Earthbound and Dune 14.09.16

Playing sports games that are no good is a problem of mine. I dug into Rugby 15 (PS4) and despite it looking pretty ropey, playing pretty poorly and being buggy as hell I played a bit too much of it. I understand the basics of Ruby so I felt a little bit prepared, aided by some really bad AI opponents, who would panic if I zig zagged across the field. That's a blessing as passing the ball to create space in the game isn't really an option as its all over the place, kicking it seems to really confuse to opposition too, so there's lots of chances to score points. Rucks and scrums are controlled with a lock picking mini game which is also really easy, which helps because throw ins and kicking penalties are as much as a chance to look like a moron as they are to relinquish possession. For all the faults I've played two tournaments, the first ending at the final where I made the mistake of ramping up the difficulty and not having a good time. The second tournament ended when my international teams where all replaced with club teams at the quarter finals, certainly an interesting bug! I enjoy playing the less conventional sports sims and who knows it might be better than Casey Powell Lacrosse 16.

Knocking that one on the head I also played a little bit of Super Bomberman 3 (snes). I didn't have a copy of Bomberman it turns out and was happy to stump up for the Japanese version of the game, a lot more affordable than the PAL release. It's an odd formula for a game in that it's not really been updated or copied with any success. The bits that this version add are not that dramatic, I think it's the first instance of the kangaroos to ride about and there are some character choices beyond colour. That's the issue though, I think Bomberman works best at its most basic, the more added the worse the experience gets or at least confusing. There are stages with see saws and igloos but the best time guaranteed is the vanilla green stage and that's a great time. The cowboy suit for Bomberman is pretty cool too.

Finally Pokemon Go (iOS) got its claws into me again as I am working around central London at the moment. Having a stretch of the Thames to wander along and catch Magikarps by the bucketload is still a fun thing. I've found the game in there, it's all about storing up a bunch of monsters to evolve, planning a long walk over lunch and busting open a lucky egg to double the XP. There's also a short passage of my train journey in, between London Bridge and Waterloo where it passes through about 10 Pokestops, that's always handy. I'm not that pleased about the mechanic where the higher I get level wise the harder Pokemon are to catch but it's not put me off it yet. I've yet to fight my Pokemon, I'm not a monster.