17th October

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little about the games we’ve been playing. This week, Connor plays a classic, and ticks it off his bucket list; Sherif isn’t sure about a first-person shooter foray into Soulslikes; Matt visits a South Pacific island volcano and Jim Henson’s Labyrinth, all in one game; and Bertie discovers that playing D&D with kids is enormously entertaining.

But enough of that: what have you been playing this week?

And don’t forget we have an entire dusty archive of previous What We’ve Been Playings, just in case you don’t trust your memory and want to check which games you’ve played, and see what you thought of them.

FTL, PC

I spent some time crossing a game off my bucket list. FTL has been sitting in my Steam library for years, untouched and unloved. When people have talked about FTL, I have smiled and nodded, knowing the game’s merits and yet, to my shame, without any firsthand experience of it.

That ended this week! I booted up FTL and threw myself at it with gusto. The game is immediately engaging; I took great joy in figuring out intricate strategies that helped me to reach the final boss, even if I’ve yet to take it down (that drone phase is brutal).

I loved a moment when I learned that rather than manually having a crewmate extinguish fires, I could open the airlock doors and make a little path to the blaze. I felt properly smart when I figured it out. So yeah, here’s to those bucket list classics! Next up for me is Dwarf Fortress.

-Connor

Guns of Eschaton demo, PC

I’ve been meaning to play the demo for Guns of Eschaton since its release and finally got to it this week, just in time for its 8th December release date announcement.

It’s a first-person Soulslike, which is already a strange pairing, but one where – perhaps more surprisingly – melee combat is secondary. Your main weapon is a single-action revolver, though you later access other era-appropriate firearms. Eschaton is set in a supernatural, folk tales-inspired Wild West (Weird West?), one where magic, superstition and even faith are weaved into its fabric.I went in expecting very little; I simply didn’t know if a first-person shooter could work as a Soulslike. And after about two hours with it, I’m still not sure I have a solid idea of the gameplay flow.

Due to the game’s nature, most enemies will be at a distance, and it’s very common for someone to shoot you from somewhere that you don’t see. If you’re even a little bit slow to hear that shot and parry the bullet, that’s half of your health gone. A couple of encounters in the demo reminded me of some terrible tactical shooters: the slow peeking and hoping the AI doesn’t one-shot you; the ammo scarcity that stops you taking any risks; the works.

It didn’t help that the game’s controls were mapped to controller buttons I didn’t expect and couldn’t change (B to jump, what?). Fighting with controls in a game as challenging as Eschaton isn’t something I want to do. I felt so inadequate at playing the game that I went looking for other people’s impressions to see if I’m alone in my feelings, but I am not.

I’m still going to keep Eschaton on my radar. The fantasy of a Soulslike gunslinger is just too specific to ignore. Maybe next time I’ll play with a mouse and keyboard.

-Sherif

Walkabout Mini Golf, Steam Frame

I had a lovely time when I shoved my head in Valve’s new Steam Frame a few weeks back, and an equally lovely time playing far more Walkabout Mini Golf than I probably should have done, given all the other VR games I wanted to play. Well, the mini golf infatuation has not ended.

Walkabout Mini Golf is, if you don’t already know, exactly what it sounds like: multiplayer mini golf, but in VR. The swingy ball-putting business feels great, entirely natural, thanks to those motion controls. But what really makes it work is developer Mighty Coconut’s phenomenal, fantastical mini-golf course design. There’s a little bit of everything across its main courses and dirt-cheap DLC: holes situated around 1950s-style Hollywood movie lots; courses inspired by Atlantis, Jules Verne, and Mount Olympus and its incumbent Greek Gods; matches winding precariously up and down red rock mesas, and even jaunts though Jim Henson’s Labyrinth.

It’s all good stuff; a wonderfully relaxing way to unwind solo or with a couple of helmet-owning chums. Sure, the air mightn’t be as fresh in Steam Frame as it is outside, but my immediate outdoors doesn’t include an easily accessible South Pacific Ocean island volcano, so there’s that.

-Matt

In-person pick-up D&D, and Marvel Cosmic Invasion, PS5

I played in a pick-up game of Dungeons & Dragons at the beginning of the week, which is something I’ve never done before. Specifically, it was an “all comers welcome” D&D night organised at Waterstones in Brighton. So my partner and I paid our £4, took way too many dice, and waited to see what would happen. And what happened was we got paired with some lovely strangers and a couple of very energetic kids. They must have been somewhere between 10 and 12 years old, and they were full of energy, full of ideas. They weren’t so good at waiting their turn, which would probably be a problem in a longer D&D game, but that night, there and then, it didn’t matter. They were a jolting reminder of the power of a child’s imagination and enthusiasm, and I love that they’ve taken an interest in D&D.

I also had a bash at Marvel Cosmic Invasion, at long last, this week. It’s retro-styled, side-scrolling, co-op beat-’em-up starring all of your favourite Marvel heroes, probably. There’s Captain America, there’s Spider-Man, there’s Storm, there’s Wolverine. There’s Cyclops, who’s always struck me as a video game character first and foremost. It’s good fun. There’s a cool tag-team system whereby you can switch between two heroes, temporarily calling the other hero for help and special moves, and there are loads of over the top power-attacks. And you can fly. That sounds trivial but it feels enormously powerful just hanging in the air like that. A perfect couch co-op game.

-Bertie