12 Weeks, 12 Games, Year 2, Week 9

   Pretty exciting week coming, Wrsetlemania this Sunday then my birthday next week (hint hint) but most excitingly at all, I have 2 Villa order numbers with enough games to go to the FA Cup semi final! So I will be straight on that phone 9:01 am, 7th April (happy birthday Rory Smith) and booking my seat (and y'know, a second seat for my Dad (the problem in the first place being I didn't want to go alone)). Away from this though, I know this is a day later than usual and in fact my post last week was a day early, so it's no doubt been a long, teeth grinding, baited breath having 9 day wait for you all. Unfortunately (and this is the reason it's a day late) I've worked every day since the last post, until today at last so there hasn't been much time to play games, but I've squeezed about an hour a day in (I'm making it sound like I have a 'problem') and not picked especially long games this week

   Freedom Planet

   (Sub headings at request of Rory Smith (urgh, him again!). So here's something you don't see very much of these days, 16-bit style platformers. Granted we've had better technology than that since the early 90's, but for someone who grew up on them (Sega not Nintendo for me (Sonic FTW)) this is pretty damn exciting. Freedom planet takes the form of the likes of Sonic, Ristar, Bubsy, Rocket Knight and many others (no, I'm not unable to list the others due to lack of knowledge, it's just that it'll take up half a page and people don't really care) and adds to the list of great 16 bit speedy action platformers, where reflex is king. Sure, I've heard people spout how great Mario was and how Sonic sucked, but people don't get it, just because they're both platformers doesn't mean they have to be the same game judged by the same standards, they are 2 different types of game (this is all personal opinion btw) and Freedom planet is of the Sonic variety.
   Just like the games listed above the characters are colourful animals (actually, Bubsy wasn't colourful, nor is a star an animal, hmm...) which makes it feel more retro rather than try and make it more gritty and the story is nuts, with terribly captured voice work (which I assume was intentional) that sounds like it was recorded in a bin, cut scenes that take way too long, plot twists that are never mentioned again and bickering world leaders. I love all this about it though, it makes it seem so cheesy and that's all part of the fun (for me anyway).

  On to the important bit now, the gameplay. I'm not sure I'd liken it to Sonic so much as many people have (or had by now I guess as this is about a year old), but more of a mix of the games I already listed. It's got the fun variety of levels that you expect, a massive array of enemies that you never know what they're gonna do when you first meet them (and hence nearly always get hit the first time) and lots of spikes, moving platforms, ledges and crushing pillars for you to land on/miss/fall down/ get squashed under. Naturally it gets harder as the game goes on, but as you start to figure out what all your powers do and where to use them, things get easier at the same time.
   One major advantage this has over older games (and something not has no doubt fuelled the 'games are too easy now' arguments that fill the dark corners of the internet) is that there's infinite continues, so no game over (good job too as I died about 30 times on the last boss). Obviously this brings up my dislike of bosses again as there is one at the end of every level, but the levels are so long (mostly around 15+ minutes) that it feels more like the end of 'zone' boss to steal a Sonic term.
   Another bonus is there is 3 different characters you can play the game through, and, by the way their stories mix it would seem like they each have different levels (though I haven't looked that up) and you can opt to play through the game without the story so if you wanted to replay it with all the characters you can save yourself some time (I chose Lilac BTW, because the other first option rode a bike, which seemed lame). There's a time attack mode too if you're in to that sort of thing, but the best part, for me anyway, are the uinlockables throughout the game. These come in the form of cards hidden around the levels, and much like you used to get, most of these are music from the game. I miss sitting there listening to the theme tunes for all the bosses on Sonic 3 or whatever (I don't really miss it, but it is something I did) and although I'm not going to be spending my time listening to it now, it's nice to see it in there for nostalgic reasons

   It must be said that the game was quite easy for me, as this is the sort of game I've invested months of my childhood in to, so if you're of the same generation of me you'll probably find the same thing (apart from that final boss, blimey). Nevertheless, it's a great look in to the past at what I grew up on, and it feels like I've just bought a new Megadrive game. It's available on Steam right now and coming to Wii U soon (which everyone owns of course) and hell, just pick it up on the next Steam sale, even if you don't try it for 5 years, and then just for 10 minutes, it's worth it if you give it a chance. (added note, the water level is much like Sonic 3's Hydrocity zone where there isn't much water (thank god).


DLC Quest

   This is a simple little game (£2 on Steam) that makes fun of a lot of today's games, with having to pay to get a lot of things that should be in a game at the start, e.g, you can't walk left at the start of the game. It also pokes fun at fetch quests as it's often sending you back and forth across the map in order to advance, whilst hiding the ability to advance through a game behind having to upgrade your character. I can't forget it also adds 'dlc' (though you don't really pay for any of this it's noted (apart from the original £2)) that just changes the game aesthetically and has no real impact on the game, like making everyone wear bathing suits, putting a load of zombies in the game (that do nothing) and of course a horse armour pack. It's also packed full of little jokes referencing specific games and just gaming in general

 
   I have just found it difficult to sum up what I just said in 1 picture, so I just picked this one at random. Anyway, the game is between about 1 1/2-2 hours long and for £2 is totally worth it, If I had to describe it in 2 words it would be 'simply (because it's really basic) brilliant (because for the tools available to them they've made a witty game with a handful of genuinely tough platforming moments)'. That's 2 words right?

Infamous: Second Son

   Wow, how did I play all these when I was at work so much? Well, it's because I only started Infamous today and only for a couple of hours. It must be said though that it was a good couple of hours, I had really enjoyed the first 2 infamous games on PS3, so I knew when I got a PS4 eventually I'd be playing this and I got that PS4 sooner than expected and have been getting around to playing this game for months, and today just decided to go with it. It's really good is what I'm saying.
   I'm not far in enough to have unlocked any of the other powers yet, so for now, just like The Mask, I'm Smokin'... hahaha, a classic. Point is it's not all that different from the other infamous games thus far, although the story is more grounded in the real world than before, but the gameplay is basically the same at this moment, which I don't have a problem with, yet, because I knew going in you unlock a variety of other powers like Neon, and whatever the others are.

   This one may well take longer than the week ahead (well, 6 days in fact now) as it's open world, and there are powerful rewards for doing everything in the map (y'know, better powers and stuff) so next weeks post will cover a lot more ground on this game, though probably on nothing else.

   Especially not on Dying Light, Which I've all but given up on, unless a certain person ever actually wants to play co op in it, which was the main reason I bough the game in the first damn place.

Completed games


Transistor
Worms Battlegrounds
Saints Row 4: Gat out of Hell
Wolfenstein the new order
The Swapper
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die
Apotheon
Sonic Adventure 2
The Order: 1886
Shovel Knight
CounterSpy
Ori and the blind forest
Freedom Planet
DLC Quest

Underway

Infamous: Second SonDying Light

12 Weeks, 12 Games, Year 2, Week 8

   So, obviously after all my excitement for Ori and the Blind forest and Hotline Miami 2 I have played one of those this week, but which? Well, it's Ori. I've been well and truly put off Hotline Miami 2 after seeing reviews mention that you often get killed by enemies that are off screen and you just see bullets flying in from out of camera shot and killing you. That is a massive turn off for me, if there's one thing I hate in games it's failing through no fault of your own (well, multiplayer obviously is different there), and being killed by an enemy you didn't even know was there is perfect controller destroying material for me. Point is I'll be giving that one a miss, but I carried on with Ori and the Blind forest.

   So, to set you up, it's a Microsoft exclusive (by which I mean it's on PC as well as Xbox) 2D platformer, with some exploration elements thrown in. You can go round the map exploring if you want, but of course, certain parts are locked off to you until you unlock the move that lets you get to them. It's a classic trick in games, and it must appeal to many people, but I have to let out a groan every time I see an area right by the start of the game that I can't access and would have to go all the way back to get some mostly useless ability boost (think Pokemon red/blue). These abilities you choose from the tree seem mostly pointless, sure, the 8 key moves you unlock along the way are important, but the skill tree things don't really seem to add much. This isn't where I wanted to start though, I wanted to start from how it started for me and that's constant crashing.



  I'm trying to start the game right, you get to the main menu to create a save file and all that junk, and it just kept crashing for me, I saw that some other people were having this problem too and even though we'd been told that we didn't need to uninstall and reinstall, I did it anyway, which took forever. Eventually it was back on, I went to start it and it crashed on the menu again. Would this game work at all? (obviously it did because I wouldn't have said I'd played it already, sorry to ruin the tension (maybe you should get some red packing paper)). I tried a few times and noticed that although it kept crashing, I was getting slightly further in to the menu every time, so I crossed my fingers and hoped that if I kept doing it then eventually I would get through the menu, in to the game and it magically wouldn't crash again, which it turns out is exactly what happened. At least it was the last time it crashed on the main menu, there was another crashing issue though.You see, on the xbone, you can exit a game, go back to the main menu, watch  iplayer or whatever then when you go back to the game it'll take you straight back to wherever you left off, but with Ori it wouldn't, try this and it crashed and you had to restart the game. Urgh, for an internally developed game you'd expect less bugs really.
   The game itself was good though, some good platforming, light puzzle elements, and split second decision making where you had to quickly figure out which power would be most useful in which situation. It also had a very interesting saving system where you could create your own save point, but it would use up some of your power that would only get replenished by a few fairly infrequent things around the map, so it was a tough choice thinking shall I go around another couple of corners and save there and risk dying (again) or save here and hope I can find somewhere to replenish energy cells soon. This also brings me to the other thing about this game, it was hard. Mostly hard in a good way where it was timing that you just couldn't quite get, but sometimes it would get frustrating as you spend 15 minutes doing the same tiny section over and over but you just can't get it all to work together even thug you have no problem with each little part. Damn you feel good/ relieved when you get through these sections though, this especially goes for the sections at the end of each of the major sections pf the game (of which there's 3) where you have to escape from a barrage of whatever element you've just restored to the forest (although these parts aren't as difficult as many reviewers are making out). The only problem I have really is the character design, which is pretty disappointing, especially as the rest of the game looks so good. Many of the enemies are just blobs (see above) or regular angry animals, plus Ori itself is just some little white dude (see below).

   Still, despite some bugs, it's a neat game, the story is simple yet definitely has hints of the film 'Up' to it. I enjoyed it myself, and that's what's important to me.

   No, I didn't touch Dying light, but I do now wonder what I'll be playing next week since I've been put off Hotline Miami . Will I carry on with dying light? There's always Oddworld (as I talked about last week) and Frozen Planet on Steam interests me (I'd have to pay for that mind), but then I've also got Infamous: Second son, Drive Club and Borderlands, the Pre-Sequel all here still in their cellophane wrap. Who knows? And yes, I am aware I've now done the 12 games, but just like I said last yer, I'll keep going until the 12 weeks is up.


Completed games
Transistor
Worms Battlegrounds
Saints Row 4: Gat out of Hell
Wolfenstein the new order
The Swapper
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die
Apotheon
Sonic Adventure 2
The Order: 1886
Shovel Knight
CounterSpy
Ori and the blind forest

Underway

Dying Light

12 Weeks 12 Games, Year 2, Week 7

   Ah, the beginning of another month brings with it new free(ish) games for me with PS plus and games with gold. Unfortunately I already have/ had all the Xbox offerings and I would probably describe the PS plus offerings as 'interesting' at best. I heard good things about Olli Olli (some 2d skateboarding game) and it's sequel comes free straight at release and then there's the remake of Oddworld: Abe's odyssey, a PS1 classic that I had never played (now if had starred a Bandicoot...), but may get around to at some point now I have it. I figured I might as well download them anyway, why not? The most interesting of the offerings though was Counterspy, a 2D stealth platformer, Looks interesting I thought, so this is what I played.

   Counterspy is just pure and simple fun. It's not overly complicated but it does what it does very well. It's set in the cold war and you have to stop America and Russia launching nukes in the moon as you're in some third party spy agency. The idea of the game is you have to collect information on what they're planning, then when you have enough of it, thwart their nuclear launch. There's more to do too,  collecting weapon blueprints, upgrades, gathering other information for money (and boy do you need to get some of that to at least refill your ammo). You get to choose which side you raid each time too, American or Russian, with varying advantages and disadvantages to each. Each mission is about 10-15 minutes long so you can play it in bite sized chunks if you wish and you're never far away from your next upgrade.

      The art style is great (as you can see above and may or may not agree with) too. There are cover based shooting bits (you know my thoughts there from last week), but they only happen a couple of times a mission and you can sneak past these bits anyway if you're good. The most interesting part though is the Defcon level. See that number top center of the picture? That's the number. You may also see that the meter is pretty full. Do that and it'll go to 2, fill up 1 and that's it, you're found, you have to run to the end of the level and abort the launch before it's too late and game over (don't worry, there's continues (thankfully (also I should point out that they have a different level for each side and how you do on one side won't affect the other)). You can fill the meter by being spotted and guards will phone it in, filling the meter, or if you die it jumps straight up to the next level. The only way to lower it is to make enemy captains surrender, which means you have to kill everyone else around them with hurting them, and point your gun at them, then they'll lower the level. There's 5 levels, you start at 3 but as the early levels are inevitably easy you can get it down to 5 quick, but then when you get later in the game, for example, you have to think if you want to take on the mission for the side you're at defcon 1 with, but there's 4 officers on site so you could lower it, or do I go for the other side where they're at level 3, but there's no officers around, add in to this decisions on weapon parts and how much information is available at each site and picking which base to go for each time becomes a mind game in itself.
   Still with me? Good, I think I made that sound more complicated than it actually is. I've only got a couple of gripes, like you can't invert the aim mid mission (this made my first mission go terribly), you can't swap out your original pistol from the weapons wheel (despite the fact I spent loads of money on a shotgun before the last mission and then couldn't fit it in my arsenal) and sometimes on the later missions, you'll walk through a door into a room full of enemies, only for one just to be standing there facing the door, then they all open fire at you, how are you supposed to sneak around that?
   They are minor gripes though really, I thought this game was great.


So, the other game this week was Dying Light. This is a game I was convinced to get by a friend so we could play co op together, and after days of berating me for having ordered it online and it not having arrived, since it's arrival not one second of co op has been played (and yes, annoyed message, this is for you).
   Anyway, it's another one of those free roaming hordes of zombies games that Dead Rising did so well back in 2006, but since it's 2 sequels, the Dead Island series, State of decay and many many more I've got weary of them, but I thought why not, it's something to play on the side. The problem is, I can't be arsed. The game is all about doing side quests (completely clashing with the constant phone calls telling you how urgent them main story  mission is whilst you're out fetching a someones lost satchel with a press report in it) but they're all go to a location and fetch something. The fun is supposed to come in the parkour that you use to get around everywhere, but you're guy gets tired too easily, Sunset Overdrive had the travel down, but there isn't even fast travel in here, making far away missions a chore, plus he's just so unlikeable. He's secretly working for some faceless organisation and even though he moans about the horribleness of destroying everyone meds and allowing them to turn in to zombies just to meet some guy, he still does it, just cause he's told (pretty sure that makes him a war criminal).

 
   There's not really enough control either, like, I've got a Hammer here, I want to bash him round the head, but for some reason you seem to be shoving it in his chest. I wouldn't mind so much but it's set to be so long, and I keep dying from falling off things, losing some survivor points and not being able to level up faster, surely the point of the parkour is that it would be quick and fun to get around, not that you have to stop and consider every jump, as I seem to die every time I have to travel a relatively long distance because I fell off something. Also, an night it becomes way harder (hence the name) and these nearly unstoppable zombies come out and hunt you down, fortunately I've figured a way around this, don't go out at night.

   Maybe I'll carry on playing Dying light, maybe I won't, what I do know is that Ori and the Blind Forrest and Hotline Miami 2 are both out this week and I've been looking forward to both of those.


Completed

Transistor
Worms Battlegrounds
Saints Row 4: Gat out of Hell
Wolfenstein the new order
The Swapper
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die
Apotheon
Sonic Adventure 2
The Order: 1886
Shovel Knight
CounterSpy

Underway

Dying Light

12 Weeks 12 Games, Year 2, Week 6

   So, I mentioned The Order: 1886 in passing at the end of last weeks post, so I'll get in to it. There has been much debate around this game and how it's more concerned about being cinematic than actually being a game and how some people hated it for that but others loved it. This whole deal interested me so I figured I'd give it a go. It was about an hour in to this game that I remember Heavy Rain existed, and I'd hated that and that unfortunately, this was looking the same too. Now, don't get me wrong, this is quite probably the most graphically impressive game I've ever played (as mentioned before, I'm not a PC gamer with thousands of pounds to spend) plus it's set in England, which is always nice (and you can tell it's an alternate reality because there's airships, just like every other alternate reality that's ever existed in anything ever (okay, I'm mostly thinking of Fringe and Dr. Who)) but sadly that's all I've got to say good about this game.
   There were 2 major problems for me, firstly, I didn't find the story interesting, at all, so I kept zoning out during long cut scenes and missing what was supposed to be going on. Even looking back now I can give you the plot summary but most minutiae are lost. The other problem is the gameplay. I've never been a fan of third person cover based shooters as it is, I played the first mission of Gears of War then haven't played a second of any of its sequels based on 1 mission alone. This isn't any different here. I just don't see the fun in a whole game just being about hiding behind stuff and popping off some enemies before ducking back in to cover then repeating for some random amount of time until the game dictates you've killed enough waves of them and can move on to the next room.
 

   There's a couple of extra bits too like, don't you need a silver bullet to kill a werewolf? Who lets a Frenchman into the Knights of the Round table? What have the French got to do with peace with the Cardassians? Why is there so much stuff in the way all the time? Why did it use the cliched story telling device that is starting near the end of the story then going back to before and eventually coming back to the bit where you started and finally, why was there nearly always a 2 man team but there was no co op? I'm sorry about all the negativity but I really didn't like this game (had you guessed).

   So I decided to take a more light hearted approach to games, literally dusted off my Wii U and after 6 or so months of hearing how great it was, finally jumping in to Shovel knight.
   As you probably know if you're reading this I grew up plying 16 bit platformers (some 8 bit too but 16 was where it was at, yo) but I was more of Sonic player than a Castlevania guy. I hear this is one for the lovers of Metroid and Megaman more than Mario and Gex. Still though I enjoyed it. It wasn't a hearkening back to my youth for me as it was for others who had grown up playing different games but it was nice to play a fun 2D platformer again. The story was simple, yet effective (and it never lost my attention), there was plenty of silliness in there, lots of hidden stuff to find (turns out I'm dreadful at that) and thankfully, unlimited lives. I've been softened over the years from when you got 3 lives to start, lose them all then that's it, now I just charge through stuff, shooting (well, jumping in this case) first and asking questions later rather than the more cautious approach I used to take when death meant so much. I'm not complaining at all though, as I'm now far too impatient for that, and I know damn well if I'd have got more than a couple of levels in and had a game over and had to start again, I never would've.

   If I had one criticism, which I do of course, it's that there's too many bosses. I come from playing games where there'd be one every few levels, I dunno how it worked on those others games I mentioned earlier but all I do know is that I have never liked boss battles in platformers, they just seem to be  way of eating up lives and annoying m and yet there was one at the end of every level on here! I just wanted to jump from platform to platform, is it so much to ask?
   Still, I enjoyed it enough, I certainly wouldn't have considered it for 'game of the year 2014' like many magazines/websites did, but it was good.

   Sherlock series 3 BTW, what happened there? Sheesh (no, save it for later Andy!)

Completed

Transistor
Worms Battlegrounds
Saints Row 4: Gat out of Hell
Wolfenstein the new order
The Swapper
D4: Dark Dreams Don't Die
Apotheon
Sonic Adventure 2
The Order: 1886
Shovel Knight