Brain Surgery

   As many of you know, on Friday, 9th October, I had brain surgery to remover a cavernoma (an expanded blood vessel), it has been a hard couple of weeks and I thought I should tell people how it's been for me, if you care?

   It was Thursday the 8th that I went in and had to stay in the hospital overnight before it all kicked off the next day. I got in the hospital gown, got a catheter and morphine and fell asleep. some 3 hours in I awoke in the middle (as planned)  so I could take a series of tests to make sure that nothing was going wrong. It was things such as disciple this picture, finish the sentence and things like that. It was also very uncomfortable, dead legs, sore arm, cramp, and the notion that I had a guy digging in my head.

   I got out and returned to my hospital bed, not feeling to bad except for a headache, but painkillers were helping. Sleep was tough though, with the catheter and cannula and very uncomfortable bed. The next 5 days in the hospital were awful, the headache got much worse, become unbearable after a few days, and getting to sleep due o the quality of the bed, plus of course, it's very boring, not aided by the fact that I could barely read, it took about 10 minutes to read a paragraph. Finally, on Wednesday the 14th, with the worst headache I've ever had, I got to leave and go to my mothers.

   The headache got worse, and I spent the next 24 hours with terrible pain and throwing up constantly, so I went to A&E. I got a bunch of scans and had to go back to a room for the night. At that time, I also started to not understand things. I could really speak as I couldn't understand anything people were saying nor what I was saying. This would go on for 4 days, and was awful as I couldn't really do anything because I couldn't understand anything. I also had to spend the majority of the next day in the hospital waiting for the pharmacy to drop me some steroids and anti sickness tablets, it's not very efficient. After that I went back to my mothers house.

   The steroids weren't great either. They did calm down my sickness and headache but I basically couldn't sleep for more than 3 hours the whole week I was on them, I was tired all the time but just couldn't sleep. I spent the whole of the next week sitting on my arse as I had no energy (this wasn't as fun as it sounds) and with the difficulty in talking/ thinking/ reading and headache it was awful. The headache has calmed down massively now, I still have a slight one, but it's not head splitting anymore. I can also think and talk again now thankfully although I do still have trouble reading and find it hard to concentrate on anything.

   I went off the steroids on Friday, so am still concerned with the fact the problems could come back up, but only time will tell. Finally, today, I have been allowed back to my own flat. I now have to relax for 4 weeks, and just hopes everything goes well. If there's spelling issues in here or if some of it makes no sense, that's the reading issues.

Forza Motorsport 6 Review

   The eagle-eyed among you may remember that I put Forza Horizon 2 in my game of the year list last year, it was fantastic after all, and so I figured it was time to dip my toe in to the main series for the first time. After all, I've got a long history with racing games. When I was younger Gan Turismo 1 and 2 were a couple of of my favourite games. It wasn't just the racing though (good job as looking back the AI on that was pants, but it was a PS1 game I guess), it was buying cars, handpicking races, speciality events, winning cars, different race types and all the other things that went along with it.
   Unfortunately as I've got older I got epilepsy and hence can't drive. so even though all that stuff seemed to awesome to me as a kid, I've grown up in to someone who couldn't give a hoot about cars, there's just no interest there, but as shown last year, I still enjoy racing games. The last straight track racing game I remember playing though was Project Gotham Racing 4 (Xbox's other (now defunct) racing series) and I really did enjoy that, mind you it did come out in 2007, still, I've always liked racing games, so I didn't see why it mattered. Turns out it did matter. I'm racing around these tracks and I just don't care. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate everything that's there and I will go in to more detail, but as I'm racing around these set routes, my mind wonders and I very quickly lose interest. I struggle to see what I used to find so exciting about them as it just seems like it's about learning when to break on corners, and that's it. Sure, you may be sitting there thinking to yourself 'that's what racing is' or 'all videogames are about learning a mechanic' but I think my lack of interest in the subject matter is leading me to boredom (or maybe you're thinking of your own boredom reading this hot mess).
   I want to be positive here though, so I will. If you like cars, I'm pretty sure you'll like this. For one, It looks great (as expected) and the car selection is excellent. Hell, there's plenty of 90's classics from me to choose from that I still have a minor knowledge of  them due to my interest in the past, plus, there's some great GT classics in there, what more could I want than reliving the glory days of GT in a GTO? There's a great tool for livery creating as well that's full of options, and, if like me that seems like too much effort but still want one, you can download livery's that other people have made as well. There's car modding as well that effect your stats that 'gearheads' (that's a term, right?) will appreciate (I assume), but you can also auto mod the car so the computer will do this for you and save the hassle, if like me, you don't care.
   On the positive and gaming side of things, the options are great. There's so many ways of modifying the difficulty for yourself and they've done a great job with this. From the simple aspect of turning the AI difficulty up or down, to things like adding/ removing a racing line, automatic or manual transmission, abs, auto break and plenty more. an added bonus here too is that the more modifiers you turn off, the more prize ( according to the spellcheck here, 'prize isn't a word) money you get for your races, so it pays to be good too (unfortunately only in game, not IRL (unless there's some tournament I don't know about)).
 

    On top of this there's so much to do (if you want). Just the basic game is 6 categories of increasingly powerful cars with multiple tournaments within each, then within these categories there's 6 categories, and you're not 100% complete on that until you win every tournament with a car from every category so if you want to, there's plenty to play. Of course, you can also just do each tournament once which has you complete the game the normal way too. Then there's dozens of special challenges to play too with the likes of car specific challenges, moments from history, side challenges and more to keep you busy.
   Back to my favourite bit now, criticism. Online is terrible. It's just down to luck as to who doesn't get involved in the first corner pileup and then hoping no-one takes you out on any other corner. Don't get me wrong, that's how I race with friends and against AI (as a last resort, I might add) but when there's 24 cars racing and they're all smashing in to each other constantly it's just a cluster...mess?
   Music, what's gone on there then? I can't think of any traditional racing game I've ever played before that hasn't had a proper soundtrack (at least playstation onwards), but this just has some in-house created general background music. Am I supposed to care about the sound of cars? because I don't. And then, there's Top Gear plastered all over the place. I hate Top Gear. What's the big deal, seriously? There's Top gear challenges and James May and Richard Hammond doing voice overs all over the place. I'm so glad that show fell apart

   So what's my recommendation? I guess if you like cars and/or racing games then go for it, the gameplay is about as good as you can get in a racer, but a lack of variety has bored me. If, like me, you've been out of racers for a while, I'd really recommend you don't bother. Because of what I see as a well deigned game for other people but not at all me, I'm going to be less harsh on a score than I could and give it 5/10. Will I get the presumed Horizon 3 next year? Maybe, I did like that last year, a lot, but this has left me with a our taste in my mouth.

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain Review

   This is the big one for this year, arguably. It's probably not the game I was most excited for but it was up there, and after many years in development and all the issues with Konami and Hideo Kojima it looked like it would never come out, but it's here now (well, 2 weeks ago).
   Before I start I'll go a bit in to my personal Metal Gear history. I never played Metal Gear Solid, Even though I owned a Playstation and it seems to be basically everyone who ever owned one's favourite game. I played the demo that came with OPUKM (Acronym meaning available on request) and liked it, but as you may know, Total Soccer also came on that disc, so... I have seen it be played many years later (like, 2012) but I'm still not really sure what the story was. Anyway, jump forward to the PS2, and I got MGS2, and loved it, easily one of my favourite games on the system, and might have been my favourite if not for the GTA 3 series. Couldn't get in to MGS3 though so gave up a couple of hours in. I never played any handheld games but I did play MGS4, but wasn't particularly keen, I didn't know what was going on in the story and the amount of respawning enemies was nuts.
   Jump forward to ground Zeroes, the overly expensive demo that came out last year and I didn't really like that either, I seemed to be spotted from the other side of the map constantly, and it nearly put me off buying this, but in the end I went for it and here we go.

   Stealth again is the name of the game, and just like every other mgs game (apart from 4 IMO) they've nailed it. Planning, timing, execution are all vital and when it all turns out how you planned it just feels great, I love it when a plan comes together. Of course, that happened to me about twice in the 31 missions in the main game, so, it's a rare feeling. I will be honest though, the majority of the times I was spotted were my own fault. In the first half of the game, I'd sneak expertly through the first 2/3 of the mission until I get spotted, but by that point there was few enough enemies for me to gun them down without issue. Then, as I got further in the game and my relationship with Quiet (your sniper buddy) got to a point where she could 'cover me' and I was able to get her to basically wipe out entire bases, or at least distract them to the point where I could just waltz through the middle and complete my objectives. Sure, I wasn't technically 'spotted' on these missions and I got a few S ranks on missions based on this, but the point was not to kill anyone, bu Quiet did all the biz and saved me time and effort, so I was all for that (do I even like games? I'm always trying to make them easier for myself somehow).
   On the subject of Quiet (although I've started a new paragraph so I guess this is bad grammar, kbfhsbd), the buddy system is of great use. You have to start with a horse, which is basically useless except for travelling slightly faster. Then you find a lost puppy, the cutest thing in a video game since Yoshi's Woolly World. Rescue him and you'll soon have another buddy, D-Dog. He's a lot better as he spots enemies for you and can distract them, the only problem he has is following you around to closely, and not very stealthily. Later you battle Quiet, beat her and after a while she's another Buddy, and IMO the best one, for all the reasons I've said above. The only weird thing is her back story, she's sort of part of the Skulls (more on that later) and doesn't eat and other such things, but more strangely she's really scantily clad. Don't know why, though I guess I should be used to it from other metal gears. You'll unlock other variants on her attire, like being silver, gold (for some reason) or covered in blood (more than once a month) to 'intimidate enemies'. The weird thing with all of these is she's a sniper, so she shouldn't really be seen, so it makes no real sense as the guff says it intimidates enemies. There is also a mini rideable Metal Gear, but I never used it as it can't do awesome stuff by itself like Quiet of DD, so no comment.
   Base management then. It's got these RPG elements, and although there's many aspects to it, ultimately everything is for the benefit of creating new equipment for you and your buddies. I have to mention the Fulton device here, which allows you to capture people, items, vehicles and animals in the form of a big balloon that shoots them in to the sky. It's a fun addition to the game that's just as crazy as you expect something in Metal Gear to be. If you can at some point, Fulton a sheep, the sound is hilarious.

   The Skulls then are a super powered group of soldiers that have massive health bars, deal massive damage that takes forever to recover from and can teleport. They always come in groups too and are  tough group, just make sure you're loaded up with exclusives and tat Quiet is in position. They also turn other soldiers in to sort of zombies, but they are way easier than regular enemies as they don't shoot, so that's helpful.
   Things that aren't so great then. There's some slow down t times. I was playing on Xbox so can't say if it's true for PC and PS4, but a few times I got spotted or missed a great opportunity due to this. I also found cover sometimes doesn't work great. Approaching cover is supposed to automatically put you in to cover but sometimes you end up just standing by the wall, a button press would have been more effective. I'm going to put the story in here, but not for the reasons you may expect. Sure, the prologue is classic metal gear where it makes no sense and is nuts, but after that there isn't much to it. Just a guy trying to control the world through language and metal gears, but it's very light. I've never been a big fan of the weird Metal Gear stories anyway, but it's still nuts, but there's not much to it. On language, there is a section towards the end of the game where many of your staff gets a disease based on what language they speak and have to quarantine them, individually. I had to individually check each of my 343 staff to see if they spoke Kikongo (whatever language that is) and the 153 that spoke i I had to individually move them in to quarantine. That was both time consuming and annoying.
   On to the final boss, where you fight a Metal Gear. It's very easy (though when he drew his sword I really wished I' researched a Dragon Dagger). Now, I'm not a lover of bosses as I've no doubt said several times before as they just seem to be a test of patience so I was glad for this, but it was a low point to end on as it felt an anticlimax, I much would have preferred a big infiltration mission like the penultimate level, that's where I'd have finished it.
   I am yet to complete 'chapter 2' of the game which takes place after the end of the main story and is mostly redoing old missions with difficulty modifiers. Now, never in my life have I finished a game and then played it through on a higher difficulty so unless I have nothing else to do I'll probably skip it and watch the 'true ending' on youtube, so nothing on that it.
   Overall then, it's a game of fantastic gameplay and well crafted missions that is great fun to play with a few annoying niggles that leave it for me at an 8/10. If you've enjoyed Metal Gear games in the past, play it.
 
   

The Deer God review

   So why am I playing this rather than Metal Gear? For one, as this is this months Xbox 'game with gold' (free for the month) I figured if I finished it quick and wrote it out fast some people may actually be interested in reading about a game that came out in February on Steam as some Xbox owners, somewhere, will wonder what this game is, and if it's any good, whereas if I were writing this in a month then nobody in the world would likely care. So that's one reason, the other? I'm intimidated by Metal Gear. From what I've read about the game so far it sounds so open and massive, with so many ways of doing everything that I'm sort of scared to start it because even for someone who' been playing games for about 25 years, I'm still worried I'll be in over my head.
   But what is 'The Deer God' actually like. A quick cover of what it is then, it's a 2D platformer done in an 8 bit style with 3D backgrounds (looks nice). You ply as a deer (as you may have got from the name) and have to complete a few missions through procedurally generated worlds. There aren't levels per-say, but different environments such as Forrest, mountain, desert, graveyard and others. They just repeat s you go around but each area has different bosses and you can clear each section within about 30 seconds when you get towards the end of the game.
   It's a pretty simple platformer to be honest just wrapped up in some extra bits to make it seem deeper. The actual gameplay is pretty simple for a platformer, jump, dash, shoot fireballs out of your antlers, just everyday deer stuff. There's a few bosses and puzzles to keep it mixed up, but the simple nature of it is fun, reminding me at times of the classic Mega Drive Sonic games as you dash through the areas. The problem with this comes in night times though (because there's day/ night cycles) when you can't really see the enemies and are often dealt damage unexpectedly.

   Some of these 'extra' bits include dealing with hunger, which can lead to a draining or filling on the health bar (and personal annoyance). Also, ageing. When you spawn you come back as a baby deer and aren't as bad ass, and have to wait to age. It's ok though, you can get offspring by meeting a lady deer and getting her to fawnicate ;-) (also there's extra life skulls).
 Ultimately it's worth giving it a go if you got it for free, but I wouldn't pay for it 5/10. It's alright but there's a lot of other platformers out there and you could pick a lot better (but it's free, so, y'know) (also, it's pretty short if that makes you feel any different towards it).

Until Dawn Review

   With Gears of War finally done I could move on to Until Dawn at last, a game I had been pretty excited about for a while now. Though I tend not to like horror games I do like horror movies and the modern rise in 'interactive story' type games, now that Telltale have really popularised that genre in he last few years. Obviously those games are made episodic and fairly cheaply so I was really looking forward to what a well financed, all in one version of those would be as written by horror writers plus voiced and motion captured by real actors (some of whom are fairly famous (Grant Ward)) in an interactive horror film.
   In many ways it lives up to what is to be expected of it, it looks great, the score is incredible, the acting, the voice and mo-cap is great and the setting is great and you get to control all the characters a fairly equal amount of time (provided you don't get them killed too quick), but unfortunately in an attempt to pull apart the slasher film tropes that we've come to expect, they fall headlong in to them.
   The set up is daft for a start (spoilers for the first 10 minutes of the game coming). Last year when the same group of friends went to the lodge, 2 of them got lost and were never found again, yet still their brother (of all people) wants them to go up again this year, and they do, of course. Why would you? As you meet the characters you see there's all the typical American teen horror genre staple characters, the 'cool' guy,the stupid whore, the bitch, the jock, the upbeat one, the nerd (although he's not really that nerdy, but in the bonus content I watched after the actor who played him seemed to think he was (then again a lot of the actors seemed to read more than there actually was in to their characters)), the suspicious one and the 'will they won't they' one. At first a lot of this is endearing as you get to control the characters you usually have to watch, but after a while you just want to kill off all the ones you typically get annoyed by, yet the backstabbing bitch still lived, dammit!
    I don't want to spoil the plot here, as that's basically the whole game, but needless to say it's full of twists, some of which are very predictable, and it's full of people making bad decisions, like going off from a room of 5 people on your own to find some keys on a guy that's probably being eaten in a monsters den because you can't wait 2 hours until dawn when the helicopter arrives, despite the fact you're perfectly safe where you are. Often times too when there are choices, they're both stupid, or it isn't clear what's different between the two.
   Most annoyingly of all though is some of the deaths. I rescued 5 of the 8 in the end, and I accept full responsibility for Ashley's death (such a shame too as I wanted her and Chris to get together) but the other 2 deaths were utterly stupid. I won't tell you who or how, but take heed that sometimes taking the safe paths isn't the best idea and also, see those millions of collectibles dotted around everywhere? well, better get collecting.

   I criticise a lot (I do enjoy it) but there's also quite a lot to like, it's a really strange game of great ideas that are well implemented, and terrible ideas that are terribly implemented. On the good side, they are great at building tension. You're often left walking around dark corridors or mountaintops with just 1 or 2 of you and a flashlight for company, most of the time in an inter gender pairing, hell, it's the best X files simulator I've ever played. Seriously though, these dark walks with eerie noises, wild animals, windy trees and a creepy soundtrack build the tension well. There are also these totems you can find, which are one of the far too many types of collectible, but these are actually good. They show you glimpses in to potential futures (depending on your actions) and clues to what actions you should take in order to not die/ get something useful or numerous other helpful hints. I recommend you watch these and remember them. There is also a great game menu system constantly tracking characters different relationships to each other (as in how they get along with the other individuals) based on the interactions you have between them as well as personality traits. What bearing these have on the game outside of the one on one interviews with the characters at the end I'm not sure but it's still interesting. The same menu also tracks your 'Butterfly effect' decisions so you know where you could have chose to do something else of note so if you wanted to play it again to get a better/ different ending, you'd know where to look (I bet Ashton Kutcher wished he had that handy device to hand).

      The story and characters aren't all bad as well, some are genuinely likeable and some grow on you, Mike for instance, in my mind, turned from being a dickhead 'cool guy' in to a genuine hero. And as for Dr. AJ Hill, urgh. He goes from asking simple questions to someone with a minor mental health problem to forcing a total breakdown on you and going insane. And he only appears to space out the game between chapters (still, he sure knows now I don't like snakes).
   In the end it was an interesting game, I'm glad I played it but I doubt I'll ever pick it back up again 5/10. I'd suggest for the future give Telltale more money to get all the great effects offered here in like acting, visuals and sound whilst leaving the story to them. Maybe supermassive games should give them a call. Thanks for reading cochise and remember, save the upbeat girl, save the lodge...

Gears of War Ultimate Edition Review

   It's that time of the year again, the time where 3/4 of the games for the year come out in 1/4 of the year because Christmas. I was originally going to start this 'Game season' with Rare replay but it's disappointing nature stopped me from doing so (quick review; old games you have no attachment to don't hold up well), and to write about so many different games would've taken forever, so I've started with the weekend where 4 games I want to play come out in 5 days (looks like Mad Max is going to be missed) and I accidentally started with Gears of War Ultimate edition (I say accidentally because I was more psyched to play 'Until Dawn' but I accidentally sent that t my mothers house, and although I've got my hands on it now, I'd already started Gears by the time I got my grubby mitts on it).
   I suppose the million pound question before I start is am I a pre-existing Gears fan? (as this is a remaster of the 2006 'classic'). No, I wasn't. I didn't play it when it first came out but did pick it up a couple of years later for £5 (or something), played the first couple of chapters, didn't like it and never picked it up again. I figured I must be missing something though, right? It' Xbox's second biggest franchise (by quite a distance mind you) and millions of people can't be wrong, can they? (probably).
   I started and after the same first few missions I was put off for the same reasons I was the first time, just generic cover based shooting, but I'd paid new game money now so I was gonna get my moneys worth here, whether I liked it or not. I ground away and pretty soon I actually started enjoying it, despite all the stupid things about it, the game is actually pretty fun. For a game that's just about cover to cover shooting they do a good job of mixing the game up and providing new locations and gameplay modifications, like dealing with the Kryll, going underground, fighting off giant boss type enemies and more. The gunplay is fun and it's satisfying to unload a clip of ammo in to some Locust scum and watch them explode into a flesh and blood pile.
   I like the way the story of the game is just one mission too (granted, it goes wrong so takes much longer than planned) just like Half Life 2 and you feel like you're going along for this short story that they're on. The only problem I have with the story can be summed up in one word is 'bro'. These people are just hulking masses of men that celebrate when they eviscerate an enemy, love doing man stuff, saying phrases like "yeah, bring it on sucka', this my kind of shit" and don't even get excited when one of their former sports heroes joins them on their adventure. If Juan Pablo Angel had joined me on an adventure I'd have never wanted to get off the Angel-train.

   The other thing I don't get is how there's so many 'stranded' about. How can humans live in this war torn environment relatively safely when enemies can just come up from the ground and some evil bat things tear you apart in the dark? That's not safe living conditions, I'm sure they would've been dead withing a week. It's a very, very mad world on Sera. While I'm on weird things, the game its a huge difficulty spike on the penultimate chapter (when you get on the train), I probably died twice as much on that level as I had the whole game before it, and that final boss, urgh. After googling for help turns out I wasn't the only one who had problems with Raam, bu as soon as I found the Torque bow I did it first time, and the annoyance of having just spent half an hour getting nowhere faded away (somewhat (not at all)).
   The graphics have been caught up with and the game again looks great. also, in a weird turn of events, the levels that have been added in extra here (although they were in the PC release of the game but not the 360 one) have far better team mate AI. I ran in to problems all over the game where the rest of Delta just stood miles behind you and didn't help you from being overrun, or alternatively, ran way too far ahead of you and got shot to pieces. In these extra chapters though it was perfect. Couldn't they have fixed that for the main game at the same time?
   A quick touch on multilayer then. Clearly everyone who was playing online already had done so before because I was getting destroyed the second I moved anywhere, and it took forever to get in to a game anyway. Maybe this should just stay for the original players and noobs like me should say out of it, I'm hardly the worlds biggest fan of online shooters anyway (though I need to be ready for Battlefront).
   Overall then I think the game is pretty good now that I've actually given it a fair chance. Some parts of the game feel a little outdated (you really should be able to destroy cover, glaring omission or what?) but for the most part it's a solid game that make sense to be a big Xbox franchise as it's well made, simple fun. 7/10.

Tembo the Badass Elephant

   Remember when I said I was going to talk about a further 3 games, well forget that. Yeah I played them but there's not really much to say about them, except that you should've bought 'Saviors' when it was 15p on Steam. I moved on to this game then, after all it is a Sega published 2D plaformer based around speed and you know my feelings on those.
   It's not like Sonic. Despite the gag I made just there and what lots of reviewers are saying. Just because it's published by Sega and about a fast animal doesn't automatically make it the same (can't think of a good analogy). They don't play anything alike. There's plenty of 2D platformers in the world and people just don't say they're all the same. This lazy comparison has annoyed me (clearly) as a massive Sonic fan (from the Mega drive days anyway), granted, it does welcome this comparison for the reasons listed above if you hadn't played this game, but if you have, you'd know there is no comparison to make.
   Hmm, that dragged on a bit. Anyway, getting to the actual game. It starts out great, speeding through the first area of levels, trashing enemies in well designed worlds and having a whale of a time, until you get to the fourth level where you have to have hit a certain amount of enemy kills to progress. Urgh. Then that happens on the fourth level of every wold so you have to keep going back to older levels and making sure you kill off as many enemies as possible to advance. Speaking of replaying levels, the fact that the game lets you replay levels whenever you want but doesn't give you infinite lives is stupid, and I'll tell you why. On level 1, you can easily pick up enough peanuts (you see, peanuts are the thing you pick up in this game to build up extra lives) to gain 2 extra lives every playthrough. That means you can just play level 1 as many times as you need to have enough lives to complete the game, all it does is waste the players time as I had to keep playing level 1 to have enough lives to get past the final boss.

   Speaking of final bosses, and I've spoken enough before about my dislike of bosses as a whole and how I think it's time to move on from them, but my point here is that just like Rogue Legacy a few weeks before it's got a double layered boss, where the first bit is pretty easy but you have to spend ages doing that first section of that boss over and over before you can get to the actual tough bit that you need to get done. Another waste of my time that I'll never get back and could have spent doing something more important like, watching TV or drinking.
   Going back to what I was saying before, the problem is the game kind of changes about 2/3 of the way through, where it becomes more fiddly and the speed element goes from the game so what the initial section of the game did so well vanishes and it becomes something else. It's still not bad though, I should point out, it's just a completely different game. While I'm talking about things that aren't so great about it, it's the start up time. When you fire up the game, it takes forever to load (on xbox one anyway).
   Sill though, it is a pretty well designed platformer, it's worth a play if you like classic 2D platformers, but for a non-fan it won't convert you. It's fine, but I won't remember it in a years time. Decent game, stupid name.

 
 

Massive Chalice/ Rogue Legacy

  At first I wasn't going to write about Rogue Legacy as it's 2 years old and also I was going to write about Massive Chalice last month when it was still free on games with gold so people could have got it free based on my lovely words. Then, over the course of the day I've bought a couple of other games and I have another to play, so I was going to put out a mega post talking about 5 games, but then I figured it'd take forever to write and thus forever to read. Of course, I haven't played those games yet either but suffice to say I've decide to split it in to two.
   Let's keep it interesting first with the more up to date game which is Massive Chalice. I noted down here early through the game to remember to refer to it as 'the poor mans Xcom' but time has proven that to not be true. I mean, for the battles it's true to an extent, I'm not saying these are the only two turn based combat that exist, but it's an easier comparison because half of the game takes place in the improving the future of your team by resource management. Granted this is more old timey than modern to futuristic like Xcom but it's the same idea.
   I have to say that I don't think I really 'got it' for the majority of the game, which mostly didn't cause an issue throughout the game as you'd have to be pretty terrible to fail completely but it did mean the final battle taking forever. Looking back at it, I feel stupid now for making it difficult for myself. You see, the main point of the game is you're trying to defend your nation against some evil monsters while a super weapon that will wipe them out takes 300 years to charge. Every few years you're attacked and have to defend the regions. On top of that you have to make families and grow children to become warriors despite the knowledge they'll get old and die (like all of us) or die in battle. On op of that there's research to be done and help needed to train the kids. Obviously as you level up your fighters in battle the kids they birth are better so you get better levelled recruits as you go on (because games). What I didn't get though, was the benefits of the variants of classes. It seemed you just needed archers (or 'hunters as they're called here) but it turns out alchemists and Cabrejacks (which are melee fighters) are amazingly useful, which I didn't fully appreciate until the final battle and probably could have saved the entire nation had I appreciated it more (see, it's split up in to regions which are attacked multiples at a time but you can only defend one and the others lose some health or whatever you like to call it (this is also just like Xcom)). I could also have levelled up the classes more evenly so the archers weren't super powerful (while still annoyingly inaccurate (but super powerful when connecting)) and the Caberjackers were frustratingly underpowered (although I accept it's my own fault).

   If i were to play it again I'm sure that it would be a breeze as it took me bout 200 in game years to finally figure everything out. Up until that point I'd won every battle without much thought until suddenly the difficulty shot up and from having to mindlessly walk through the battles, serious attention was needed and I needed to have planned my improvements and families better, but I made it through in the end anyway, but I made it difficult for myself. It may seem I'm giving out mixed messages here, but the point is, with some thought put in, the game would be a fun time with a decent challenge, but underestimate it like me and it'll be a challenge where you're archers are so frequently inaccurate that you have to shout in to a pillow.
   Despite all of that it was a good game in the end and i would've recommended it to be played if you could still get it for free. Is it worth however much it actually costs? I'm not totally sure, I know I had a good time with it, but I probably won't remember it a year from now, so take that how you will.

   Okay, I normally hate, hate, hate grinding in games. It's put me off JRPG's for years but the indie darling love this game has been getting over the last few years, and the fact that it's a platformer gave me enough motivation to give it a go. That and the fact that I bought it about a year ago to play on my Vita while I was on a long plane journey, only for for my Vita to break and the game to sit on my hard drive for a hard year and me waiting to be bothered to start it. I'm so bad at starting not new games. I don't know what it is about me, but unless a game had just come out I find it difficult to start a game for he first time.
   That's the back story for you, so I better say something about the game. Basically you're trying to conquer a castle, defeat all the bosses and claim the glory for your family, but you ain't gonna cut it, you will die and have to start over, several times. That's where you bloodline comes in. You've gotta collect gold to help train your family and learn the traits of the enemies and bosses if you're ever going to get past them. At first it seems like an impossible task, and when you go on to every new area you will feel the same, but after time it become possible.
   It's more than just that though, because there's pros and cons of each heir. Firstly there's the type of fighter they are. There's charcters with better health or attacks, or speed or agility or mana or so on, but you'll find out what you prefer and then ultimately, and most importantly, which is more appropriate for each boss. On top of that there's the side weapon/ spell which is more of a personal preference. Beyond that there's weird things like being giant or a dwarf (or, y'know, normal height), being unable to see colours, everything being upside down, being 'the one' (which makes everything futuristic looking), being bald (which makes no impact on gameplay) and many other useful and/ or silly things.

   Beyond that there's challenge rooms to unlock items that can help you throughout the game, like double jumps, sprint dashes, health leach and many more which you can stack up or mix up, depending on your play style, or yet again, what boss you're on. On top of that there's hidden weapons throughout the world and bonus games to help you win more gold and mini bosses to unlock more bonuses.
   It should be noted that the castle randomises on each new entry (unless you use the architect to lock it down but you'll miss out on a lot of gold, though it is useful on bosses) so you'll never know where to go which makes exploration vital, which means you need to get good. I should note though that you only need to beat a boss once and they'll remain dead for good.
   The art style is great and looks like a 16 bit classic but more importantly the game plays great. At some times enemies firing through walls can be frustrating but the platforming is perfect and the combat, though basic, is spot on for this kind of game. Going in I really didn't think It'd live up to the hype, but it honestly did, every great thing you've heard about this game is true, for even the biggest sceptic, like myself.
   You do have to stick with it though, as I said it seems for the first few hours like you'll never be able to do it and hell, by the 4th area, I still couldn't do it, I just had to run through to the boss room because I could barely survive 2 rooms in the dungeon. I'd definitely say this game is worth  try, especially if you're a fan of Metroid-vania types and as long as you have some patience.

Rocket League

   Okay just a quick one today, I just really want to recommend Rocket league. It's football with cars. That's basically it, but it is genius. The ball is massive, there's boost pickups, the car can do flips and stuff and teamwork seems non existent. This seems the kind of game I'd have never stopped playing 5 or so years ago when online gaming was all I did with my time because I imagine if you were playing with a group of friends and communicating you could easily beat the cluster that randomly put together teams usually turn in to. Not to say it's not still fun joining a random team online as everyone seems to play like madmen, there was one noticable time I came up against a group playing together as they were frustratingly organised but usually it's just crazy.
   You can go from 1 on 1 up to 4 on 4 and there is local multiplayer and offline modes with bots too. There's a simple season mode in there that you can play alone or in local multiplayer as well as the usual exhibition mode plus training modes to practice (and man do I need to, I appear to be dreadful at it). The cars are customisable, you can change they type, the paintwork, the flag you fly, wheels, smoke and car-hats (naturally). The game also keeps track of all your stats which is fun to see how many games you've won, goals you've scored etc. XP is easy to come by for things like clearances, assists, goals, overhead kicks, saves and just generally completing a match without quitting so you tend to unlock something new for your car after every match

   The only real problem I have is that it's a bit Americanised, so there's no draws, you go to 'overtime' until you get a winner in case of a draw at full time and in season mode it's not simply done on a league table, you HAVE to go to a playoff at the end of he season. It's football damn it, not soccer!
  These personal annoyances aside, I can't put this game down, there's so much stuff I have to do around the house but I'm just losing hours to Rocket League, hell, writing this was difficult enough (at least there's some Scrapheap Challenge on to keep me entertained). The best part though is if you have a PS4 with PS plus, it's free throughout July (it's also on steam for non ps4 owners). Get it now!

Batman: Arkham Knight

   2 games in (well, 3 technically but let's ignore Origins as it's a spin off) and the Batman: Arkham series already showed promise of being one of the best game series ever. Those first 2 games were just that good, but now after several years and a jump forward in console generations the trilogy is complete, and here's what I thought (spoilers for Arkham Asylum and City to come).
   You know a game is going to be good when the voice of Mike Ehrmantraut opens it up. The ominous beginnings that threaten the life of Batman, a threat which unless you collect 250+ Riddler trophies (and come on, who can be arsed with that? not me!) you'll never see (apart from anywhere on the Internet). This leads on to what proves to be a great story, led on brilliantly by the Joker, who died in City, but is now in Batman's mind, leading him astray and putting a light hearted view on a game that at times becomes somewhat too serious given the subject matter.
   Anyway, to the game and it must be said that yet again the hand to hand combat and predator fights are as good as they always were. They haven't really been improved much though, you could argue why change something that works so well but at they same time, come on. Especially given what they do seem to have spent so much time on and how tedious it is and I'm talking of course about the much maligned Batmobile.
   Oh dear, what happened with the Batmobile? The amount of tank missions in the game is ridiculous, they're forced in to the game frequently. I can understand them wanting you to play their new addition to the game frequently, but it is the worst part of this game, or any of the Arkham games by a long way. Basically the Batmobile turns in to a tank and you have to hold off a bunch of other tanks as you defend whatever thing it may be, a bomb you're defusing, a chemical plant worker, Poison Ivy, yourself or dozens of other excuses for this. It just seems like a gameplay mechanic that would have felt at home on the PS1. I don't want to go on and on about it, and I will say that it's fun to leap off a building and call in the Batmobile and land in it, and it is a much faster way to get around if you, like me, begin to get bored gliding around and wish there was a fast travel system. The Riddler races are pretty good though, as are the APC chases, though if I never have to do vehicle platforming again in my life I'd be delighted.
 

      Moving back to the story then and the big question throughout the majority of the game if who is the Arkham Knight? I won't give it away here but suffice to say that they make it very obvious, if I can figure it out then it must be simple (joke, I'm actually highly intelligent...). I have to question the set up to the game somewhat as well, sure, Scarecrow (Joker's replacement as main bad guy in this game) scares everyone off with his poison gas leaving just Batman and the emergency services, so the criminal element can take over Gotham, but why not attack a city that isn't guarded by a Superhero? I'm clearly not a comic reader and am probably looking too much in to it, but why would dozens of super villains lead this attack on one city that's guarded by 'The Bat' If they all split up and took a city each chances are some of them would be successful.
   I will say though that on top of the good story there are a nice mix of side missions. They mix up all the different types of gameplay well and there's always something different to do. Unfortunately with the bomb diffusing there is yet more tank combat but this is really the only time you have to do it outside of the story. The only real issue is that you have to complete all of the side missions to get the 'proper' ending (as I reffered to back at the start) including all of the Riddler trophies and frankly, after just spending so much time playing The Witcher 3 I can't be bothered now to spend dozens of hours in another game doing side missions. I already know that's coming up in Metal Gear and Fallout later this year and I already want tighter games that are more focused, I understand People want more content, but I'm beginning to want less. Anyway, that was quite a tangent, all I was trying to say is, good variety in side missions.

   I'd just like to point out a few other bits, like how the game froze about a dozen times for me (playing on Xbone) but fortunately the game autosaves frequently so it wasn't too much of a worry. The game apparently doesn't work on PC either. Plus as just another silly comic thing, I find it hilarious when things just have 'bat' put in front of them to refer to them belonging to Batman, like 'Bat-Computer' (made me laugh anyway).
    All in all though it's another good entry in the Arkham series, but I would say it's the weakest of the 3 purely thanks to the Batmobile. The rest of the game remains as good as it's ever been (though it's starting to touch on being stale) and the story is fantastic.

Yoshi's Woolly World

   For once living in England actually means that something has come out here before North America. Anyone reading this from over there will still be waiting until October until this game lands over there, but here in Europe, and indeed most of the rest of the world the game has already been out a few weeks. Of course there is the issue that barely anyone actually owns a Wii U, but I'm choosing to ignore that and go on about this game anyway.
   First things first, this is the most stylish looking game I've ever played. The Wii U may not be the most powerful system out there but just as always Nintendo gets the best out of its machines and the wool effect is stunning. The way the game looks, the little animations from when you gobble up enemies, the way lava is made out of wool and every little thing in the game is stylised in wool, it's not just that things in the game are made of wool, it's that the game IS wool.

   For me though, it hasn't fully captured style down though because I found the music pretty disappointing. As someone who grew up playing 8/16 bit platfromers (albeit Sega) I love the music that goes with these style of games and normally the more modern 2D platformers, be they indie games or bigger budget games (like Mario) the music is normally nailed on and awesome. What I'm obviously building to here is that I found the music boring in this. It wasn't cheery or threatening or iconic. It was just there and frankly about 1/3 of the way through the game I muted it and listened to other stuff instead. The music in 2D platformers is commonly one of my favourite things in them and can turn what is frankly a mediocre game in to something I'll happily play just to listen to the soundtrack, but unfortunately not here.
   So, I'll cover the basic story. Everything is wool for some reason and Kamak comes to Yoshi's island and murders a load of Yoshi's to collect their wool for some never explained evil scheme. But the remaining few Yoshi's aren't happy, obvs, so chase him down to get the wool back (I do wonder though, why Kamak doesn't collect the wool from inanimate environments so he doesn't have to do any murdering, nor will he be chased down).
   The actual game then I guess. To be honest, by the time I'd finished world 2, I was ready to give up. It was slow and gimmicky constantly and I had lost interest. If it wasn't for this blog I wanted to write that literally dozen of people read then I may have given up. I pushed on though and was glad. They took a long time to introduce many of the systems to you, but by the time you get to world 4 the game is fantastic. The challenge picks up and the feeling of reward grows massively. The feeling you have when you complete a well crafted  level of a 2D platformer has always been special to me and the last 20+ levels of this game all gave me that feeling.
   I normally hate boss battles in anything, it's always felt to me like a hold on from a time of arcades where they were desperately after your 20p's, or a way to artificially make a game seem harder than it is. Sure, I get that games like Dark Souls do just bosses and people like that, but then you just have to think of Deus Ex: Human Revolution to see the opposite side, and that's the side I stand on. But here they are some of the best I've played. They have the classic Mario 3 hit boss style, but with each hit the movements and attacks slightly change and become more difficult, but as long as you're paying attention you can get them without a sense of the game screwing you over as I so often feel with Bosses. The one thing I'd like to say though is that maybe Kamak should change his name to Rita Repulsa as he's constantly making his monsters grow.

      There is plenty more to go back and collect too, hidden balls of yarn and sunflowers to unlock different coloured Yoshi's and secret levels if you can be bothered (I can't). There are helpful 'badges' you can buy on levels that are proving too difficult for you, such as not hurt by fire, run faster, magnetic pick ups and many more that you pay for with the gems you collect in game, and are occasionally given handily for free. Can't say I ever needed them, but I did use them when free, why not? (was very easy then though).
   As long as you've got the patience to slog through the slow start to the game, then this becomes a very good game and well worth a play (provided you like 2D platformers (frankly if you don't then you're wrong)). It looks so stunning it's untrue as well, but I do wonder If Yarny will out do it though (although it has a slightly different style).

The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt

   I said I'd write something about it and here we go now that I have finally finished after spending just shy of 100 hours in the game. There's so much to do, plenty of which I left, yet much of which I did do. I could have spent another 50 plus hours in the game finding all the locations and killing all the beasts but I find these days that games can be too long (I never used to feel like that).
   I should say before I start that I never played the other 2 games in he series. I was going to go back and play number 2, but I heard that it was hard to understand without playing the original, which now is really outdated, so I didn't bother. I did then hear not long after I started 3 that you didn't really need to play the first one, but I couldn't be bothered to go back by that point. Point is, I'm not 100% sure what the history of the series was (I also hadn't read any of the books) and just reading the plot of the first 2 on Wikipedia doesn't tell you who these million characters that tun up throughout the game that you're supposed to know are. Of course you can look them up but I felt that I was missing out on the full experience by having not played the others. It would be like watching Jurassic World without Jurassic Park. That said, I'd still recommend this game to someone who'd not played any of the previous games.

   Before I go too deep in to my thoughts though I will say that in my mind no massive open world RPG will ever live up to Oblivion/ Fallout 3 to me now. These were the first RPG's I spent triple figures of hours in (no I never played FF7 (but I may in the near future now...)) and they blew my mind with how much there was to do. Nowadays I feel like there's frequently nothing new, or at least similar ideas are repeated frequently. That's not to say that I feel games like this, Skyrim and so on are bad, far from it, I just find that my sense of wonder has gone now. It probably doesn't help either that spending 100+ hours in a game now is a serious commitment of my time, whereas when Oblivion came out I was at university and essentially had very little else to do with my time (hence why I now work for Tesco).
   Okay, the story as a whole is great. The main story does drag on a bit, but the characters are good enough and there's enough involving side quests in the game to keep you interested throughout. I never really found myself getting bored during story quests. I will say though that sometimes witcher contracts could get samey and the combat can get very repetitive at times, mainly during periods in the game where they're clearly trying to drag it out a bit. Unfortunately there are several points in the game where it is very noticeable that the game is being stretched. Sure, this happens in many games but in a game where there is so much you can do anyway, when unnecessarily chucking in sections add half hour on to the game it makes me less interested in trying to get 100% completion.
   Still though, make sure you do the major side quests. I'm referring here to the quests that tie in to characters in the main story. They'll hand them out to you while you're more interested in doing something else at the time, but make sure you go back for these. They add a lot more of the history of the series in and make the world feel far more alive for you. They change the ending massively and as a whole tend to be some of the best quests in the game. The other thing to take note of is Gwent, the game within the game. It's a card game that at first doesn't seem to make much sense, but in actuality it's genius and is probably the best game within a game I've ever played (take that geometry wars). It's a great little addition and the tournaments going on through the world keep it exciting. Unfortunately I wouldn't say the same about the boxing in the game though, which is basically treated the same but isn't really interesting at all.

   The upgrading of weapons and armour as well as resource management is all treated well and all the classic RPG elements of the game work well, arguably apart from the 2 specialist craftsmen you need to 'unlock' to make the best armour in the game. There is also some nice sections of the game where you get to play as Ciri (who's story this really is, forget Geralt) that mixes up the gameplay a bit and I would be very interested in some DLC where you get to play as her more.
     Of course, this being a classic pc game series and with me playing it on console I'm accepting that the game could have looked better than it did, and I've certainly heard enough criticism from people at me not being part of the 'PC master-race' but it still looked pretty good anyway.
   Ultimately I'd say if you, like myself have a relatively large amount of free time then definitely pick this up, but If you could only really commit the 30(ish) hours it would take just to do the main story then I well and truly wouldn't bother. For me though, Game of the year so far up to this point, that Said, I haven't started Arkham Knight yet... (hmm, forgot to this post that funny)

Jurassic World

They say Jurassic Park is the Star Wars of my generation and I can certainly see that. I Remember seeing it in the cinema when I was very young. I'd like to say my first memory of the cinema but I remember seeing Aladdin first. Aladdin may have had a better video game but Jurassic park stuck with me more. It's an important part of my generation and knowing the film is vital to so many things in the 90's. It'd be like not watching game of thrones and then trying to understand 90% of jokes of the Internet.
   Let's forget 2 and 3 existed and here are my thoughts on this great sequel to the original, so hold on to your butts because spoilers are ahead.
 

   Okay, so this is basically  love letter to the first film. They keep the same theme tune they talk about John Hammond a lot, that guy from new girl is wearing a 'tasteless' Jurassic park t-shirt and of course they go to the original visitor centre complete with slow, sad piano version of the theme tune. As a lover of the first film I, and hopefully you dear reader would love this. Granted there's no equivalent scene to Jeff Goldblum posing topless for no reason but they do find the night vision goggles the kids have in the original.
   Apart from me just going on about how many references there is to the first film I guess I'll say what else was great in it. So, I loved the cliche teenager who's just interested in girls. He can't let go of his girlfriend but when he gets to the park he spends his whole time eyeing up every equivalent aged female in the park. Chris Pratt is great in the film too. As someone who saw his come to fame as Andy (what a great name) on Parks and Rec it's so weird to see him becoming a big action movie star. He's got in shape so much and he's always so likable no matter what he's in, this included.
   Back to love and the kiss between Owen and Claire was so cliched and had me rolling my eyes, but just a few minutes later they brilliantly turned it around by having a perfect set up for another classic cinema show of love between the guy from New Girl and the guard from Orange is the new black, but she totally stopped him in his tracks and it was great, I guess the Jurassic Park T-shirt was bad luck afterall.
   The kids weren't s annoying this time either, there was no constant screaming, which was nice (though, to be fair, the little one kept being upset and their parents upcoming divorce, but I'm with the elder brother as someone who's actually been through this. You do get 2 of everything and it's sick). The sub-plot was fun too with a secret operation between the head of research and some army guy to make an army of dinosaurs. Have these people not played Turok? I wouldn't blame them, but still it was a classic feel good moment when the 'raptor killed him.
   It was great to see the raptors back too. In the original they were the stars there after it was expected the T-Rex to be, and here it seemed like the Indominus-Rex was going to be the dinosaur star of the show, but the raptors came into their own again. I loved the great 'cawing' sound effects of them back again too.
   I have just read some RL dinosaur experts were angry that the dinosaurs weren't accurate to what we now know of them when the first one was so good for the knowledge of the time that was made and this is a jumped up monster movie. This has made me angry. Firstly, it's a sequel to a film made in the past so if they looked completely different to that original film it would make no sense, AND they made reference in the film to how the dinosaurs would look different if they weren't full of reptile DNA. Experts man, what a bunch of knobs.
 

   That's what Raptors think of paleantologists. Anyway,it had the great element of building disaster from the first movie too. So, the Indominus-Rex gets out and it's like, 'oh no'. So, to stop him an inexperienced helicopter pilot crashes one into the pterodactyl cage so they get out, so they set the 'Raptors loose to try and practise this Dino-army plan and save they day, but of course they turn and attack. It's a great disaster movie.
   Igonring all the rest of the greatness in the film the ending just takes the biscuit. So, Chris Pratt gets his team of Raptors to turn on the Indominus-Rex again and join team humane, but oh no, the bigger one beat they crap out of them. So, off runs Claire to set the T-Rex free as that will obviously just kill it and then walk back in to it's pen without doing any other damage. Stupid as it is, in the ultimate call back to the first film where the Raptors and the T-Rex are the big bads of the film, between the Rex and Blue, the beta Raptor, they save the day (with a little help from the sea-monster). The T-Rex gives the knowing nod (in my mind anyway) and everyone goes home happy, obvs.
 
   I know now I'm going to be watching the original tonight and despite the fact that I've still got hours and hours left in the Witcher 3 (I swear I'll write about it at some point) plus Batman and Yoshi coming out next week, I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy Lego Jurassic world tomorrow. It's not the best movie I've ever seen, but it probably is the best sequel I've every seen. I'm just wondering who the next Sam Jackson is gonna be.
 

NXT Takeover Unstoppable

I like wrestling. There I said it, move on I'm also going to speak about this as if you have somewhat of a clue what's going on so if you think it's lame or have no interest, click away now.

   NXT has been the best pat of WWE for over a year now, or however long it has been since the network got here. week in week out it's full of great wrestling. It attracts so many indie darlings to WWE like Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Hideo Itami and many, many more and could spell a very exciting future for the whole of WWE. It also has a great advantage of always being filmed in the same place. I say this because as the main roster is always on the road and you have to wait for them to go to the traditional big wrestling cities to get the good crowds, but NXT gets it every time and crowd participation is something that is out of the companies control, but makes the product so much better.

There's also a very interesting preview of the show with Triple H where you can see just how proud he is of the show and reading between the lines there's more to see, with comments on how NXT 'divas' are real wrestlers and not just in it for the fame plus essentially saying it's the best wrestling show in the world https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=447&v=I2-AsE_1w3w .

   So, to the show. It was obvious to put finn balor vs tyler breeze on first as the two of those plus hideo itami (who was out injured) have been going as a group through a series of great matches and this one yet again didn't disappoint. I do worry that Finn's Undertaker challenging entrance is too long though, but the crowd seem to love it, I just hope they don't fart out the title match that Finn earned like they did after the last no. 1 contender match although I think they might given what ended the show.

   Divas tag match was solid. We all know how good a worker Charlotte is by now after her series of outstanding title matches last year and is more than ready for the main roster. Bayley too is very good and well over with the NXT crowd. I'm interested to see what Dana brook can bring but I don't like her entrance as he does the same thing over and over again and I'm indifferent to Emma as she was just leaving NXT as the network got here, so despite her match with Paige at the first live special she's been mostly ignored since she went to the main roster so I'm not sure what I think. The match was fun, hardly the most technical of the live special womens matches but fun for what it was.

    Okay, so I'm in to Rhyno being in NXT. It's fun to have some random veteran in there, especially when the crowd can just chant 'gore' throughout the whole match, added to by the way Rhyno himself gets in to the chant. Corbin I'm not keen on, maybe as he's just had short matches until this point but I find myself not caring. I expected a brawl and we got a good one, Just a shame about the result (although I guess a vet coming in and ending a young talents undefeated streak would be against what NXT stands for).

   Enzo and Cass, what a team. Not convinced they're the greatest wrestlers but wow they're good on the mic and super over with the crowd.  You have to love them, it's impossible not to, they've even got the classic big guy/ little guy partnership like Dion Dublin and Julian Joachim before them (and, I guess, whatever other big guy/ little guy combos have happened). Murphy and Blake are strange as tag champs, it seemed like it was done to a) show that when these stupid title matches against no hopers happen, actually the no hopers could win and b) get the titles off the Lucha Dragons to send them to the main roster. I'd say put them on the Vaudevillains instead and have them feud with 'the Jersey boys' but Blake and Murphy are okay I guess, it can't stop feeling weird to me though that 2 jobbers suddenly won the tag titles. Needless to say I was fully behind Enzo and Cass and bitterly disappointed at the result as this was one of two matches where I truly favoured a winner and it didn't come to fruition. Needless to say there's only one word that can describe the ending of that match...

   Okay, on to the ones that really matter and first the NXT WOMENS championship. It must be said that recently Sasha Banks has took the spot of my dream girl from Aubrey Plaza. Ah, if only I were fitter, lived in north America, were a Pro wrestler and worked for WWE. Maybe I'd have a chance (just a few hurdles to climb then). Needless to say I'm in the 'no she's not (ratchet) category. The women's title match has pretty much stole the show on every NXT live special so far, be it Paige showing her strength and earning her place s next WWE divas champion (although arguably the nxt women's title actually is better) to the classic from Charlotte/ natalya to Bayey's coming out party (as a class wrestler) to an edge of your seat fatal 4 way to another clinic in Charlotte Sasha, to this, which probably compares best of those to Charlotte Natalya with Charlotte the underdog against Natalya the established star. The same was true here with Becky Lynch finally getting a title shot. Granted she wasn't really pushed enough to deserved it and it felt like a rush job to get a different match than yet another Sasha/ Charlotte match (though they've all been excellent) and at the start of the match it seemed like the crowd also saw things like this and gave Becky a hard time, but just like Bayley before her ,Becky Lynch may not have won the title, but earned her stripes in this match and left, as the loser, to a standing ovation.
PS. Triple H in the interview I posted higher up said Sasha Banks was one of the best performers, male or female, he's ever seen. I've got high hopes. Here's to hoping they cut all of the main roster 'divas' except Paige, Naomi and Natalya, put the nxt gals up and give them some serious length for their matches. Then we'll see what good womens wrestling is in WWE.
#legitboss.

   PPS. Corey Graves made a killer reference in relation to Becky's newly bright ginger hair.

   So after Kevin Owens made a truly incredible Raw debut on Monday, putting John Cena in his place, I was excited (added to by his entrance attire). Not that I wasn't before. The match at the last special was great, the build has been great and the things you hear about their ROH matches all makes it more special. The only thing I feared for was another Sami Zayn injuy. Not a real injury mind you. He's a great wrestler, but in basically every high Profile match Sami Zayn has it has to get stopped for a period of time due to him being injured. If pro wrestling were real, he shouldn't be doing it, it makes him look so weak. And yes, it happened, again... he came out all guns blazing and fighting Owens off, but the very well put over brutal ring apron powerbomb put Zayn down. Owens wins by the match being ended again and he looks great, but Zayn, who knows. Added to the fact the freakin' Samoa Joe, still named Samoa Joe came out to save Zayn at the end. Don't get me wrong, I was excited. I loved TNA in the late to mid naughties, but stopped watching in the Hogan/ Bishoff era (y'know, when they ruined it) and I gather Joe was bumped down the card at that point too, but Samoa Joe is a truly great wrestler. Next to maybe AJ Styles the only person who could come in to WWE right now and keep his name. It was  great to see him (despite his awful music) but where does his leave Zayn now? He looks like an aftherthough. The next live special will clearly be Joe vs Owens so where does Balor fit in, I assume with another blowoff regular show match. Don't get me wring the match will be great, like the last one, but we all know Owens will retain.

   The show was, just like every other like NXT special, outstanding. Watch it if you have the slightest interest, but I just wonder, where does this leave the title picture with 4 men basically involved now, not to mention the champ's big match against John Cena (sucks) in 2 weeks.

PS Plus May

   After being so excited about all the games coming free on PS plus this month, I felt it my duty to play them before The Witcher 3 took over my life and see if these games were really as good as it was said. Often times you hear indie games are great only for them to turn out to be some artsy nonsense that have little merit as game per say, but are more interactive adventures the likes of which Katherine Janeway may enjoy on the Holodeck as they all pretend to be fancy hundreds of years in the future. Yes, I am still watching voyager (half way through season 4 now (which is about half way in general)) and yes I think games are supposed to be entertainment, not just a chance for developers and reviewers to pat each other on the back and say how great they all are.

   That being said I'd have to take my hat off to 'Race the sun' as that was a good game. I played it first as I thought I would like it the least out of all these games, but how wrong I was. This game is basically an endless runner as viewed from behind where you control a little spacecraft. You have certain objectives to complete as you go to unlock more things like speed boosting pads, jumps and paintwork which all (well, most) help you on the ultimate job of trying to get as far as you can without dying. It's a simple but great concept as you have to both dodge obstacles (moving and static) as well as make sure you're going fast because, as the title suggests, your ship is solar powered and when the sun goes down that's game over.
   There are other modes you unlock too like a sort of maze mode, and an extremely hard mode, but the normal mode is where the most fun is as trying to get as far as you can. The only thing I found a disappointment is that there is no end, not even ridiculously far away, there is a point where the score stops going and 20 or so people have managed that world-wide (this game has been on Steam for a while too) but for most people, me included, it would have been nice to have a just about reachable end to game, so you could aim for it, as it is though, I know I'll never catch those 20 or so with unstoppable scores so when I unlocked everything, I just stopped, I did have all these other games to play too remember.

   As for the other 3 games; The Unfinished swan, Ether One and Hohokum, I have completely different thoughts.

   Firstly the unfinished Swan, which was more of an 'experience' than a game. Now, don't get me wrong, I played Gone home (another interactive story) and loved it, but this just didn't grip me. It was about a boy coming to terms with the loss of his parents (I think) which was doled out in small pieces of information between navigating mazes of no colour, which you threw balls of paint at to help you figure out where to go. That was the game play element of it really, throwing paint or water balls to help you see where to go in basically colourless landscapes. I think it was quite a good idea for a game play element to be fair, but as soon as they seemed to start getting somewhere with it, they'd change it to water, or night-time or other things and you'd be back to step one and you never really got to see how far that mechanic could go, which I'd think could be implemented very well in to a stealthy game (there's a money making idea for someone). I wish I could stay more about the story but after an hour or so, I started zoning out and lost interest, in fact the only reason I finished it was due to how short it was.

   That's why I didn't finish Ether one. Again, it seemed like a good concept as you were some sort of mind changer that goes in to peoples dreams and solves their mental problems. You were accompanied by your boss' voice in a cheap GLaDOS imitation role. The problem for me though is that it seemed to be very reminiscent of point and click adventures where it was a case of trying to combine everything with everything else while looking in every little cupboard in the game, and being on foot (as it's a first person adventure game (just like unfinished swan before it)) it takes forever walking back and forth. I know this one is more personal opinion but I like my puzzle games more like 'The Swapper' (which I talked up a few months ago) and not in the form of trail and error of trying to combine everything in the game together. Sorry, it's not for me so I chucked in the towel after a few hours.

   Hohokum is an interesting one. I can't decide if it's a terrible example of art getting in the way of a good game or a trippy masterpiece. I'm leaning towards the first one but I'm not sure. Basically you're a flying snake thing and you have to go around the world playing a very long game of hide and seek with your brethren by once again trying to interact with everything possible. The difference here is it's not a first person experience but a side on colour trip and you're basically interacting yourself with everything.

   I'm not sure if I'm explaining the difference very well, but suffice to say there is a lot of similarities, especially in the trial and error sence. The biggest problem though is the lack of information it supplies.It doesn't tell you how many of the other snakes you've rescued, if the are you're currently in has a snake to rescue and most damningly of all, there's no overall map, so it would seem that if you get to a stage where you've only got one or two snakes to get (at least, you assume that) then you could be spending hours trying to navigate the giant map that tells you nothing, yet the game is happy to tell you how many eyes you've found in a level (they're a bonus collectible). I'm not claiming to have really been liking it before, but the knowledge of this to come totally put me off. That said, there's a few days until The Witcher comes out yet, so I may try picking it up again, certainly more likely than Ether One.

Chroma Squad

   Oh how I was loving this game. It was a fantastic idea for a game and really well executed until it all went wrong, but to keep a narrative thread, I'll bring up the issue when I get to the point (it's at the end).

   So, this is basically a game where you make a Power Rangers style TV show where you are in charge of running the show and acting out the show in turn based combat. Much like many other turn based combat games it's as complicated as you want to make it and the light RPG elements of the game add extra intrigue when you're outside of the show such as what to equip on your heroes which help out one stat but drop another, y'know, basic RPG stuff.
   The combat is very much played out in the style of Power Rangers or similar shows which exist (apparently) where you fight off some easy monsters before getting on to the big villain, defeating him, then when he gets big, taking him out in your mech. It's not all that simple though, there's directors instruction to follow, like using a team finishing move on an enemy (remember when they used to join all their weapons together? Yeah? Well, like that), or defeating a certain amount of enemies or finishing in a certain amount of goes and other such things. The mech battles can be frustrating though, they're very easy but can be very time consuming where you have to play percentages and when you miss a punch that has an 88% chance of hitting 3 times in a row, it makes me wonder what the percentage chance of me smashing my monitor is about to be.

   On the plus side though, you can name everything. You studio, your team, the characters the finishing move and so on, so there's plenty of chance for personal gags there, or just blatant rip offs. You even get to hire your actors at the start to fulfil certain rolls in the team and they all add something different, so even though the RPG elements are quite light in the game, they're sill very important.
   Of course, the story goes nuts. At first your just making your own show then it goes crazy and gets real and you actually have to save the universe, and keep your audiences up. I do wonder why those camera men keep putting themselves in the way mind you. It's funny though, there's branching story lines too and the music is retro gold.
   I was loving it, until the final boss. Sigh. So, there's 3 parts of the final level, fail it and you have to go right back to the start. Bare in mind that between getting through the fights and skipping the cut scenes the first 2 sections of this take about half an hour before you get to the big final fight at which point twice now it has stopped working for me. Both times I've nearly 'done him in', but when one of my team goes down, the enemy just doesn't take it's turn and the game can't continue. So I'm stuck there, after spending all this time getting there (and nearly defeating the final boss is no quick feat either) I can't do anything. Everyone is just standing there. I've spent far too long looking around forums and such for help, but none exists. It's sad to say but even if they do patch it now I doubt I'll go back and finish it now, if there's one thing I hate in gaming actually, there's lots) it's re-doing large sections of the game. I was so happy when game overs went away for this exact reason, I play games once and rarely go back, once it's done it's done to me.

   Oh well, I'll try and get off my ramble. At least this month there has been a fantastic set of games put out on PS Plus for me to go through before the Witcher 3 comes out in a couple of weeks, it's just unfortunate that right now the term 'pissed off' doesn't even cut it to describe my mood. 15 damn hours I'd played that game for and I wish I could recommend it, I was going to...

   Additional. I've calmed down now considerably. Chroma Squad is a really good game, and assuming it's fixed within the next few days I'd recommend it to anyone, it was great until that point. I may finish it yet, but I'll give it a few days first. I don't like to run indie development teams in o the ground when I know bugs will always appear after a game launches, but with just a small team it's hard to keep up with the corrections, I'm just annoyed it's affected me when many others seem to have finished the game no problem.

A week off

   So I'm on a week off from work, and as I mentioned before, until the Witcher comes out, I don't particularly have anything to write about, but I also didn't want to just leave this un-updated (is that a word?) for a month, so I thought I'd share some thoughts on the things I'd been doing with my week off so far, so here we go.

   So, I just went and watched Avengers: Age of Ultron. Now, I like the MCU and related TV series', hell, I nearly wrote a review of Daredevil as I thought it was so great, but I'm not a comic book reader. I have enough hobbies I feel plus a job and stuff, so I'll happily watch the shows and movies but don't mistake me for a comic-buff. I'm not having a go at comic readers, more power to you, it's just not something I do (also, it seems really expensive). What I was getting to with this is that I don't really know these story lines going in, nor what these more minor characters can do. Sure, I'd heard of Scarlet Witch and 'The Vision' before, but I didn't know if they were goodies, baddies, what their deal was etc. This is leading nowhere really, I'm just trying to say don't expect any big analysis here.
   My main concern is there was too many fight scenes. Sure, I know that's kind of one of he main deals with these films, but if I wanted to watch hours of cgi, I'd go and watch a Michael Bay movie, but I don't, so I wont. I also didn't like how it started in the middle of action, I never like it when films start like that, at least have a brief description of whats going on first. Sure, you find out quick enough that they're trying to get Loki's staff, but it seemed a cheap way of opening the movie when they just basically wished they could've opened with Stark making Ultron. Which leads to my other problem of James Spader voicing him. I'm terrible for associating actors with one role for the rest of their lives, Patrick Stewart may be a Shakespearean actor but to me he'll always be Jean Luc Picard. Simon Pegg is in everything now, but He's Tim Bisley. Kelsey Grammar - Frasier Crane. Karen Gillan - Amy Pond. Steve Coogan - Alan Partridge, Jermey Clarkson - A Cunt (oh wait, that one's accurate). Point is, for me, hearing James Spader over and over just made me think of Robert California, the ott character he played in the U.S Office. I can't take him seriously as a villain while thinking of that. I couldn't get that image out of my head though. I kept expecting him to pass blame on others or make offensive insults based of the Hulks size. Didn't happen though which was disappointing. And yes I know James Spader has actually had a big acing career before that, but it's the thing I remember him best from.

    I did actually quite like a lot of it though so I don't want to be too critical. Hawkeye is actually a character now. Scarlet witch was interesting, though mostly towards the end. There were some fun jokes and a nice nod to agent Carter (the best of the Marvel TV shows so far, imo). The story was pretty good overall and it was just generally fun. The biggest problem though is that it was just filler content while waiting for the civil war in the next Captain America movie. When Avengers Assemble  came out it felt like all the movies before that had been setting up for this epic team up. Since then it seem like Captain America the Winter Soldier was more important than this film as it had more of an affect on the MCU and it looks like the next 'cap' film will also have an affect whereas this film can just be essentially forgotten, based on the assumption that they go back on the ending like I suspect they will.
   Btw, a good video game concept for the MCU would be a beat em up with all the characters from the films and TV shows useable, from Ironman to Skye, Groot to Red Skull. Sure, there's already a marvel vs. capcom fighting game series, but scrap that (they're full of X-men that they're not allowed in their films anyway), put them in their more realistic film/ TV costumes (maybe the traditional costumes could be unlockable? (not paid DLC though!)) and make it more gritty. This was kind of already done with DC's Injustice- Gods among us, but this would be tied in to a film universe, so it's sort of not the same, yeah?

   Another thing I've done this week is started watching Star Trek Voyager. There's only 178 episodes, how long can it take? Well, I watched the first season (albeit only a shorter 16 episode one) in 3 days, so maybe not all that long. It's the only one of the more recent Star trek series I've never watched through (yes, that does mean I've never sat down and watched TOS (or TAS)), even though I've caught many episodes in the past when I was younger and they were on TV. I mean, I know who all the characters are and that they're trapped in the delta quadrant and that it's tough to integrate a Maquis and Federation crew together and that Tom Paris is Jeremy Clarkson in space, but I've never watched it properly through. Sure, with Star Trek series' as a whole they're more episodic, so it doesn't mean that you have to have seen them in order, or all of them to consider yourself a fan, but I went for it anyway.
   You know what, it's not too bad. It's certainly better than the first season of TNG, which was terrible (it did get awesome though (note, if you turn on a random episode of TNG and Riker isn't fat, turn it off and don't bother)). There's some good set up for the future (though I know where it mostly leads) and they actually talk about problems like that they're running out of food and power and they actually try and do something about it. Sure, when they go to do something about it they wind up going down a tangent and that winds up just being the set up for an episode, so I'm still not sure if they've actually gotten any dylithium yet, but at least they're talking about it.
   In the past I've talked about how Star Trek paints a too altruistic view of the future, and DS9 did well to get some of that away, although mainly through alien races while humans stayed whiter than white. While the same applies on Voyager it is nice to see some friction within the ship and not that every member of a federation crew is perfect.

   Don't get me wrong, there's problems. Not every episode is a hit, there's many episodes where not a lot happens, a common issue amongst all Star Trek series. There's been no Borg or Q yet, despite the fact I know they're yet to come and the Doctor, who becomes one of the main characters isn't really introduced as well as I'd hoped, he's just kind of turned on and left to it when the actual doctor, and ALL of the other medical staff dies. That's a pretty unfortunate situation to be in, good job Star fleet though ahead there, I hope if all the transporter chiefs had died there would be a holographic Miles O'Brien ready to step in.
   I'm happy to keep watching it though, I did after all watch twelve episodes of it yesterday, even though I hear it does the reverse of all the other Star Trek series and Peaks early, where the others all start lame but get awesome. We'll see


   The main other thing I did was dust off my Xbox 360 and start Borderlands: The Pre-sequel, named as such as it's set between Borderlands 1 and 2. I could've bought it for the new consoles as it has been re-released, but I'd already had it for Xmas and hadn't bothered yet, so I figured why waste my money (plus more importantly, CEX round the corner from me didn't have it in stock). My issue is I can't get in to it. I don't know if it's because I'd had enough of it with the first 2 games, whether it's because it's a spin off/ placeholder game put out to keep the series relevant while a real sequel is being made, or if it's simply because I went back to my 360 and my mind is now set on me not needing it anymore. I'm sure I'd happily go back and relive some classics on it, but to play a new game on it now feels weird. I suspect it's a bit of all 3 really. I turn it on for half hour, then get bored, I just can't get in to it. Maybe it's cause I know there's so many good games coming soon, starting with The Witcher, and this is jut passing time while waiting, but this seemed like the perfect game for such an issue, but I guess it's not

   There may very well be more on Voyager and Borderlands over the next few weeks while I have nothing to write about, after all, I can't spend my whole time talking about how I saw Villa beat Liverpool at Wembley to get to the FA Cup final, although it was pretty fucking awesome. UTV!