The Order:1886 (PS4) I've played through the majority of this game this week. With a new Zelda game on the horizon I wanted something not too time consuming and simple enough to get into and it met both these requirements. It's very much like a Gears of War game, in gameplay and in terms of technical achievement, I remember the first time I played Gears of War and thinking that it really did look like a new generation of game, while this game isn't as great a leap it still uses some nifty tricks (like a slight letterbox to the picture and gating where I could go quite severely) to make it look very nice. The premise of the game is the knights of old have hung around to shoot werewolves in London, leading to some lovely looking environments. Such as lavish houses, old hospitals and underground stations. Traversing the environment is cool, and while I felt I was being pushed down corridors most of the time its still nice how the game ties together winding streets and old houses. Moments where I was jumping out of windows or climbing along walls were highlights. The game gets a bit more imaginative with its weaponry, instead of sticking to technology of the time guns are spruced up and a lot of fun to play around with. My personal favourite was the concrete gun (or whatever its called) which blasts a cloud of dust at enemies and then with the other trigger the dust is ignited to create an explosion. There are a couple of novel weapons like this, indeed I thought the game really hit its stride when I was introduced the "Q" type character at my headquarters. At times it uses other forgotten parts of the Playstation 4, like tapping out morse code on the touchpad which was a nice little gimmick. The plot is fairly basic but moves at such a pace that its kept me interested and after a pretty dull first boss battle, which involves repeating the same trick a few too many times the other encounters with werewolves are a lot more tense affairs which mix up the more basic QTE's with an element of skill. Overall I like the game quite a bit, by being a more refined and shorter experience it was perfect for what I was looking for.
If they can condense this duel screen nonsense to a single screen
for the Switch i'll be there day one.
I also indulged in a farewell of sorts to my 3DS, with the Switch inbound hopefully that will be my handheld console for commuting so I played a bit of Super Mario Land, I say a bit I completed it three times. The virtual console has presented me with the shocking revelation that Super Mario Land is a very short and very odd Mario game. Few enemies are familiar and even the ones that are now blow up instead of abandoning they're shells. Beyond the Goomba's and Koopa's that are now explosive, theres weird flying mice, easter island heads and zombie humans that jump about. The setting or location of this land is hard to pin down, it could be earth I guess. Theres certainly more elements of our planet I recognise than the Mushroom Kingdom. Its such a brief little game that i've got no issue at all playing it a couple of times in a day, I can get it done in about the fifty minutes or so it takes me to get home. Finally I think I like the 1-1 theme music more than the standard Mario tune. I also returned to my stable of poorly named horses to play a bit of Pocket Card Jockey once more. Time has been kind to this game, it's still exceptional, time had also been kind to my young horse Red Rum 2. Such a fine young filly that she got me to bits of the game I didn't know existed, I now have a rival who was pretty impressed with my ride, and flew a few insults at me. Basically this horse wouldn't stop winning races, incredibly lucky and was winning me so much money I could be frivolous in the shop, buying gloves and carrots to keep the winning run going. It all came crashing down though when she went into mature mode. Once she'd passed her peak of three years old she was pretty much useless. I might put her out to stud now or whatever you do with a really good horse. I really, really hope that games like this find there way onto the Switch eventually, its such a fun and unexpected game.
No comments:
Post a Comment