¡Recently, Abandoned; Games!

I'm close to abandoning Zelda tears of the kingdom. I have zero interest in looking around a room for things to use magic gunk to stick together to open a door of float above something or slide along. Or maybe have to look up to magic warp through a ceiling and watch a boring animation whilst I swim through rock or sticking a tree branch to a stone. Zzzz. Botw is one of my favourite games of all time as well.

It might be worth sacking it off and seeing if it clicks next time you have a Zelda craving. I didn’t really care for the fusion ability until I understood it’s worth and the game doesn’t really communicate that very well. Once you fell a silver Bokoblin and fuse it’s horn to a weapon, it’s quite eye opening as to what you can achieve with weapon power and such.

As for the other abilities, I do use ascend a lot, as somebody that goes looking for caves, but I don’t build much. It’s not essential all that often. At least outside of Shrines and Temples.

You can crack a joke but at 47 I do feel set in my ways a bit.

Sounds like you need to go and find a new one... Joking aside though it is a good game.

My wife had the same issue but clearly not as bad

Thinking of abandoning Mana Spark, I've maxed out all weapons, skills and food so I've reached a ceiling now. Can only reach the third section a handful of times so struggling a bit. It is a bit moreish though as the first few sections are a cakewalk.

Ha! I’m also playing F.I.S.T. I think somebody posted about it on here yonks ago, but the combat is pretty poor. It’s all basic combos for the most part, but the difficulty is dictated by how many enemies get thrown at you at once. It’s not very well designed in that respect.

I did, however, enjoy both the stealth part where your weapons are taken away and the mines, which is pretty much just platforming.

Will I finish it or abandon it? It depends on how stubborn I feel about completing it. It looks fantastic, sounds awful and is generally quite frustrating and unrewarding to play.

If only I had recalled your post sooner! I certainly regret starting it.

Bee Simulator (PS5)

Thought I'd have a crack at this as the trailer appealed to me in a weird way and it's free as part of the PS Plus Extra subscription. Unfortunately the trailer was not at all representative of the actual game, which seems to be aimed at children with a high tolerance for jank. You basically fly around a small open world following quest markers and doing one of about four different simplistic minigames. There's a little bit of educational stuff about bees and bee hives, as well as an admirable message about the importance of bees to our ecosystem and the dangers they face, but that's all ruined by the truly awful flight controls, unimaginative mechanics, twee characterisation and dreadful voice acting. Avoid!

Felt exactly the same, very dark themes at least made it different. But once get past that just felt like a clunky indie platformer and frankly there are enough of those around. 

Haven't played Syberian Mayhem, but Serious Sam 4 (the game it's based upon) wasn't well received even by the fandom.

If you want to give the series a proper chance, First Encounter and Second Encounter are the pinnacle for me. The HD versions are great too.

The ways it’s playing so far, Ghost if Tsushima.

I’d wanted to try it for ages so upgraded PS Plus. Maybe it’s because I’m playing Elden Ring but this is - after a few hours - pretty poor.

Way too much slow walking to investigate a stable, a map filled with icons, combat that feels more like a rhythm action game and horribly “light” combat system.

I think I’ll give it another hour or so before I bin it and try Returnal instead.

Returnal > Ghost, for sure; however, I thought the combat was the latter's best feature by a country mile.

jeepers What is it you don't like about Ghost of Tsushima's combat system, out of interest?