Okay, so games, and I'll start with Donkey Kong country tropical freeze. Yeah, that's right, another 2D platformer, but, if you hadn't noticed by now, I love 'em. I had never played one before, but I figured I need to get some use from my Wii U, so I scraped the dust off of it and gave it a whirl (also, it got good reviews, which was the main reason really). It was good, with some nice level design, and different side characters that gave you different abilities, though you could normally find that any of them would give you as good of a hand as any of the others. It looked great too, with some beautiful levels and background art, but the music was pretty uninspired, no catchy tunes that made me want to search youtube after I'd done it to rehear them (yeah, I've done that before).
So, yeah, it was good, but not great, like many reviewers made out. I'd heard a lot of comments that didn't seem to hold up to me, like it was groundbreaking and full of things never done in 2D platformers before. No it wasn't. There were also on rails levels that were either riding a run away mine cart or flying some kind of barrel rocket (best way I can explain it) which were more about trial and error than any actual skill.
Something else that was praised was the bosses, and how they were 'fun' to play. I was very sceptical on this comment, because I never like bosses, you just do the same thing over and over again whilst it gets slightly harder. Of course, I was right. The first boss was a seal, and to be fair, i had a seally good time with that one, it was a nice change from the other levels, and it was nice to seal a bit of a change in the game. In the end I sealed the victory though and carried on. The bosses moved on, an owl (owl the hell did I beat him) on to some kind of monkey threesome, then a blowfish (but I blew it away) and by the time I got the penultimate boss, a Polar bear fielding a hammer, I just couldn't bear it anymore. The last boss was a walrus, and I have no puns for that.
Also, this is what it looks like (though the word 'freeze' isn't well represented here).
So that was one down, and next up was Crimson Dragon, a spiritual successor to the Panzer Dragoon series that hit my favourite ever console, the Sega Saturn (obviously that is a joke, and yet here is a selfie of me holding mine that I took just now:
Anyway, the Panzer Dragoon games were basically on the rails shooters where you flew on a dragon (you were the guy riding it) and shot at other bizarrely designed creatures, which included, despite my comment just a few paragraphs ago, good bosses! That was mainly because you'd have to pick at certain areas of the boss to aim at whilst tyring to dodge there attacks. This is a good point to mention that you could move around the screen, it wasn't totally fixed.
Crimson Dragon got a lot of the same feel to it, and although I'd probably say it wasn't as good as the first 2 (only out 19 years ago) it was a pretty decent homage (I never played Orta on the first Xbox (It seems really awkward, with the new Xbox being called Xbox One and referring to the original Xbox as such, not that I think I ever called the original the 'Xbox one' anyway, it just feels like I've been cheated out of saying it if I ever wanted to (maybe it's because most people refer to the 'Playstation' as the Ps one now))). They added some light RPG elements about buying powerups, evolving your dragon, choosing which attacks you wanted and some other bits, but the basics were essentially the same. It still had the weird looking enemies with crazy names, and you still dodged around the screen frantically trying to avoid getting killed whilst trying to kill (that makes it sound like a generic FPS). Okay, I haven't really explained this game very well, but what more can you say other than you ride an on rails dragon, dodging and shooting (that sounds even worse).
I had a lot of problems with it though, I had to spend a good chunk of time going around the same early level trying to get a golden Vespin seed to evolve my dragon, and you would be able to get it about one time in four, and when you're at a point when you're way too overpowered for this level, it takes about 10 minutes and barely gives you any xp, it got pretty damn annoying. Another thing that was annoying was the fact that creating a save file isn't the automatic option on the home screen, as I found out having got a couple of hours in, then, when i came back, all my progress had been lost, due to the simple fact of the bit of the menu at the start of the game that says 'do you want to create a save file, yes/no' was automatically set to no, so when you're tapping away at the A button to get to the game, you end up not creating a save file and losing a load of your time. After I had done this, I thought I would be too annoyed to continue (it was touch and go on controller smashing, but It survived), but, unlike my usual self, I pushed on and redid it all over (much better this time too, I was terrible at it the first time around.
Another thing I want to mention/complain about is the graphics. Now, I'm not one for feeling that graphics is a key part of gaming, it's more like the icing on the cake for a game if it looks beautiful, but it's a long way from a top priority for me. However, this was a launch game for a brand new console, so it had to show off what it had, but it was very disappointing in that regard. I'm not saying that the Xbone has bad graphics, I don't want to jump on this 720p up scaled to 1080 p argument that's going on, as it doesn't bother me that much. Hell, Ryse looked amazing, as did Assassins Creed 4. But not Crimson Dragon, so, for arguments sake, here is a screen shot
and for comparison here is a screen shot of Kameo: Elements of power (a 360 launch game)
Can you honestly tell me that Crimson Dragon looks much better than this?
In the end though, all of these complains aside, I enjoyed, and finished it, so scratch it off the list.
Speaking of things that are annoying, on to Grid 2 again then, and no, I Haven;t finished, nor have i played it since last Friday (the day after i wrote the last entry). After finally winning a season (season 3, I came 2nd in one and two) it finally removed the annoying pre season section where you had to try and get other racing clubs to join the WSR. I thought this was going to be great, but how wrong i was. I'll just prefix this by noting I'm not particularly good at racing games (yeah yeah, excuses excuses) but the difficulty level has shot through the roof. I'm now having to do a race 20 to 30 times to get a podium finish, and considering there;s normally 3 or 4 races in a tournament, and 8 tournaments until you can unlock the final, you can imagine what a ball ache this became. What's more, there is going to be a season 5 as well (sigh)! I am beginning to wonder now if I'll ever finish it, and truly I do not know, but I'm a fair way in to it now, so I might go back sporadically to play it, and in the course of the next 10 weeks I'll (hopefully) get it done.
Just before I wrap this up, I'll give you a taste of what's to come next week (nom nom nom) as I started Metro Last light last night, and got a couple of hours in. Now, i never played the first, but I read the synopsis so it's fine. The original (Metro 2033) was based on the novel also (coincidentally) named Metro 2033 by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky (apologies if miss-spelt) and is about a post nuclear war Russia where the survivors are forced to live their life in the underground train Metro tunnels (hence the name). There's rivalling factions though and nuclear abominations to deal with too.
As I said though, I didn't play the first, and I don't want to repeat the synopsis I read on Wikipedia (the source of all knowledge). The second follows on from the story of the original, but goes in a completely different direction from the book sequel, the aptly names Metro 2034. You're tasked with righting the wrongs from the original, but you soon get captured, and although only a few hours in, there's been plenty of good signs, with varying gameplay styles throughout, from classic FPS action (it's an FPS by the way), stealth and survival horror. So with lots of scope to expand on these varying styles of gamplay, and a very interesting setting to boot, I'm looking forward to playing it some more (not tonight though, I'm jiggered). One problem I do have though, is the terrible Russian accents. A friend suggested to me that maybe Russians did the voice overs, but if they are, they should be ashamed, it's enough to make Dick Van Dyke blush.
Additionally, as I mentioned House of Cards S2 at the end of the last one, I'll just add that I've finished that, and it was amazing, everyone should watch it. Bare in mind you really should watch season 1 first, not only because it's really good too, but also the plot would be difficult to pick up without it. However, season 2 is better.
Finished: Mark of the Ninja
Donkey Kong country tropical freeze
Crimson Dragon
Underway: Grid 2
Metro last light
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