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.