Recent reviews by Bunch

Breaking Bad S4 E6, 34:12

Beautifully relaxing game, it's not hard and the story is about you being a child, but the theming and atmosphere is perfect. Well worth picking up.

This is THE best Star Wars game around right now. A must play for fans. Massively improves upon Jedi Fallen Order with more fleshed out combat & variety, much better world building and exploration. The graphics are gorgeous. The story had me hooked. While this game was massive to complete, if anything I've been left wanting more Star Wars of such high quality like this.

I don't enjoy having certain "pathways" locked until you have X ability or having to backtrack in games, but thankfully all the backtracking is only for optional collectables (which there are many). I ended up just waiting until I had all the progression tools before bothering to explore properly. A really nice feature is upon exploring you can find map upgrades that actually pinpoint collectables you have missed on the map, so no guide actually needed to 100% this title.
Make sure to run EA app as admin and make sure you are signed in properly before playing to make sure achievements pop properly. This + not being able to get steam overlay running properly was my only real gripes with the game.

Performance wise I never had an issue, No frame drops or crashes before the Denuvo removal update.
I have had an avg frame rate of 84.8fps on Native 3440x1440p Maxed Settings + RT (7800x3d + 6950xt) during the 65ish hours of playtime.
Funnily enough I had only experienced a couple of crashes (2 or 3 at most) and frame drops in very small specific locations after this update, your experience may be different, even so please don't let the chance of poor performance stop you experiencing this phenomenal game.

Lookout for the "STAR WARS™ Jedi Bundle" that gets put up sometimes during certain sales, you can grab both Jedi games Fallen Order and Survivor for £27

Even someone who doesn't know anything about the Warhammer lore, this game is brilliant. The combat and the campaign makes you feel truly badass, with all the blood and gore soaking you in red as you cleave through the relentless swarms of aliens (Tyranids). The execution animations are brutal and there are several for each weapon and enemy type so it keeps feels fresh and epic to pull off. I have many times just stopped and looked around in awe of the graphics and set pieces.

The campaign imo is neither too short or too long, for solo I found the 2nd difficulty option was more fun, it was harder for you to die, so it felt like Titus (the main character) was more formidable. However the 3rd difficulty option (the intended experience by the devs) felt more challenging and satisfying to overcome. But it just was not fun to constantly die to defense sections when you have a time limit to protect an objective before it dies, and the AI is next to useless to help you. It became far to frustrating to try to rush killing the mobs hitting the objective AND dealing with swarms trying to kill you AND fighting for your life as you are getting torn to shreds by ranged mobs.
The story continues off the first one, which I just couldn't get into. But jumping straight into the 2nd was interesting, the little comments between your squad and other leading characters was great, it kept sprinkling in lore that kept me hooked and wanting to learn more. Several times I stopped to google lore out of pure interest. I'm sure 40k fans will LOVE every part of this game in that respect.

Operations the PVE mode is great, it's only 6 missions so far but the combat just makes you want to keep replaying them anyway. The concept behind the PVE is something I've personally not seen before, you play as members of a side squad who helps assist in missions that directly ties into the campaign itself. So understandably the missions are locked until you get to the respective point in the main story, however a nice feature is if you don't care about the story you can just ignore the warning and play them anyway. The difficulty is nothing like the difficulty of the campaign and it is a MUST to start from the lowest and earn perks and upgrades before jumping into higher difficulties. This is because of the progression balance and needing to create a build with your classes and weapons perks, otherwise the mobs are just too tough and too much of bullet sponges.

The PVP caught me completely by surprise, it's just pure arcade-y fun, like playing an action fps from the Xbox 360 era. There's no stat tracking or anything to do with kills really meaning anything. Only being on the winning team gives you any real sense of progression; which comes in the form of a new cosmetic unlocked for every Win in either PVE or PVP. And the best way to win is playing smart as a team. The classes more or less have a rock/paper/scissors counter between them. The balance isn't really spot on at the moment but that does not stop the fun or challenge in any sort of way. The worst part of PVP currently is there is NO team auto-balance or switching. You will be stuck with the same teammates until you leave the lobby. This means if you join a team as the Space Marines you will always be them every match until you leave. It also means if you join a good team that plays well together you will stay with those people, and with the losing people deciding to leave and refill with other new people, it can be very common to just go on HUGE win streaks which is just unfair to be honest. I have multiple times now gone on 10+ win streaks until the lobby closes or I get a disconnect, and this is just absurd and unheard of in any other PVP game I've played.

Customisation is not bad... but I believe will be vastly improved through later content packs. There is roughly somewhere between 6-10+ armour parts per body segment to choose from for each of the 6 classes of Space Marines, (Head, L/R Shoulder, L/R Arms, L/R Legs, Chest, Backpack) with many more stated to come later. The parts have a countdown to unlock them, tied to wins in either PVP or PVE which is a great reward as you are always unlocking a new part to try out, and the more wins you get the more fancy and decorated your Space Marine can look. The Heretic Marines customisation in PVP, practically doesn't exist, all you can change currently is the colour of the armour. Hopefully this will change later, it's not a massive deal but it is a downside. Especially so if you think of PVP balance in the form of readability with the silhouette, each Heretic Marine class has a very distinctive look that easily stands out from each other. The same cannot be said with the Space Marines, who can be much easier to mix up in the heat of battle or from a distance, leading to making the wrong call with your plan of attack.

In terms of content realistically at the time of release we have:
6 campaign missions (they are pretty long)
6 PVE Operation missions
3 PVP Arenas
3 PVP Modes, King of the Hill, Control Points (3), and Team Deathmatch (50 kills)

Some people will very quickly get bored or burnt out, and some people who are just in love with the combat and setting will keep playing a long time.
Either way there are some real solid bones and foundation that if properly built upon with new content being added later will make it a truly great title. Even with the cons the game may have, it's a great time and its more of what we need in gaming these days, No MTX, No Battlepass, No DRM, A Story that doesn't drag on too long, and simply just some fun gameplay to play as much or as little as you want with friends or solo and then move on. This game is an easy recommendation, I just hope I don't get hooked more into he 40k universe and it becomes the gateway to the plastic crack.

All Yakuza Games and Judgement / Lost Judgement have fantastic stories worth experiencing.
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is another fantastic addition to the series but is in a JRPG turn based style instead of the previous games + Judgement series in a brawler style combat.


If you find the price of the games too much you can pick them up in steam sales. (Lookout for "The Yakuza Collection" which only appears in certain steam sale events, you can get 0 1 2 3 4 5 & 6 in the series all together for approx £30)

For a live service game, the game play is tight, has a regular content drip feed and pretty fair with being able to farm enough premium currency.

Sony backtracked on forcing users to link PSN account so all the people outside of PSN regions can play still. But the game has been delisted and still unavailable to buy in 170+ countries that it was originally available in.

This game is literally a gateway drug. I have lost both countless hours and money across this new "Bullet-Heaven" genre or whatever it's called, with no signs of stopping, and it's all thanks to this game.

It's a great game at a great price, with fairly regular DLC releases and updates (both free and paid) to keep you coming back to maintain that full completion.

This is a short and sweet idler game, where you have to try and use the perk points earned from resets to make different builds to push for higher compression events. You are able to in a way softlock yourself if you are not careful with upgrade choices, as making builds that synergise well together is key to progressing further. Overall it's a fun and charming game. If you like idlers that ask for a bit more strategy than just clicking and waiting, it's well worth its price.

Wow what a thoroughly enjoyable speed running 3D platformer this was to complete. Definitely a hidden gem and so far my favourite swinging / speed running game. Well worth its price. If you like to hunt achievements, this is a relatively easy 100% taking me just under 9 hours to get them all.

The 3 Star times are lenient enough to get without too much trouble if you play right, but have just enough difficultly to keep you improving at your skill of the game as you progress through to the harder levels. There is some cool movement tech to learn and just when you think you did well, watching the top leaderboard runs will blow you away.

Balatro is a brilliant spin on the rougelike deckbuilder genre, using poker and the classic 52 card deck to create a unique game I've not seen anything like before. As you can see people have high praise for the game and it is rightly deserved.

Right away Balatro is very user friendly, the game is very easy to access and modify files to add, change or modify the game to the way you want to play. It's very easy to run and uses very little storage space.
In the game, you have 3 profiles to play with, each with its own progression save, but the great thing is you can use one of these profiles to unlock everything right away (at the expense of achievement progression while playing the profile) to just jump right into any deck you want with all modifiers and cards. Each run in seeded, so you can copy, save and share the seed to improve or re-experience a great run. The game is apparently balanced in a way that if you play right, every game on the base difficulty is winnable.

I will be honest, I did not enjoy the game very much when I first played. I wasn't feeling the "addiction" feeling of enjoyment others had from the game. But slowly but surely after unlocking new and different jokers and getting to grips of how to be successful in Balatro, there was plenty of goals and enjoyment to be had.

There is a slight learning curve when you first jump in, as this is far from a typical poker game. Your scoring is based upon poker hands on playing up to 5 cards at a time. Each poker hand has a Blue number times a Red number, Blue represents your Chips and Red is your Mult. When you play a hand your score will be Chips times your Mult. The harder your hand is to play the more you will score. If you pass the threshold of the blind you progress to the shop before another blind.
This is the core gameplay loop, you will have 3 increasingly harder fights or Blinds as it is called, Small, Medium and Boss Blind. The boss blinds will have a condition or debuff you will have to play around to score. Every time you beat a boss blind your "Ante" will increase which each time will make the scoring requirements to pass harder. Once you beat the boss of Ante 8 you win the run and can test your deck in a rapidly scaling endless mode to see how far you can get.

There are 15 decks to play each with different base modifiers to play around, each time you win on a deck you can play again on a harder difficulty stake up to 8 times each with stacking conditions as you go up. Once you win a few games you unlock challenges which have unique rules to try to win a run with. Beating a challenge unlocks a new one, starting with 5 unlocked up to a total of 20.

Currently you have 150 jokers to use to help you bend the rules of your hand to help you score. 22 Tarot cards to help with deck manipulation. 18 Spectral cards, which are like double edge swords, giving strong manipulation at the cost of potentially run ending negatives if you are not careful. and 22 Planet cards which directly increase the base power of your poker hands. This on top of Card Seals, Card Enhancement and Joker Editions, there is a lot to learn and play around with to help you win.

This in an excellent game at a great price, easily worth the money if this style of game takes your interest, and is very enjoyable to play both on the PC and on the go with the Steam Deck.