Earthbound and Dune 17.04.17

Sake Pass (Switch) is an unusual platformer in that it it takes the physicality of the snake you play as and limits actions to exagerated forms of what a snake could actually do. Theres not jumping or gabbing or punching, because, basically you've not got any arms. So the game is really a selection of small levels, which act as puzzles. The aim in every level i've played has been the collection of three brightly coloured items (which emit pillars of light so can be seen almost anywhere in the level) the challenge is getting to them. At first it was frustrating, it feels so different to other games, more so bearing in mind i'm played a lot of Zelda at the moment, a game which is incredibly free in its controls. To get up surfaces involves wrapping the body of the snake around shapes, gripping on etc. The learning curve is such that after a couple of levels I was on board with the game and like the advertising campaign had suggested I was thinking more like a snake. Like any good game at the point that I'd got to grips with the basics of the game it adds more complex elements, such as switches to be pulled and swimming. I've found it a really satisfying game to play in small chunks, a couple of levels at a time. The only glaring issue I have with it is that it doesn't suit the handheld nature of the switch too much, it feels like what it is, a port of a console game. Checkpoints are limited to the end of levels so I found myself a couple of times having to restart a level because I'd been commuting and reached my destination. This is an really early release for the Switch so hopefully future games will feel more tuned for the machine. Apart from that I've really enjoyed playing it and will certainly continue.

A much more intimidating game, which I'm under no illusion will take me a good long time to complete is Persona 5 (PS4). As i've aged I've come to the realisation that JRPGs are really up my street and not as hard to play as I always imagined. This is a great game to continue my education in the genre, because its bloody amazing. Taking control of a teenager who's got into some trouble and been relocated to Tokyo the game immediately impresses with some fantastic storytelling, expertly jumping between scenes and timeframes while also mixing up gameplay and wonderful manga cutscenes. I'm not far into it a couple of hours into something which I coming to terms with which will take me over a hundred hours to complete. I've started school and scratched the surface of the weird persona realm in the game and also met a very charming cat. It's the contrast between the mundane tasks like negotiating the rail system to get to school and the David Lynch like other world which is quite unnerving, especially as the gambit of capital punishment is thrown around very loosely. It all looks incredibly stylish and wonderful but so far theres a dark undercurrent running below the surface. My early steps have involved a little bit of combat here and there and its what i've come to expect from the genre made much more pleasant by really catchy music. Its a really good game in short, I'm set on a path of many hours playing it and can't wait to see where it takes me.

Earthbound and Dune 04.04.17

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch) certainly is something, a sprawling world of mystery and adventure. I'm really starting to get the game, the more I play of it and the more I play of it on the go. It benefits being a handheld game much more than I'd expected, setting a few goals in the half hour I have here of there and just going for it. Even the dungeons have a save system which means that if I have to put the machine down or turn it off I can jump right back into them. Talking of dungeons, I'm now two down (of what looks like four) there much smaller in design and really feel like they can be approached in a number of ways, like most of the game. In one, where I was on a giant mechanical bird flying through the sky, I found myself relying on my glider most of the time, making daring leaps out of windows to bypass locked doors. It didn't feel elegant enough to be the designed route through the area but the genius of the game is the freedom it allows me. When the freedom is taken away, for setpeices which lead up to dungeons and boss fights it's  still spectacular. Boss fights now don't rely on that Zelda formula of use the item you found in the dungeon to beat them (as all the key items are received in the first hour) instead using items scavenged from the world. For the second main boss fight I depleted my reserve of bomb arrows, which I'd been holding back on using for the duration of the game and smashed up a very fine spear to strike the final blow. The destruction of the spear distracted me from my main quest, as I now need a diamond to make a new one.

With no idea where to find diamonds I've just been walking around the landscape picking off side quests. Two of my favourite have been leading up to hidden shrines, one involved killing three giant brothers. The way I approached it, or was forced to approach it was fighting the oldest (a presumably hardest) first, it was a struggle. Not helped by the smaller enemies he'd surrounded himself with but I got through it and then moved onto his younger siblings. By the last I'd got so good at my giant slaying that he never stood a chance, my sadness for the brutality of what i'd done turned to anger when I realised not one of the brothers had a diamond on them, instead where full of cooked meats and fish. The next shrine I found, nearby, made a puzzle out of entering it and the solution to getting in was ingenious.

Also on the Switch I played some of the Splatoon 2 Global Testfire (Switch)  over the weekend. Hour chunks of gameplay were offered at different times and while it was a struggle to fit them in around life I did get around four matches in. Not much seems to have changed from the WiiU game, the biggest thing I found was that I really missed the map being on the controller (which the WiiU offered) it was a strong visual clue onto how the game was going. Now the results at the end seemed to be more of a surprise, one match I played I was certain that we'd won, the area surrounding me was covered in our colours, it wasn't until the full map was presented though that I released that I'd been focussing on too small an area and we were well beaten. I'm sure this is something I'll get used to, the map is just a button press and it appears on screen so it is still there. The game is still wonderful, it could be a case of absence making the heart grow fonder but it looks sharper and more vibrant than I remember and still plays as well it always has. I'll be interested to see whats added to the game to make it a true sequel, hopefully a decent single player incentive will be part of the package.