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