Earthbound and Dune 29.08.15

Everyone's Gone to the Rapture (PS4) has been an interesting experience and a hard game to describe without getting into parts of the story, so a slight spoiler warning before I start. 

Set in the early 1980s, rural England it's filled with visual references and nostalgia which could be lost on players not from Britain, but I found it refreshing to play a game set in a familiar world. The plot places you as an unnamed voyeur on this world, slowly gliding through it listening in to balls of lights dialogue which sounds a bit like the Archers goes Sci-Fi. The movement is slow (even when pressing the run button) but I thought this added to the mysterious nature of your role in the game, it feels floaty, almost ghostlike only annoying me a couple of times, when tracing back footsteps to work out where I was going, there is a holiday camp section about two thirds in which this was particularly irritating. On the whole though your guided by the lights floating about, and you can see the from a distance pointing you in the right direction. Story can be stumbled upon by lesser characters talking between themselves and discovering these chance encounters helped make the game more alive whilst making my play-through seem unique, a great example of this was with the fate of the mechanic and the people who discover him. The opening of the game, following a vicar as he deals with the events was fascinating, ambiguous on how long a timeline your dealing with as the village descends into chaos building up to him alone questioning his faith it was distressing, aided by some fantastic acting, then I departed to the next part of the story where the mystery of what happened starts to take centre stage, graffiti on doors, discarded star charts and other clues such as crutches laying in the street could point to what happened and it builds up to the two lead characters taking centre stage. The major plot points are almost unavoidable, playing out on radios when interacted with and that takes a little bit of the chance elements of the story out of the game but there can be some detective work to find where the radio is hidden (you can hear a loop of numbers when your near). It looks good, but not spectacular bar a few scenes when night passes to day and as I mention earlier the acting throughout is fantastic. If I hadn't played Her Story earlier in the year I may have felt a lot better about this game, the comparison between the two is a bit tenuous but for a slow methodical journey through a mystery in a nostalgic Great Britain, Her Story just does it that bit better. I liked Everyone's Gone to the Rapture, just don't know if I loved it.

In my downtime I played a bit of Kung Fury: Street Rage (PS4) Two buttons, punch left and right, fighting through nazis, ninjas, dominatrix's an robots as a dinosaur watches on, perfect respite from walking slowly through the countryside. Could easily be a mobile game, but it's cool and cheap on the PS4.

Finally I played some of the reimagining of Gauntlet (PS4) from the makers of Helldivers, a game I really enjoyed. Given an arcade game most people know they've got a bit less freedom with objectives it seems, and the levels seem larger for it. There is a satisfaction to killing waves of monsters still, piles of bones still dispatch pesky ghosts and it all feels very familiar even being too sword happy can still destroy a turkey and all the health that goes with it. Looks fine, not too different from the Tomb Raider game I played a few weeks back. It's a game I'm not going to pass judgement on until playing it coop as that's where Gauntlet has always been at it's finest, it all felt a bit lonely in the dungeon on my own.

Earthbound and Dune 18.08.15

My plans to complete, or at least get through a sizeable chunk of Mario & Luigi: Bowsers Inside Story (DS) whilst on holiday didn't quite come off, the small portion I got through still trawling through tutorials. What I did play I really enjoyed. It's the first Mario RPG I've played, and it's a novel twist on the typical mechanics, adding basic platforming into the mix and stealing and building the rhythm based combat mechanics of Earthbound. It's a slow build, made more bearable by a witty story, playing off the tropes of a Mario game as you'd imagine, Bowser in particular is a much funnier character along with his sidekick Kamek, some of the humour early on is too dependent on breaking the third wall, the first few times funny but the joke wears a little thin as it continues through a lengthy tutorial. Perhaps that's why Bowser is such a breath of fresh air, whereas the Mario Bros play the same roles you imagine, Bowser seems more downtrodden, the story playing on his multiple failed attempts at capturing Peach. The gameplay itself gets pretty in depth even early on, Mario and Luigi are controlled by separate buttons while platforming but they're tied to the same movement, which makes lining up some jumps trickier. In combat your encouraged to spot tells in enemies attacks and counter them by the ever dependable head stomp it also drops green shells into fighting which can cause more damage if timing is right while also building combos up. There's a lot going on, even at this early stage, I'll hopefully keep at it as it's one of those titles that would probably require restarting if I left it too long just to work out what to do (Sadly Bloodborne has already fallen victim to that this year). The only thing I've got against it is a personal thing, I find the shoulder buttons on the form of a 3DS or DS (except for the original silver model) awkward to use, so games which require them don't feel great.

I checked into Animal Crossing (3DS) to find animals annoyed I'd not spoken to them in a week, a jungle of bamboo has sprouted around my house and I got bitten by a tarantula. Way too stressful for sitting by the pool.

Much more to talk about next week, I've taken my first slow steps into Everyone's Gone to the Rapture and plan to have some less ernest fun in Kung Fury: Street Rage and Gauntlet.

Earthbound and Dune 06.08.15

Not much to talk about this week, life got in the way of playing anything. I did download and play the first section of Limbo (PS4) so probably like an hours gameplay. Its interesting (to me anyway) how much of the game came back to me, i’d completed it about 4 years ago and not picked it up since. I only died twice in the opening bit, and both times due to attempting to rush through it. Thats not a vindication of how good I am at playing games, rather that the game is designed so well its incredibly memorable. Killing the spider and subsequently using his body as tool seemed more gross and cruel when I was finding the game much easier. Not much more to say about it, still looks and sounds fantastic but the timeless look of it shouldn’t age really. I’ll probably leave it at that, I remember some of the more physics based magnet sections becoming irritating later on and a little too fiddly for me. Fantastic game all the same.

I also played Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (PS4), a top down duel stick shooter. Due to my limited time with Tomb Raider games since the first one the two hours I put in is the most fun I’ve had with the series from the most time put in. I ignored pretty much any story I was presented with, so was a little confused when a brief cutscene showed the protagonist with another dude and two Egyptian throwbacks, it wasn’t slow to place me in the action, fighting skeletons and giant beetles (i’m assuming mummies will make an appearance at some point). Puzzles so far have been limited to blowing stuff up and pushing rocks about, but that allowed the tighter elements of the gameplay to shine, such as avoiding rolling spiky balls and ascending walls. On my way there was a tremendous sort of boss fight with a giant crocodile monster, aided by his fantastic character design and a more underwhelming fight against some golden god chap who just followed me around as I dropped bombs for him to walk into. Puzzles and enemy count ramped up in difficulty pleasingly as I was playing, sometimes involving raising platforms with a magical staff, another shoulder button on the controller is mapped to lighting lamps, the purpose of this so far has been similar to shooting countless vases (collecting gems) also dotted around the levels are other trinkets, some applying more RPG elements to my character such as more damage or strength. The only downside to this fairly mindless game has been a confusing hub world which didn’t guide me to the next level as much as I would have liked, but this hasn’t been helped by me tapping through the cutscenes. The idea of this game existing alongside the grittier titles from the series (however preposterous it seems) I like, especially as it harkens back to the time when Lara Croft fought dinosaurs. 

Thats about it, I’m intending to get through Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS) whilst on holiday next week, i’ll see how that goes.