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

The Fear is real!

Hello

This week has been quite a good week for game playing for me.

On Saturday I got quite a good session on LA Noire on the PC. I got a couple more missions completed (and a couple of achievements to go with them). I really like the look and feel of LA Noire and the gameply is solid enough. It's one failing is that there is never a sense of urgency to rush through the game, but for a lot of people (myself included) this means that it is an easy game to come back to whenever you have the time to continue your adventures in that world. From the LA Noire wiki I'm half way through the homicide cases which leaves me 14 cases in total through homicide, vice and arson divisions. Still a good chunk of playtime to go, and that's not including finding collectibles and achievement hunting.

Demon's Souls Monday continued and I got marginally further than I had previously, but the fear of dying is real! It is also justified as I took a slight wrong turn and came across a red eyed knight who charged at me, hit me with his spear, and killed me in one hit. I managed to back track and get some of my souls back, and then went back to the nexus for repairs etc. I think I need to just push through and take the deaths as they come and continue on. Must try harder.

I've also played and nearly finished Thomas Was Alone this week. It is such a good platform puzzle game in itself, but the music and the narration/commentary by Danny Wallace really take it up a notch. I think I've only a handful of levels to go and I will miss that world when it's all done. I've been recommended Gravity Ghost as a similar game to play next so that's next on my playlist.

Other games this week have been Hooks and WWE Supercard. 

Hooks is a 50 level puzzle game where you have to remove the hooks from the screen using buttons and switches in the right order. A very short game by any standard, but at 79p on Steam it is well worth that money (also on Android for a similar price). 

WWE Supercard has had a major update and an expansion of sorts. The expansion adds new season 2 cards to collect and enhance, but unfortunately you can't play season 2 cards against season 1 cards. I was close to uninstalling the game, but I've been sucked back into it and have 210 matched played already this week. I think this will be on my regular playlist for a good while yet.

Until next time

Stuart

So little time

Just a quick post this week about what I've been playing as it's been a busy week and there is only so much time for games along side everything else.

Demon's Souls (got my spelling right this week) Monday lasted for about three quarters of hour this week. Not a lot but during those 45 minutes I died at least 7 or 8 times and didn't really progress very far through Boletarian Palace. My combat technique needs a lot of work, and I might have been better with a character with more hit points. I'll have another go next week, and see if it lets me backtrack early on to use some of my collected souls for upgrades etc. I'm not giving up yet!

As well as Demon's Souls I also put a bit of time into Thomas Was Alone, which is a lovely little platformer puzzle game by Mike Bithell and narrated by Danny Wallace. I think I'm just over half way through so I'm determined to complete it before the end of the year.

Otherwise I've spent 5-10 mins here and there playing some mobile games most notably Warhammer Snotling Fling (like a 3D Angry Birds set in the Warhammer universe that is enjoyable for a bit until you realise that it suffers from encouraging microtransactions to actually get all the achievements for each level) and Hitman Go (a Hitman themed puzzle board game that is good fun and just the right level of difficulty). The other games were Bag It!, New Superstar Soccer, Alto's Adventure, Puzzle Retreat and Twisty Hollow. All of them are nice little time wasters that are worth a go.

Next week is more Demon's Souls and whatever else takes my fancy.

Stuart

Demon Souls!

Hello

This week in games I have started Demon Souls on the PS3. Why on earth has it taken me this long to have a go at this? I have no idea, other than not getting the chance to regularly play on the PS3. I put in about an hour or so on Monday and managed to only die twice. I'm having a little bit of an issue with the control scheme in that the R3 button is your lock on and that just feels a little clunky, but otherwise I'm very much enjoying the game. It looks like this will be my goto Monday night game for the foreseeable future.

I've also played a little bit of MadWorld on the Wii this week. It is a monochrome beat em up by Platinum Games. The controls on the Wii are maybe not as exact as I would like, but overall the game is very good and a nice addition to the game library on the Wii.

Other games I put some time into this week are WWE vs MMX and EA UFC on the iPad, as well as a little bit Alphabear and WWE Supercard on Android. 

WWE vs MMX is a monster truck drag racing game in which you win races to improve your vehicle to win more races and ultimately improve your position in your class before moving onto the next one. It is free to play and race tickets can be earnt through watching videos or waiting until some time passes. The WWE element comes in wrestler themed trucks, but you have to spend real money on buying one of the vehicles to get access to the WWE class races. The game itself is adequate if simple racing, but requires spending a lot of time doing races to earn ingame currency, or spending real money, before you will advance up the classes.

I'm hoping to get some PC gaming done this weekend, and then back to Demon Souls on Monday. Demon Souls! 

No excuses

Hello

I haven't really had a chance to play a lot of games this week outside of some time playing Alphabear, WWE Supercard and Strata on my phone, but that's not a good excuse for not updating this blog.

What I did get to spend some time playing this week was Kirby and the Rainbow Curse. I initially bought this for my son as it is controlled purely through the touchscreen on the WiiU gamepad, and supports offscreen play. He enjoys playing it, but can't quite manage to get passed world 1-2 without a little help. I put a bit more time into it myself and I was very impressed at how good the game is. The initial worlds are designed to let you get used to the controls, but once you do even these initial worlds are surprisingly big and worth exploring to get all the reward chests. I'm still on world 1 and have about 14% completion totalled up so far so the game seems to be of a fairly good size. I'm looking foward to playing it a bit more and playing it with my son as well.

Over the last month or so I've also put a fair amount of time into Rogue Legacy. It feels like a very 16-bit era action platformer, but instead of having set levels each run at the dungeon is different due to them being procedurally generated. The Legacy part of the title comes into effect when you die as you are then asked to choose an heir. These heirs have different traits and strengths/weaknesses eg. gigantism, near-sight, flatulence, dwarfism, strong spell power, large health bars etc, as well as being either male or female. The overall aim of the game is to get as far as you can in a dungeon, beating monsters and bosses on your way, and collecting gold. The gold is then spent buying upgrades and weapons which are passed on to your heirs. I really enjoy playing the game, but it is designed for you to fail and die and hopefully have enough gold for the next upgrade for your heir. I'll keep this in rotation for a while, and hopefully I'll start making some better progress.

Until next time

Stuart

Bitesize and Loading times

Hello

I didn't think I actually played much this week, but then I started listing the games I did play. I didn't play a lot of one game, but I did play a little of a lot of games.

I got a rare night to myself this week so I decided to play some games on the PS3. Unfortunately I'd forgotten how slow the PS3 can be when installing from disc. TNA Impact Wrestling must have taken a good 20 mins or so to install. The game itself is actually quite a good wrestling game and a nice alternative to the WWE games. It also gives a nice snapshot of TNA at the time and the fairly stacked roster that they had. The downpoints are that the load times are slow (despite installation to the PS3 HDD), and that a fair amount of the roster is locked out until you unlock them through the story mode.

Def Jam Icon was next, and after just one match I gave up on it. It's not that it's a bad game as a lot of time has obviously been put into it, but it just didn't grab me the way that the Def Jam games on the Gamecube did. Compared to those it just felt a little slow and the punches and kicks lacked weight behind them. The roster looked OK, and I'm guessing more characters can be unlocked through the other modes. I'll maybe go back to it at some point.

Up next were Entwined and Cloudberry Kingdom, both of which were free on PS+ in previous months. Cloudberry Kingdom is a side scrolling platformer that has you collecting diamonds to complete the level. The artstyle is a cartoon style that suits the game, but the controls felt sluggish and jumping just didn't feel right. Entwined, however, was very satiffying to play. You control two birds with one analog stick each and have to navigate them on the screen to fly through relevant coloured sections to fill up your entwined meter. With your meter filled you then merge the birds into a dragon and fly about collecting orbs that opens up an exit portal to the next level. A very beautiful game and worth your time to have a go on.

As for everything else I've been playing a bit more of LA Noire, 0rbitalis and Rogue Legacy on the PC, Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on the WiiU, and Alphabear, You Need to Build a Boat, and WWE Supercard on Android.

My goal this week is to try and get the handful of achievements in 0rbitalis that I haven't got yet, and put some time into either Rage or Zack & Wiki (hopefully).

What I've been playing this week

Hello

Here we are, nearly at the end of June 2015. It's amazing how the weeks seem to fly by sometimes.

This week I've been mostly playing Hearthstone (iPad & PC), Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate (WiiU) and Alphabear (Android).

In Hearthstone I've been playing Ranked mode to get myself up to level 20 for to win the monthly event card back. I've also been playing Tavern Brawl which was a new mode released about a month ago. This mode has a new rule set each week eg. adding bananas to each players hands, or giving you a strong deck based on the class you choose. This keeps the mode fresh and allows players to dip in and out of it as they want. For anybody interested in Hearthstone I heartily recommend the HearthCore Podcast. The hosts have a nice conversational style as well as a good knowledge of the game.

I have 140+ hours clocked up in Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. It is easily my most played game of the last 2 years, if not ever (I had 100+ hours on Monster Hunter Tri on the Wii). I am still doing quests, upgrading my weapons and armour and trying to push on to the next level (this is just in the offline mode, I've still a lot more time to put into the online quests). A fantastic game that still has a good online following.

Alphabear is a cute looking word making game where you use bears to boost your points. I'm just playing the free version as it's an easy pick up and play for 5 mins a couple of times a day.

I had hoped to put some more time into LA Noire this week, but when I sat down on Saturday night and tried to launch it from Steam it would not work. After an hour or so of validating files, uninstalling and reinstalling, and checking the forums I gave up. During the week I looked online again for a solution and found some users saying to disable antivirus while playing. I tested it last night and it does actually work. Not ideal but at least the game is working again. I'll hopefully spend a few hours in LA this weekend.

If you are reading this please leave a comment and let me know what you've been playing.

Stuart

My Year in Games

This is the My Year in Games blog.

At the minute I'm just setting the blog up, but I hope to post regularly about games I've been playing (when I get the time to play them).

Due to limited time and money the games I get to play are not going to be the triple AAA titles that are just out, but there are plenty of other sites that'll cover those.

My main goal with the blog is to, hopefully, play the large backlog of games I have on Steam and consoles (WiiU, PS3 & Wii). I might even occasionally go retro and bust out my Gamecube or Dreamcast, but we'll see how we go. I'll throw in some smartphone games on Android as well (always easier to squeeze in 5mins on a phone than an hour on console).