in the background, which likely was the root cause of those problems.</p>
1559
1560
1561
1562<p>Once you get into the game, you find out that it&#8217;s online-only. With a forced co-op campaign, although you can play it solo if you want. That said, I played the majority of the game solo, and the one time I decided to play it in co-op made the game significantly less shit. But we&#8217;ll get into that.</p>
1563
1564
1565
1566<p>But because of the forced co-op, there are no mid-level checkpoints to load back into. If you leave a match, you have to start that level from the beginning. You also cannot pause the game.</p>
1567
1568
1569
1570<p>And now we get into the meat of the problem, the gameplay. The guns are not terribly interesting; the abilities you unlock are useful but only if you remember to actually use them. However, the most annoying thing in this game, head and shoulders above everything else, is the enemies being massive bullet sponges. These aren&#8217;t your typical bullet sponges; these dudes have got health to spare. We&#8217;re talking about guys who tank multiple magazines&#8217; worth of bullets.</p>
1571
1572
1573
1574<p>If you thought that the robot enemies in Black Ops 3 were bad, this game doubles it. But for every enemy. Robot enemies also feature in this game, and guess what, they also have stupid amounts of health. It makes every encounter a chore now. Slow, constant shooting, having to manage a tonne of enemies everywhere because they only did the bare minimum of balancing for solo play.</p>
1575
1576
1577
1578<p>Playing it is a awful slog. So why I did I say that it was interesting?</p>
1579
1580
1581
1582<p>Well, you spend the entire game tripping balls. You&#8217;re hallucinating all kinds of crazy shit. Zombies, giant machetes falling from the sky, and giant plants as a boss fight. The levels are filled with insane visual
1582s. It&#8217;s a complete departure from the military focus that the series is known for. It&#8217;s almost as if the Zombies team were told to make something, and they just threw shit at the wall. Every level is followed up by an open-world area, which I believe is the Warzone map that has been repurposed. These levels aren&#8217;t all that fun, as you rarely get any respite from the enemies that continuously respawn.</p>
1583
1584
1585
1586<p>But once you finish the game, that open world turns into an extraction shooter with various objectives thrown about the maps and other players. I don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s fully Player vs. Player vs. Environment; I think it&#8217;s just Player vs. Environment, as I wasn&#8217;t able to harm other players. I didn&#8217;t play much of it, unfortunately, but it sounds like an interesting idea.</p>
1587
1588
1589
1590<p>Don&#8217;t bother playing this. Complete waste of time.</p>
1591
1592
1593
1594<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Skate Story</h1>
1595
1596
1597
1598<p>I remember seeing the trailer for this years ago and wondered if it would ever come out. After what seemed like an eternity, I can finally play it. It&#8217;s fucking awesome.</p>
1599
1600
1601
1602<p>The vibes are immaculate. Visually wild-looking, with the glass skater and abstract rock and building formations everywhere. As for music, it adds a lot to the surrealist aspect. There are also visual and gameplay sequences synced to the music.</p>
1603
1604
1605
1606<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220030_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220030_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2832" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220030_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220030_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220030_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220030_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220030_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220030_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
1607
1608
1609
1610<p>The game&#8217;s story is fun. It revolves around the player having to eat moons because the devil demanded it. As part of this deal, you get a skateboard, and your body turns into glass.</p>
1611
1612
1613
1614<p>It works its way into the gameplay, as every small stumble and bail shatters you into tiny pieces. Thankfully the checkpoints are quite forgiving, so it&#8217;s never really that frustrating.</p>
1615
1616
1617
1618<p>As for the skateboarding itself, it doesn&#8217;t play like Skate, but I would hesitate to compare it to Tony Hawk as well. It uses a single button to ollie, with additional button presses to mutate it for other tricks. For example, pressing R1 or L1 will let you do kickflips or heelflips. Double tapping those buttons, plus using R2 and L2 as well, you get a reasonably sized but simple list of tricks you can do. There are no grabs as far as I can tell.</p>
1619
1620
1621
1622<p>It&#8217;s a simple system, but the feel of landing tricks and the general weight of the gameplay certainly do a lot of the heavy lifting. If I were going to complain, I would say that the handling of vert ramps, like quarter pipes and halfpipes, is not as smooth as it could be.</p>
1623
1624
1625
1626<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209142525_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209142525_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2833" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209142525_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209142525_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209142525_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209142525_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209142525_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209142525_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
1627
1628
1629
1630<p>Did I mention the game has boss fights?</p>
1631
1632
1633
1634<p>They&#8217;re quite the highlight. Not necessarily from the gameplay perspective; fighting them is quite straightforward, but rather from the audio/visual aspect.</p>
1635
1636
1637
1638<p>As I mentioned earlier, the music is often in sync with the visual
1638s. So as the music absolutely envelops you, the tension of the fight heightens, and you get absorbed by what you&#8217;re doing.</p>
1639
1640
1641
1642<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220043_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220043_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2834" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220043_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220043_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220043_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220043_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220043_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251209220043_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
1643
1644
1645
1646<p>If someone asked me to describe this game, I would say, &#8220;Imagine if Suda51 made a skateboarding game&#8221;. It&#8217;s super cool, I highly recommend checking it out. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT5-o6AqlZQzczIgJaDgJsuI">You can watch my playthrough here</a>.</p>
1647
1648
1649
1650<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Call Of Duty: Infinite Warfare</h1>
1651
1652
1653
1654<p>Black Ops 7 wasn&#8217;t the only Call Of Duty game I played recently. I also delved into the other COD game I hadn&#8217;t touched yet. This one seems to be a bit forgotten. It&#8217;s quite a departure from the regular COD games, as it takes place in the far future, and you have dogfights in space and Zero-G shootouts.</p>
1655
1656
1657
1658<p>It&#8217;s a bit of a mix between the movement tech from Titanfall and the dogfighting from Freespace. Actually, the similarities to Freespace are staggering. Missions are picked from a map screen on a hub ship, your personal ship has a launch and subspace jump sequence that is very similar to Freespace 2, and the dogfighting in general feels very similar.</p>
1659
1660
1661
1662<p>Before I get into more of the gameplay, I should comment on the story.</p>
1663
1664
1665
1666<p>As I mentioned, it takes place in the far future, the UN has now gained complete control and has become the world&#8217;s government (God help us), and Mars is now a space colony. However, the colonists aren&#8217;t too happy with the Earthlings and have decided to start a war following a failed recon mission by Earth&#8217;s forces.</p>
1667
1668
1669
1670<p>The main villains&#8217; motivations aren&#8217;t really explained. He just seems comically evil, committing war crimes en masse with little to no justification beyond &#8220;Earth is bad&#8221;. The main villain shares an actor with Jon Snow from Game Of Thrones, so that&#8217;s something.</p>
1671
1672
1673
1674<p>The entire game apparently takes place within 24 hours, which just doesn&#8217;t seem feasible considering the distances they need to cover and the fact that the main character ends up getting thrown out into space without oxygen for a while but somehow manages to recover without issue.</p>
1675
1676
1677
1678<p>I can&#8217;t say I cared that much about the characters in the game. Only one is even remotely memorable, and that&#8217;s the robot guy. And that&#8217;s only because he has some dark-humoured jokes about robots destroying humanity.</p>
1679
1680
1681
1682<p>As I mentioned, missions are picked up from a map screen on the main hub ship. The side missions consist of dogfights, stealth missions, and sabotage missions. Fairly standard COD stuff, but now in space. You also get to choose your loadout.</p>
1683
1684
1685
1686<p>The weapons vary from Space AKs to pistols that vaporise people in one shot. The latter of which is called the Eraser pistol. An apt name. That said, besides some of the bigger guns that had obscene damage outputs, I didn&#8217;t use that many of the guns.</p>
1687
1688
1689
1690<p>The levels aren&#8217;t much to write home about. Although the skyboxes are gorgeous, the levels themselves aren&#8217;t that crazy. But occasionally, there are some mechanics associated with them, like shooting windows on the moonbase to cause enemies to get launched out into the vacuum of space. A level that takes place on Mercury has you avoiding direct sunlight so you don&#8217;t get instantly cooked.</p>
1691
1692
1693
1694<p>Although I liked parts of the game, I do understand why it&#8217;s not that popular. It is a massive departure from the normality of the series and goes a bit too far into sci-fi. I still think it&#8217;s interesting at least.</p>
1695
1696
1697
1698<p>You can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT4qtf7w65-revMQfLKD-hZK">watch my playthrough here</a>.</p>
1699
1700
1701
1702<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">RoboCop: Rogue City &#8211; Unfinished Business</h1>
1703
1704
1705
1706<p>Earlier this year, I played RoboCop: Rogue City and was surprised at just how much I enjoyed it. All the side quests and characters helped flesh out a world I&#8217;d only seen in movies. So when Unfinished Business was announced, I was quite excited to jump back in.</p>
1707
1708
1709
1710<p>Unfortunately, it&#8217;s just not anywhere near as good as the base game. Although a lot of my gripes have to do with the performance.</p>
1711
1712
1713
1714<p>
1714I ran the original RoboCop mostly fine on my rig, with some settings turned down. But here, I need to turn it down further and rely heavily on DLSS. The image quality suffers a lot. But to make matters more confusing, you spend most of the game in an interior. Grey corridors, labs, and offices make up the majority of environments. I suspect the polygon count is way higher than it needs to be.</p>
1715
1716
1717
1718<p>Not helping matters is the crashing. I streamed my playthrough of this and experienced an average of two crashes per stream. Usually about 40 minutes to an hour apart. It usually occurred during or just before a cutscene. I suspect it&#8217;s something to do with the loads. And it&#8217;s not just me encountering these problems either; the Steam forums are full of posts about it.</p>
1719
1720
1721
1722<p>Putting aside the performance problems, how is the game?</p>
1723
1724
1725
1726<p>Well, if you&#8217;re coming into this expecting more exploration and side quests, you&#8217;re going to be disappointed. There&#8217;s a very heavy combat focus the moment you get out of the opening sections, and breaks from it are somewhat rare. Not to say the combat is bad; it&#8217;s about the same as the first game. But it doesn&#8217;t do anything new, and enemy variety is lacking. At some point it just gets very repetitive and numbingly easy once you equip the Auto-9 with the PCBs that turn it into a full-auto monster. You practically turn into a walking A-10 Warthog.</p>
1727
1728
1729
1730<p>There is at least one memorable combat segment. You get to control an ED-209. Although short, there are a few Easter eggs, and getting to be overpowered as hell is always enjoyable. I must say, it did remind me of the mech segment in Escape From Butcher Bay. Actually, this whole expansion gives me a similar vibe to the Riddick game.</p>
1731
1732
1733
1734<p>There&#8217;s not much new in the way of weapons. The highlighted weapon they&#8217;ve added is a freeze gun. It turns pretty much any enemy into a popsicle. Unfortunately, the polygon count on the ice shards is absurdly high. So using it absolutely ruins the frame rate. It&#8217;s also not that fun to use, but it is effective.</p>
1735
1736
1737
1738<p>There are some breaks from the combat. There are a couple of hub sections where you can pick up some side quests. These usually involve going from one place to another, getting items or searching for clues. There&#8217;s nothing that really stands out, unfortunately. Most of these side quests are usually finished in the same sentence that I start them in, or quickly thereafter. I can remember one where some dude wanted me to lift a gate, so I did, and then the side quest immediately completed about as quickly as it appeared on screen.</p>
1739
1740
1741
1742<p>There are a couple of other sections, such as the part where you play as pre-RoboCop Alex Murphy and another section where you play as the scientist lady that communicates with you throughout the game. Murphy&#8217;s segment is too different from the main game, but the latter&#8217;s section starts off running away from thugs, and the best of it is a walking simulator with a choice at the end.</p>
1743
1744
1745
1746<p>The story is a bit of a mess. The main villain&#8217;s goal is not particularly clear. He&#8217;s stolen the chair RoboCop uses, and I assume he&#8217;s trying to use it to hack OCP. But to what end I&#8217;m not sure. He also has history with Murphy, which is part of the flashback previously mentioned. There are a few recurring side characters, but beyond that, I struggled to care too much.</p>
1747
1748
1749
1750<p>Overall, it&#8217;s still fine. It&#8217;s more RoboCop. But this expansion certainly has a lot of problems. I can only recommend it if you really want to turn more bad guys into paste. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT4ClgyaNzbZW_QL8mIea-fa">You can watch my playthrough of both the main game and the expansion here</a>.</p>
1751
1752
1753
1754<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Metaphor: ReFantazio</h1>
1755
1756
1757
1758<p>As of the time of writing this, I have not finished Metaphor. I&#8217;m at the 2nd town; I&#8217;ve fought the boss there. I&#8217;m struggling to make my way through the game.</p>
1759
1760
1761
1762<p>The fantasy racism aspect isn&#8217;t as appealing as it could be. Partly because they only depict the bare minimum of actual atrocities so far. But the thing that actually bugs me is the lack of reasoning, insults, and slurs that actual racism would actually bring. It&#8217;s really half-arsed, but they spend an ungodly amount of time on the subject.</p>
1763
1764
1765
1766<p>Every single conversation in this game feels like an exposition dump. Constantly having to explain the intricacies of the world, as it isn&#8217;t ours and doesn&#8217;t operate like ours. But it bores the fuck out of me. I&#8217;d rather listen to the shipping forecast.</p>
1767
1768
1769
1770<p>I don&#8217;t care about any of the characters whatsoever. They are miserable to talk to, they barely do anything outside of battle, and their personalities are uninteresting. I seriously could not care less.</p>
1771
1772
1773
1774<p>The actual turn-based combat is OK. You get an amount of turns; you get more uses out of them if you exploit weaknesses. But there are no all-out attacks, and you can&#8217;t knock enemies down. You can&#8217;t swap to specific party members in battle like you can in Persona 5 and Persona 3 Reload via Baton Pass.</p>
1775
1776
1777
1778<p>The class system is a bit complicated. There&#8217;s a bunch of them; they all have their own skill sets, and you can change the class of every character at any time out of battle. As you level up the classes, those skills can be used with other classes. What bugs me about the system is that the characters clearly have preferred classes, but the game is awful at explaining which ones those are.</p>
1779
1780
1781
1782<p>As for what I actually like about the game, well, it&#8217;s pretty. There are some nice backgrounds and art. And you get to ride a giant mechanical lizard thing as your main method of transportation.</p>
1783
1784
1785
1786<p>I&#8217;ll try my best to finish this, but I will have to force myself to do so.</p>
1787
1788
1789
1790<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Clair Obscur: Expedition 33</h1>
1791
1792
1793
1794<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-h
1794as-aspect-ratio"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
1795<iframe loading="lazy" title="Orson Welles French" width="584" height="438" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/tJfcCRPCcak?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
1796</div></figure>
1797
1798
1799
1800<p>As if I could start this section in any other way.</p>
1801
1802
1803
1804<p>This game blew up this year, and various people I know have raved about it, so I decided to give it a go.</p>
1805
1806
1807
1808<p>And holy shit does it run like crap. It looks like crap too. The image quality is fuzzy and blurry. You have to use temporal reconstruction along with DLSS because you simply cannot run this game at native resolution at a reasonable framerate.</p>
1809
1810
1811
1812<p>As for the gameplay, well, it&#8217;s a turn-based game similar to Persona or SMT, but with some real-time aspects. You can aim a gun at specific weak points to do additional damage, dodge and parry attacks, and your skills have a quick-time event associated with them that boosts the effectiveness of them.</p>
1813
1814
1815
1816<p>No need to worry about mana levels either. Skills are gated by a battle-specific meter that recovers as you do damage and parry attacks. Which is nice. Worrying about mana use gets tiring after a while, so I appreciate not having to bother with it.</p>
1817
1818
1819
1820<p>Levels are mostly corridors with hidden bits and other things to find. There&#8217;s no minimap for these levels, so it becomes easy to lose your sense of direction. There&#8217;s also an overworld map which you explore more or less the same way but with the camera further out.</p>
1821
1822
1823
1824<p>Much like Metaphor, I&#8217;ve barely touched the surface of it. It&#8217;s more interesting than Metaphor, but I&#8217;m struggling to find the time or motivation to play it. I&#8217;m just not seeing what everyone else sees.</p>
1825
1826
1827
1828<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Like A Dragon: Pirate Yakuza In Hawaii</h1>
1829
1830
1831
1832<p>Majima is a pirate now.</p>
1833
1834
1835
1836<p>This is an amazing premise let down by an incredibly slow introduction. They spend the first hour or so of the game introducing mechanics like growing plants and feeding animals.</p>
1837
1838
1839
1840<p>Once the game does get going at least, it&#8217;s not too bad. The combat is fast-paced. Majima gets a dual-sword moveset that turns him into a human blender. But the combat isn&#8217;t anything beyond what the series has done before.</p>
1841
1842
1843
1844<p>I&#8217;ve fought a dude named Keith about four times now, after about 6-8 hours of playing. Each time I wonder why he continues to bother trying to fight me. Once I can understand, twice also, but three fights and beyond – what has he got to prove at this point? Is he a masochist or something? Does he enjoy getting his arse kicked?</p>
1845
1846
1847
1848<p>He&#8217;s not even a main character or anything. I genuinely do not understand why we keep fighting this dude.</p>
1849
1850
1851
1852<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025_12_24_21_06_33.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025_12_24_21_06_33-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2854" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025_12_24_21_06_33-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025_12_24_21_06_33-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025_12_24_21_06_33-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025_12_24_21_06_33-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025_12_24_21_06_33-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025_12_24_21_06_33.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
1853
1854
1855
1856<p>I&#8217;m barely into chapter 2 as I&#8217;m writing this, so I still have plenty left to play. So I&#8217;ll give another update next year.</p>
1857
1858
1859
1860<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-large-font-size">Other Stuff I Played:</h1>
1861
1862
1863
1864<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Lumines Remastered</h2>
1865
1866
1867
1868<p>I hadn&#8217;t played Lumines before. My first experience with it was with the demo for Lumines Arise. If I were to describe it in layman&#8217;s terms, it&#8217;s a mix of Tetris, Puyo Puyo, and Puzzle Fighter. The goal is to connect 4 coloured blocks into a box shape. Then a line goes across the screen, clearing the blocks.<
1868/p>
1869
1870
1871
1872<p>Off the bat, the music is incredible. The first song is &#8220;SHININ'&#8221; by Mondo Grosso, which is an awesome song. Other songs by them and songs by Nobuchika Eri are featured heavily in it. And they&#8217;re absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, unlocking songs requires me to be significantly better at the game than I am.</p>
1873
1874
1875
1876<p>My one actual complaint is that the game is FPS dependent. Playing above 60Hz causes it to run at much higher speeds than intended. Although 60Hz can also be quite difficult during the latter stages. I haven&#8217;t tested at 30Hz, perhaps that would solve the issue.</p>
1877
1878
1879
1880<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">PowerWash Simulator 1 &amp; 2</h2>
1881
1882
1883
1884<p>Another busybody game in a mountain of simulators of real-world work. I did not play much of the first game. It made me motion sick after a while, and hunting down the smallest of smudges became extremely tedious as the maps got larger.</p>
1885
1886
1887
1888<p>The second game greatly improves the pixel hunting, highlighting the specific parts that require cleaning. Plus it&#8217;s more lenient as to when something is clean. Soap is free in the second game and is an extremely powerful tool. Using it means I no longer require the highest pressure nozzle for the toughest stains. Making my life much easier.</p>
1889
1890
1891
1892<p>If I must complain, I&#8217;m not sure what the point of the hub area is. You can customise it, but it doesn&#8217;t serve much purpose. Also, the order of the levels does not really respect how much time you&#8217;re willing to put into it. You&#8217;ll start with a small job and then immediately receive multiple longer jobs after it. Some of which take over an hour to finish, if not more. There&#8217;s no time estimate on these jobs either. Thankfully you can save in the middle of one and pick up where you left off.</p>
1893
1894
1895
1896<p>It would be nice if it gave you a time estimate for a job as well as organising it into small, medium, and large jobs. And then letting you pick which one you want to go to at the present time.</p>
1897
1898
1899
1900<p>Either way, it&#8217;s a good time-wasting/podcast listening game.</p>
1901
1902
1903
1904<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Keeper</h2>
1905
1906
1907
1908<p>Double Fine released a game this year. Not that you would know, considering the complete lack of marketing for it. Anyway, it&#8217;s a pretty walking simulator where you play as a lighthouse making his way towards a mountain. Although you don&#8217;t stay in the lighthouse form. You get turned into a boat for a bit and a couple other things.</p>
1909
1910
1911
1912<p>There&#8217;s no combat to speak of, but there are some puzzles. They&#8217;re not terribly difficult to figure out, but they use the mechanics they introduce to you fairly well.</p>
1913
1914
1915
1916<p>It doesn&#8217;t run very well. I was struggling to maintain 60 FPS on near-low settings with DLSS Performance. I don&#8217;t know how the hell they managed to make a heavily scripted walking simulator run so badly, but they did. It&#8217;s an annoying blemish to an otherwise neat little game.</p>
1917
1918
1919
1920<p>You can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT5QtceroE9MuhWpJx02BiH0">watch my playthrough here</a>.</p>
1921
1922
1923
1924<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">All In Abyss</h2>
1925
1926
1927
1928<p>I believe I mentioned this when I talked about Balatro. It&#8217;s another poker-focused game, but with a story told via a visual novel. I actually prefer it to Balatro because I play against another character instead of just the void. I prefer having the social aspects of poker, and seeing the other character react to your moves is fun.</p>
1929
1930
1931
1932<p>That said, although the game does a good job at explaining the hierarchy of hands, cheating is part of the story and gameplay mechanics. So it doesn&#8217;t matter how good your hands are at times; the game can and will ruin it.</p>
1933
1934
1935
1936<figure class="wp-block-image size-large"><a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251112205110_1.jpg"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="1024" height="576" src="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251112205110_1-1024x576.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-2861" srcset="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251112205110_1-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251112205110_1-300x169.jpg 300w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251112205110_1-768x432.jpg 768w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251112205110_1-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251112205110_1-500x281.jpg 500w, https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/20251112205110_1.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a></figure>
1937
1938
1939
1940<p>I haven&#8217;t finished the game; I&#8217;ve only made it up to the story part leading up to the next boss. But the first boss&#8217; death scene was very disturbing. All I&#8217;ll say is that it involved food, and I&#8217;ll leave it at that. I hope I get some more time to play this soon.</p>
1941
1942
1943
1944<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">DOOM 64</h2>
1945
1946
1947
1948<p>I feel like this game gets overlooked a lot. Probably because the N64 is probably the worst pile of crap to play shooters on, and partly because it was stuck on the N64 for the longest time. Either way, we can play it on PC now.</p>
1949
1950
1951
1952<p>It feels like they took at the later levels in DOOM and made more of them. The maps are complicated with a lot of key hunting. A good amount of secrets too. Most of the weapons and enemies are the same, but with a different visual style.</p>
1953
1954
1955
1956<p>I think the new art looks pretty good, albeit different. Certainly better looking than the PS1 port of the original.</p>
1957
1958
1959
1960<p>The final boss is stupidly difficult, however. It requires you to obtain items from secret areas throughout the game to power up the Unmaker weapon. Otherwise, the final boss will obliterate you. Unless, of course, you save your BFG ammo and cheese it. In the additional levels they added for the remaster, these secret items are in the map with the final boss. Cutting out the need to hunt them down in prior levels.</p>
1961
1962
1963
1964<p>You can <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkzr2JHJ2bT5VZtPK3jYwJl_mRkoX4yLv">watch my playthrough here</a>.</p>
1965
1966
1967
1968<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-large-font-size">Anime Corner:</h1>
1969
1970
1971
1972<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Turkey!</h1>
1973
1974
1975
1976<p>I came into this expecting a bowling anime. I did not get a bowling anime.</p>
1977
1978
1979
1980<p>Instead I got a stupidly contrived plot about time-travelling teenager
1980s introducing bowling to some ancient Japanese family of girls while they deal with trying to figure out how to get back. Then they go back, realise that the girls they were friends with get slaughtered by the local warlord, and decide to go back again. With little to no consideration for how their actions could potentially change the course of history.</p>
1981
1982
1983
1984<p>Frankly, it takes itself far too seriously, while also being probably one of the dumbest things I&#8217;ve ever watched.</p>
1985
1986
1987
1988<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">New Panty &amp; Stocking with Garterbelt</h1>
1989
1990
1991
1992<p>After God knows how long, there&#8217;s a new Panty and Stocking anime. And it&#8217;s the same as ever. Tonnes of pop culture references, sexual humour, and a crap load of uncensored nudity. The last of which is exclusive for Western audiences, as Japan censors that.</p>
1993
1994
1995
1996<p>The parodies are generally more recent and very Western. Everything from Star Wars and Indiana Jones to Tomb Raider of all things. Inferno Cop even shows up at some point in some weird joke about American police brutality. I enjoyed it.</p>
1997
1998
1999
2000<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">City The Animation</h1>
2001
2002
2003
2004<p>Remember Nichijou? City is from the same author. There are a lot more characters and more story threads than in Nichijou. There&#8217;s a group of three girls that often act as the main trio, but focus is certainly spread out beyond them.</p>
2005
2006
2007
2008<p>The animation is incredible in places. Lots of characters on screen moving around, long shots with multiple gags as the camera moves past time, and so on. KyoAni still have some fantastic animators working for them.</p>
2009
2010
2011
2012<p>That said, I don&#8217;t think the show is as funny as Nichijou was. The many characters do a lot for the world-building, but there are so many of them that it&#8217;s difficult to focus on some. Which means there&#8217;s a lack of driving force behind the overall plot. Nichijou mostly focused on Yuuko, her friends, the robot Nano, and her child professor. Other characters would only get a handful of gags. Here, characters get most of a whole episode. Sometimes multiple plotlines run in parallel. It gets hard to follow.</p>
2013
2014
2015
2016<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide"/>
2017
2018
2019
2020<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-large-font-size">My Top 10 Games Of The Year</h1>
2021
2022
2023
2024<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Released Games That I Wanted To Play Or Play More Of</h2>
2025
2026
2027
2028<ul class="wp-block-list">
2029<li>Death Stranding 2</li>
2030
2031
2032
2033<li>Rune Factory: Guardians Of Azuma</li>
2034
2035
2036
2037<li>Gal Guardians: Servants of the Dark</li>
2038
2039
2040
2041<li>Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound</li>
2042
2043
2044
2045<li>Shinobi: Art of Vengeance</li>
2046
2047
2048
2049<li>Baby Steps</li>
2050
2051
2052
2053<li>Tokyo Xtreme Racer</li>
2054
2055
2056
2057<li>Digimon Story: Time Stranger</li>
2058
2059
2060
2061<li>Lumines Arise</li>
2062</ul>
2063
2064
2065
2066<p>God I wish I had money.</p>
2067
2068
2069
2070<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Worst Game I Played</h2>
2071
2072
2073
2074<h3 class="wp-block-heading has-small-font-size">Sushi Ben</h3>
2075
2076
2077
2078<p>I really wish this game wasn&#8217;t as boring or buggy as it is, but here we are. I already talked about it above, so I&#8217;ll save you the reread.</p>
2079
2080
2081
2082<h2 class="wp-block-heading has-medium-font-size">Honourable Mentions:</h2>
2083
2084
2085
2086<h3 class="wp-block-heading has-small-font-size">Uma Musume: Pretty Derby</h3>
2087
2088
2089
2090<p>Not technically a 2025 game considering it&#8217;s been out in Japan for about 4 years. But I enjoy the lore of all the horses portrayed. Especially Gold Ship and Nice Nature. Unfortunately, the grinding and gacha elements were having a net negative effect on my life, so I had to drop the game.</p>
2091
2092
2093
2094<p>Now here&#8217;s the Top 10:</p>
2095
2096
2097
2098<ol reversed class="wp-block-list">
2099<li>Keeper</li>
2100
2101
2102
2103<li>Clair Obscur: Expedition 33</li>
2104
2105
2106
2107<li>RoboCop: Rogue City &#8211; Unfinished Business</li>
2108
2109
2110
2111<li>Ninja Gaiden 4</li>
2112
2113
2114
2115<li>All In Abyss</li>
2116
2117
2118
2119<li>Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii</li>
2120
2121
2122
2123<li>Virtua Fighter 5 R.E.V.O.</li>
2124
2125
2126
2127<li>PowerWash Simulator 2</li>
2128
2129
2130
2131<li>DOOM: The Dark Ages</li>
2132
2133
2134
2135<li>Skate Story</li>
2136</ol>
2137
2138
2139
2140<p>I loved the style, the music, and the skateboarding was awesome despite being somewhat simple. It&#8217;s just a damn good game and stood out the most compared to everything else.</p>
2141
2142
2143
2144<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide"/>
2145
2146
2147
2148<h1 class="wp-block-heading has-large-font-size">My Top 10 Anime Of The Year</h1>
2149
2150
2151
2152<h3 class="wp-block-heading has-small-font-size">
2152Special Mentions:</h3>
2153
2154
2155
2156<ul class="wp-block-list">
2157<li>Rock wa Lady no Tashinami deshite</li>
2158
2159
2160
2161<li>Ballpark de Tsukamaete!</li>
2162</ul>
2163
2164
2165
2166<p>Both fun shows, but lacking something that keeps it out of the top 10 of the year.</p>
2167
2168
2169
2170<h3 class="wp-block-heading has-small-font-size">Worst Anime I Watched:</h3>
2171
2172
2173
2174<ul class="wp-block-list">
2175<li>Lazarus</li>
2176
2177
2178
2179<li>Turkey!</li>
2180</ul>
2181
2182
2183
2184<p>Lazarus doesn&#8217;t respect your intelligence and feels the need to spew self-righteous moral bullshit at you every chance it gets. The animation is good, but I couldn&#8217;t stand the plot or its characters. Topping it off is probably one of the stupidest endings ever written.</p>
2185
2186
2187
2188<p>Turkey, on the other hand, could have been a normal &#8220;Cute Girls Doing Cute Things&#8221; anime about bowling. But instead, the animators decided on time-travelling nonsense. I&#8217;ve already talked about it above, so I won&#8217;t repeat myself.</p>
2189
2190
2191
2192<p>Right, here&#8217;s the Top 10:</p>
2193
2194
2195
2196<ol reversed class="wp-block-list">
2197<li>City The Animation</li>
2198
2199
2200
2201<li>Kowloon Generic Romance</li>
2202
2203
2204
2205<li>Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Otona e no Kaidan</li>
2206
2207
2208
2209<li>Okinawa de Suki ni Natta Ko ga Hougen Sugite Tsurasugiru</li>
2210
2211
2212
2213<li>New Panty &amp; Stocking with Garterbelt</li>
2214
2215
2216
2217<li>Kusuriya no Hitorigoto 2nd Season</li>
2218
2219
2220
2221<li>Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray &amp; Uma Musume: Cinderella Gray Part 2</li>
2222
2223
2224
2225<li>Mattaku Saikin no Tantei to Kitara</li>
2226
2227
2228
2229<li>Chainsaw Man: Reze Arc</li>
2230
2231
2232
2233<li>Ninja to Koroshiya no Futarigurashi</li>
2234</ol>
2235
2236
2237
2238<hr class="wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide"/>
2239
2240
2241
2242<p>Well, that&#8217;s another year in the can. It was pretty awful for a variety of reasons. Storms with power outages, a close family member died, several people in the games industry whose games I grew up with passed away, and prices of everything skyrocketed to fuel some idiotic fake demand for AI.</p>
2243
2244
2245
2246<p>God, this year sucked. And next year is probably going to suck too. Let&#8217;s try and make the best of it.</p>
2247
2248
2249
2250<p style="background-color:#a30000" class="has-text-color has-background has-text-align-center has-white-color">ADMAN</p>
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2276	<caption>October 2026</caption>
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2322									</li>
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2324					<a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/02/17/17-02-2026-global-game-jam-2026/">17/02/2026 &#8211; Global Game Jam 2026</a>
2325									</li>
2326											<li>
2327					<a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/01/02/admans-den-july-december-2025/">ADMAN&#8217;s Den: July &#8211; December 2025</a>
2328									</li>
2329					</ul>
2330
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2380											<li>
2381					<a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/07/27/27-07-2026-2026-stream-layout-finished/">27/07/2026 &#8211; 2026 Stream Layout Finished!</a>
2382											<span class="post-date">27/07/2026</span>
2383									</li>
2384											<li>
2385					<a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/07/20/admans-den-january-june-2026/">ADMAN&#8217;s Den: January &#8211; June 2026</a>
2386											<span class="post-date">20/07/2026</span>
2387									</li>
2388											<li>
2389					<a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/03/16/16-03-2026-a-major-update-for-tur/">16/03/2026 &#8211; A Major Update For Tur!</a>
2390											<span class="post-date">16/03/2026</span>
2391									</li>
2392											<li>
2393					<a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/02/17/17-02-2026-global-game-jam-2026/">17/02/2026 &#8211; Global Game Jam 2026</a>
2394											<span class="post-date">17/02/2026</span>
2395									</li>
2396											<li>
2397					<a href="https://adamluttonblog.co.uk/2026/01/02/admans-den-july-december-2025/">ADMAN&#8217;s Den: July &#8211; December 2025</a>
2398											<span class="post-date">02/01/2026</span>
2399									</li>
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