Earthbound and Dune 28.07.16

Pokemon Go (iOs) has been the most talked about thing on the internet lately, I picked it up on its UK release and I like it. The question of whether its a game, or if it is how good a game is it comes up every time I start the application, its certainly more of a game than Miitomo but what I'm actually doing while playing it is all fairly basic, toss balls at Pokemon, hope they stay in the ball and walk about a bit. Whats extraordinary about the whole experience is how its become such a massive thing in such a short period of time, walking around London's Southbank I can now tell the Pokemon go players, there's a certain way they carry they're phone, however much they try to pretend to be taking a photo or texting a friend I know that there aiming at a level 15 Magicarp. It's not uncommon to see numbers of people with they're phones out at a bench or piece of street art gathering supplies and the amount of bizarre news stories from robbing's to discoveries of dead bodies is fascinating. As most people I know have an idea that i'm into video games people are happy to tell me they've got the game and sometimes ask for advice, while i'm not an expert this dialogue is really refreshing and its great to see that the game has captured the attention of so many people. I'm reaching around the level were I think I might stop playing or at least play it less attention. Some bits like server issues and especially its erratic nature in counting my distance walked (and this being a key component of what i'm doing in the game) can be really frustrating. I allow it a lot of these faults as its cost nothing to play and its not in my face at all with ways to pay actual money.  I'm interested to see where this game goes from here, especially due to the success of it, it feels like the start of what could be with some improvements a really amazing thing.

I'd been against the idea of playing Uncharted 4 (PS4) purely because I'd not played the first three games, but seeing it come up in a sale I couldn't resist and am pleased to find that without little knowledge of the franchise I'm still getting a lot from it. To me it feels like Tomb Raider mixed with Mario 64, the way that Nathan Drake bounces around the levels doesn't feel human and at points I don't know how much I'm doing but the way the game pushes me into cool set pieces and down paths without being to obvious about it is really well designed. The whole section in Madagascar from driving across the plains to the climax has been the highlight of the game so far, sometimes my own ineptitude has broken up some of the dramatic tension, either by falling off a cliff or running round in circles but this hasn't been too often. The puzzle sections are about the right level of tricky for me to get my head around and aren't too often. I'd have loved some narrative reason to be added for the rope that can be so handy in places being forgotten about in others and also the whole section playing an older video game I didn't get, at first I thought it was saying the game was set in the mid to late 90's but all the other technology seems to be from this era, it threw me a bit and seemed like a chance to throw some in jokes in and little else. These are both really minor issues though on whats been so far a great game, and perhaps the best looking game I've ever played.

Earthbound and Dune 13.07.16

Streetfighter V (PS4) came back onto my radar when it released its story mode a couple of weeks back. It was a chance to play a game which I had enjoyed the feel of quite a bit, with more purpose. The story itself is fairly silly stuff, giant mechanical moons crashing into the earth and a god demon thing which wants to eat fighters. I'm not too up on my Streetfighter lore and don't know where this all sits in the greater timeline but saying this I found it all satisfying, despite the fact it retains the single round fights of the underwhelming character stories included in the original release. At the start of the 3 hours or so it took me to get through it was simple stuff and while I wasn't having to retry fights until the last three or four in the game the challenge did have a subtile gradient to it. Also by forcing me to play as a variety of fighters throughout some fights were harder purely because I didn't know the characters moveset, any time I controlled M.Bison for example was not a good time. I really liked how it introduced either characters to be released as DLC or named background characters to mix things up a bit. Certainly with the limited roster of 20 characters at the moment it needed this to make the story seem a bit bigger the only complaint about this is that the Dolls soon became like Fire Emblem characters in Smash Bros, there were a few too many of them. It's finale was cool and over the top but for me it needed a hint of a returning character in the league of E Honda or Blanka, again though i'm not too up on the world of these characters and a few of the surprises fell short on me simply because I didn't recognise who was being introduced. All in all it was a fun couple of hours, encouraging me to play a few online matches after it was all over, I really like the new feature of rematches with your opponent which has been added since I last played. Everything added recently has made it seem closer to a full game, its a shame it wasn't there at release!

As well as this I played a bit of Furi (PS4) I say a bit, I played a few hours, but didn't get very far, mostly due to my incompetence at games like this. Guided by a rabbit through a series of boss fights as you sort've break out of jail is the basic premise of the game. The boss fights themselves have played out so far as a combination of duel stick shooting sections followed by hand to hand combat which is more timing based (and theres a handy health refresh for a successful parry) the neat thing, which has kept me playing despite how bad I am at it is that there is a three attempt system to each fight which is refreshed when you knock off a full bar of your opponents health. Meaning that there is ample time for me to get used to the waves of attacks thrown at me. It feels very much like a boss fight from Bloodborne to me, which is an impressive scope to aim for from an indie game. It all looks very stylish and the voice acting is strong so far. I'm certainly enjoying it more than I thought I would initially and despite how terrible I am at it!

Pocket Card Jockey (3DS) continues to sap away most of my time, I've now got a stable of horses with variable success on the track. I bred a horse, Tinopener, who wasn't as good as I was hoping, very quick but then I realised the speed of your horse effects the amount of time you have to play solitaire, so a quick horse isn't necessarily a good thing. I then took another ride, Paul Ross, who wasn't great but I've been working purely on levelling him up, not too bothered about winning the initial races, instead getting the little horseshoes and lightbulbs to make him a high level horse with lots of skills, time will tell. The game is a dark path of simulation and cards which continues to be the most fun I'm having with video games at the moment.

Earthbound and Dune 06.07.16

I bought two racing games on the 3DS this week and the first, Mario Kart 7, was everything I was expecting it to be. I came in from the wrong angle of having played its successor Mario Kart 8 already so a lot of the new features added had been improved upon along with the better tracks from this game being recreated for the WiiU version. That's not to say I was downbeat about my time with the game, its a lot of fun and a couple of the tracks added are great, I especially like the tracks which are split into sections rather than the conventional laps. Flight (or air-gliding) being one of the features added for this iteration is used much better than its successor, I felt that short cuts and speed boosts were a lot of fun to find with this technique. The roster, which has been expanded and chopped and changed so much by this stage, is one of the weaker for my tastes. Obviously this is a minor thing, bearing in mind how most are just skin changes for your racer, I found myself sticking to the predictable Toad and Koopa Trooper throughout. On my loose scale of this series, being a rare thing that I've played and finished every one released, I'd place it somewhere between Super Circuit and Super Mario Kart, I certainly got more out of Mario Kart DS. For the record here's my uninformed Mario Kart Chart.

8. Mario Kart Wii 

7. Mario Kart 64

6. Mario Kart: Super Circuit

5. Mario Kart 7

4. Super Mario Kart

3. Mario Kart 8

2. Mario Kart DS

1. Mario Kart: Double Dash!!

So with that cleared up I played a lot of a game that would probably go straight to the top of my horse racing crossed with solitaire games list. Pocket Card Jockey (3DS) it's as addictive a game as I've played in a long time. Tasked with controlling a resurrected jockey, who's not great at racing horses but enjoys playing cards the game then goes on to explain the at first daunting combination of solitaire and horse racing. It goes something like this; 1) race starts and you play a bit of speed solitaire to determine how quick out of the blocks you are and where you place early on 2) you play a bit of solitaire (for a varying amount of rounds during the race) the better you do at this the more energy your horse has and more injections of pace you get at the end of the race. 3) You physically mark out where your horse goes on the track, areas which will slow down expend more energy are shown, along with areas which will retain energy 4) depending on the distance of the race you then enter the home stretch and here the game seems to weigh up how you've done for how quick your horse is but also placement of the horse and the amount of boosts you have at this point can be really important. On top of all this the game has a levelling system to your horse, which includes certain skills they learn and the temperament of the creature, oh and there's a shop which sells special one time items for races along with puzzle pieces which when complete I think they boost a horse or something? At times, especially early on I found it all rather overwhelming but quickly a seemingly complex random assortment of mechanics became clear and more importantly a lot of fun. There's a massive element of chance, on numerous occasions my ride would be undone by an AI mishap or a bad hand of cards but weirdly I don't find it frustrating. The races are short enough to always have me ready to have one more go and on top of all this its got a lovely aesthetic to the whole experience only made better by some genuinely funny characters and some awesome music. I absolutely adore this game, its everything I want from a handheld game and possibly the best thing I've played on a handheld since Tetris.