Not having time to play games sucks

Hello

As the title says "Not having time to play games sucks". I haven't posted in a while due to not having had much time for games due to being busy with other things going on in life. I'm hoping after the Christmas period I might have a bit more free time either in the evenings or at weekends.

Other than taking part in the monthly Hearthstone events and playing the new expansion I've been mostly playing Warhammer 40k: Freeblade on iOS.

Freeblade is an on rails shooter where you are in control of a space marine knight (my 40k knowledge is limited but it's basically a big mech). You travel through a couple of different environments shooting Orks or Chaos marines and trying to meet the mission requirements. You can either earn, find or forge new war gear for your knight through the completion of missions, as well as earning ore and experience as well. As you progress through the missions you need to upgrade or forge new war gear to meet the mission requirements and this can feel a little unfair as you will need to repeat missions to earn ore, or use purchaseable gold coins to speed up production. Replaying missions is a little dull, but each mission has 2 objectives, and there are extra low level patrol missions which seem to cycle patterns to keep it a little more entertaining. Overall the game is enjoyable in small doses, and I did buy one of the cheap packs of war gear and coins to keep game progression moving.

I also played the new game by CrowsCrowsCrows. Dr. Langeskov, The Tiger and the Terribly Cursed Emerald: A Whirlwind Heist is a "walking simulator" that is perfect in it's scenario, mechanics and stortelling. It is free on Steam, it'll take you 15-20mins to complete, and you should go out of your way to give it a go.

I think my Playstation Plus subscription ends soon, but weirdly Sony haven't been perstering me to renew it. I have turned off the auto-renew this year as I am just not getting the value from due to lack of time to play the excellent titles on the service. I still haven't completed The Unfinished Swan or Hohokum, or even played Rain, but I might stump up for a month of PS+ next year if I fancy completing them.

As it is rapidly coming up to Christmas I might get another little blog post up this side of the new year, and I hope to get a game or two as presents (fingers crossed).

Thanks for reading

Stuart

Another game completed

Hello

Just a short post today as I'll probably do another post before the end of the week.

I have another game marked as complete this week: Alien Breed 2 - Descent. This has been on my Currently Playing list for an absolute age now, and I finally got round to completing the single player campaign. I think I originally got this game as a freebie in one of the Steam Summer events, and while I also now own Alien Breed and Alien Breed 3 I haven't played them yet.

Alien Breed 2 is a competent twin stick shooter that sees you exploring your way around an abandoned space craft and trying to survive the waves of aliens that attack you. As you progress the story unfolds, but it's nothing to write home about, and the ending was anticlimatic to say the least. The mechanics of the controls and the range of weapons is good, but I think it took me this long to complete it as every level just seemed like such a slog to get through. There is also not enough diversity in the alien enemies as you will have seen them all in the first level then be fed up seeing them by the end of the game. I'll get round to the other 2 games in the series at some stage, but with so much else to play they are quite a way down my list.

This week I also started playing Dark Echo. It is a top down dungeon exploration game, but each area is completely dark and you have to use the visual clues of echoes to navigate your way through avoiding traps and monsters. I'm a little under halfway through the game after 18 or so levels and I'm looking forward to the challenges of the rest of the game.

As it's Monday I'll hopefully get a little bit of quiet game time tonight. My PS+ subscription ends in less than a month I think so I'm aiming to put some time into Hohokum and the Unfinished Swan before I lose access to them. I also want to have a go at Rain, but maybe not tonight.

Thanks for reading

Stuart

Two games down

Hello

This week I actually completed 2 games. Two!!

On Monday night I completed the last level of Warhammer 40k: Kill Team. Thankfully no odd little glitches this time around, and quite a good final boss fight. I also ran through the survival stages just for the achievement. Overall I enjoyed the game a lot, but it has flaws like being a little too short and some bad camera angles. I would love a Warhammer 40k: Dawn of War game using the mechanics from this and a 5 team online multiplayer coop. At the very least adding terminators into a sequel would be good.

The other game I complated this was Odd Bot Out on Android (no pun intended). This is a great little puzzle game spread over 100 levels. The goal of each stage is to get your Bot from one side of the stage to the other by manipulating the bot and interacting with other bots or switches or building blocks along the way. It all has a nice simple interface and the touch controls work well. What I really liked about this game is that the solution to each level isn't exact and you can usually get away with bodging something together. Very enjoyable.

Everything else has just been the usual stuff (WWE Supercard, Split/Second Velocity and Hearthstone), but I have put some time into Hitman Sniper on Android.

That's it for this week. Just a short update.

Tomorrow is Halloween and I'm going to ComicCon. I'm excited!

Stuart

Relegated to the Kitchen

Hello

Just over a week left of October and the dark nights have come in quickly. Having the clocks go back an hour at the end of the month will only make the darkness start earlier, but at least the mornings will be a little brighter for a while.

This week I was relegated to the kitchen with my laptop as my wife was entertaining in the living room. I thought I'd take the opportunity to try using the inbuilt game streaming that Steam provides, but unfortunately it wasn't good experience. My first session crashed out on me, and my second session was very laggy. I think the game kept running on the PC from the first session which is why the second session wasn't great. I'll have another go with it at some stage as I think it is a really good feature.

As the streaming wasn't working I installed a couple of games on the laptop from my Steam library that weren't too graphically intensive and didn't have big install sizes. The first of these was Three Fourths Home - Extended Edition. I'd read some non-spoiler reviews of this game and thought it was an interesting concept. You play a girl that has had to move back home to Nebraska to live with her parents after flunking out of college. The game has you driving home through a rainstorm from your dad's childhood home. You talk on the phone to your Mum, Dad and brother during the drive making choices as the conversation progresses. Through two playthroughs the conversation choices didn't impact the ending I got, but each branch provided some more information as to the family dynamics at play. The extended edition on Steam includes an epilogue as well as some of your brother's stories, a photogallery and a radio player of the soundtrack. The epilogue is strange as it is a prologue that takes place before the main story, but it does have alternate endings depending on the conversation choices.

The other two games I played were Spelunky and The Expendabros (the free version of BroForce based on The Expendables films). Spelunky is randomly generated platformer/dungeon crawler that gets good reviews, but during my playtime I just couldn't quite get the hang of it. It looks good and plays well so I'll definitely go back to it and have another crack at it. The Expendabros is similar to Spelunky in it's look and feel, but was easier to get grips with. For it being a free game based on a movie licence it is a very playable little game that sees you running and gunning with members of the Expendabros to make it to the end of the level taking out baddies on your way. Each character has their own method of attack and special move and lives are generated through the levels by saving caged colleagues. Good fun action game just like the movies it is based on.

With it being nearly November it's time to start thinking about Christmas lists. With the amount of games I have, and the number of them that are unplayed, I think I'll just put Xenoblade Chronicles X on my list and see what else I end up with (fingers crossed).

I hope life is good to you

Stuart

Autumn Leaves

Hello

Wow! We're in October already. The nights are getting darker, the weather is on the turn, and we're heading into the Christmas push for retailers selling games and accessories.

As far as my game playing goes I'm still playing things I have had for a while, but haven't got round to playing.

In the last couple of weeks I've put most of my game playing time into Split/Second Velocity. I'm progressing quite well through the season mode races, and as I got the game for my birthday I bought most of the DLC for the game. The game is still good fun to play and very easy to have a couple of quick sessions of each week when I get the chance.

As for other games on PS3; I put about 15-20 mins each into Hunted: The Demon's Forge, Bulletstorm and Syndicate. Out of the three of them Hunted seems like a game I'll put a lot of time into as I like the game style and the mechanics seem fairly robust. It's also a nice change when a game actually allows you switch character during the game to switch up the play style of ranged or melee. Syndicate and Bulletstorm are both FPSs, but Bulletstorm definitely seems to have a bit more character about it.

On PC I've been playing the puzzle game Divide by Sheep which sees you trying to rescue a specific number of sheep on each level. The game takes a rather dark turn when you have to feed sheep to wolves, or fire them through a laser barrier which cuts them in half so that you can meet your quota. With 100+ levels to go through this will keep me going for a while as I'm only on 18 or 20. A bite size puzzler that I find hard to spend a lot of time on.

I've also been playing Warhammer 40K: Kill Team. It's a twin stick shooter where you take control of a Space Marine and shot your way through levels on an Ork battleship disabling systems on your way to an inevitable fight with the Ork leader at the end. The game is enjoyable enough and having a choice of Space Marine type (Librarian, Tech Marine, Assault Marine etc.) adds some nice reolayability. I would have liked to see a Terminator as a choice, but that is personal preference. It supports local co-op and while I haven't had a chance to try this the gameplay would suit it very well.

It's getting to that time of year where my PS+ subscription is due to expire and I've turned off the auto renew. I plan to complete Unfinished Swan and Hohokum before sometime in December, but after that I don't think I'll renew as I'm just not getting value from it due to the limited amount of time I have to play games. There are a lot of games that I got from the service that I would love to sink time into, but that's just the way life is sometimes.

Thanks for reading

Stuart

Real life gets in the way

Hello

It's been nearly 3 weeks since my last post on here. It's been a busy time with family birthdays and other real life things, but I'll hopefully be back to regular updates between now and christmas.

In between all the real life things I have managed to squeeze in some game time. I also got Split Second: Velocity for the PS3 for my birthday from my brother. It was a little bit of a random present as I don't usually play many driving games. I like them, but I'm not very good at the ones that require me to drive fast and turn corners. This, unfortunately, is usually all of them! I've put about an hour into it so far and it is a very competent driving game with an explosion triggering mechanic that you can use to take out your rivals. I'll play it very now and then when I remember I have it.

As for other games it is mostly the usual ones: LA Noire, WWE Supercard & Hearthstone. I also started to play and completed Gravity Ghost. This is a beautiful game that sees you controlling the ghost of a girl navigating your way through star constellations. On your way you collect items that give you more abilities and some that reveal more of the story about how you became a ghost. The game mechanics and music make the experience very relaxing and the story makes the journey worthwhile. I put in nearly 4 hours and completed most of the achievements during that one play through.

Other games I played on PC were Divide by Sheep (a puzzle game in which you have to catapault sheep from island to island and then onto a life raft) and Secrets of Raetikon (you are a bird flying round a forest carrying out some tasks and collecting triangles).

On Android I've been playing Crevice Hero (a side scrolling runner where you have to make it to a safe spot to avoid falling rocks), Lara Croft Go, and One More Dash & One More Line (hard to explain but worth trying for free).

I put a little more time into Kirby on the WiiU, and progressed a little further as well as going back and getting some of the treasure chests in previous levels.

Hopefully next time I'll have a Demon's Souls update as well as more PC games to talk about.

Until next time

Stuart

Demon troubles

Hello

I haven't too much time for game playing this week due to the bank holiday and quality family time. No Demon's Souls Monday this week, but I might get to play it this weekend.

This week I've been mostly putting time into WWE Supercard, but I've nothing really new to say about that. As for other games though I have put some time into Lara Croft Go (Android), Bayonetta (WiiU), Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush (WiiU), LA Noire (PC) and Thomas Was Alone (PC).

Lara Croft Go is very similar to Hitman Go on the mobile platforms, but using the Tomb Raider franchise. A clever little puzzle game where you have to navigate through levels avoiding obstacles and creatures. It's good, but not quite as good as Hitman Go.

I spent an hour last night between Kirby and the Rainbow Paintbrush and Bayonetta. For a game marketed at kids Kirby starts to get challenging in the 2nd set of levels, but remains a joy to play. Bayonetta is a great example of how the WiiU could easily handle ports from the PS3 and XBox360. The graphics and action are impressive, but it just hasn't completely grabbed me yet. Playing it on the gamepad with the volume turned down probably isn't helping the experience.

On the PC I got through another mission in LA Noire. Still plenty to do and more missions to complete so probably enough to keep me going until Christmas. I did finish Thomas Was Alone this week. What a wonderful puzzle platformer that is taken to classic status due to the music and the narration of Danny Wallace. Well worth your time and money if you haven't already played it.

Until next time

Stuart