First Learning to Love Games Stream, This one is done to celebrate the release of Friday the 13th:The Game

Earthbound and Dune 25.05.17

This week has all been about playing games I know I like, my time with video games has been limited so I didn't want to waste any time getting to know a game, oh and I played a bit of Castle of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck (Megadrive) mainly to try to appease my three year old daughter, watching a Mouse struggle with platforming controls and beat up bugs with his cape did nothing for her though. I've never been more proud.

I played quite a bit of NBA Jam (Megadrive) on my recently recovered original machine, with the volume slider and everything. The glorious thing about this machine is the foresight I must've had as a nine year old and have the scart adaptor for it, no fiddling about with an RF lead for me! I've spoken on here about this game before and for good reason. Along with Micro Machines (1&2), Dune 2: The Battle for Arrakis, Streets of Rage 2, James Pond 2: Robocod and Sonic the Hedgehog It's a game I know I can start playing and know I'm going to have a good time with it. Theres a whole load of nostalgia swaying this statement but I'd say (quietly) that the Megadrive is my preferred 16bit console, even though NBA Jam is supposedly superior on the SNES. In the game itself I swayed from a habit of a lifetime and played as the Timberwolves for a bit. Abandoning the perfect balance of Stockton and Malone for some new pairing, the only benfit I could find was one of the duo was pretty awesome at getting 3pts from all over the court. I lost a lot of matches but still had a good time with it.

I played a load more of Puyo Puyo Tetris (Switch) in particular the story mode, the one thing holding this mode back a bit is that it has some pretty lengthy cutscenes with a bunch of dialogue, not ideal for a commute or my inpatient nature. I skipped through most of it to get to the meat of the game and intriguingly by doing this found the jumping from space to the streets of earth and fighting dogs, robots and twins more interesting for it. Anyway whatever's going on I can confidently say that the reason I come to a puzzle game is not the story so I'm happy to have some strange doctor dog shout insults at me while I play. What the story is excellent for is the introduction of the variations of gameplay in the game. I was at first happy to stick with Tetris, a game I know and love, but as it slowly introduces the concept of Puyo Puyo, a more competitive, combo based puzzle. Certainly more frantic and then the idea of playing Tetris against an AI playing Puyo Puyo (and vice versa) where the upshot of getting the higher scoring moves (like 2, 3 or 4 line in Tetris or a combo in Puyo Puyo) is making the opposition have a harder time of it then finally the most ingenious addition a version which sees short bursts of each, maybe 20 seconds? then the board switches to the other puzzle game (in centre of the screen is a frozen image where the last board has ended) its a really hard thing to describe and probably sounds way more intimidating than it is. All I can say is its great fun and really tense and in the short space of a turn things can end up looking really bad and its hard not to look at the frozen board in the centre with a sense of dread for which the board switches again. I'm having a lot more fun with the game the more little bits I find of it and as a value proposition it seems like a fantastic thing. I've sunk countless hours into it and am still only 11% into the story.

I had a brief go on The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch) which has fallen by the wayside of some great games coming out for the system. I'll get back onto it more seriously at some point, I'd hate to not complete this wonderful game. This week though I was interested to see how my Wolf Link Amiibo would interact with the game and once I got round the overly complex process of enabling Amiibo with the game then working out Amiibo was another slot on my Sheikah Slate  I pressed the little wolf statue on the controller and into the world popped a pretty neat representation of the statue following me about and killing the wildlife. I'd go as far to say its the best use of an Amiibo in a game and pretty much what I'd assumed they would've done when they were first announced a couple of years back. Who knows maybe its a positive sign?

First groovy 15 minutes, Laser Disco Defending in Laser Disco Defender.

Learning to Love the First 15 Minutes - Alienation

Join us on the first episode of our Learning to Love the First 15 Minutes series. We start by playing the first 15 minutes of Alienation of the PS4.

Earthbound and Dune 19.05.17

So I've not written anything in a while for two reasons, one I'm lazy but actually at the same time we've been creating more content for our YouTube channel and you should totally check it out and while your at it subscribe.

Learning to Love Games

 

Learning to Love Games Learning to Love Games chronicles the relationship formed between man, woman and game.

 

But I've also been playing some games, What Remains of Edith Finch (PS4) I got through in a couple of hours. The few hours I spent playing it though were some of the best gaming experiences I've had in a long time. The basic premise is its an interactive storybook, charting the lives of members of one family. Who also seem to die at a worrying rate. Most of the stories experienced in the game revolve around there death and while there all tragic some are much more harrowing than others (the bathtub scene was particularly moving). It's from the makers of The Unfinished Swan so I was expecting to like the game and much like it I expertly mixes up different actions throughout the game to make it feel fresh throughout. I don't want to go into much detail as its a fantastic game and well worth playing for its short duration. Some people may have an issue with the value prospect for such a brief experience but I've since returned to it (after completing all chapters are unlocked to pick at will) to try to understand some of the more mysterious deaths in the game.

 

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (Switch) I wasn't so keen on picking this game up as I had all the DLC on the WiiU version and battle mode isn't why I play any Mario Kart game. Even though I had reservations I baulked to the pressure (and the rather sparse early line-up of games on the Switch helped) I'm pleased to say that I really, really like the game. It's a perfect fit for mobile gaming, I can usually chalk off two cups on a commute and I've been struggling through the 200cc courses to unlock the only new unlockable character in the game (and to call it new is a stretch). Its a really well selected bunch of courses, ranging from the chaos of Baby Park to the amazing Cloudtop Cruise. Having all the DLC in one package is the best way to play this game and while it would have been nice to have a new selection of courses added I've been away from the game long enough (and hadn't really given the newer tracks the time they deserve) I'm really pleased I picked this title up.

 

Puyo-Puyo Tetris (Switch) also came out in my sabbatical from writing this and I absolutely love it. Beyond the fact its got a really polished version of Tetris which is much more upbeat musically and visually than the last version released and also that Tetris has always been the perfect handheld game in my opinion. Its also got Puyo Puyo, which I think is just Doctor Robotnix's Mean Bean Machine a more frantic version of a falling block game and not as Zen an experience as Tetris and on top of that a mixture of both the puzzle games, which had way too much going on for my taste, I'll give it another go though. To wrap the package up its got an anime story mode that see a bunch of challenges with all three styles of game thrown into the mix. It's all over the place but in a great way the whole game has so much going on its a joy to play and great value. To be honest though I'd be happy with just Tetris so everything else is a bonus.

 

Ball Games, Student life and Zombies

Its been a while since I have written one of these.  But finally I have played some games that I have decided to write about.  No particular reason why these games are the ones that disturbed me from my game commentary hibernation. They are just the ones that I have played on the week I decided to write something on.

The first game that I played on this monumental week is NBA Playgrounds, from a distance this game appealed to me a lot.  I have loved the style of NBA Jam which this game appears to have borrowed.  Upon loading the game one is meet with a open card pack screen.  This dampens my interest slightly.  I have yet to find a game where the mechanic of opening a virtual card pack has really added anything to me.  I was an avid Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (Hero where I grow up, not Ninja) card collector as an sub 10 year old, the cards were stills from the 80s cartoon series flavoured by a hard stick of bubble gum that came with it, these held much more interest to me, I am yet to find the virtual equivalent to hold any such value. Any way, here the card packs represent selectable locations and players (all of which I don’t know, but to be fair unless it was the chap from Space Jam or that other guy from theShaq-Fu I’m unlike to know them).  With that out of the way I moved on to have an exhibition match, which is the only option open at the beginning of the game, it doubles up as a tutorials whose helpfulness is only slightly handicapped by the fact the controls are on the loading screens and you will find yourself staring at them for quite some time. The game is a hyper energy version of an 2 on 2 basket ball match, with over the top dunks.  Hampered some what by an unclear shot timing.  To shoot one holds down the shoot button and let goes at the right moment (what ever that means), as one inevitably misses, the game is decent enough to feed back either “late” or “early”, information I take on board and then recreate with subsequent attempts. Despite this I won the first game, then went on to have dubious success in the tournament mode.  Fickle fun.

Hello Life is Strange my old friend.  I have been waiting for the “right” moment to play Episode 2 - Out of Time for the best part of 2 years.  I completely and utterly loved the first episode and as such decided that the moment had to be perfect for me to play the second episode, this resulted in me simply not playing it at all.  With such lofty expectations could the second episode live up to them? Frankly it does. I refuse to go into details as the joy of the game is discovering the story but its great.  The game fills me with nostalgia, despite it not representing my university/college experience at all.  Beautiful, dramatic and ponderous.  Fingers crossed another perfectly “right” moment comes a long this year so I can sit down to Episode 3. 

Going from wine to cordial, Dead Rising 4, a boisterous blockbuster game which seems to be slightly stream lined version of pervious Dead Rising games. This one seems to fit the amount of time I have convinced myself that I have to play games more then pervious outings.  Seemly gone (or at least in the parts that played so far) are time sensitive survivors and restarting from the beginning of the game when you lose a life (this may have gone in part 3 to be honest I just can’t remember).  In general the game seems to be more friendly to a person who has no idea what they are doing like me, possibly to the detriment of keeping series fans satisfied.  But for me it seems like a pretty enjoyable way to pass the time.  I found case 0 and case 1 a bit too linear for my liking, that said when Case 1 finished and the game counted up the stats it appear I hand missed a considerable number of events and items which indicates that my sense of exploration was lacking some what and that maybe I should take some time to look around. Must do better. 

Also worth mentioning is Zen Pinball 2 which has been an on and off platte cleanser over the last couple of years. Currently my  number one choice of game that I play when I want to listen to a podcast at the same time.