I was the winner of a haul of N64 titles of an auction site, so I wasted some time playing a strange bunch of titles for the console.
First the good, The New Tetris is a more than adequate version of the puzzle classic, it could be the first example of the piece storing being added to Tetris, I might be wrong on that, but its refreshing to find them being more reserved with adding elements than with a lot of games on the N64. The music is a decent remix of the tune too. Castlevania 64 is better than I was expecting from what I’d read before, the button config is a little weird (they seem to be against mapping the A & B buttons) combat is pretty good for the time, the fogging which seemed to blight most games on this platform seems in place with the atmosphere and the day night time transitions are pretty neat. Pokemon Snap, could well be the best Pokemon game i’ve played, an on rails shooter, which forgoes the obvious choice of a gun for a more serine camera. You snap away at various Pokemon and then are rated for the pictures by some old dude when you get back, he wasn’t a fan of the arty framing of my shots of a Meowth. Its got some Metriody elements in that you see things on levels which can’t be achieved until you get upgrades and on the whole is very charming. Mace: The Dark Age is okay, easy enough to button mash your way through the early rounds of the tournament mode and a nice variety of characters.
Now the bad, or not so much bad, just that time has been rather unkind to them (a problem a lot of N64 titles seem to have) Mischief Makers was a title I was interested in playing for a long time, a 2D platformer on a console that had few and it always reviewed well at a time when the genre wasn’t popular. I really struggled with it though, perhaps its the lack of manual or tutorial, but it seemed overly complicated, with an emphasis on grabbing bits of the environment to get through the game or beat enemies. I didn’t give it much time and I might return to it at some point. Rogue Squadron was the one game I’d played on its release, and was interested in how it had held up, it still looks and sounds good (at least expansion pack enhanced) it was just dreadfully slow, and fogging blighted the levels I played so ships appeared from nowhere and I could just hear the screams for help from my team but had little chance of tracking them down in a maze of fog. Turok 2: Seeds of Evil was far an away the worst of the bunch, the standard controls unplayable, it looked terrible and has way too much platforming for slow first person shooter. I gave up after a couple of minutes, didn’t even see a dinosaur.
My working week has been night shifts, so I unwisely decided this was a time to get to the end of The Last of Us (PS4), only unwise as the game throws a hell of a lot of emotional turmoil at you. Its not a game which relies on jump scares overly, its more the world it renders which is going to stay with you. The actions of the humans in the game are far worse than the actions of the infected (and the infection itself is a novel take on the zombie genre). Morality in the game is grey, even a character who is associated with rape and cannibalism isn’t presented as overtly evil (at least when introduced) and this is helped by fantastic voice acting. I find it really interesting that a film of this game has been talked about, not because I don’t think it would make a strong film, just that it is as strong an game in narrative that i’ve ever played. The ending is really powerful, and doesn’t go with any obvious choices, the last piece of gun combat in the game feels especially brutal. its not a good video game story. Its a good story, and I hope when if and when the film comes out that the game is recognised as a book would be when translated to film. The only slight blemishes on it are when its a video game, guns are hard to aim (but in the context this works) swimming can be frustrating and on occasion puzzles repeat a few too many times, Anyway away from my rambling about what might happen, a few quick points about the game I loved, the inclusion of animals as a thing of wonder, collectables which help to build the world, the best hunting sequence I’ve ever played and crafting that feels rewarding rather than irritating.
I also tried a bit of the DLC released for Smash Bros 4, Ryu feels like a really unique addition, and its a great choice to have his original moveset from Streetfigher 2 usable. Bit odd they added moves from later iterations of Streetfighter though (although perhaps its referencing the 3DS version of 4?).
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