Night in the Woods

   After spending dozens of hours on Horizon, probably 10 or so on Ghost Recon Wildlands in a co op play through and then at least a dozen (probably more) on Zelda (yes, I got a Switch and breath of the wild, more on that another time) I needed something to break up the ridiculous lengths of games going on. So I went for night in the Woods. Of course, this doesn't stop the fact that Mass effect has been sitting unopened on a shelf for a week and now Persona 5 reviews are out and apparently it's amazing. Jeez. At least Yooka-Laylee isn't out for 2 weeks... Just a short one today to crank it out before heading back to Hyrule (that's where Zelda is set btw).

   Much like Oxenfree this is a 2D story based game where a bunch of youths try to make sense of a crazy situation and even though it does have many things in common with Oxenfree, it is quite different. For one, it takes place over a whole 'fall' (that's autumn for us normal people), which means it advances at a slower pace and really helps character building, which really is the games strong point. The 4 main characters of Mae (the person you play as), Gregg, Angus and Bae are fantastically designed characters with loads of personality put in to them, which is impressive from a game with text only speech and no real facial animations. Side characters add to the main plot but it really is all about these four and how you communicate with them and who you spend time with to build relationships and get more out of these characters.
   Unlike Oxenfree again there is gameplay in here too, albeit it occasional. There are puzzle platform dream sequences and a way to explore the town by jumping around power lines to find mini games and back story on the town, who wouldn't want to increase the towns rat problem by feeding them stolen pretzels? Light bulb rounders is also a thing (yes rounders). There is a whole extra game on your computer as well, it's not just for instant messaging and making a shark dance, there's a passable top down dungeon crawler in there. What a Bizarre place to put it...
   Not everything is as good as Oxenfree in this game. Despite how much better the build is for the main story, the actual reveal and ending are pretty bad. Not only does the twist come out of nowhere but the characters are happy to let the horrors of what has happened to them wash away like water off of Howards' back. This strange turn of events totally goes against their characters and leaves a sour taste in the mouth after an extremely interesting set up. This is not to say the game is not worth playing, it's very good up to that point, just be prepared to be let down. Oh,  One last point, the characters are all anthropomorphic animals, but then there's real animals as well. Odd.

Horizon zero dawn

Time to drop the week numbers as I'm in to the big games now. My first world geek problem of not enough time is adding up. Between this, Zelda, Mass effect, Ghost Recon (and maybe Nier) that's a couple of hundred hours gone there. Hey, at least it's something that I like doing, assuming that I like the actual games, and in the case of Horizon I sure did.
   Let's start with a brief history lesson. This is a PlayStation exclusive game made by Guerrilla studios who are most famous for making the Killzone series, which has been Playstations first party fps series for many years without ever being anywhere near as successful or acclaimed as Halo from the Xbox side but I guess they thought they had to make an attempt. That said, The last Killzone game by Guerrilla was a launch PS4 game and was pretty good. Horizon though is a third person open world action RPG which is quite a step in a completely different direction and it seems to have paid off.
   As an overview of a setting you are part of a tribe that exists in some kind of end of the world scenario (I say 'some kind' but actually I know what happened but don't want to spoil the plot so lets stick with that) so you use a mix of bows and arrows, electronic bombs, turrets, spears and other crossed idea weapons that come with a reborn distopian future. These weapons are used to fight off the predictable evil tribes and the lest predictable robot animals which roam around the map. Some are nice and simple like bulls and deer up to giant robot crocodiles and Ligers.

   As you get further in to the game and face bigger enemies you learn the areas to hit. The bigger machines have weapons and armour that you can shoot off with certain weapons/ ammo types. If you can get these parts off in a large battle early you can remove many of their abilities and can make them end up as big arrow sponges. You just nead to learn that technique which took me a while. Other useful abilities you gain overtime to help defeat them are stealth kills, critical hits, multishot arrows and the ability to override enemies and get them on your side. Master these techniques (and get the power armours) and the last few missions will be a breeze (if that's what you want, if not, don't do the side missions).
  The main story is brilliantly told as you discover the history of how the world got to this situation and Aloys' purpose in it (Aloy being the main character). The pacing of the reveal is fantastically done as you search through different derelict sites and find audio and video logs that tell you the story and get some help from Xbox turncoat Phillip Broyles ('cause this is a PS exclusive and around this time last year he was in Xbox exclusive Quantum break) who brings his signature delivery to the game.
   The general RPG elements are simple but all there. Side missions, collectibles, weapon upgrading, trading, levelling up and other little things that you expect are in and all work fine. Unfortunately I was always seemingly running out of wire which is an element used in making both arrows and tripwires (the 2 best weapons) which is a pain in the arse as I never had problems with any other resources. One other issue is that you can't modify the map to show only certain things so it constantly looks like a mad cluster of little icons that can be fiddly if you're looking for locations of collectibles, corruption zones, hunting lodges and other side questy things.
   All around this is a truly fantastic game and for a first game of this nature Guerrilla have knocked the distracting rock out of the park. If they carry on in this trajectory the next game could be an all time great, no Joke.

   I was going to the return the 'you may also like' section which tells you that if you like this game then another I think you might like, or if you prefer you could see if you like the game I said it's like and judge this game on that but I spend 10 minutes looking through what it's like and although it has lots in common with many games it gathers ideas from a lot of different places so I can't really pinpoint one or two games, so just google 'open world 3rd person action rpg' and figure it out from there.

   As one last push in the direction of the game it has a character called Erend and he has this hair combo:

 

Week 8

Or as it's otherwise known 'the week before Horizon and Switch'. So, I didn't want to go in to anything big, so I looked at what was left in my masses of owned yet never played games (thanks Ps Plus/ Games with Gold) that were short but also not crap. Most of the games I have that i want to play that I've picked up from all over the place are long, some of which I'd like to play some day, although I know damn well around 90% I never will. But I found something off PS plus and also splashed some cash.

Not A Hero

   Did you ever play OlliOlli? Well, I didn't. That was the first notable game by the English team behind this game. This is a 2D side on shooter where you zip through levels (at first anyway) and shoot up the place in different blocks of buildings while trying to help a Bunny become Mayor of England. The game is fun as you try to get past hoards of enemies while covering behind walls and leaping through windows and constantly facing new types of enemies that frequently appear. The real fun though is the cast of characters. As you move along in the game you unlock more playable characters, all of which have OTT British accents, but in a good way. There's a cockney gangster, a scouse piss head, a female chav and more. What's better than playing as a Welsh girl shooting up some enemies while shouting 'Flippin' Eck!'. Well, lots of things, but that is good also.
   Unfortunately the game gets a lot harder in the last few levels. Well, that's bad phrasing (I could go back and change that but that would mean less words), what I actually mean is it gets harder (like it should) but also has longer levels and no save points. I get the point that that is the challenge but when I'm spending 45 minutes trying to do a level that takes about 2 minutes to complete successfully I start to get frustrated at playing the same bits over and over just to get back to the bit I'm struggling on, then die, again, and have to repeat. this really does fit in with my dislike of bosses as it's the same kind of thing. I have not finished this game yet but there's only a couple of levels left so I'll get there and if you're a PS plus member you should download it (as you should every PS plus/ Game with gold game as they're free, you can still delete them from your console but the store knows you own them so you can get them back whenever you want (yet so many people don't (I don't understand this thinking at all))) and give it a go one day when you're bored. It's worth a try as it's pretty cool.

And then I spent some money $£¥

Resident Evil 7

   Speaking of bosses... As I played this on Xbox I could've took my own screen shot/ video, but I didn't, so I'm using someone else's as usual (spoiler, unless it's a PC game I always just use google image search (except for that one for Dead Rising 4)).
   So, I'm not a survival horror guy, I played Alone in the dark (I think it was Alone in the dark) when I was a kid and got scared to death. I love horror films but since then I've been worried that I'd be really scared by them. Childish I know. But I figured that 20 years later it was time to make the jump. Honestly though I didn't find this game scary but it was very creepy. Despite the fact I don't normally play survival horror games I still know the idea of what would be coming. It's slow and methodical and all about moments. Most of the time you're walking around with the sense of unease that something could happen at any time but largely doesn't which builds the suspense. Most of the game is about exploring the house to solve puzzles to move on to the next section. The puzzles are not hard but well made, the only problem that could occur from the puzzles would be when turned off and come back to a day later you may forget what the puzzle was you were in the middle of (good jib for guides).
   I do like the story. I have a general understanding of the Resident Evil story without playing any of the games but this wasn't a big thing, or not until the end anyway when Chris Redfield saves you. Whoops, spoilers. You are Ethan (terrible name, bad start) and you are looking for your lost wife Mia (as before). You track her down to a creepy mansion that turns out to be inhabited by some weird redneck cannibal types and as the game goes on they all get morphed in to monsters. There are also 'the molded', the side enemies that appear when you're not fighting a member of the family. I get the point of having these small enemies to give more gameplay but these guys were annoying. They're slow and the only danger they pose is that they drain so many of your bullets (which are in very short supply) while you're killing them. I'd much rather have more enemies that took less to kill. Oh well, Never mind.
   I can't go in to the last third of the story because it will be spoiler central but it transitions well to something else. From a gameplay side it plays well. The shooting is solid and movement is fine. There's not so much action that it needs to be a big thing but it's more than adequate for what it is (that makes it sound bad, it's not supposed to). I very much enjoyed this game and I'm glad I gave this genre a chance after the age of 10. Great, yet another genre of games to play now.

Completed

Mekazoo

Bastion

Sound Shapes

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Pony Island

Undertale

Mighty Morphon' Power Rangers Mega Battle

Batman: A Telltale series

Super Mario run

Ratchet and Clank into the Nexus

Westerado: Double Barreled

R-Type: dimensions

Dead Rising 4

Little Big Planet 3

Ratchet and Clank: The quest for Booty

Rebel Galaxy

Rage

Resident Evil 7