Earthbound and Dune 30.01.17

Bird Week, despite its breezy artwork its actually a harsh and unforgiving

game.

I continued to brave a cold shed for the greater good of playing through some old games this week. Starting off with Bird Week (NES/Famicom) a fairly low key import title in which the goal is to collect butterflies to feed to your chicks so they can get big and strong and fly the nest. In the way are bigger birds, who presumably want to take me (the smaller bird) to feed to they're chicks. The game doesn't get much more varied than that, once the first set of chicks have fledged the nest it moves onto a new season, my tree is a vibrant pink blossom but the world no less brutal. New enemies are thrown into the mix, strange hopping creatures, like rabbits without ears. Anyway they want to eat me too, again presumably to feed they're young. It's a pretty nasty game, with the playable character sitting slap bang in the middle of the food chain. At its harshest I found myself dying after killing a butterfly and leaving my own young to starve with my corpse at the base of the tree they nest in. Gameplay wise its well ahead of its time, Flappy Bird owes a lot to this title, the controls are strikingly similar, if only that titular bird had a family to fend for I may have been more invested in that title. Graphics and sound aren't really much to write home about, especially as to play this import title i'm forced to play it on a 7" screen. The music is catchy though.

I then moved onto Shadows of the Empire (N64) challenging myself to start after its impressive Battle of Hoth opening (and probably the only bit of the game most people remember. What comes after this level is some FPS platforming, which isn't as bad as I recalled, It can be quite brutal with its failed jumps leading to falling into a foggy abyss but with a bit of switching of the camera it works. It's an odd choice not to have a gun on the screen with a FPS, gunfire instead reduced to a big red line emitting from around where my hand is. It makes some of the boss fights a bit harder than they should be. The boss fights themselves range from pretty cool iconic Star Wars baddies to the more obscure, a fight against a "loader droid" who's only power is to flail his long arms about felt almost cruel. Sections of the game fell completely flat, the battle in the gun turret early on was almost impossible to see anything and the speeder bike chase was as bad to look at as it was to control. On top of this it went on for an eternity of me bashing into walls chasing after countless bounty hunters who were thankfully going about there buisness about as quickly as I was. I did play a lot more of the game than I intended though. A mixture of nostagia from when I bought the game (it was the game I got with my N64 around its launch) and trying to convince myself it was a good game and it actually not being that bad, its ambitious with a lot of its scope, the music is especially strong. It falls flat on a few things that because of its early release it may well have done better but on the whole the game it more than not that bad, its quite good. 

Earthbound and Dune 24.01.17

I've spent a few months investing and foraging screens, machines and games and now find myself in the blissful state where I have a space at the end of my garden where I can play old games whenever life allows me. The cold winter hasn't made this the most inviting prospect lately but this week I popped down there to play a couple of old N64 titles. First up was Doom 64, at the time of its release this title seemed dated, it still used sprites,had fixed aiming and lacked any form of multiplayer. Now though this title strangely has held up a lot better than the Turoks or even dare I say Goldeneyes of the era. By sticking with sprites it still looks pretty decent and has all the grim sounds you'd expect from a Doom game. I got through four levels, which are typical Doom fare, secrets and red and blue keys and a range of demons to shoot. Its also pretty tricky in places, it all came to a head when I basically couldn't be bothered to think out the solution to a puzzle and got crushed by falling celling's. 

I moved onto Rogue Squadron, and spent more time with this game than I thought I would. With the bit more power the expansion pack offers the N64 it looks alright, the controls still feel a touch more sensitive than other flight games on the N64. Dogfights are a bit more chance than skill, with the dreaded fogging the console seems to excel in making Tie Fighters pop up out of nowhere. Apart from these small issues its more fun than I remembered, the levels are brisk with simple enough tasks. Sometimes they rely a bit too much on dubious AI as most of the early levels involve protecting something. All the levels played avoided space combat, rather taking place on some generic looking terrain I guess this helps with making it a more linear experience but hopefully at some point it delivers on the promised "star wars". Beyond all this is cool to play an N64 title with a lot of dialogue and voice acting.

Finally I played the Star Cup in Mario Kart 64. In my opinion the perfect selection of Mario Kart courses, opening with the epic Wario Stadium a lengthy course which weaves and bumps and has the bastard jump near the end which a well timed lightening bolt can ruin everything. Then Sherbet Land, with its abundance of penguins. One in particular with cabin fever, just walking in circles on an iceberg. Besides penguins its got corners that can be cut with well timed jumps adding a risk/reward as if and when I mess up i'm sent into the icy ocean. Then onto Royal Raceway, a proper racers race, lush green fields and a few corners which can lead into falling into a lake, near the end theres a massive jump which can be used (albeit rarely) to cut off a massive section of the race. It all comes to a head with Bowsers Castle, which thwomps still cause mayhem and a few looping sections near the end complemented by some tricky jumps and staircases. Mario Kart has progressed massively, the courses have got bigger and look amazing these days but I don't think the balance of these four has been matched. 

Earthbound and Dune 14.01.17

I'm almost at the end of my time with Pokemon Moon (3DS) I've finished up the main story, it certainly goes places, then conquered the elite four. Some cutscenes are way too long for a portable game (one in particular lasted the duration of my commute) and at times it confused me a bit, I'm taking challenges to become a trainer while at the same time theres a bunch of punk kids making mischief and a creepy corporation pretending to be conversing Pokemon. Its a long way from the first generation of the game, most of the time this departure from its previous iterations is a blessing though, in fact its not until the last part of the main story that I encountered a traditional cave, Zubats and all. The final "boss" of the game (at least before I face the Elite four) was a pretty breezy affair, in fact I didn't switch from my Toucannon to defeat it but I was pleased to find at the end the story was tied up as best it could be. The more traditional fight against the elite four and the trainer which appears after is much more tricky, once again there is not healing between fighting each trainer so I went into it with a lot of preparation, two pages of notes in fact. I bought a ton of revives and max potions and finally utilised all my rare candy i'd been squirrelling away. I'm pretty sure as I've found this conclusion to previous games such a ball-ache that I'd been overly cautious throughout this game mindful that this final fight is way harder than anything I'd experience in the game. I got through it though in one attempt, my planning certainly helped, utilising tactics such as my Klefki opening my battle, sucking up a few turns and dropping spikes to mess with the changeover of my opponents Pokemon, once this odd bunch of keys had taken a beating I'd then send in my heavy hitters, like the wonderfully named Crabominable (a mixture of a Yeti and a crab). I'd always fall back on my notes which detailed how this expanded game of rock, paper, scissors would go down. It all concluded with my opponents Bearware throwing an almost fatal punch at my Mudsadle, which in turn caused a devastating earthquake which then triggered victory and a cutscene which even for this game seemed overly long.

There seems to be a lot more post game things to do this time round, I'm now going around visiting spots which the story didn't take me and levelling up some of the monsters that stood of the periphery of my top six. The game itself was a shorter affair than I was expecting, coming in at around 30 hours and weirdly thats enticing me to maybe one day start again, trying it out with a different selection of beasts. I've said it before and I'm sure I'll say it again, its all nonsense. In its construction though, from the design of the creatures, the music and most importantly gameplay, there is more to Pokemon games than I was expecting. They're not just prolonged adverts for soft toys and keychains. The message which is sometimes not so subtly forced into this games story about raising and nurturing (told through the perspective of a pretty awful mother) was something I wasn't expecting and the "Gotta Catch 'Em All" attitude seemed to be replaced with "Gotta Care for 'Em All" and thats no bad thing.

The Last Guardian (PS4) is not a leisurely experience at all. I'm pretty sure I'm near the end of the game and while I'm really happy that i've played it I don't think I'd ever play it again. My frustration was at it peak when doing a particular platforming section ascending one of the many towers, simple jumps were made harder with a really twitchy camera and my character deciding that now was the time to stop reaching out for ledges. What was most frustrating about this ordeal was that it was coming off the back of one of the games many spectacular setpeices, one moment i'm dashing up a crumbling building with my trusty monster, him plucking me out of the air when I make a mistake then seconds later it all comes sputtering to a halt. Thats been the story of this flawed game for me, every time that I'm really enjoying it it throws a control or camera shaped spanner in the works. Had this game had the tight platforming of Uncharted 4 for example it would be an absolutely amazing experience but too often it falls short. Theres a bit more to the story now, which I wasn't expecting and while its not completely unexpected I like the way it ties back to the start of the game. 

Earthbound and Dune 02.01.17

The festive break always cuts back what i'm playing quite a bit, but I sunk a bit of time into Active Soccer 2 DX (PS4) Its a top down football game. Its got an impressive slate of teams with slight modifications on names to get round licensing, yep its pretty much a modern Sensible World of Soccer which isn't a bad thing. Its relatively simple, beyond short and long passes, shooting, tackling and dashing there isn't much else, players are quite squirrelly to control and shots can be hard to aim but that makes it a slightly deeper game. I've enjoyed playing what I have of it, especially the transfer system, building up a team and slowly getting better at it. The one issue it seems to have is quite an irritating bug, since one transfer of a player I now constantly have a goalkeeper playing on the wing and a midfielder in goal with no option of switching them out. At first this was understandably frustrating but in a weird way its added a new challenge to the game, keeping clean sheets with a Syrian international midfielder in goal is pretty tricky but he's pretty strong at goal kicks. The Ivory Coast goalkeeper is slow and can't shoot for toffee but he's chalking up a lot of assists. Its okay and fun to whittle away a bit of time. 

Whats not proving fun but at the same time keeping me coming back for more is The Last Guardian (PS4). I can't state enough how annoying the controls and camera can be, especially in tight spaces, which there are a lot of. On top of this there are a number of occasion's where puzzles revolve around throwing barrels around and there is little aiming control so its in the hands of the gods (for me anyway). Despite the glaring issues I have with the game I still really, really like it. Trico (the beast companion which has followed me throughout) continues to build his personality as we wander through the world. The world itself is a sprawling labyrinth which twists and turns, opening up into spectacular vistas and then almost impossibly returns to places I've already visited from new angles. Puzzles which revolve around scaling the heights of the world are some of the most fun I've had with a game in a long time and when the game gets the set-pieces right, Trico hoisting me out of the air before a perilous drop for example, its is amazing. Problem is when it misses these marks and it becomes a clumsy drop into the abyss. Hopefully I'll be done with soon, as the story is an massive factor in why I keep coming back!