Our Latest Gaming Adventures – From Blockbusters to Hidden Gems and Standout Titles

8th March

Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing. This week, Ed excitingly dives into Monster Hunter Wilds but isn’t entirely convinced; Tom O takes the plunge into Avowed and hopes he can stick with a big game this time; and Bertie goes back to probably the best mobile game ever.

What have you been playing?

Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.

Monster Hunter Wilds, PS5

Like many, Monster Hunter World was my introduction to Capcom’s series, and had me intimidated and confused from the start. A hundred or so hours later and I was still intimidated and confused, but at least competent with the bow. So when I played follow-up Rise, I felt more immediately confident and quickly fell in love with it.

I’d hoped to fall even deeper in love with Wilds as my hunting confidence grew further, but my feelings so far are mixed – I’m close to finishing the initial campaign. For every improvement Capcom has made, there’s a drawback elsewhere; two steps forward, one back.

Take the more streamlined approach of Wilds, for instance, especially the new options on your Seikrat mount. Your speedy bird is almost a mobile camp, allowing you to swap and sharpen weapons on the go, heal while riding, and grab distant materials with a grapple. This is great! But equally, the auto-run function means I’m hands-off and on auto-pilot, on my way to the next hunt, barely interacting with the environment. The focus is squarely on monster battling rather than monster hunting.

Then there’s the level design, with its sprawling and spectacular open environments and weather effects. So far in the campaign, these haven’t had a noticeable impact on gameplay, though I hope they will in the High Rank hunts. Instead, they contribute to the game’s poor performance; even on a base PS5 that’s prioritising framerate, the game is full of distractingly PS2-era textures to keep things smooth. The visuals have a drab, washed-out feel, especially compared with the more colourful Rise, and I think it results in a lack of personality here – outside of the monster designs, of course. I miss the Japanese-influenced world of Rise. I miss its poetic monster introductions. I miss the cat dango song.

But then there’s combat, which feels the best of the three games. As a bow main, I love the wound system and the ability to fire focused homing shots for massive damage. Yes it’s a little easy, but I feel more powerful than ever, and the monster menagerie includes some particularly inventive and thrilling battles. And with the ability to switch weapons more easily, I’m sorely tempted to learn a secondary melee weapon too. Wilds absolutely succeeds in its core combat, and the central concept of battling and skinning monsters is incredibly moreish. I just hope those later High Rank hunts can override some of my disappointment from early on.

-Ed

Avowed, Xbox Series X

I’m terrible at getting into big games. I bounced off The Witcher 3 four times before finally getting consumed by it. Skyrim, a game I own on at least four platforms, I’ve never really got far into, usually wandering off up a large mountain I shouldn’t be wandering up, then sort of getting bored – I somehow managed to push early companion Lydia off one of these mountains, once, and never found her again, which didn’t help. I didn’t get off the first disc playing Final Fantasy 7 on PS1 for goodness sake.

So, Avowed. I’m liking this a lot having just made it to Paradis, but as ever I’m struggling slightly to just play it instead of getting distracted. With Avowed my issue is the image quality on Xbox Series X. I’m playing on Balanced Mode as I wanted some decent visuals but with the smoother frame rate offered compared to Quality, but it’s one of the noisiest looking games I’ve seen in a while. Movement causes the image to break up pretty badly and there are some terrible graphical issues I think are to do with shadows, but can’t be sure. The game looks lovely most of the time, but it feels like it’s about to break.

Anyway, best moments so far? I thought I’d accidentally eaten that spell book you get near the start that’s needed to burn the overgrown thorny branches away. Turns out I hadn’t. Can you eat them, though? Sort of like a mushroom-headed Kirby gameplay mechanic? I also spent a minute gazing at the gorgeous scenery and walked straight off a cliff to my death. Will I stick with Avowed? Who knows. Find out next week, maybe.

-Tom O

Slice & Dice, Android

Every time I load Slice & Dice back up, I fall in love all over again, such that my infatuation has now developed into full obsession.

You will have noticed me write about it here before. Slice & Dice is a game about rolling dice to lead fantasy heroes through increasingly tough battles. Character abilities are mapped to the sides of six-sided dice, which you roll and reroll to keep the good results from, then you use those against enemies that do the same on their turn to you. That’s it on a very basic level, but it’s the character level-ups that are more like Pokémon evolutions that make it great.

The game has something like 102 heroes you can play as, or draft into your teams, and because there are so many, they go way beyond the regular fighter, rogue, mage types we’re used to. The other day, on the way back from London, I got drafted a Spade for example – a spade! And what did it do? Nothing but resurrect others – nothing but dig people back up! Sheer brilliance.

I don’t know how solo developer Tann comes up with all of the ideas but part of the joy of Slice & Dice is simply experiencing what character the game offers you next, and marvelling at the abilities they’ve been given to use. Some characters destroy themselves, others copy, and some – like the Statue – don’t do anything at all. How do you use them? That’s the pervading mindset in the game – how do I use this character well.

What also astounds me is the regularity Tann keeps updating the game with, years after release. Play it, that’s all I can say. Play it and tell me I’m not mad, I beg of you.

-Bertie