AlexStinton

@hulkie It has two (normal and hard).

@Rudy_Manchego I didn’t keep an exact track of time, but it was around the 5-6 hour mark. It felt just the right length for what it had going on.

@NoCode23 I played all the boss fights solo at various points when I was reviewing this, and I could do them all on my own on the standard difficulty.

Also, there’s no AI companions so when you’re solo, you’re on your own.

@WanderingBullet It feels like there are more enemies with more players, but I couldn’t say for certain how many more. There is an option to max out the number of enemies on the level select screen, so you can bump it up manually if you want more.

@Hengist My picture may be slightly out of date. By about 10 years to be precise. But let’s not talk about that 😬

@Hengist I have no idea how old you are, but I was playing Space Hulk games in physical and video game form before most people reading this site were born. That’s why I found what felt like a lack of impact from sealing doors so perplexing.

Now, that we’ve got comparing the size of our Warhammer 40k genitalia out of the way, may I propose a idea?

Could it be that we are both right? After all, reviews are subjective - despite what some people may say. We’re both entitled to our views and I am genuinely happy that you’re getting lots of enjoyment out of Space Hulk: Deathwing. I respect your position despite it being different to mine, so maybe you should respect mine.

@Hengist @Bonbonetti Come on guys. Please don’t suggest we don’t put effort and research into reviewing a game just because you disagree with what our view is.

Just to reference the comments about my SH: Deathwing review. I was fully aware of how to hack and seal doors, and you know what? It never felt like it made a big enough difference to what was happening.

Bottom line on Deathwing: That game’s absolute bobbins, and a poor use of the 40k license, and I can’t believe someone with a deep interest in that universe would be willing to give it a pass.

If anyone has any questions about Space Hulk: Deathwing feel free to @ me, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

@Shellcore It’s only £29 for a physical copy now, but I imagine there’ll be a sale in due course.

@Shigurui Well done, you passed my test. Your prize is on it’s way. Ignore the ticking, it’s nothing to worry about.

@Zerat0r Hey, if you think you'd enjoy Fear Effect Sedna then more power to you. I hope you enjoy it more than I did.

I wish it was better, especially since I had to play it all the way through.

@get2sammyb I believe it's still being worked on by the same developer that made Fear Effect Sedna.

@RogerRoger Thanks for coming back with your thoughts on The Station. I was surprised to read that you were even more down on it than I was.

Sounds like you had more technical issues than I did. The frame rate was bad at times, but I don’t remember any graphical or sound glitches.

Anyhow, thanks for such a thoughtful critique.

@RogerRoger If you do end up getting The Station let me know what you think. I'd be interested in your take.

@NYJetsfan123 I would definitely play The New Order first as many of the characters carry over to the sequel. The Old Blood on the other hand is good, but isn’t essential in my opinion.

@Tasuki Thanks! It was such a great year I struggled to settle on my top five. Hopefully 2018 will be just as good.

@Ben_Rage_V2 Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.

Hey everyone! That SMITE PlayStation Plus Bundle sure looks pretty sweet.... Hey! Where are you all going? Guys? Don’t leave me alone here!

@Useyourname I guess we can agree to disagree.

It certainly was a very challenging encounter - probably the hardest in the whole game - but it's broken up into distinct phases that required a bit of thought and forward thinking as to how to deal with them, hence why the rigid scripting of the encounter made it feel more like a puzzle for me.

This is an interesting take on a game I had a different experience with, as evidenced by my review.

I think it wants you to tackle it's combat in a very specific way. Dual-wielding, avoiding aiming down the sights, staying on the move, and keeping an eye out for armour and health as you go.

I also think the key to enjoying the combat is to find the right difficulty setting. The second lowest setting provided the right combination of challenge and enjoyment for me, but the lowest - based on the hour or so I spent playing on it - turned out to be a much more forgiving way to blast your way through.

The ability to save anytime - rather than a reliance on just a checkpoint system - shows that Machine Games were aiming for a more challenging spin on the combat of the first game. The courtroom encounter especially felt like a multi stage puzzle, and I enjoyed planning out my ballistic ballet step by step.

That said, I don't think the stealth is particularly great. You just don't have the feedback or tools at your disposal to make your way through without trial and error.

@Tasuki Based on the previous adventures I think it’s going to be running for a month or two.

@johnny30 Yeah they're intimidating to begin with, but they drop in no time once you're tooled up.

@johnny30 Word up, son. It does get a bit easier as you level your perks. Are you playing on the 2nd or 3rd difficulty level?

@Quintumply Yay! I like the first one a lot as well. I'd be interested to hear your take on it when you're done.

@Tasuki The crashes and scripting errors are probably fixable with a patch, but the game itself just isn't that much fun.

I was hoping this would be a step up on Payday 2 - given that it's been over two years since the release of the remaster on PS4 - but the mission design just isn't close to being of the same calibre.

Bungie.net doesn't seem to be playing nice with Safari at the moment either.

That said, the request to join option must be accessible somewhere since I just accepted someone who'd asked to join the clan.

You should all see the pain of navigating the Bungie website as your first test. We need to see how bad you want it.

@Comrade44 It's ok, though, you'll have to do most of the heavy lifting as your AI teammates are pretty useless.

@ztpayne7 Yeah, there's plenty of great games out right now and more coming all the time, so I expect Agents of Mayhem won't sell particularly well.

It seems like I enjoyed Agents of Mayhem way more than other reviewers. If anyone has any questions feel free to @ me in the comments.

@WanderingBullet I can't say I'm afraid. Any impressions are embargoed until next week.

@WanderingBullet I have no idea I'm afraid. I think I've played less than 5 hours in total and most of that was in 2013.

I tried this again last week and enjoyed the little bit I played. Never realised before that in some ways Destiny followed in it's footsteps, with both games having more than a few similarities.

One thing that really irked me though, was that it didn't let me wipe my progress and start again. After a bit of research I found out that you can't create a new character and have to pick up where you were left off.

@Hordak I thought I'd detailed that Elite didn't have campaign, though, I appreciate I didn't necessarily use that sort of explicit terminology when I talked about it, so I can see how it might not have been clear.

At this point I think it's safe to assume if there's an online component then PS+ is needed. So, I'm not sure there's a need to always mention this in a review.

Funnily, I did have a line in the review about needing to be connected to the servers for both solo and open play, but cut it during editing as i felt it was also a given with the way games with an integral online component work these days. Though, given your constructive comments - thanks for taking the time to post by the way - I'd probably leave it in now.

@andreoni79 No need to apologise. I was more than happy to help. It's not easy to find answers to those sorts of questions.

@andreoni79 According to the PS4 FAQ for Elite Dangerous you don't:

"Will this require PlayStation®Plus membership to play?

Solo Play will not require PlayStation®Plus. Anything that requires direct multi-player interaction, such as Open Play, CQC, Private Groups will require PlayStation®Plus."

@BlaBlaBla Yes. You can wing up with three other people in your own ships, and even get into some of the bigger ships together to man different stations.

@angrygrolsch I have no issues playing with a controller, though, it understandably uses a lot of different button combinations so it takes a little time to get used to. I've not tried a joystick yet but I may pick one up in the future.

@BAMozzy Yeah.... pretty much

@BAMozzy I'm sure you've aged like a fine wine. Just like me.

@BAMozzy Captain Blood. Now that's a blast from the past. As fun as it was to hunt down those clones I always preferred Elite myself.

In terms of Elite Dangerous' graphical performance: At least they've fixed the awful v-sync issue that cropped up at launch.

@lacerz I think getting the version that includes Horizons is well worth it, though, if you're on the fence you can get the base version and upgrade later for the same price overall. I think you just miss out on some ship paint jobs by not getting the more expensive version straight away.

Tutorials are divided out on a main menu and are completely separate to the actual open/solo play.

I don't think that there are any that take that long. Certainly not an hour. I don't think they save progress, but to be honest I've never left one and gone back in again.

I'm available in the comments if anyone has any questions about Elite Dangerous. Just @ me and ask.

@mantralux Elite's much more focussed on the actual act of flying your ship than EVE is. That said, the "space trucker grind" is definitely in Elite as well.

@LieutenantFatman I'm here for you. We'll get through this together!

@LieutenantFatman To come out of super cruise at a desired location you need to make sure you're targeting it, and then get you speed and distance into the blue zones - these are visible in the targeting display on the left.

Once you've done this a blue message will pop up in in your HUD signalling it's safe to disengage super cruise (pressing triangle once will do this).

@VanguardKaiser Before accepting a cargo mission check you can make the journey by plotting it on your galaxy map. There's a slider you can move to take into account the additional weight of carrying the cargo.

If you keep getting your docking requests denied at a station it's down to the pads being full with other players. This is happening quite a bit right now due to a lot of players being in a similar area of the galaxy.

Fortunately, it's easily solved. If it happens again, save and quit, then go back into the game via the solo play option. You will then be able to dock without an issue.

@Xavien The learning curve in Elite can be brutal so I imagine you won't be the only one it doesn't click with.

@Galvatron The trailer obviously shows the most exciting aspects of the game, and the open nature of Elite means that how much combat you want to see is really up to you.

For me, I just enjoy flying around the galaxy at a leisurely pace doing whatever takes my fancy at the time. On the downside, you do need to be prepared to expend some effort in learning the mechanics, and there are some glaring omissions in terms of functionality - such as in-game clan support.

That said, those omissions have meant player developed tools have popped up to fill the gap, which in-turn has led to the Elite Dangerous community becoming a real driving force in the game. The Fuel Rats are an excellent example of this.

I'm going to do a live stream at some point this week which will be on the YouTube channel, and that'll give you a good idea of how it plays.

@Galvatron The versions are exactly the same according to Frontier, and I can't see any differences outside of some control mapping due to the change in controller.

I've not been back to No Man's Sky recently, but my biggest gripe was how much it held your hand when flying. There's none of that in Elite and if you don't pay attention you can get yourself into trouble very quickly.

Once - when playing late at night - I fell asleep and flew into a star!

@Galvatron The servers only went live yesterday, so the review is in progress.

This article is based on the 100+ hours I put into the Xbox One version over the last couple of years, and I thought - since both versions are the same from a gameplay / content perspective - it would benefit the Push Square community members dipping into Elite for the first time to have some guidance for what is a pretty tough game to get into at times.

I understand how you might have made the mistake in thinking we were going about it the wrong way, but I think it was the right thing to do.

In terms of your questions:

1) I find the exploration, ships, and combat to be much better than No Man's Sky. The big difference is that you are always in your ship, and the only planets you can land on are barren, with no life - unless you count the mysterious barnacles.

2) I think the horizon content is well worth getting as it adds more options for what you can do. Also, you won't know you've lived until you've tried to land on a high gravity world.

@kyleforrester87 It's Rebel Galaxy you're thinking of. I actually liked it, but Elite Dangerous has way more depth.

@LieutenantFatman Yeah, there's a lot to take in at first. Once you've got docking sorted you're over the worst.

Even after many hours of playing Elite on other platforms I still manage to occasionally get wedged in the docking slot, or boost into the side of a space station. It's all part of the Elite Dangerous experience.

@LieutenantFatman A couple of things to check.

1) Are you docking at the right pad number? When you request clearance to dock it tells you which pad number to land on.

2) Are you facing the right way? When you get close to the landing pad and your display changes to show the orientation of your ship, if the nose of you ship isn't pointing away from you in the picture, you're the wrong way around.