Earthbound and Dune 20.10.15

A rougelike shouldn't really work on a mobile phone, controls need to be precise and movement fluid. Somehow Downwell (iOS) manages to not only make this genre work on a touch screen device, but also creates something close to the best in the genre in my opinion. The way it does it is making it a more vertical experience, where you play a boy with gun boots (boots that shoot guns) as he descends down a well. As you're controlling a character in free fall it also strips out a lot of platforming, you can jump but its fairly limited by the fact the game plays with height a lot of the time. The jump button is shared with firing your gun boots, and ammunition is reloaded every time you touch down on solid ground, meaning a successful run in the game is carefully balanced by the amount of time falling down the well being broken up by interludes of landing. The selection of enemies you encounter range from floating blobs and worms which are easy enough to kill by landing on they're heads, bats who chase you about, tortoises which take a bit more firepower and balls of fire which cause you damage by landing on them. At no point so far has the amount of enemies been overwhelming, and my failure has always been self inflicted. Action is aided by a selection of weapons hidden in caves, normally coming with some health boost, a clever way of forcing me to try out a wider selection of weaponry, otherwise the stronger weapons like the laser would be a little overpowered, no gun i've found has been completely useless either.  The whole package is the perfect fit for the mobile market, whereas the likes of Rouge Legacy require far more precision and a bit more time to get deep into the game, this game seems to encourage dropping straight into it (literally) and playing a few quick games. The graphics look really nice for what they are, three colours and I assume help to make it run smoothly as well, not too much more to say about this great little game.

I played a bit of The Crew (PS4) as well, in scope its really ambitious, giving me an approximation of the United States to freely drive around, and thats what I did straight after I started to get entwined into a story involving Detroit, my brother being killed and gangs, I took to the open roads, attempting a drive down to Miami then getting sidetracked and heading through the Badlands toward Vegas. Luckily the pleasant lady who's waiting with my next objective at my garage in Detroit doesn't seem to bothered by my extended road trip as i've not got any intention of returning to the story. It looks good, certainly for the scale of the game. At times I wish there were a few less cars on the road, even going to some of the more remote parts of America the freeways seemed pretty crowded. If nothing else its helping me with geography, although i'm not too trusting of how true to real world it is, every route I take seems to take me through Little Amsterdam (a place I'd never heard of until this week) its got a lovely windmill though. The cars (or car which i've driven so far) don't really feel like they are gripping the surface of the road, the whole game feels quite slippery which is a shame, but its not game breaking, just took a bit of an adjustment in my playing of the game. Hopefully more cars become available as time goes on to me even though i'm avoiding the story, it would be good to see if there is anything thats got a bit more grip. The online components seem interesting, other (from what I can make out) real players appear every once in a while zipping down the motorways and i'd be keen to give the game a go with someone else I know, the idea of a point to point race across America seems pretty cool. Theres not too much wrong with it and i'll tinker with it a bit more over the next few weeks i'm sure.

Bowsers Inside Story (3DS) might as well be called Bowsers Inside Neverending Story, I've got to be close to the end surely? I had to watch two Toads have a cup of tea for about 5minutes in Bowsers lower back so that was something.

Earthbound and Dune 13.10.15

The internal clock on Bowsers Inside Story (3DS) continues to tick on, standing at thirteen hours as I edge toward the conclusion of a game I wanted to finish in a week. I still intend to finish and quantify my thoughts on this charming game at some point, just not this week.

Standing at a more impressive fifty hours or so was my playtime to get to the (real) ending of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4). I say the real ending, I've watched the lengthy credits twice and have a conclusion to the story of Big Boss circa 1985, but at the same time i'm back in my helicopter with one more important side op to complete (I think I did two missions out of sync which could lessen the drama of the way things play out). Without going into the final events of the story I really liked it, it was powerful, even to me who hasn't played that much of the other games. From my understanding this game was meant to be building toward Big Boss being the villain of later games, and it certainly does that while also angling toward what will happen with Solid Snake. One aspect of the finale I found really frustrating but could understand why it played out that way, perhaps it didn't need to go on that long though. On the whole its a fantastic game, which I've had so much fun with, I've got a bit more clearing up of side ops to do, but once thats done it would take me a while to return to it as most of the joys I had from the game were from either discovering an inventive way to complete my objectives or attempting to unravel what was going on in the story.

I played a small amount of the Battlefront (PS4) beta over the weekend, and while it looks and sounds pretty much exactly as i'd have hoped I found the other players were already at such a higher level than me that a lot of the enjoyment was sucked out of the game pretty quickly. Especially the battle of Hoth gameplay, which is a fantastic recreation of the second films opening battle, I wanted a chance to have a root around the world but sadly I was being picked off with ease (whatever side I was on), sometimes it was humorous, either being stomped on by an ATAT or coming head to head with Darth Vader in a trench but more often it was being sniped from miles away by someone at a much higher level. I found the loadouts and weapons seemed to benefit the higher level players too much, and the idea of getting to they're level seemed like too much of a grind for me (thats because I'm inept at these sorts of games though) other issues I had could well be ironed out in the full release though like every time I found a vehicle, the glee of taking control of it was taken away from me as I tried to fudge the controls, the training mode offered in the full game will help with this. For a beta I guess this did what I'd have wanted it to do, get me interested in the final product as there was more promise in the hour or so I spent with it than I was expecting. 

Finally I've been playing through Gauntlet (PS4) with a friend online, and it's been a really enjoyable experience (and also the perfect antidote for all the Metal Gear seriousness i've had going on) it takes itself really lightly, perfectly illustrated by the commentary from both the narrator and the characters we're playing. Whats most impressive about it is how it strikes the balance between arcade nostalgia and more modern games, there is a surprising amount of finesse to the combat and different attacks that can be purchased, and so far we've not found a level which has overwhelmed us or seemed impossible. So bits have been tricky, but after a few attempts we've got through everything thrown at us. It looks lovely, lighting in places especially shines (bad pun). Character design is pretty generic, but every once in a while a boss like an anthropomorphic crocodile is thrown at you which looks better than it should. It's taken us about 20 levels to release the cash we've been accumulating can be used to buy other attacks and armour, which led to a spending spree then a less harmonious approach when we see treasure in caves from then on. The end is in sight, which is another design choice I really appreciate (you can see the path to the conclusion mapped out for you) on the whole i've loved my time with it since joining up to play with someone else.

Earthbound and Dune 06.10.15

I made a promise to myself to finish Bowsers Inside Story (3DS) a few weeks back, but i’m still struggling toward the end, its not such a struggle, and i’m enjoying my time with it, hopefully i’ll finish it soon and be able to talk about my final impressions.


Another RPG I’ve picked up on (and finished in half the time) is Undertale (Steam) its a novel take on a modern RPG, the combat system is still turn based, but it adds rhythm and skill based elements in defence of an enemy attack, and this is made even more joyous by the commentary by your foe as he attacks, explaining why sweat is pouring down on you or bombs are falling. The writing of the game throughout is awesome, each character, although a monster, feels human and natural, its humour borrows from games like Earthbound in places, which is never a bad thing. Its a relatively quick game to get through (about 4-5 hours) and the ending you get is very much dependant on decisions you make through the game, I don’t know if i’d play through it again, not that I didn’t love my time with it, the end “twist” which plays on your expectations from an RPG was both funny and a surprise so I wouldn’t want to go through the game knowing how to cheat the system, it wouldn’t feel right. In places the game plays with light really well, and it looks really pretty at these points, the rest of the time its an 8-16bit look which a lot of indie games adopt, but it continually feels individual purely by the look of the characters and the feeling of the world they live in. Steam as a platform I find difficult to find things I want to play, and though the fault of having a mac sometimes find it hard to find things I can play, but Undertale is a game i’ve loved from beginning to end.


I’ve got to the end of Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4), I say the end, I’ve got to the halfway point, but I’ve seen the credits. As much as I’ve enjoyed it so far, the final moments of Skullface in the game really didn’t sit to well with me, he never was fleshed out as a villain, and I didn’t really feel that much hatred for him (perhaps I should have listened to more of the tapes) so when Big Boss is dealing out his revenge it just felt uneasy, having no control over the scene as well was strange. Its one of a few times I feel what is an essentially a fantastical world of floating boys and giant robots gets caught up in trying to shock or create a brutal realism and it just didn’t click for me, it feels more like its doing it because its "cool" to be gory or hyper violent, in the end though its a great game, flawed in places but still better than pretty much anything I’ve played this year. I’m slowly battling through the post credit material (which looks like another 40hours of gameplay) and some of the variations on missions offer a neat twist on the objectives.


Built a few more Super Mario Maker (WiiU) levels too, I’m particularly pleased with Panic on the Titanic.


Owlman Vs the Bowser Snake: 0150-0000-004F-7CAB
Burger Babies Boozer: 1FAD-0000-0051-CA19
Panic on the Titanic: 4840-0000-0061-CF26
Bowserbot 5000: D2F6-0000-0069-7495
Bowser Towers: 1E4C-0000-007D-0991

Earthbound and Dune 15.09.15

Two fantastic games have drawn my attention from writing this for a while, which I guess is a good thing.

 

First off is Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain (PS4), following up from the fantastic Ground Zeroes, it attempts (really successfully) stealth on a massive scale, every mission can be attempted from pretty much any angle or mind-set, saying that the opening mission does limit you to the old trappings of a stealth game, there are fail states when people spot you and your movement is severely hampered, with narrative reasoning but I did find it annoying, It's opening was such a throwback to the old Metal Gear games which I wanted to love with no joy, strange characters doing bizarre things included, that  I was worried that it was going to stray from its predecessor  which finally bought me into the franchise. I wasn't worried for long though, so after a fairly decent length intro, with more story than I was expecting, I was thrown into mid 80's Afghanistan, if you've seen the Living Daylights you'll be familiar with this setting, desert and outposts is pretty much it, with larger details like power plants every once in a while, in contrast to the desolate surroundings though the game builds a living, breathing world, guards work shifts, some are driving about randomly, some can be found sleeping late at night, nothing feels scripted or on rails and that's fantastic. Early mission objectives are fairly standard for an open world game, kill someone, capture someone or blow something up. What makes this game so individual though is the freedom to complete your objectives, when tasked with destroying a tank I had the option to stand back and attack from distance as it was on route to its destination or, once this failed for me I ran for the hills, the tank didn't chase for long (after all I'm just one man) and carried on its business, there wasn't a fail state for taking too long or getting spotted, my mission adapted with my ineptitude and now I had to destroy a tank in a enemy stronghold. I won't bore any readers with how I achieved my goal, but it involved another armed vehicle and a lot of damage. Whether you kill a human target or not is optional as well, like everything else in this world it or they can be sent back to your base with the aide of balloons, so far I've kept a policy of capturing every target I'm set out to kill, I don't know why I'm doing this but I find it immensely satisfying. I'm not too far into the actual game (and I know its going to be a long journey) instead of progressing the story I've focused on side missions, which seem actually useful in this game for example when capturing a Russian translator your given translation to what everyone is saying. I've spent far too long getting all the music tapes from around the opening area, including a spectacular heist of Aha's "Take on Me" which ended with me avoiding gunfire as I escaped on horseback whilst listening to my new cassette, its quite a game.

 

Super Mario Maker (WiiU) gives you all the toys to build a level from either Mario Bros, Mario Bros 3, Mario World or New Super Mario Bros dresses it a lot like Mario Paint and succeeds in building just about the most charming game ever made. Being totally honest this is the game I always wanted to play or at least since having a cheat code for Sonic the Hedgehog 1 which let me redistribute enemies and tiles around Green Hill act 1. The amount of power at my hands the second I booted this game up was totally overwhelming (and that's without the unlocked elements, which now don't take a day to arrive) I've found a natural evolution to what I've made, and where I was expecting to want to make expansive levels as big as the game would let me, I've progressed more toward smaller levels with tighter platforming. I think I need to move away from theming each level, perhaps making more traditional Mario levels. Having most of the tools that the original games makers had really makes me appreciate good level design, very few levels I've built or sampled feel like a Super Mario level, and that's what's fantastic when you do encounter one. On the subject of playing others levels you can sample 8 or 16 with a limit of 100 lives, which is a great way to see what other people are making, weirdly I've only seen one penis, and that was almost subtle. The bonus on completion of the set amount of levels is a random 8bit sprite, offering another way of getting Amiibo characters as well as the likes of Waluigi. The drip feeding of items and foes for your own course creation is something that really suites me, I've not dabbled in Yoshis, Boos, Chomps or wigglers, I'm sure as I get more familiar with the game these will be thrown into the mix but at the moment I'm just absolutely loving everything Super Mario Maker has to offer. I've even found myself at times either thinking about an idea for a level or sketching out some unusable idea, its a long, long time since a game has gripped me like this. Below are the codes for my first four levels:

 

The Great White Whale : C85B 0000 001E AFA6

Mr Blockos Goomba Kids 6EAF : 0000 0023 23FF

Big Bowsers Transport Musuem : A668 0000 0024 84D9

Waluigi Goes to Hades : 47F7 0000 002F 89EC

Mowsers Monument: 1479 0000 003E 44EA 

Next week I'm trying to make a promise to myself to finish Bowsers Inside Story (DS), and then say what I feel about it...

 

Earthbound and Dune 29.08.15

Everyone's Gone to the Rapture (PS4) has been an interesting experience and a hard game to describe without getting into parts of the story, so a slight spoiler warning before I start. 

Set in the early 1980s, rural England it's filled with visual references and nostalgia which could be lost on players not from Britain, but I found it refreshing to play a game set in a familiar world. The plot places you as an unnamed voyeur on this world, slowly gliding through it listening in to balls of lights dialogue which sounds a bit like the Archers goes Sci-Fi. The movement is slow (even when pressing the run button) but I thought this added to the mysterious nature of your role in the game, it feels floaty, almost ghostlike only annoying me a couple of times, when tracing back footsteps to work out where I was going, there is a holiday camp section about two thirds in which this was particularly irritating. On the whole though your guided by the lights floating about, and you can see the from a distance pointing you in the right direction. Story can be stumbled upon by lesser characters talking between themselves and discovering these chance encounters helped make the game more alive whilst making my play-through seem unique, a great example of this was with the fate of the mechanic and the people who discover him. The opening of the game, following a vicar as he deals with the events was fascinating, ambiguous on how long a timeline your dealing with as the village descends into chaos building up to him alone questioning his faith it was distressing, aided by some fantastic acting, then I departed to the next part of the story where the mystery of what happened starts to take centre stage, graffiti on doors, discarded star charts and other clues such as crutches laying in the street could point to what happened and it builds up to the two lead characters taking centre stage. The major plot points are almost unavoidable, playing out on radios when interacted with and that takes a little bit of the chance elements of the story out of the game but there can be some detective work to find where the radio is hidden (you can hear a loop of numbers when your near). It looks good, but not spectacular bar a few scenes when night passes to day and as I mention earlier the acting throughout is fantastic. If I hadn't played Her Story earlier in the year I may have felt a lot better about this game, the comparison between the two is a bit tenuous but for a slow methodical journey through a mystery in a nostalgic Great Britain, Her Story just does it that bit better. I liked Everyone's Gone to the Rapture, just don't know if I loved it.

In my downtime I played a bit of Kung Fury: Street Rage (PS4) Two buttons, punch left and right, fighting through nazis, ninjas, dominatrix's an robots as a dinosaur watches on, perfect respite from walking slowly through the countryside. Could easily be a mobile game, but it's cool and cheap on the PS4.

Finally I played some of the reimagining of Gauntlet (PS4) from the makers of Helldivers, a game I really enjoyed. Given an arcade game most people know they've got a bit less freedom with objectives it seems, and the levels seem larger for it. There is a satisfaction to killing waves of monsters still, piles of bones still dispatch pesky ghosts and it all feels very familiar even being too sword happy can still destroy a turkey and all the health that goes with it. Looks fine, not too different from the Tomb Raider game I played a few weeks back. It's a game I'm not going to pass judgement on until playing it coop as that's where Gauntlet has always been at it's finest, it all felt a bit lonely in the dungeon on my own.

Earthbound and Dune 18.08.15

My plans to complete, or at least get through a sizeable chunk of Mario & Luigi: Bowsers Inside Story (DS) whilst on holiday didn't quite come off, the small portion I got through still trawling through tutorials. What I did play I really enjoyed. It's the first Mario RPG I've played, and it's a novel twist on the typical mechanics, adding basic platforming into the mix and stealing and building the rhythm based combat mechanics of Earthbound. It's a slow build, made more bearable by a witty story, playing off the tropes of a Mario game as you'd imagine, Bowser in particular is a much funnier character along with his sidekick Kamek, some of the humour early on is too dependent on breaking the third wall, the first few times funny but the joke wears a little thin as it continues through a lengthy tutorial. Perhaps that's why Bowser is such a breath of fresh air, whereas the Mario Bros play the same roles you imagine, Bowser seems more downtrodden, the story playing on his multiple failed attempts at capturing Peach. The gameplay itself gets pretty in depth even early on, Mario and Luigi are controlled by separate buttons while platforming but they're tied to the same movement, which makes lining up some jumps trickier. In combat your encouraged to spot tells in enemies attacks and counter them by the ever dependable head stomp it also drops green shells into fighting which can cause more damage if timing is right while also building combos up. There's a lot going on, even at this early stage, I'll hopefully keep at it as it's one of those titles that would probably require restarting if I left it too long just to work out what to do (Sadly Bloodborne has already fallen victim to that this year). The only thing I've got against it is a personal thing, I find the shoulder buttons on the form of a 3DS or DS (except for the original silver model) awkward to use, so games which require them don't feel great.

I checked into Animal Crossing (3DS) to find animals annoyed I'd not spoken to them in a week, a jungle of bamboo has sprouted around my house and I got bitten by a tarantula. Way too stressful for sitting by the pool.

Much more to talk about next week, I've taken my first slow steps into Everyone's Gone to the Rapture and plan to have some less ernest fun in Kung Fury: Street Rage and Gauntlet.

Earthbound and Dune 06.08.15

Not much to talk about this week, life got in the way of playing anything. I did download and play the first section of Limbo (PS4) so probably like an hours gameplay. Its interesting (to me anyway) how much of the game came back to me, i’d completed it about 4 years ago and not picked it up since. I only died twice in the opening bit, and both times due to attempting to rush through it. Thats not a vindication of how good I am at playing games, rather that the game is designed so well its incredibly memorable. Killing the spider and subsequently using his body as tool seemed more gross and cruel when I was finding the game much easier. Not much more to say about it, still looks and sounds fantastic but the timeless look of it shouldn’t age really. I’ll probably leave it at that, I remember some of the more physics based magnet sections becoming irritating later on and a little too fiddly for me. Fantastic game all the same.

I also played Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris (PS4), a top down duel stick shooter. Due to my limited time with Tomb Raider games since the first one the two hours I put in is the most fun I’ve had with the series from the most time put in. I ignored pretty much any story I was presented with, so was a little confused when a brief cutscene showed the protagonist with another dude and two Egyptian throwbacks, it wasn’t slow to place me in the action, fighting skeletons and giant beetles (i’m assuming mummies will make an appearance at some point). Puzzles so far have been limited to blowing stuff up and pushing rocks about, but that allowed the tighter elements of the gameplay to shine, such as avoiding rolling spiky balls and ascending walls. On my way there was a tremendous sort of boss fight with a giant crocodile monster, aided by his fantastic character design and a more underwhelming fight against some golden god chap who just followed me around as I dropped bombs for him to walk into. Puzzles and enemy count ramped up in difficulty pleasingly as I was playing, sometimes involving raising platforms with a magical staff, another shoulder button on the controller is mapped to lighting lamps, the purpose of this so far has been similar to shooting countless vases (collecting gems) also dotted around the levels are other trinkets, some applying more RPG elements to my character such as more damage or strength. The only downside to this fairly mindless game has been a confusing hub world which didn’t guide me to the next level as much as I would have liked, but this hasn’t been helped by me tapping through the cutscenes. The idea of this game existing alongside the grittier titles from the series (however preposterous it seems) I like, especially as it harkens back to the time when Lara Croft fought dinosaurs. 

Thats about it, I’m intending to get through Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story (DS) whilst on holiday next week, i’ll see how that goes.