Oh God damn, LA Noire is £8.74 today, and that includes all the DLC. I've been toying with whether to play through it again recently and now this amazing game has fallen onto my lap, on my preferred platform (PC), with extra content and really cheap to boot. I may have to call this a late Christmas present to myself...
I wrote about LA Noire in my Top Ten Games of the Year list, so you only have to go there to find out what I think about it. If you want the short version...if you haven't played this game, you should buy it today, although if you've got New Years plans you might want to hold off playing it til tomorrow, it's that good.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Both Bioshock games are £3.49? Steam, you are treating us...maybe they thought everyone would be out celebrating by now and would miss the deals? The original Bioshock is an absolute masterpiece, with one of the best realised game worlds ever created. The second wasn't bad either, although didn't quite live up to the magic of the first game. If you've never played them, would you kindly pick up a copy?
Grid is probably the best driving game of this generation. It has tons of cars, a multitude of tracks and great gameplay, along with a highly addictive single player experience which makes you want to keep playing and playing. The multi player was fantastic too, although I will put a warning on this glowing recommendation. Codemasters discontinued the online multiplayer, so if you're looking for the full racing package, I'm afraid you'll have to look elsewhere (to another Codemasters game).
Dead Island was also on my top ten list, and £15 is well worth it for what was one of the most enjoyable games of the year. It's not quite at the price point of "Well I may as well just buy it," but if you want a high quality zombie killin' game, look no further.
Hitman: Blood Money is a game that kept me coming back to it, years after I had finished it. I had always enjoyed the Hitman games, but this was the first one that really didn't severely punish you for not playing exactly how the game wanted you to play, while also rewarding the people careful enough to go for that Silent Assassin rating. There's a great range of ways to get your murder on, along with some good sadistically humourous moments. All of the Hitman games save for Contracts are on Steam for £1.49 each today, what a bargain!
Today will be an expensive day for you if you want to get all the quality games in the Steam deal. There's honestly nothing I wouldn't recommend buying (apart from Spacechem because I don't really know what it is beyond it being some sort of puzzle game). Everything else will be just a matter of whether you can justify spending the money on it. The highlight of the deal is probably the GTA games, they're all super cheap and all super fun. If you've played them already, the DLC for GTA4 is also there, which pile on some great content, particularly in the Ballad of Gay Tony.
Other than that, I won't go into any detail for the other games there, just that they're probably all worth a look. Another reason is because the Newcastle game starts in fifteen minutes and I don't have time to write something about the dozen or so games that are in the sale today...you can't say I'm not dedicated.
Quickly though, I wanted to share with you a little sentence I heard today that really jarred me. The first Gears of War game came out on the Xbox 360. You might think "...duh, that's obvious". And it is, but I thought about it for a second, and that means that one of the most important video game franchises of the last decade has lived it's entire lifespan in a single console generation. (I'm sure we'll see another Gears game at some point, but the trilogy containing Marcus et al ostensibly ended in Gears 3) Then I got to thinking and realised that the same is true of Uncharted, and there's probably more I haven't thought about yet. That says to me one thing...This console generation has gone on for far too long already, and it's going to be at least a year, if not quite a bit more until new consoles start making their way onto shelves.
2011 has been a fantastic year for games, but with that comes an underlying sadness: Has the quality of games for this generation reached it's peak? Is the next year or so going to be simple remakes of games that we know are high quality, but aren't really putting out any new innovations? I hope I'm wrong and 2012 brings something new and fresh for gamers, at the risk of playing the same old games month after month.
"Everything's amazing and yet nobody's happy" comes to mind. Hell, I'll still be playing all of them, they're still top quality games right? Don't really know what I'm complaining about.
Mafia Collection
I played the first Mafia game a looooong time ago on the PS2, and I enjoyed it...I think. Mafia 2 is a pretty well made game though, and it's definitely worth the £4.99($7.72) that it's currently on Steam for. I will say that when I finished the game, which felt slightly short, at least in comparison to the vast storyline in GTA4, I didn't really feel like I had any reason to go back and play it again. However while I was in the middle of playing, the combat was very enjoyable and it felt like they captured the period just right with great visuals and well realised characters.
Total War Collection
I have some fantastic memories of the first Medieval: Total War and Rome:Total War, and I spent quite a bit of time with Empire but I think other game commitments meant that I didn't get quite as much time out of that as I feel it deserved. They've been making these games for a while now, and they've certainly got them right most of the time. I must say I'm tempted to buy Shogun 2 for £7.49, however I feel that again it wouldn't get my full attention...also I'm not the biggest fan of that style or time period. But that's just me, if you fancy a great quality strategy game, then you should pick up any one of the number of Total War games on sale today.
Left 4 Dead Collection
Man, these games are fun in multiplayer. Whether you're teaming up to get through the story missions or squaring off against each other in the fantastic humans vs zombies versus mode, you're going to have a good time playing these games with friends. You get 75% off today, so be quick if you want to murder many, many zombies...don't be the one to startle the witch though...
Mostly, I've played all the games on Steam that I actually want to play, so for me, the holiday Steam Deals are more "oh God if I had waited 6 more months or so I could've got a load of money off that game" than "oh God that's a sweet deal!"
So, I've decided to put here the games in the daily deals that I'd advise you to play, and a little bit of why. New deals appear at 6pm GMT every day, so if you miss them, that's your own fault for not reading my new post THE SECOND IT GOES UP. <shameless>To stop that from happening, you should subscribe to my blog!</shameless>
Assassin's Creed Collection
You can pick up Assassin's Creed: Director's Cut for £2.49($3.85), Assassin's Creed 2 for £3.74($5.78), Brotherhood for £10.19($15.75) and Revelations for £22.49($34.77).
I'm gonna go ahead and say that you probably don't need to play the first Assassin's Creed, it was a pretty good game which set up one of the best series of recent years, but the following games improved on it to such an extent that it's now kind of irrelevent. Number 2 was a great game, but it's Brotherhood which has been the real stand out game of the series for me. Everyone expected it would just be the same as 2 in a new setting, given such a short turnaround period, but it blew all of those preconceptions out of the water. Revelations sadly did not live up to the huge expectations set out by Brotherhood, and I'd advise only playing that game if you'd rather play through the storyline rather than just look up the synopsis on Wikipedia.
Machinarium
I picked up this short, whimsical indie game last year when it was super cheap, and wasn't expecting much. But man, those three hours it took me to complete that game were some of the most enjoyable hours I had spent in front of my computer all year (with my trousers on).
It's a point and click adventure, you're a cute little robot and you have to save your girlfriend. It's simple, amazingly pretty and has some really intuitive gameplay mechanics that will make you unable to pull away from the game. And at the moment, it costs merely £1.86($2.88), you should absolutely play this game.
Dungeon Defenders
This is a little third person action rpg/ tower defense game which is pretty good fun to play with a few friends. You pick your class and set up towers to repel Goblin attackers, or if you prefer you can dump points into your combat tree and lay into the horde with one of the many different pieces of loot you acquire along the way. I'm not sure it's worth the full price of the game, but it's out today for £2.49($3.85), which I think is a more than fair price for a bit of fun.
Dead Space Collection
Dead Space is on there for £3.74($5.78), and Dead Space 2 is on there for £4.99($7.72). These are great prices for a couple of really good quality games. In fact, Dead Space 2 made it on to my Top Ten of the Year list, and a fiver for a game on that list is very reasonable indeed. For fans of horror and third person combat, these games are for you.
Alright, so as promised, I'm sitting on a train writing my top ten games of the year list. It has actually been harder than I thought...about five or six games in I suddenly found that I had run out of ideas. Either the first half of the year or so was pretty slow for games, or I just don't remember what happened. Both are likely, but I fear the former is the truer.
Before I start, I'll quickly say that these are only games that I have played myself. Some honourable mentions go to games such as Gears of War 3 and Uncharted 3, and probably also Modern Warfare 3 to some extent, I'm sure the multiplayer is just as addictive as ever. You can knock CoD for not trying enough, but you can't deny that when all is said and done, they are very well made games. Anyways, here we go:
10. Dead Island That trailer really left us expecting something great, although what the game turned out to be was unexpected to most people. Whether that's a good or a bad thing depends on your view, but for me it turned out to be a pretty enjoyable game...and I'm definitely not the biggest fan of this new zombie craze that has been around for the last couple of years. I will say that if I had played Gears or Uncharted, then perhaps this and the next game on the list would have been replaced, but that's not to say they don't deserve their places here.
So in this game you kill zombies...lots of zombies. Alright, not as many as in Dead Rising, but still, a lot. It could be primitively described as Dead Rising with multi player and RPG elements, but it's a little more than that. The story is as follows: You are holidaying on an island, you go to sleep, wake up, and then oh no! Zombies! You choose your character based on whether you'd rather be using ranged or melee attacks and set off in search of other survivors and a way to escape.
There's a coloured loot system that you would normally associate with mmorpgs...but that's almost what this game is. There's an open world, quest givers, loot, you level up and choose talent points, and you can jump straight into a game with up to three friends (providing they're not further progressed in the story than you).
The stand out feature of the game though, is the combat system. There's never been a more visceral zombie killing experience. You're breaking bones, chopping off limbs and quite literally shredding their flesh as you fight your war through the environments, and it rarely gets old.
The game is also gorgeous, particularly the opening sunny beach resort area...your typical dark and dreary living dead game this ain't. It's not without its fair share of bugs and glitches though, and the story isn't much better than any other standard zombie story already available. I feel if the developers had spent maybe six months to a year longer on the game, it could've been brilliant, rather than just pretty good.
9. Battlefield 3 Being probably the best multi player experience of the year, it's a shame that the single player didn't live up to it... again resulting in a game that isn't quite as good as it could've been. Although contrary to many critics' opinion, I didn't think the single player was that bad, it was compelling enough for me to finish it anyway.
I was playing on the PC, which mean I could take full advantage of the 32v32 player servers in all their glory. Some people aren't a fan of such games, and prefer the smaller, more strategic maps...but I just love the chaos and carnage that results from sixty-four human beings let loose in a playground of big guns, and a variety of vehicles which range from small Jeeps to fully blown fighter jets. Great fun.
8. FIFA 12 I had my doubts about putting a sports game on this list, given the general prejudice against them from both industry professionals and "hardcore" gamers. So I've limited the amount on the list to one. Happy?
If you've played a Fifa game before, you'll know pretty much what's going on. This year the main change is defence. It's a little harder and a little more nuanced than previous games, and takes quite a bit of getting used to at first. At the attacking end, the pace has also been slowed down a bit, with more emphasis on working the ball around than you're used to. There's a new impact engine, which makes the animations look a bit smoother, especially in the tackles...although it isn't perfect yet. About once a game or so, there'll be a "wait...what?" moment, as the physics on a player spiral out of control, quite literally.
For fans of the series, and of football in general, it remains the best version of the Beautiful Game you can play without lacing up your boots and heading down the local club on cold Sunday mornings.
As a side note, NBA2K12 is probably a superior game, I just haven't played enough of it yet for it to definitely make an appearance on this list.
7. Dead Space 2
#&*!, what was that?!... #&*! where did it go?... #&*! why won't you die!?!
These are all things you'll frequently hear if you're sitting in a room with someone playing this game. Although they are making the mistake of not playing it alone in a dark room, late at night with some good headphones on (it's a scary game, not what you're thinking from that).
Equal parts jumpy, not-quite-sure-what-that-was-but-it-didn't-look-friendly, and flat out in your face monster horror, Dead Space 2 is a well paced action game, with some fantastically satisfying third person combat. Main character Isaac Clarke returns from the first game, but this time with a face (maybe only to set up this horrifying minigame later on in the game)! As you'd expect from a game like this, you don't need to know much about the story other than: Monster-alien-zombie things, kill them and run.
The action is close to relentless, and when you do get a moment's respite, you're left wondering exactly when the next thing is going to jump out of a wall at you. Nearly always, it's exactly when you expect it's going to...but then it scares the hell out of you anyway. The standout moment of the game for me was the train sequence, which I won't spoil for you by posting a link if you want to actually play it...otherwise I'm sure you'll be able to find it on YouTube. By the way, if you are going to play it, I'd advise you to fail as often as possible, the mini death sequences are superb...look up those too if you're still not going to play it.
6. Portal 2 It seems as though game developers are beginning to understand the idea that their audience actually wants a decent story with good writing, and that this isn't just limited to films and books. Portal 2 is an example of great writing and storytelling, made even more impressive by the fact that there are only a handful of characters. The worry was that the creators couldn't come up with a character as good as Glados from the first game...not only does she return, but she brings with her two new characters that are just as good. I feel a particular connection to the 'friendly' robot you meet at the start of the game as he is voiced by Stephen Merchant, a graduate from my university. That's a lie, I don't feel that connection, but it is a nice little claim to fame.
So we're back to 'Thinking with Portals', and now with quite a bit more. New mechanincs include anti-gravity tubes, light bridges, and different types of gel with make you run super fast or which you can bounce off. Some of the puzzles are just as fiendish as the first game, and still leave you with that real smug sense of achievement when you complete a particularly hard one. I'd also advise finding someone to play the co op with, as it is just as good as the single player, except now you get to troll your friends.
5. LA Noire
I just love that the incredible face capture technology they used in this game means you can actually recognise the actor playing the part.
John Noble's pretty impressed too.
LA Noire captures everything you know about that film-noir post-war Los Angeles style, throws in an excellent story, great detective work, and some decent shooting and driving sequences, and spits out a fantastic game at you that's very hard to put down. Unlike most detective games, there is no black and white, good or evil outcome to each case, you decide who you think the culprit is, and put them behind bars. Even if your boss would rather you put away the alcoholic homeless man, rather than the upstanding, well known businessman.
The main complaint would be the lack of things to do, given the open world setting. Beyond a few "random" quick side missions, there's not a real point to driving around the city, other than just to explore and experience it the first time round. The open world isn't really needed, just stick to the main story line and you'll be rewarded with thrills, spills, and plenty of kills.
4. Bastion I'm sure you've already heard me wax poetic enough about this incredible indie game, so I'll just let you read my review if you haven't already, and request that you please, play this game.
3. Batman: Arkham City Once again, I've written enough about this game in my review. It's good, by the way.
2. Saints Row: The Third Apparently I review games I really like. I really like this game.
aaaaaaand finally...
1. The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim I also really like this game, but I haven't got round to reviewing it, and perhaps never will because...where do you begin with Skyrim?
I'll give it a go...I'll start with that bit where I...wait that reminds me about when...but then also that bit with the... This isn't working...
The Bethesda open world rpgs have been around for quite a while now, and they've always been pretty good, although I think many people look back on Oblivion with rose-tinted glasses...It was a fine game, but was certainly aided by the fact that the 360 launched with barely any good games, and Oblivion was the first one to come along with something new and interesting. Anyway, Skyrim is by far the best attempt at this style of game that anyone has ever created. It's still not without it's fair share of bugs, magic resistance and backwards dragons aside, but that's almost accepted as a quirk of the genre at this point.
Skyrim is a phenomenal achievement, which gives you the greatest amount of freedom ever seen in a video game. Think of something you'd like to do within the bounds of this style of world. Okay, you can't do that, think of something less weird... How about rolling two and a half thousand cheese wheels down a mountain? Why? Why not?!
The amount you can do is staggering, even after spending just a few hours in the game, your map will be littered with dungeons, towns, keeps, bandit camps and towers, and you'll feel compelled to visit all of them, because chances are there's a fantastically involved short quest involved with the area. You could spend literally hundreds of hours in the game without even touching upon the main story quest, and there are vast areas of the map you will never explore if you stick to the main missions, which is amazing in a modern video game, especially one which takes so much effort to make. Skyrim probably has the best main story questline out of any previous effort from Bethesda, Fallout games included. Do you like dragons? Do you like killing? Mmhmm...
I do hope Skyrim is an example of what is to come from more video games, especially with a new console generation looming, I for one can't wait.
Turns out 2011 was a pretty good year for games after all, here's to 2012 being even better.
Tomorrow, I'll be on a train for four and a half hours, so I'm going to use some of that time to draw up my list of the best games of 2011 and write some stuff about them. If you've read some of my previous posts you'll probably have a good idea of at least a few of the games that will be on there, but hopefully there'll be a few surprises.
For now though, I'll talk to you about NBA2K12 because that's pretty much all I've been playing over the last couple of days. I decided to buy it because it was cheap on Steam (which is also the reason I buy a lot of games). Anyway, here we go:
This isn't a review because I haven't played enough of it yet. I've barely scratched all the different game modes. The one I've been playing the most is the one where you create your Basketball man and join a team and start playing out your career. Goodness me, it's addictive, and I'm not even very good. Well I say I'm not very good...I've won the "Rookie of the Month" award twice now, although that could just be a gameplay thing that makes you want to keep going.
In this Create a Player mode, you start out by playing a single game in front of all the bosses of the teams in the NBA. Your performance is rated and after the game you go into a little interview situation with some of the teams where they ask you questions and you can pick one of four answers, the most amusing ones being the options which might as well be labelled "I am an arrogant ass". This is a nice little touch that helps you connect more with your guy more than in similar modes in other sports games.
So you get drafted by a team, and then work your way up from bench warmer, to starting line up. As you play, you earn skill points by doing good things, like scoring, assisting, good defending and so on. However you also lose skill points by not performing as well, committing turnovers, missing your shots etc. Then you can use these skill points to increase your attributes, like shooting, defending and passing. It could just be that I'm bad, but these skill points seem to accumulate very slowly, at least in relation to my main point of reference, the create a player mode in Madden 12. In that game I had pretty much maxed out all of my main attributes about halfway through my second season.
Anyway, that mode is great, and the gameplay is very fun. All of the animations look really slick, and most importantly, your player usually does exactly what you want him to do. The most annoying thing about Fifa (other than Sweaty Goals) is when you see a great opportunity for a pass, you hit the button, and your player tries to pass to the wrong guy and it gets intercepted. The game looks GREAT as well, and they've done a really good job of making you feel like you're watching a real NBA game. There's the Halftime Report where you get taken to other games happening at the same time, little cutaways in between quarters showing you upcoming big games, and a few other neat little touches.
On top of the great gameplay, the commentary is phenomenal... by far the best I've heard in any sports game. They seem to know what exactly is going on, and how it relates to the overall game, and even the season. The commentators can also be in the middle of a thought, and then break away to some big play that just happened in the game. Then after that, they'll say something like "Anyway, back to that..." and carry on with their thought! It's just the little touches like that that make this game really impressive, and I'm not surprised that it won the sports game of the year at the VGAs.
As I said, I've barely touched on the other game modes. I look forward to playing games as a whole team, and I'm told that the mode where you play historic games is really well put together too.
Batman has certainly been the superhero of choice during the last few years. The billion dollar success of Nolan's films, and the glowing reviews of it's predecessor Arkham Asylum meant that Rocksteady Studios had their work cut out for Arkham City. I don't want to say they fully lived up to the high expectations, but they have certainly made a high quality game, which is fun and compelling to play.
The biggest change from the first game, both aesthetically and in a gameplay sense, is that there is now a fully open city to explore. From a story standpoint, this area is actually a walled off section of Gotham City, which is being used as a mega prison and is now home to your typical henchmen, political prisoners and of course, a huge selection of recognisable Batman villains that we've all grown to love... Bane, Poison Ivy, The Joker, Mr Freeze and many more make an appearance (although Egghead is still strangely omitted, which scrambles my brain in an eggstremely unpleasant manner). Now, imagine you lived in Gotham City... if someone floated the idea around that "hey guys, we're going to wall off some of the city, kick a load of people out of their homes, and then shove all of our criminals in there"... how many of you would say, "Yeah, sure, sounds a great idea!" Needless to say, the story connections are a bit loose this time round, but if you look past that, everything else is still outlandish and slightly over the top in a way we've come to expect from Batman.
The new open area would be nothing without an exciting way to get around it, and Arkham City doesn't disappoint. Batman's grappling hook, combined with opening his cape to glide make for great way of traversing the city, and it looks damned cool when you do it too. It's not perfect, you often find yourself catapulting yourself the wrong way off a building, but once you get used to it you're getting from place to place in no time.
What's disappointing is the lack of main story stuff that happens in the open world. Most of the missions take place inside, at which point it's back to the basics laid down in Arkham Asylum. Swinging around from conveniently placed ledges, waiting for guards to become isolated, and then taking them out silently. If you're discovered however, and the guards start converging on your position, all is not lost. Arkham Asylum had probably the best combat system in the business outside of straight up fighting games. Arkham City took that system, and improved it. So simple, and yet hard to master, combat is still a mixture of timing, quickly using one of Batman's many gadgets, and simply flailing your fists at guys. This time around, they've added in a critical strike system, where if you time your strikes perfectly, you'll deal more damage. You've still got your array of gadgets from the first game, with many more added here. New additions range from a freeze grenade, which will immobilise guards caught in the blast for a few seconds, to a disruptor, which can disable enemy weapons silently and from afar. This makes for extremely satisfying situations where you walk up to a guard, they try and shoot you, they look helplessly at their gun, and you proceed to beat them senseless. The animation is also still top notch, with Batman going between jumping, dodging, attacking and blocking seamlessly. The graphics are still extremely nice looking, the darkness partly mirroring the tone of the game, and the frame rate was solid for the entirety. I said it earlier, but it remains true, it just looks damned cool.
The other main feature is the ability to play as Catwoman. She has her own story missions which break up the main ones nicely, but she is just not as enjoyable to play with as the Bat himself. She only has her whip to move about the city with, making getting around much slower, and combat just feels like an inferior version of Batman. It could've been a really nice feature, but it ended up feeling a little tacked on.
The challenge rooms make a return, where you're confined to a small space, tasked with beating up waves of increasingly challenging enemies, or beating up guys with your own abilities impaired. This remains the least compelling part of the game for me, but it's there if you want it. This is the only place in the game you get to play as Robin or Nightwing though, so there's that.
Outside of the main missions, you are once again tasked with finding all of The Riddler's secrets, scattered around the world. These involve finding his trophies, solving his riddles and taking a photograph of a specific location, or entering Batman's detective mode and finding huge question marks hidden in the scenery invisible to the naked eye. There are over 400 trophies to find alone, which is a crazy amount, and it would take a lot more time than I care to give to find them all. However once you have completed everything he has set out for you, you are promised the pleasure of facing Mr. Edward Nigma himself... and I'm sure by that time, you'll be more than willing to knock the stuffing out of him.
So really, it's nothing revolutionary. Although I suppose more Batman Arkham Asylum is what we wanted, so that's what we got. I just hope that for the next game, something is changed a bit more drastically, to avoid it becoming one of those jaded, yearly releases that everyone plays, even though nothing has really changed. I'm sure Rocksteady will stop that from happening, because Batman isn't the game the industry needs...it's the game it deserves.(sorry)
I'll just get the Grand Theft Auto comparisons out the way straight off the bat. You press Triangle to enter vehicles. That's about it. If people are still comparing this series to GTA at this point they need to broaden their view of games a bit. Remember how ridiculous San Andreas and Vice City were? If you multiply that ridiculousness together, and then add in a baseball bat sized floppy pink dildo (called The Penetrator), then you come close to the feel of Volition's latest product. GTA4 was super serious to the point where I found myself driving somewhat safely around town...no such worries in Saints Row, especially considering you're actively encouraged to drift, get air, and run over every pedestrian in sight. The first time an achievement progress bar came up saying "10/500 Pedestrians Ran Over", I knew that this was a game to be taken with large quantities of salt.
The story is close to inconsequential given the sheer amount of fun you can have in the game without it, but they've actually done a pretty good job of it. You are the nameless 'Boss' of the internationally recognised street gang 'The Saints', hounded on all sides by law enforcement, the government and rival gangs. The main villains (if anyone can really be called a 'villain' in Steelport) of the game are the Syndicate, headed up by the Mexican-wrestler-mask-wearing Killbane, along with twin sisters as his sidekicks (one of whom is voiced by actress Sasha Grey...I won't link you to anything she's done in the past, you can look that up yourself, preferably alone). The Syndicate want money and power, because they always do, right? So, it's up to you, Johnny Gat, Shaundi, Zimos (a pimp who speaks entirely using auto-tune), and the rest to stop them. The comedy is extremely well written, and often crude, yet in a good way, unlike a certain other game released this year which took 14 years to make. I'm not a fan of the way the game was marketed, the tagline "Strap it on" doesn't really do the game justice in my opinion, you're better than that, Saints Row.
A good chunk of the early game story missions introduce you to all of the mission types that you'll be seeing throughout the game. These range from jumping into a tank and destroying everything in sight, to driving around with a tiger in the passenger seat attempting to keep it happy, to protecting some of your buddies by hanging out of a helicopter with a rocket launcher, and everything in between. Everything just felt like pure, unadulterated mayhem...and by God was it refreshing, and most importantly, fun. In the very first mission you are robbing a bank, disguised as...yourselves, and signing autographs as you go. Oh, and rather than just open the vault and take the money, you blow a hole in the building, and lift the vault out with a helicopter. Not long after that, you're skydiving out of a plane, dodging debris and defending yourself from skydiving bad guys as you fall. Then later, you're transported into a Tron-like cyber-world, and then off you go to Mars. The action is relentless without ever being overwhelming, and the combat is a delight. You find new weapons as you go, and upgrade your existing ones with your cash that you acquire during your adventures. Ever fancied turning someone into a cloud of blood using a weapon which creates a sonic boom? No? Well you can anyway, and you'll enjoy it.
Pretty much everything you do in the game gets you some 'Respect', the Saints Row version of experience points, which you use to level up. As you go, you can unlock new abilities, such as increasing the amount of gang members you can have following around, being able to dual wield pistols, and, you know, not being able to take damage from bullets. The usuals.
An ambitious game such as this is never without it's flaws, and Saints Row: The Third has a few. I was playing on the PS3 and the frame rate took a HUGE dive when the action on screen got a bit crazy, especially during the tank mayhem missions, where if something isn't exploding at all times, you're doing something wrong. There were also a few texture issues here and there, and I fell through some scenery once or twice, but all that was forgiveable, and you almost took it as part of the game, which is so silly already.
There's multiplayer in the awfully named 'Whored Mode'...again, you're better than that, Saints Row. It's pretty much the same as the Gears of War horde mode, you're fighting off enemies, buying defences and so on. It seems fine, but is nowhere near as compelling as the single player mode.
All that being said, I'm sure not everyone would enjoy Saints Row: The Third, the humour and carnage won't be to everyone's taste. However, if you like the carnage, and huge amounts of fun, you should really check this game out.
Does anyone else find it really hard to walk upstairs while wearing slippers? Nearly went arse over tit just now, which got me thinking about slippers, then about how cold it is, then about Winter, and then about CHRISTMAS!!
It's that time of year when the University has just finished, so you don't want to do any work because it's nearly Christmas, and you've got plenty of time to do it in a couple of weeks. So until then, I'll be sitting around in my pyjamas (with a dressing gown over the top because I can't afford to put the heating on while I'm living alone), playing some video games. It's kind of like the rest of the year, except then I wear normal clothes because sometimes I have to go out places. Also, I'm an adult now, so I can do WHATEVER I WANT (until I have to get a job). People say things like "oh yeah, now I can have chocolate for breakfast, because I don't have stupid rules any more"... Chocolate for breakfast...that would be awful, right? It's not just me?
So I'll be generally just doing whatever for the next couple of weeks, then do some family stuff around the 25th. Then around the 28th I'll think, "hmm maybe I should get on with doing some work...nah it's New Year's in a few days, I'll do it after that," and so on, until the term starts again and I've done nothing. Because that's what the holidays are all about, right?
I'm looking down the list of games that I'll probably be playing over the coming weeks.
Aquaria
Bit.Trip Runner
Cave Story+
Skyrim
Gratuitous Space Battles
Jamestown
NightSky
Shank
Super Meat Boy
Trine 2
Those are the Steam games that I can pretty much just drop in and out of. They're mainly the games from the Humble Bundle that I picked up the other day. I gave my thoughts on them in a previous post, highlighting my misgivings about playing Cave Story+ at all, but I've been persuaded by a couple of people to keep going with it, so I shall, as I'm a trusting person.
Beyond those, I want to get back into Skyrim, simply because I feel it deserves more of my attention. My main aims for that will be to finish off all the Daedric quests, as they seem to be the most interesting stuff past the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood quest lines (which were really cool).
I also picked up Trine 2 the other day, which looks absolutely gorgeous, so I'll continue playing that. I've been playing it co-operatively, which I feel is the best way to play it...as I've said before, if you do things with friends then you can make anything fun. That's not to say it wouldn't be fun without friends, it's a very well made game, and it's great fun to play around with the physics.
I've also been playing a fair amount of FIFA recently, getting back into playing around with some of the online modes. I haven't played it in a good while, and it's very apparent because I SUCK. Either I suck, or I'm just being drawn against people who are really good, hard to say. Sometimes, the only goals I can get are the ones where they accidentally pass it from a goal kick and you just run up, take the ball and score. You think, "oh man, I scored, awesome!" ...and then the wave of shame washes over you.
Trackmania 2 continues to be some of the best value for money that I've ever come across, and I'm sure I'll put many more hours into that game over the coming weeks. Some people don't 'get' it, and I can definitely see the reasons why those people don't. It's also pointless to try and explain the craziness that is Trackmania 2 to those people, because it's the type of game where you see it, and immediately make a decision in your head over whether you think you'd enjoy it or not. So I'll just say that I really enjoy it, and let you make your own mind up.
Let's see... there's also things like Battlefield 3, which I'll pick up again if I can persuade some friends to, as I don't really enjoy it as much when I'm playing on my own (again with the friends -> fun thing). I think I'll also get some people together and check out what's going on in Minecraft v1. But other than that, and dabbling in a few other games for a small amount of time and here and there, that's about it for games. I think I've got all I'm going to get out of Saints Row the Third for now, it was super fun, I might do a review tomorrow or something, haven't decided.
Bastion is the first game by indie developer Supergiantgames. It's an action rpg centered around your character, The Kid, who wakes up after a catastrophic event referred to as The Calamity which has broken apart the world. As you move around, the world forms around your feet, although there is an ever present danger of falling off the edge. This happened a few times as I was exploring, thinking I could step where I couldnt, or when I was dodging around during a particularly intense battle. The only penalty for falling off though is some fall damage when you return to solid ground, so it's not too frustrating, and there is a nice touch where you damage enemies if you fall on them.
The Kid sets out to find the Bastion, a place where people could go in troubled times, but when he gets there he finds almost nothing left of it, much like the rest of the world. He does find an old man, Rucks, who tells the kid they can rebuild the bastion if they find cores which have been scattered around the world. Rucks also acts as the game's narrator, who comments on nearly everything in the game, from actions the kid takes, to the weapons and buffs he chooses. There's a crazy amount of dialogue, I've played through the game twice now, and there were barely any repeated lines, other than the critical story ones. It's a testament to the hard work put in by the developers, in that half (or maybe more!) of this dialogue will never be heard by the player. This is all helped by the fact that the guy who plays Rucks, Logan Cunningham has one of the best narration voices I've heard in a game. You can hear him, and get a feel for the game in this trailer:
The action takes place in various locations around the fictional place Caelondia, which are accessed from the bastion via a skyway. Your job is to find cores which can be used to rebuild the bastion. Each core you bring back allows you to construct a new building on the Bastion, such as an arsenal to change your weapon load-out, a distillery to change which buffs you have, and so on.
At any one time you can have two weapons, a shield and one special power equipped to your character, and there are multiple weapons that you are slowly introduced to along your journey, and the game does a good job of teaching you the best way to use them as you discover them. Combat is an excellent combination of attacking, shooting, countering, blocking and dodging, and it feels very satisfying to pull off all of these fluidly to defeat a large group of enemies. You can find special items in the world, or buy them in the shop once you unlock it in the Bastion, which are used to upgrade specific weapons. Another way of obtaining them is to take part in one of the challenges tailored to each weapon, and if you do well enough in the challenge, you unlock a special skill for that weapon, such as a multiple barrage attack for the musket. Once or twice, the action on screen got a bit hectic, and I ended up spamming the dodge and attack buttons until I had killed enough enemies to figure out what was going on...but for the most part the combat is very impressive.
Bastion has an interesting take on a buff system, whereby the kid carries various alcoholic beverages with him. These have standard abilities such as granting higher damage or critical strike chance, but there are also more interesting ones such as gaining health when you successfully counter-block, or when you damage enemies with your weapons.
The most impressive part of the game for me though is the soundtrack, the story, and how it is told. You are introduced to a small group of characters, who, although silent you feel you grow to know them very well as you learn their past from various items which you find in the world. Most of the story is told through Rucks' narration, there are a few cutscenes, but mostly the narration takes place as you explore the world.
I mentioned the soundtrack, and it is indeed good enough to warrant a soundtrack edition of the game where you can get all of the songs in the game, which I would highly recommend. There is a level where you find Zia, a musician, who plays an absolutely hypnotic song which you can hear throughout the entire area. This sequence was worth the entire price of the game alone for me. There are several similarly poignant moments throughout the game, which break up the action beautifully.
As an aside to the main story, there are three extra dream sequences (four with the free DLC that was released today) in which the kid must fight off waves of enemies. These serve as a good way to make money, test various combinations of weapons, and on top of this the narrator provides extra back story for each of the main characters in between waves. There are online leaderboards for these sequences, which adds a competitive element to the game. The boards are ordered by the amount of shrines that the player has active at any one time. These shrines are similar to the Halo skulls which improve the enemies or decrease the abilities of the character. They can also be activated for the main story levels, with the bonus of gaining extra money or experience for each one active.
I've been playing the PC version of the game, and it runs like a dream, I've noticed next to zero performance issues. I have also been playing with a 360 gamepad, which makes controlling the character a lot easier than with the keyboard.
All in all, Bastion is a game with a beautifully presented world, solid combat and an excellently told story.
If those are things which appeal to you, then I advise you pick it up as soon as possible.
The new Humble Bundle came out today. Awesome, I can buy some games, spend a few minutes with each of them and then never play them again. At least that's what usually happens, I feel I may be spending some more time with this collection than previous ones though.
If you don't know what the Humble Bundle is (if you do you can skip this paragraph), it's a collection of (usually) independent games which are released in a small group, a bundle if you will, using a 'pay-what-you-want' scheme. As an incentive to pay a bit more, if you pay above the average, you get a couple of extra games thrown in... bargains! During the payment process, there are sliders determining how exactly your money is being split up between the developers of the games, and charity. After all that you can then download the games direct, or enter a code into Steam and get them that way. It's awesome.
So I paid above the average and downloaded the games, and got to work spending a few minutes on each of them to get a feel for how it works and whether I think I'll enjoy it or not. Here's the list:
BIT.TRIP RUNNER
Jamestown
NightSky
Shank
Super Meat Boy
...and the extra two:
Cave Story+
Gratuitous Space Battles
I've actually been wanting to play Super Meat Boy and Bit Trip for a while, just can never be bothered to spend money/ put in the time. I also saw some gameplay of Shank 2 which is being released at some point, and I thought, "hey that looks cool, I wonder what the original game was like"...and then forgot about it. That's part of the reason why I think the Humble Bundle is such a good idea, as even though you can pay as little as you want for the games, its money that the developers wouldn't normally get because of people like me who don't exactly want to pay the full price for their games. So it takes some of the shame of that away for me...kind of.
Anyways, here's my thoughts on the games in the bundle...talk about some unforgiving, yet addictive, games...
BIT.TRIP RUNNER
There's loads of Bit Trip games, and I've never played any of them, which is a shame because I'm big into music, and they are essentially music/rhythm games. My main thing to say about it will become a theme for most of these games... it is hella addictive... but my God is it frustrating. You're this little dude who is constantly running to the right, no reason is given for this... you just kind of go with it since you're dumped straight into the action. While you're running you are faced with obstacles which you either have to jump over, or duck under according to the rhythm of the music (these are the only mechanics I've come across so far, there may be more along the way). You also have to pick up gold (again, no reason is given for this, you don't even have to collect all the gold in the level), and these other pickups which make the music go CRRRAZZZYY and a rainbow comes off of your back while you run because it's CRRRAZZZYY. It's a super simple game, which makes it all the more frustrating when you die (by hitting an obstacle), not only because you have to go aaaaallll the way back to the start of the level. Here's a video which should hopefully explain what's going on a bit.
Jamestown
I haven't played Jamestown yet, because I've seen some videos of it before, and although it looks cool, it's still one of those vertically scrolling shooters where there's usually about 5 pixels on screen which are safe for you to be in at any one time. I'm not saying they're bad games (in fact it does look cool, and I will play it at some point), it's just I have to be in a certain mood to play a game so stressful, and most of the time I'm not in one. The premise for the story looks weird as hell for a game like this... and I kind of like it in a strange way. Anyway, here's the trailer.
NightSky
Now here's a game more up my street. I love the artsy type games where you're not really doing much, it's more about the atmosphere, experience and solving a few basic puzzles. If you like that sort of thing you should play stuff like Machinarium, And Yet It Moves and LIMBO. In NightSky you're a little ball, and pretty much the only thing you can do is roll around in this 2d world... At this point you're either sold on the game, or you've totally zoned out. If you're in the former, poke those in the latter group and tell them this probably isn't the game for them.
So far there have been no enemies, and no Game Over screens. Although there are times where you can get stuck in a level, and the game admits this to you right at the start and tells you how to reset the level if this happens, but you will only lose a few seconds progress because each stage is so short. Beyond rolling you'll be using momentum and gravity to get to the end of the level. Sometimes you get extra powers such as being able to roll faster, slower, or change the direction of the gravity, but so far it's all been very simple and enjoyable.
Here's some gameplay:
Shank
Shank is a side scrolling beat-em up, with the premise being that this big dude called 'The Butcher' has stolen your girlfriend, and you're on a mission to get her back. I'm playing with a gamepad (the game straight up tells you at the start that this is the way it's intended), and your face buttons are mapped to a quick melee knife attack, a heavy chainsaw (hell yeah) attack, and your ranged dual pistols. You've also got a pounce button where you fly through the air and land on your enemies, some grenades and a grapple. The combat is super satisfying, and is made more so by the really cool art style and sound effects. As you get a feel for the controls you begin to start racking up combos against the different types of enemies, and feel really cool while you're doing it. I'm pretty sure I'm going to be playing this game to completion.
Super Meat Boy
Now we're back to the super frustrating, yet annoyingly addictive games. Does anyone remember that game 'N' where you were this little ninja running around and wall jumping and stuff? It's kind of like that. The premise of the game is that this big dude has stolen your girlfriend, and you're on a mission to get her back. Hang on a minute...
So you're this sack of meat running around, jumping off walls and avoiding buzz saws to get to the end of the level. It follows a similar pattern to the Angry Birds style game, where you complete levels within stages, and then there's a mini cutscene at the end of the stage showing something else going wrong for the protagonist. It seems like you unlock extra characters as you go after completing special bonus stages (for example I just unlocked Commander Video, the character from BIT.TRIP RUNNER).
As usual, it's best explained with a video:
Cave Story+
I'm not sure why there's a plus at the end of the title. Maybe there was an original game which this adds features to, I haven't really checked. I haven't played much of this yet, but it's your old style platforming adventure type game. You're running around avoiding enemies / shooting them with your little gun, and that's about as complicated as it's been after my ten minutes or so with it. I'm not even sure what the story is yet...there's a guy in a room somewhere, trying to get in contact with someone called Sue, and she's supposed to be this 'outsider' in this village I've just arrived at. Anyway, I might play some more at some point, I'm not particularly drawn in by the game yet though.
Gratuitous Space Battles
And finally we get to this, a game I haven't played yet... it's got a cool name though. I loaded it up and it looked super complicated for what I was wanting at the time, especially after playing all those really simple, yet addictive games. I believe what happens is, you select certain types of space ship, and build a fleet, and then give them certain orders, or ways to behave...maybe, and then the battle happens and everything looks really cool and explodey. Sorry I'm not more specific, I'll have to play some of it and get back to you, but as always, a gameplay video comes to my rescue:
So overall, a pretty sweet collection of games...and you can pay what you like for them! You've got a couple of weeks before the deal ends, so go and snap it up! Thanks for reading.
Thinking about it, I have a tradition of supporting mediocre sports teams. First of all, I'm English...name any internationally played sport and the chances are we're always in there with a shot at winning, until we fall at the last hurdle. I guess Cricket has been the exception recently, we're still not great at the one day stuff though.
My main sporting passions at the moment are Football and American Hand-egg (Football).
Newcastle United Football Club
Being in 7th place in the Premier League and 5 points clear of 8th isn't a bad place to be for a club that was in the Championship a couple of years ago, in fact it's very good. A lot has been made of the success story so far this year, but it seems to be coming to an end now. The lack of squad depth has been very obvious over the past few weeks, despite the good draw we got out of Manchester United and the awful refereeing decisions in the Chelsea game, but never more so than on Saturday against Norwich City.
The first ten minutes started well enough, then the game settled down. Alright, it was a bit of a snooze-fest for the first 35 minutes I suppose. Then suddenly, after a bit of pinball in the area, Wes Hoolahan opened the scoring for Norwich. "Alright", I thought, "we can come back into this", and sure enough Demba Ba continued his prolific goal scoring season by equalising just before half time.
Not long into the second half it wasn't going well... two more Norwich goals went in from headers. We were 3-1 down, but I still had faith, we had come back from worse...only last season we came back from 4-0 down against Arsenal to draw the game... And then Dan Gosling got sent off. I turned my attention away from the game and started to do something else, no way we were scoring now with our team riddled with injuries.
However, a few minutes later I noticed the black and white shirts wheeling away in celebration...it was 3-2, and somehow we were back in the game! From then on we were pushing and pushing, and you wouldn't have known we were a man down and a goal down, we could draw this game...or even win it!
Oh wait...Norwich scored again...from a header. FOUR goals had gone in from headers (deflected or otherwise).
I mean I know we're lacking squad members, and I hope something is done about this in the January transfer window (we got 35 million for Carroll last year, come on, let's spend some), but we just got embarrassed by Norwich City. Norwich City! When you think about Newcastle you think Shearer, Beardsley, Gascoigne, Milburn... the list goes on. When you think about Norwich City you think Stephen Fry, Delia Smith and my Year 5 primary school teacher (well maybe you don't). What just happened?
Anyway, Swansea next week, maybe we can get things back on track.
Seattle Seahawks
Here's another team I support which is decidedly average, yet showing moments of brilliance at times. We had a pretty awful start to the season, although I'll admit we've definitely turned it around over the past few weeks. In fact if we win the remaining four games in the regular season, there's a very big chance we'll be going to the play-offs for two years in a row! And we do have a few players who seem to perform very well in big pressure situations... we all know what our premier running back Marshawn Lynch managed in the play-off game against the Saints last year. What's that? Most of you don't know? Then allow me to educate you:
Even if you don't like American Football, you have to admit that's impressive. That's not a one-off either, check out this touchdown he scored in the game from last week against the Philadelphia Eagles:
My favourite part was the commentator saying "he's not gonna get anything..."
Anyways, hopefully Lynch, the quarterback Tarvaris Jackson (who, by the way, has been playing half the season with a torn pectoral muscle, ridiculous) and the rest of the Seahawks can go on a winning streak to the end of the season and then put up a good play-off run as well.
So there's a little insight into my sporting passions, thanks for reading
