It’s been a while since I’ve written about games that I’ve played on here. Recently I’ve been playing a lot more than I would do normally, and just wanted to write a little post about that. At the moment I’m playing Lego Star Wars with Tabby. We’ve been big fans of the Lego games for a long time, and this has been one of my most anticipated games for a long time.

Sadly, it’s not as good as I was hoping, but I’m still really enjoying it. To get the bad out of the way, I think the films are rushed through in the story. It feels like some key moments are missing or condensed, and I understand that it’s a lot to pack into one game, but I would have preferred more levels and less fetch quests. The bigger issue is just how buggy the game is. I’m playing on PS5 in co-op, and the game is a mess. It freezes, there’s a boss fight the just wouldn’t progress, twice, and it seems if you play it for a long period of time things just start to go a little wrong and that builds up until you have to turn the game off and on. It feels a little unfinished, which is a shame after how long it’s been delayed. They should have held it back to iron out the issues.

Thankfully, when the game is working, which is most of the time to be fair, it’s great fun. The humour is excellent, especially if you’re a Star Wars fan. The combat is greatly improved from previous games, and the open worldness of it all is pretty great. There’s something special about driving around on Jakku and going over a hill to find a town to explore. It feels very big and expansive to find little things to do and that’s really fun.

Before Lego Star Wars, I played Elden Ring. I like the Souls series, so an open world game with input from George R. R. Martin was a must. I did put off buying it, because I knew I would sink so much time into it, but in the end I caved. I have a problem with playing games, that I need to 100% them and Elden Ring was a challenge, but I managed to do it. 100 hours later and I did everything in the game. Overall, I found this game so frustrating, and not always in a good way. Malenia, and anyone who’s played this boss will understand my pain, is just an awful time. It was one of the last things I did in my playthrough, and it took an entire evening of struggling, dying and repeating. I did manage to beat her in the end, but it was a struggle. The repeated bosses in the smaller dungeons also annoyed me a lot. To be honest, I didn’t enjoy the game as much as I thought I would. I used to enjoy playing hard games, getting good at them and then reaching 100%, but this one just wasn’t as fun, for me at least. I think it’s me getting older, but when I look back at the time I spent playing it, I do slightly regret it, it just wasn’t that fun.

I remember when Bloodborne came out and I sank so much time into that and loved every second of it. I struggled so much, spent like eight hours on one boss in a day, but I got really good at it. To the point that I got the platinum trophy and then helped a friend at work get the platinum themselves as well, and then we played through new game plus over and over. I loved Bloodborne, but I can’t say the same about Elden Ring, but I think that’s mostly on me.

Other than that I’ve been slowly playing through Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, which is a lot of fun even if it feels like a cheap Final Fantasy game while we wait for XVI to be released. I’m trying to limit myself to playing one level at a time, and it’s a great action game. Not too difficult, but there’s enough of a challenge there to keep me coming back for more. I don’t know how much I have left of the game, but I’m enjoying it so far. It’s not excellent, but a fun time all the same.

Beyond that I’m really looking forward to The Quarry, which is my most anticipated game of the year now that Lego Star Wars is out. It looks like a great successor to Until Dawn and I can’t wait to play that. I’m also looking forward to Evil Dead, as I love the films. Also the Klonoa remasters, as I’ve never played them but always wanted to. There’s just too many games, and not enough time.

Thanks for reading and until next time,

Ashley