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).