Earthbound and Dune 24.11.15

Fallout 4 (PS4) continues to take up most of my gaming hours, this week I made the long road to Diamond City even longer by clearing out a lot of the optional quests along the way. Taking out a lot of raiders in the wasteland and starting to accept that encumbrance in this game is a real pain in the ass. My loop at the moment is clear out an area of enemies, grab everything in the area from ammo to dog remains and typewriters then fast travel back to Sanctuary and put all my loot in storage. I have a fear that my companion (Dogmeat) will be caught in the crossfire of my very haphazard approach to combat - Throw a bunch of molotov cocktails at the enemy, hope a few hit the target and mop up the rest with a machine gun. The main thing i'm worried about is sharing my haul of junk with him. I'd hate to loose him and the junk i'm gathering, that might be too much to take. I've yet to master customizing or crafting weapons and doing things like assigning NPCs to harvesting crops or fixing my power amour is really fiddly. I'm happy to forgive all this, as for me it seems fitting for a world where surviving seems so difficult for simple tasks to be hard to complete. 

Story-wise I've just met a robot private eye who may offer some clues to my search. He's a fantastic character both to look at and talk to. After completing the first mission with him I took a wrong turn with a female character we'd kind of rescued, she continued to bad mouth my mechanical friend and I quite mercilessly gunned her down (and the rewards were just a sequin dress and a baseball bat). A continuing feeling with this game is that my actions (however stupid they are) are going to play a big part later on and I instantly regretted my choice. The story seems to be heading toward the choosing of factions from Fallout: New Vegas, I've made my first tentative steps with the Brotherhood of Steel and they're hatred toward "synths" seems like it may be a major part of the bigger narrative. 

I put my misgivings about the Battlefront (PS4) beta last month to one side and bought the full release. There was something in the hour or so I played of it that I enjoyed. So far I've had mixed feelings about the full game, it lacks the unbridled joy of Splatoon, and I found it very easy to find myself in a match where I was being killed so frequently it was just no fun at all. The supremacy mode (I think thats what its called) I find particularly infuriating as the conditions for victory are a bit confusing to amateurs like me, the fact the clock keeps resetting made games last maybe 30minutes or so (at least it felt like that) and thats hard to balance with my home life. The major problem I've got with the game though is that when everything falls into place, its really good fun. The moments when I've been flying a Tie Fighter over a packed battlefield in a dogfight narrowly avoiding missiles or sneaking through the forest picking off opponents on speeder bikes have felt really good. It looks and sounds amazing, especially the Hoth level, which is pretty much everything you'd want from a Star Wars game design wise. Personally I'd have loved some kind of campaign, I've done a couple of the training missions and they're fun, if they had been placed in the context of a narrative it would have been a bit more interesting. I'll carry on playing it when I can, but doubt i'll get to the higher levels as I'm just not really that good at these kinds of games. 

Finally I've been wasting a bit of time with Brian Lara Cricket (Megadrive) I'd never played this title until recently, always preferring Super International Cricket for my 16bit Cricket fix. I'm pleased to say it's a lot of fun, its got official license (should you want to play with international cricket teams from the mid 90s), 5 day series to contest and simple and easy to play mechanics. Wickets are easy to take (basically use any player with the ability to swing bowl and it confuses the AI) but this is balanced a bit by the fact its impossible for the computer to be run out. Batting is just as easy, aim where to put the ball and use A for a lofted shot (which the computer always seems to catch) or B to play a more cautious ground shot. Everything is as easy going as a cricket game should be, and while its still for a niche market I'd say its one of, if not the best cricket game i've played.  

Earthbound and Dune 17.11.15

Even if you forget the raiders, bloatflys, deathclaws, murderous robots and irradiated waters Fallout 4 (PS4) is still a frightening game. The scale of it alone in my first week with it has blow me away. After a brief introduction and character build, which included the devastating revelation they didn't record my name as one of the 1000+ names in the game, even though the main item in the game is a Pip-Boy! I was thrown into the wasteland once again. The impact of seeing an area pre and post nuclear destruction was a neat one, but didn't hit as hard as I would have like, what I did love however is that feeling of freedom the second I left vault 111. Despite the very urgent, mysterious objective given to me straight away I instantly started exploring the massive wasteland. Whats changed from Fallout 3 is that everything you collect can have a purpose, ashtrays, teddybears and typewriters were all but an encumbrance in previous games, and after a few hours I had to change my way of thinking a bit, now pretty much all objects are broken down into parts which can be used to customise weapons or build armour or storage (along with less useful items, like flags and paintings). When this realisation hit I spent countless hours retracing my early steps and collecting everything on my way, taking it back to my settlement. Thats the other big change so far, instead of being a lone(ish) wanderer like in the previous titles early on the concept of building up a space to live and get others to is hinted at, I say hinted as like a lot in this game I was given very little indication on what to do or why! The game then became a post nuclear Animal Crossing title, I made a basic dwelling for myself, complete with a sniper turret on the roof (and a rocking chair for comfort) and a two headed cows head was mounted above my bed. I must have done a good job because no sooner had I built my house, than one of the party of people you rescue early on was sleeping in my bed. Countless hours were now spent breaking down junk around my settlement and cleaning it up, bugs appeared in places, as I smashed up a toilet for the ceramics another character I'd rescued took issue with this and started shooting at me, instead of fight back I just darted off and soon all was forgotten. 

Once I was happy enough with my settlement I headed back into the wasteland to continue through set objectives, I met another small group of friendly survivors who set me the task of clearing an area out of wrongdoers, confused about where I had to go (the map and marker objectives seem more confusing than before) I found myself underpowered against a dude in power armour and his friends with lasers, this moment rekindled my love for this franchise, instead of running off I fudged my way through the area, using grenades and mines and anything else I'd gathered, with my health depleted and all my stimpacks used I finally got through it. The rewards were weapons and armour I felt I shouldn't have so early on in the game. I squirrelled a lot of my haul away back at my base and set back out on my mission. I was interrupted this time by two named characters holding up a diner, from what I could gather they wanted money the owners son owed them. I attempted to pass by and not get involved, but the two men took issue with me and raised they're guns at me (not knowing that I had a bunch of overpowered weapons ready to use) I killed them with ease and went into the diner to see if there was any rewards for the good deed I'd attempted to avoid. The reward was a few bottlecaps, certainly not as high as if I'd gone the other way with the situation, and assisted the men at there hold up. In the corner of the diner I noticed the owners son sitting apparently overdosing on some drug, the storytelling in Fallout games can sometimes be amazing with its ambiguity. After all these distractions I'm just finding myself getting to the objective I was set hours before, which is nothing to do with the greater story, this game is going to take a long time.

The game still has some issues with bugs and glitches, but nothing game breaking so far for me. I've been impressed with the look of it so far, not so much the characters but as ever the world feels like it was lived in and the draw distance is fantastic at times. The music is also as predictably good, it would be nice to have a few more songs though. Another improvement is the use of guns, aiming is easier and V.A.T's is less of a requirement than an assistance now (in fact it can be a nuisance at times, now time is slowed during it rather than stopped). The familiarity I had with this game instantly has been complimented by the new mechanics added and I'm having a great time with it.

Destiny (PS4) ended its story just as my copy of Fallout 4 arrived on Tuesday morning, the final mission was great, I loved the sequence with the Vex reanimating as you walked down the darkened corridors and the final boss(es) while not really explained were the right level of challenge. I then tackled a couple of Strikes, which were a lot more fun when I felt useful and not underpowered, in fact when I ran the strike in Russia I had an unusual feeling, that I was quite good at the game. The strikes have offered me something new to do post game, and i'm looking forward to attempting them all. 

Earthbound and Dune 10.11.15

First off I dug more into The Crew (PS4) this week, at the same time breaking my promise to to get further into the story, and I'm glad I did. Its all very generic find the bad guys responsible for killing your brother stuff and involves a lot of street racing type people stereotypes so far. Rattling through them at some pace, no sooner had I gained someone's respect by tormenting a female driver round the streets of Saint Louis was I being hounded out of town by the same person. Its managed to keep everything really fresh, and the RPG/Loot mechanics to the game and your car help to make the experience more personal, even though I seem to be getting getting tyres all the time. My car is certainly becoming much easier to handle as I go through the upgrade tree, the only disappointment being that I seem to be stuck with the same car now, I looked into buying a Mini in Vegas but that involved a real world money transaction which I'm keen to avoid. I did spend some time making my car a garish shade of green with a black octopus stencilled on the side so that was something. Early on (at least in the first four hours) it gave me a chance to try some off-road racing in the desert and that was great, there are bits of the game I've really enjoyed, it's certainly a great thing to do while listening to a podcast or music. The one massive frustration is one that any online required games going to have, when the servers are unavailable its obviously unplayable. So when I was thinking what a fantastic game it was, driving into the centre of New York for the first time (after an extended road trip) then the game booted me out saying the servers were down for planned maintenance for the day (or a big chunk of it, it was a bit harder to tell as all the times I was given were for US time zones) all the good feeling I had toward what I was doing disintegrated. Such a shame, I will return to it, but that feeling of not being able to play something I've paid money for and am enjoying never sits well with me.

So I jumped into another game which has done the same thing before Destiny (PS4) the first time I've played it since the massive updates, which have replaced a voice actor while taking up a lot more space on my hard drive. To put into context of how far (or not) I'd travelled in the game, I was on Venus at level 12. Now I don't know if this can be attributed to the improvements in the update, or just where I am in the game but from this point on I've adored my time with it. What's helped so far is I'm paying more attention to it for starters, realising basics like aim for the highest number possible on the clothing you select no matter how stupid it looks and get rid of all the low ranked weapons in my inventory. I got through the missions in no time, using a combination of a hand cannon (which made me feel like a space Dirty Harry) a sniper rifle and a machine gun. The online world created feels at its best when I spotted some conflict at the other side of the map and took a few well aimed shots to help out some stranger. It now pushes you in the right direction of what your doing with quest logs, so the downtime between the missions feels more direct, although I did have to google the location of places like the Hall of Guardians (my fault for not paying attention at the start I'm sure). The stuff on Venus was over pretty quickly and it lead to Mars, where the enemy design went from generic sci-fi shooter to cool and unique (for me) the meaty Cabal where intimidating as soon as I saw them (even forced me to replace my trusty hand cannon with a more powerful plasma rifle) and they're conflict with the Vex was interesting and spectacular in places. It's really odd for me to say that, as up to this point I was very much playing the game like The Crew, enjoying the exceptional gun mechanics and rushing through it, I'm now more immersed in what's going on, listening to the fragments of story I'm given and looking forward to where the game goes next. I'm near the end of the game in its original form, and I'd say that it does feel a bit short, but knowing that the three expansions can be bought with the game for a decent price helps bulk up things to do. Like I say, I don't know if the improvements of the update have made this a different game, but in a year of some really good games this version of Destiny i've been playing stands right up there with them, and I've loved returning to it.

Earthbound and Dune 03.11.15

After buying my third copy of Sega Soccer Slam I decided it was finally time to document my collection of games in the form of an excel document. I aided this with some cotton buds and alcohol to clean old cartridges and set out on a long journey through duplicate disks and tangles of wires. To save space I’ve condensed all my disk based games pre this generation to CD wallets which is a sad process, only made easier by the knowledge that they’re rendered almost unsellable after doing this, so BMXXX will always remain in my possession. While doing this I was struck by how short a lifespan a game will have, copies of NBA Live 2003 and Tour De France 2003 would have cost upward of £40 on of release and now can be found for under a pound in charity shops, its a weird balance looking at my collection, games that I bought on a whim because I wanted to see what they were about for a modest price like Gaelic Games Football 2 would have cost a much higher amount back when released and while I love that these oddities exist and in my possession its hard to make an argument for games like Americas 10 Most Wanted to be given a disk release in 2015. I listed my digital purchases as well, and theres an argument that this is a better place for the weirder titles to be released now, games like the aforementioned Sega Soccer Slam bears some similarity to the great Rocket League, my only concern as my digital library continues to expand is that it will all continue to be playable as the years go on. I know I can out my clunky first generation Playstation 2 knowing that its built like a tank and despite the amount of noise it makes usually a good clean of a disk will see all games work on it, due to licensing and other factors that safety net isn’t there with digital purchases and its something which will keep me buying disk based content where I can.

Cartridges take up even more space, but are much more rewarding to go through, I acquired a bunch of Gameboy games earlier in the month, including Pokemon Red, Silver and Gold and with a little bit of cleaning they are nice objects. Retro gaming being in fashion now means that I’ve not really picked up many cartridges in the past few years, I’ve got copies of Super Mario Kart, Super Mario World, Super Mario Allstars and Mario Kart 64 but the premium on older recognisable games is really high (especially if you put Mario in the title it seems) now with Virtual Console and ports coming to mobile devices and tablets its much more fun looking for the games which get less love, among my favourite cartridges I own are Dune 2, Body Harvest, MicroMachines, King Arthurs World, Super International Cricket and Rockmans Soccer, games which I imagine are less likely to be coming to a digital service any time soon (without emulating of course). The downside of having a bunch of Japanese titles I’ve found is that, especially in the SNES era, there is very little info on what the game is on the cartridge, so my list contains 5 records of Japanese RPG UNKNOWN, which will probably turn out to be fishing or horse racing simulators when I get round to firing them up. 

On a cleaning buzz I went through all my accessories and cables, a much less appealing task, the amount of untangling an untouched box of cables manages to do is amazing. 

I finished up by having a quick go on my new copy of Sega Soccer Slam (PS2) which looks a lot less colourful than the GameCube version, and the loading times a little longer (Nintendo where onto something with the small disk). Great game, and maybe worth owning three copies of!

Earthbound and Dune 27.10.15

I finally wrapped up on Bowsers Inside Story (DS), initially the game was meant to last a week at most, but somehow its taken me a summer to complete, weirdly the play counter is almost exactly 17 hours whereas its felt a lot longer. Thats not a slight on the game though, i've had a great time with it, the humour is where the game really shines and thats consistent from start to finish. Every team of Bowsers minions I rescued offered respite in the form of humour, and it plays with the conventions of a traditional Mario game in some fun ways, whether that being what you expect, Bowsers a thug but his hearts in the right place, or some unexpected twists (who knew Monty Moles where such dicks?), and with Broque Monsieur and the fat toad mistakenly diagnosed with the blorbs illness, two of my favourite Mario characters have been added into the Mushroom Kingdom. Another thing which is consistent throughout the game is the introduction of new mechanics, even entering the last section of the game it added something new and never resorted to the Zelda trope of throwing everything you've learnt into the last dungeon. Some elements worked better than others, avoiding bombs on conveyer belts and moving a platform through tight spaces with a stylus where frustrating tasks made more so by the controls not being tight enough. Special attacks like Luigi's Snack box (or whatever its called) and using an army of Kameks where inventive and satisfying to use. The world was small enough to traverse quickly, which is good because I was finding that I'd forget my task between playing the game and wander aimlessly between the two castles. I found the section with the laid back surfer squid thing in space and learning a new attack to be the only bit of unnecessary padding in the game, which is impressive for the time I spent with it. The use of three protagonists in the game, and separating them at various points made returning to areas two or three times bearable because I was always finding new paths to explore with the individual characters abilities. It also helped keep enemies fresh throughout, where there wasn't a massive variation of things to fight, fighting a walking tree as Bowser rather than Mario and Luigi was tactically different and helped keep the game from feeling repetitive. Adding a skill layer to traditional RPG turn based combat was a great design choice, for me it felt like the evolution of Earthbounds rhythm based attacks (I don't play a ton of RPGs so this may be in other games) and instead of combat feeling like the roll of a dice I was working out a course of action to fight most enemies, even the frustrating star things which cloned themselves where beatable when I thought it through.

I don't know if I'd rush to play another Mario RPG, as much as I've loved my time with this game it was an investment of time made much more pleasant by the unique story (for a Mario game) the fact they now seem to make these titles exclusively for the handheld Nintendo systems puts me off a little bit too certainly I hope they iron out issues with save points a bit in future titles, a few times I'd have to give up on sections of the game because I needed to jump off a train. It's still one of the most unique, funny and enjoyable things I've played this year. 

Just a quick disclaimer about all the nonsense I've written above about Blorbs, Monty Moles and Snack Boxes, if it doesn't make any sense I apologise.

I had to watch the credits in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4) one final time, the mission I did after the final mission (which sees one of the lead characters exit the game) was by far the best storytelling I've watched in the game (and probably any game) wrapped up in one of the most irritating missions i've played (in any game) I'm so glad I've done it though, as a few times after being killed by one hit off a tank I considered not returning to this mission, it was well worth struggling through the mission and it's lack of checkpoints to see where it goes.

Finally I put Splatoon (WiiU) on for the first time in months to see what the countless patches and additions have added to an already great game. Pleasingly its still a load of fun, although I managed to enter on a rotation of two levels which where in the original release and I stuck with my weapon loadout which has served me pretty well, so I can't say much about whats been added really. The playerbase is still really high, I never struggled to get into a match and even though everyone is now at a level pushing 40 (compared to my 17) I still felt useful to my team and like I wasn't underpowered, I want to jump back into it a few more times to see some more of the new content, or at least some of it!

Earthbound and Dune 20.10.15

A rougelike shouldn't really work on a mobile phone, controls need to be precise and movement fluid. Somehow Downwell (iOS) manages to not only make this genre work on a touch screen device, but also creates something close to the best in the genre in my opinion. The way it does it is making it a more vertical experience, where you play a boy with gun boots (boots that shoot guns) as he descends down a well. As you're controlling a character in free fall it also strips out a lot of platforming, you can jump but its fairly limited by the fact the game plays with height a lot of the time. The jump button is shared with firing your gun boots, and ammunition is reloaded every time you touch down on solid ground, meaning a successful run in the game is carefully balanced by the amount of time falling down the well being broken up by interludes of landing. The selection of enemies you encounter range from floating blobs and worms which are easy enough to kill by landing on they're heads, bats who chase you about, tortoises which take a bit more firepower and balls of fire which cause you damage by landing on them. At no point so far has the amount of enemies been overwhelming, and my failure has always been self inflicted. Action is aided by a selection of weapons hidden in caves, normally coming with some health boost, a clever way of forcing me to try out a wider selection of weaponry, otherwise the stronger weapons like the laser would be a little overpowered, no gun i've found has been completely useless either.  The whole package is the perfect fit for the mobile market, whereas the likes of Rouge Legacy require far more precision and a bit more time to get deep into the game, this game seems to encourage dropping straight into it (literally) and playing a few quick games. The graphics look really nice for what they are, three colours and I assume help to make it run smoothly as well, not too much more to say about this great little game.

I played a bit of The Crew (PS4) as well, in scope its really ambitious, giving me an approximation of the United States to freely drive around, and thats what I did straight after I started to get entwined into a story involving Detroit, my brother being killed and gangs, I took to the open roads, attempting a drive down to Miami then getting sidetracked and heading through the Badlands toward Vegas. Luckily the pleasant lady who's waiting with my next objective at my garage in Detroit doesn't seem to bothered by my extended road trip as i've not got any intention of returning to the story. It looks good, certainly for the scale of the game. At times I wish there were a few less cars on the road, even going to some of the more remote parts of America the freeways seemed pretty crowded. If nothing else its helping me with geography, although i'm not too trusting of how true to real world it is, every route I take seems to take me through Little Amsterdam (a place I'd never heard of until this week) its got a lovely windmill though. The cars (or car which i've driven so far) don't really feel like they are gripping the surface of the road, the whole game feels quite slippery which is a shame, but its not game breaking, just took a bit of an adjustment in my playing of the game. Hopefully more cars become available as time goes on to me even though i'm avoiding the story, it would be good to see if there is anything thats got a bit more grip. The online components seem interesting, other (from what I can make out) real players appear every once in a while zipping down the motorways and i'd be keen to give the game a go with someone else I know, the idea of a point to point race across America seems pretty cool. Theres not too much wrong with it and i'll tinker with it a bit more over the next few weeks i'm sure.

Bowsers Inside Story (3DS) might as well be called Bowsers Inside Neverending Story, I've got to be close to the end surely? I had to watch two Toads have a cup of tea for about 5minutes in Bowsers lower back so that was something.

Earthbound and Dune 13.10.15

The internal clock on Bowsers Inside Story (3DS) continues to tick on, standing at thirteen hours as I edge toward the conclusion of a game I wanted to finish in a week. I still intend to finish and quantify my thoughts on this charming game at some point, just not this week.

Standing at a more impressive fifty hours or so was my playtime to get to the (real) ending of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4). I say the real ending, I've watched the lengthy credits twice and have a conclusion to the story of Big Boss circa 1985, but at the same time i'm back in my helicopter with one more important side op to complete (I think I did two missions out of sync which could lessen the drama of the way things play out). Without going into the final events of the story I really liked it, it was powerful, even to me who hasn't played that much of the other games. From my understanding this game was meant to be building toward Big Boss being the villain of later games, and it certainly does that while also angling toward what will happen with Solid Snake. One aspect of the finale I found really frustrating but could understand why it played out that way, perhaps it didn't need to go on that long though. On the whole its a fantastic game, which I've had so much fun with, I've got a bit more clearing up of side ops to do, but once thats done it would take me a while to return to it as most of the joys I had from the game were from either discovering an inventive way to complete my objectives or attempting to unravel what was going on in the story.

I played a small amount of the Battlefront (PS4) beta over the weekend, and while it looks and sounds pretty much exactly as i'd have hoped I found the other players were already at such a higher level than me that a lot of the enjoyment was sucked out of the game pretty quickly. Especially the battle of Hoth gameplay, which is a fantastic recreation of the second films opening battle, I wanted a chance to have a root around the world but sadly I was being picked off with ease (whatever side I was on), sometimes it was humorous, either being stomped on by an ATAT or coming head to head with Darth Vader in a trench but more often it was being sniped from miles away by someone at a much higher level. I found the loadouts and weapons seemed to benefit the higher level players too much, and the idea of getting to they're level seemed like too much of a grind for me (thats because I'm inept at these sorts of games though) other issues I had could well be ironed out in the full release though like every time I found a vehicle, the glee of taking control of it was taken away from me as I tried to fudge the controls, the training mode offered in the full game will help with this. For a beta I guess this did what I'd have wanted it to do, get me interested in the final product as there was more promise in the hour or so I spent with it than I was expecting. 

Finally I've been playing through Gauntlet (PS4) with a friend online, and it's been a really enjoyable experience (and also the perfect antidote for all the Metal Gear seriousness i've had going on) it takes itself really lightly, perfectly illustrated by the commentary from both the narrator and the characters we're playing. Whats most impressive about it is how it strikes the balance between arcade nostalgia and more modern games, there is a surprising amount of finesse to the combat and different attacks that can be purchased, and so far we've not found a level which has overwhelmed us or seemed impossible. So bits have been tricky, but after a few attempts we've got through everything thrown at us. It looks lovely, lighting in places especially shines (bad pun). Character design is pretty generic, but every once in a while a boss like an anthropomorphic crocodile is thrown at you which looks better than it should. It's taken us about 20 levels to release the cash we've been accumulating can be used to buy other attacks and armour, which led to a spending spree then a less harmonious approach when we see treasure in caves from then on. The end is in sight, which is another design choice I really appreciate (you can see the path to the conclusion mapped out for you) on the whole i've loved my time with it since joining up to play with someone else.