Earthbound and Dune 09.05.16

I finished Starfox Zeros (WiiU) brief story this week, there where points when everything came together, especially the penultimate battle against Star Wolf and his companions. Here dogfighting worked, felt good and I even used the gamepad to target at points. Changing the Arwing into the chicken walker during the fight felt like the the best transformers game there never was and compact level it took place on was small enough so action was always close. The sad thing about the game though is the few good levels are majorly outweighed by boring or annoying levels. When the game has around 10 levels in to total to complete, factor in 3-4 of them I found no fun at all, therein lies the problem I had with it. If it had been an "attraction" at the much maligned Nintendoland game the value proposition for this game wouldn't be an issue. On its own though it just felt too threadbare and I plain didn't enjoy a lot of my short amount of time with it.

I got nowhere in Party Hard (PS4) and was happy enough to do that. A stealth game with a comical premise, your irritated at the noise/commotion a party is causing to the point of wanting to murder all the people attending. The levels are small enough to occupy a single screen and it's got a stylish 16bit look to it, complete with the chip tune soundtrack that does start to get annoying as I slowly worked my way through the couple of party's I ended. I've always assumed I'd be awful at a hitman game and this game confirms this, a number of times I'd get to killing the last few people and the police would catch me right at the end because of my over eagerness to finish the level. Despite my failing I am having a great time with the game, seemingly random events from aliens to robbers happen on the levels and will increase the death count, traps and places to hide also litter the levels and add a more methodical strategy to playing. Hiding places and escape routes are barricaded up with overuse which stopped me from cheating the levels much to my dismay at discovering this. The levels are compact enough that the really fun levels, such as the party on the ranch are really good fun and kept interesting by moving around items to help your murdering on attempts. Some levels aren't as much fun due to a more constricted environment but it's all snappy enough that it's not become irritating yet. Looking forward to carrying on with it.