shakedown hawaii

Who remembers GTA 1. I do, it was amazing (at the time). Granted I was about 10 years too young to be playing it, but much like getting my mother to buy me South Park VHS' from Woolworths for £20 for two episodes, I did not care. As you may have got from that, this is a top down driving and shooting game, just like the first 2 GTA's (depending if you count London as a full game (also GTA 2 was no where near as good as 1)). There is a big aesthetic difference between the 2 games where Shakedown has gone for a full on 16 bit look, stepping up from the 8 bit look of their previous effort Retro city rampage. Point is it gives it a very different look to GTA.

This game hits hard on the story. You're a shady businessman who uses all the bad business practises in the book to rebuild his business empire that is on the edge of collapse. This leads to a lot of very on the nose cut scenes, some amusing, some not so much. It also leads to a fun property management mini game where you're ultimate goal is to buy every property on the map, starting with a tiny amount of money which you build with dividends through you're purchases, at first it may seem impossible to ever be able to afford everything but by the end of the game I was raking it about $5million a day, which is probably enough to buy half the island in one go (multipliers not included).

The actual gameplay is what you would expect, with the top down driving and shooting. There is a nice variety of things to do from very shooting heavy missions like taking over farms and weapon challenges, heavy driving missions and a whole lot of variety in the shakedown side missions (not all property owners are happy to sell ) where there's a large variety of ways you have to to get businesses to sell up from blocking the toilets with too much bog roll, to cutting off hairdressers hair and smashing up shelves. There's a fun array of weapons here from you're normal pistols, shotguns and rifles to water cannons, flaming hairdryers and ball guns.

There's something different in here that I enjoyed but I  think many wont. Yes, there's an open world but the plot is very linear and the meat and potatoes of this game are missions that last for 1 to 2 minutes, then you drive somewhere to a cut scene and repeat. It feels almost like a bunch of mini games in a way that the missions are so short. As I said though, I actually enjoyed this as it's a nice change to most other games.

I really liked this game, fun, bite size gameplay, a good property management side game and a generally amusing on the nose capitalism plot.

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Watched all (3 episodes) of the new Black mirror. Got to say I'm a bit disappointed, the show has basically completely moved away from it's distopian tech based origins and in to boring personal issues, which aren't that gripping for me as you only have an hour to get to know the characters. They also seemed more predictable now, if this were the Outer limits there would be some mad twist at the end of every episode, so where is it? Playing Rage 2 now, nearly done in fact. more to follow

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon

I'm no NES fan. Never had one, probably only played the first Mario as far as NES exclusives go which leads me to not having played any NES Castlevania game. In fact the only Castlevania game I have played was Symphony of the Night, and that was about 20 years after it's original PS1 release. Why am I saying this? There's a game called Bloodtsianed: Ritual of the Night due out this month from the original creator of the Castlevania series as a spiritual successor to the original series, but that game is based on the 16/32 bit games. Curse of the moon though was a side project the same team were making based on the 8 bit Castlevania's that was released more 'outta know where than an RKO last year. I had no interest due to my lack of nostalgia for this type of game, but then it came to games with Gold and I played it...

What a fantastic game this was. It plays like an old game but with modern sensibilities. Instead of game overs after a small amount of deaths, you have different characters you unlock along the way and switch between at a whim and if they all die you have to restart the same level (someone has been playing Sonic Mania Plus). The pixel art is great as is the sound. To be honest it feels a lot like the 8 bit sections in The Messenger. The characters all have different skills which gives you a chance to play different ways after deaths, though of course this can be a curse (of the moon) as some characters play much better than others (the girls is the best one due to her speed (gotta go fast)). 

It's a short game, probably between two or three hours and probably works out the exact right length for such a retro experience.This game is just the right amount of challenge for a short game, it gets difficult at times but not frustratingly so. Obviously this is a 2D platformer but not a metroidvania (thankfully) and is a nice series of levels to work your way though (remember levels? that was a good idea wasn't it?). Even the bosses are decent in this game, by which I mean not too difficult of course, the only one I had a problem with was the succubus. There was a morning after that as i held on to the night and defeated her (reference).

Before I had played this I had a minor interest in the upcoming Ritual of the Night, but now it's become a game I'm really looking forward to and hell, I'm even thinking of buying the newly released Castlevania collection (if you count a series of games from 25 years ago put on a disc and not updated at all as 'new'). This is a really good game, even if like me you don't have nostalgia for this exact style of platformer. I suspect you probably need some nostalgia for older games though, I found out recently that all the youngsters I know (as in people in their 20's) don't like 2D platformers at all!! pfft, kids these days, what do they know?

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Still playing though shakedown Hawaii, took a while but I'm really getting in to it now. Seems like I've missed the Xbox games pass 3 months for £1 deal, so that's off the cards then. and hey, Sonic Mania is coming to PS plus this month so if you haven't played it already there is now no excuse (other than you don't own a PS4, aren't interested and a bunch of other ones probably).