Two fantastic games have drawn my attention from writing this for a while, which I guess is a good thing.
First off is Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4), following up from the fantastic Ground Zeroes, it attempts (really successfully) stealth on a massive scale, every mission can be attempted from pretty much any angle or mind-set, saying that the opening mission does limit you to the old trappings of a stealth game, there are fail states when people spot you and your movement is severely hampered, with narrative reasoning but I did find it annoying, It's opening was such a throwback to the old Metal Gear games which I wanted to love with no joy, strange characters doing bizarre things included, that I was worried that it was going to stray from its predecessor which finally bought me into the franchise. I wasn't worried for long though, so after a fairly decent length intro, with more story than I was expecting, I was thrown into mid 80's Afghanistan, if you've seen the Living Daylights you'll be familiar with this setting, desert and outposts is pretty much it, with larger details like power plants every once in a while, in contrast to the desolate surroundings though the game builds a living, breathing world, guards work shifts, some are driving about randomly, some can be found sleeping late at night, nothing feels scripted or on rails and that's fantastic. Early mission objectives are fairly standard for an open world game, kill someone, capture someone or blow something up. What makes this game so individual though is the freedom to complete your objectives, when tasked with destroying a tank I had the option to stand back and attack from distance as it was on route to its destination or, once this failed for me I ran for the hills, the tank didn't chase for long (after all I'm just one man) and carried on its business, there wasn't a fail state for taking too long or getting spotted, my mission adapted with my ineptitude and now I had to destroy a tank in a enemy stronghold. I won't bore any readers with how I achieved my goal, but it involved another armed vehicle and a lot of damage. Whether you kill a human target or not is optional as well, like everything else in this world it or they can be sent back to your base with the aide of balloons, so far I've kept a policy of capturing every target I'm set out to kill, I don't know why I'm doing this but I find it immensely satisfying. I'm not too far into the actual game (and I know its going to be a long journey) instead of progressing the story I've focused on side missions, which seem actually useful in this game for example when capturing a Russian translator your given translation to what everyone is saying. I've spent far too long getting all the music tapes from around the opening area, including a spectacular heist of Aha's "Take on Me" which ended with me avoiding gunfire as I escaped on horseback whilst listening to my new cassette, its quite a game.
Super Mario Maker (WiiU) gives you all the toys to build a level from either Mario Bros, Mario Bros 3, Mario World or New Super Mario Bros dresses it a lot like Mario Paint and succeeds in building just about the most charming game ever made. Being totally honest this is the game I always wanted to play or at least since having a cheat code for Sonic the Hedgehog 1 which let me redistribute enemies and tiles around Green Hill act 1. The amount of power at my hands the second I booted this game up was totally overwhelming (and that's without the unlocked elements, which now don't take a day to arrive) I've found a natural evolution to what I've made, and where I was expecting to want to make expansive levels as big as the game would let me, I've progressed more toward smaller levels with tighter platforming. I think I need to move away from theming each level, perhaps making more traditional Mario levels. Having most of the tools that the original games makers had really makes me appreciate good level design, very few levels I've built or sampled feel like a Super Mario level, and that's what's fantastic when you do encounter one. On the subject of playing others levels you can sample 8 or 16 with a limit of 100 lives, which is a great way to see what other people are making, weirdly I've only seen one penis, and that was almost subtle. The bonus on completion of the set amount of levels is a random 8bit sprite, offering another way of getting Amiibo characters as well as the likes of Waluigi. The drip feeding of items and foes for your own course creation is something that really suites me, I've not dabbled in Yoshis, Boos, Chomps or wigglers, I'm sure as I get more familiar with the game these will be thrown into the mix but at the moment I'm just absolutely loving everything Super Mario Maker has to offer. I've even found myself at times either thinking about an idea for a level or sketching out some unusable idea, its a long, long time since a game has gripped me like this. Below are the codes for my first four levels:
The Great White Whale : C85B 0000 001E AFA6
Mr Blockos Goomba Kids 6EAF : 0000 0023 23FF
Big Bowsers Transport Musuem : A668 0000 0024 84D9
Waluigi Goes to Hades : 47F7 0000 002F 89EC
Mowsers Monument: 1479 0000 003E 44EA
Next week I'm trying to make a promise to myself to finish Bowsers Inside Story (DS), and then say what I feel about it...
