What you playing PS4 / PS5 Style

I've been playing Persona 5 Strikers after it was given away as part of Playstation Plus this month. I'm enjoying it, but it's definitely not without its problems. It has a woefully slow start, which doesn't help considering that Persona 5 had an opening act which was arguably its highlight, and some of the early dungeons seemed to last forever. But, it's opened up tremendously after the painful beginning and I'm having a much better time. The story beats are as good as they were in its prequel (Strikers is essentially a sequel to P5) and I'm enjoying the new characters they've introduced.

I do wish it leaned a bit more into its Warriors DNA though. Most battles are against a boss enemy or a very small handful enemies, and the most fun I've had is with the few larger-scale battles the game's thrown at me.

Funnily enough, I half-considered giving Strikers a chance because it apparently is less like a Warriors game than some of the other Warriors clones. I gave the genre a fair chance when I tried Age of Calamity but it felt like I was just ploughing mindlessly through hordes of enemies. Got bored of it, and the story didn't interest me either.

I wish this trend of Warriors-style sequel/prequel/spinoff games, was instead a trend for character-action DMC-like games instead. A style where I find the combat more involved and satisfying, but is still heavily action focused. Honestly, though I think the market feels a little saturated with this type of game now, I'd welcome it more.

I've played this on Switch! I fell off it but have every intention of getting back into it. I found it had a few random difficulty spikes but I'm not a Pro Gamer like Jay is.

Funny reading the two different takes on Strikers though - wanting it to be more Warriors-y, and hoping it's not too Warriors-y. It does have a lot of Persona 5 DNA in it and I was impressed by how much it felt like its own game and not a Warriors title with a Persona skin on it.

I've decided to play a football game for the first time since FIFA World Cup 2010 and I've jumped into FIFA 22 after they gave it away for free with Playstation Plus.

I'm only really playing the Player Career mode, controlling my single character and aiming for success. I decided to join up with Hearts as a young striker, and managed to fire away a whopping 55 goals by February in my first season. I was then cruelly benched by a ligament injury for 5 months and the team nearly bottled a 20 point lead, but managed to close out the season and win the league.

After I returned from injury, the manager decided to start playing me as a LM as opposed to a forward. Even though my player had much better stats than the forward that took my spot after injury, I couldn't get that position back. I was still firing away goals, but not as many, and our defence was getting taken apart by Celtic and Rangers, so we could only hold third in the league. We somehow managed to qualify for the Champions League group stage, but we got hammered by Man U and Inter.

Considering my player was ranked as an 87 overall and most of the Hearts team were around 70, I decided to push for a transfer. My initial offers were from League One sides, but eventually, I received a whopper offer from Real Madrid for £228,000,000. So, uh, that's Hearts set up for life.

I'm enjoying it, but I'll have to see how long I'll stick with it.

I was curious what made you play that, I'm no fan of Fifa but I do think the Become a Legend or whatever its called mode is really good.

I think it's been renamed to the much more banal sounding "Player Career", but it hasn't lessened my enjoyment of it. I don't think I'd have gone out of my way to buy a copy of the game or anything, but when it's free with Playstation Plus then I figured I might as well!

I did go out of my way to buy a copy of the very charming Cat Quest. It's certainly not a world-beater, but there's something moreish about knocking around the world, clearing out dungeons and completing side quests.

Cat Quest 2 is one of my favourite co-op games. I can't imagine it's terribly engaging to play alone though!

Cat Quest was alright - it was fairly basic at its core and definitely didn't have the depth to stay wholly engaging through its fairly short runtime, but I enjoyed it well enough.

I've started playing The Outer Worlds now. Right now, my early impressions are mixed. The writing and dialogue has already proven itself to be of a higher quality than the likes of Fallout 4 but I do think there's something off about the combat that's causing the whole experience to have a strange, almost low-budget feel to it. More thoughts to come, I'm sure.

Goddammit I'm playing Horizon Forbidden West now - I was a bit burnt out by the first game, but family members wanted to see what happened in it so I don't mind so much. I have to say the acting and the capture of said acting is probably the best I've seen in any videogame - and unlike practically everything else in AAA videogames, the story and the main quest is making up for the slightly repetitive game bits.

Think me and EofGiz both starting that soon, I just wrapping up SOPFFO first to send back to boomerang before I get another game from them.

Started that there FFXVI last night. Early impressions - very impressed from a story standpoint. I was gripped across the game's opening couple of hours and I expect that'll continue as the game progresses. The Game of Thrones influence is clear to be seen and it's paying off.

The combat is showing promise, but I don't think I've got enough abilities yet for it to truly shine. I'm enjoying what I've got so far, though. It's not as punishing as a Devil May Cry, but the pedigree that the lead combat designer brought to the game is shining through. It's fast paced and I've not felt bored yet. I've seen complaints about how you can just mash square to win, but I think that's disingenuous and will drag out the tougher fights. It probably won't even work for the real nasty enemies either.

The PS5 says I'm 4hrs in but done 30% of the story and sure played like 8hrs.

Yeah GoT influence is very clear. The combat has been pretty basic at the moment to be honest.