GTA 5
OK so I've been playing Grand Theft Auto 5 again for most of this week. It is as huge game and, as predicted, it is taking me a while! I'm around 55% of the way through the main game, and I'm up to level 6 in GTA Online.
From my previous write-ups, you might have picked up on the fact that I'm in two minds about a lot of the missions; wondering whether or not they were any good given that a lot of them are based around storytelling rather than free choice of how they are handled. Having now played through a lot of the game, there is one other factor that occurs to me, and that is variety.
Even though there is often only one way to complete a mission, every mission is different in some way to the one that you played previously. In fact, sometimes they are substantially different. It is quite rare in a game that I find myself saying "well I really should go to bed now, but I want to see what this next mission is; I'll just do one more." The variety of activities on offer here really makes for a much better game and as most of them can be wrapped up in 5-20 minutes of game time, you never really feel like you're stuck in a long section doing the same thing over and over again with no opportunity to take a break. So well done to Rockstar for that.
The cut-scenes, as I have described previously, are well done and actually capable of conveying some quite raw emotion. Often it's things that are to do with Trevor, as some of what he gets himself in to really makes you think "Whoa, I shouldn't be doing this..."
*SPOILER ALERT*
*One part that really made me quite sad was the mission where Michael and Trevor have to kill a guy on a plane, and pick up some files from the plane. You have to use a gun in a van to shoot down the plane as Michael, and then follow the plane on it's way down across half of the map with Trevor on a dirt bike. The thing is, when you're following the plane, the game patches you in to the radio chatter between air traffic control and the pilot of the plane you've just shot down. For about a minute and a half, you're speeding across the desert on a dirt bike, listening to the pilot as he's desperately trying to land the plane. You get the initial shock of being shot and subsequent recovery, the professional desperation as he tries to guide the plane to a landing strip, and the resignation in his voice when he realises there's no way he's going to make it and has no choice but to attempt an emergency landing in a field. This done, you approach the plane, kill the guy you were supposed to kill then board the plane to find the files. It then cuts to a scene where Trevor searches the cockpit to find the pilot - modelled as an older guy at least in his late 40s - dead from the impact of the crash. In typical Trevor style, he doesn't give the pilot a second thought, and this adds to the feeling of "the poor guy!" It's a rare game that can make me feel something like that about, well, not even a minor character really, more of a 'bit player.'*
This, combined with some of the other scenes where there characters have to look at the consequences of their actions, makes for quite an immersive experience. This is certainly more the case than pretty much any RPG I've played on the Xbox360 has done so far. I think it suggests that if it is possible to bridge the gap between video games and movies, GTA 5 is coming close to doing so.
Another few points:
- Great to hear Queen on the soundtrack! This should happen far more often.
- Thank heavens for the 'Quick Save' feature on the phone; it would have been incompetence of the highest order had saving been restricted to visiting your safe house (which can often trigger a mission.)
- I would love to say the stock markets are a nice feature in the game, but honestly I'm really not sure what I'm supposed to be doing with it.
Blood Bowl is a game I've owned for a while now, and by the standards of the Xbox360, it is very poor indeed. The graphics resemble a PS2/Xbox game, the gameplay could (and in fact does) work every bit as well on a hand-held console, the coding is poor (not that I would know about such things; it's something I've heard TotalBiscuit say,) and the dice mechanics take a lot of the skill out of the game.
The above comments are the bare-bones elements of the game, and sadly for the most part, Cyanide seemed content to leave it at that. For those of you who don't know, Blood Bowl is a strategy-sports board game originally published by Games Workshop, loosely based on their Warhammer mythos. You buy the game which includes the board, dice and a couple of 'teams,' you paint them yourself and build them however you want by buying new models for them - or build a different team entirely. Or at least, that was the case, though GW have now discontinued the so-called 'specialist' product line. Given all that, you would expect to see some customisation in how your team appears, or at least some variation in the colours, but there isn't. Your team either plays in red or blue. That's it. You don't even choose which colour. There is an online mode, but the asinine way in which it was handled means that there is no longer an online community to play it. Apart from the obligatory ranking system, there were no tournaments, no leagues, nothing to give the players anything more than they would have got it they'd have found some friends, bought the game, painted all the models and sorted the tournaments out for themselves. I understand that later versions were released on the PC and are now doing a little better, but I don't play games on the PC. I am therefore stuck with the 360 version - which had 1 DLC pack to add Dark Elves to the line-up and that was it - which is a substandard game to the point where it barely feels complete.
And do you know what? I absolutely love it.
I've been a fan of Warhammer and 40K for over half of my life, and sadly Blood Bowl had been and gone by the time I got in to it. The video game was therefore the only opportunity I was ever going to get to play it, and while it took me a while to get my head around it, soon I was winning matches, picking abilities for my players and really having some good fun with it. The campaign mode is basically a selection of competitions that you can enter, which as far as I can see is always a round-robin league followed by a knockout tournament. You have to have a certain number of points before some of the competitions can be accessed, and you have to go through the smaller tournaments before you can access the bigger ones. What is interesting is the way your team develops along the way, gaining Star Player Points (basically experience points,) new abilities, and even better attributes. And while the dice are used for this as well, the fact that you never really know what you're going to get until you've got it forces you to work with what you've got, rather than deliberately building an unstoppable set of abilities. Your players can grow old and have to retire, be injured which can reduce their attributes or give some other penalty, or get killed during the match and need to be replaced! Even without the potential level of customisation that game could have had, the storytelling potential of this game far outweighs any of the core mechanics and it is for that reason that even though I have owned the game for a year and a half, somehow I always seem to find time to go back to it.
I've never got to the end of the campaign though. This is largely because there isn't an end, but if I set a goal of participating and winning all the tournaments, I haven't done that yet. So, in the spirit of No Game New Year, now seems a good time to give it a go. This is likely to be an ongoing thing - I'll probably not do all of this at once, as the game can get a bit 'samey' watching the same thing happen over and over again. I might play through a competition once every couple of weeks, and see how it develops from there.
For a start, I should probably explain the block dice: Blood Bowl uses, for the most part, 6-sided dice, and this includes the dice to show what happens when you block (i.e. tackle another player.) If you choose to block a player, in most cases you roll 1 block dice and get 1 of the following results:
- Attacker Down - your player goes down which also forces a turnover (your turn ends.)
- Both down - both your player and your opponent's player goes down unless the Block skill is used. If your player goes down, it also forces a turnover.
- Pushed - the defending player gets pushed back by the attacking player
- Defender Stumbles - The defending player goes down unless he uses the Dodge skill
- Defender Down - The defending player goes down. This is the one you're usually looking for.
So, here we go:
The Team
For the team I picked Humans. I would normally choose Chaos, as I love the style of beating everybody up with the score being a secondary consideration, but I play Chaos pretty much every time so I decided to go for Humans instead. In honour of the Challenge, I named the team The No-Game Nihilists. They consist of the following players:
Linemen: Ardtrui the Boss-eyed, Enan the Applauder, Seragne the Storyteller, Griswold the Punisher, Jek the Anti, Hector the Weeper, Arwod the Beloved and Woros the Mad.
Catchers: Dagonet Huppert, Detlef Doolist
Throwers: Arne Rolf, Gawain Rosulver
Blitzers: Viscount Lutolf, Arnulf Ottman
Ogre: Dur Head-Wrencher
The Clean Cup
This is always the first competition you enter. It is between four teams. The teams do a round robin league (every team plays every other team once) and then all of the teams are entered into the knockout stages at the end. The four teams were:
- No-Game Nihilists (Human, and also my team, so yay)
- Da Severed 'Eads (Orc)
- Noxious Nibblers (Skaven)
- Friends of the Wood (Wood Elves)
Here were the results:
- Game 1 vs Da Severed 'Eads (Orc): An early try from Dagonet Huppert gave me the lead, but after this, the first half turned into a fight with neither side gaining the upper hand. The second half looked much the same way but the Orcs broke through and scored a try. It would have ended as a draw, but for a late try from a plucky lineman Griswold the Punisher, breaking through the Orc lines! Win for the Nihilists, 2-1. However, Thrower Gawain Rosulver picked up a smashed knee in the carnage, which will add +1 to any future injury rolls. Also, Orge Dur Head-Wrencher of all people levelled up, which was surprising as I don't remember using him very much in the game. I gave him Guard as a new ability, which allows him to assist other player's blocks even if there is another player in his tackle zone.
- Game 2 vs Noxious Nibblers (Skaven) Viscount Lutolf scored early on, and again after a brutal fight, meaning the Nihilists were 2-0 up going into the half. However, the second half was a stalemate, and neither side managed to score. Win for the Nihilists, 2-0, and incidentally the only point during the competition where the team managed to keep a clean sheet. Viscount Lutolf levelled up, and I gave him Tackle as his new ability, which effectively shuts down Dodge. I also bought an Apothecary, lest I get any more injuries...
- Game 3 vs Friends of the Wood (Wood Elves) You'd think, with such a rubbish team name, that this team wouldn't be any good. I've played Blood Bowl far too often to take Wood Elves lightly, but that didn't prepare me for the absolute pounding I got here. They scored quickly in the first half, and early in the second, and the only way I had a hope of pulling it back was to get 2 trys in about 6 turns. However, thanks to some appalling passing from my own team, it wasn't to be, and a final try from the Wood Elves sealed the deal with their only win of the competition. Nihilists Lose 0-3.
Still, it was enough to qualify, so:
- Playoff: vs Noxious Nibblers: This one didn't get off to a good start, as bribery had reduced the Movement Allowance of 2 of my players by 1 (down to 5.) However, we soon fought back, and Hector the Weeper got the first try. In the second half we looked to capitalise on our lead, but in doing so left the defence wide open and the Skaven scored. The game ended a draw, but in this round, it needed a winner. In an overtime that actually lasted longer than either half, and after most of the Skaven players were brutalised out of the game, Jek the Anti scored the final try - and he was one of the players who'd got bribed! This meant the game carried on a little longer (overtime goes on for a number of turns in a multiple of 4, and Jek scored at the beginning of the 25th turn so it had to run on to 28 before the game could end) but the Nihilists Won: 2-1. Detlef Doolist levelled up, which was a strange thing to happen as I don't actually remember him playing in the match. I gave him +1 movement; an ability would have been nice but the opportunity to increase an attribute is very rare and should not be ignored lightly!
- Final vs Da Severed 'Eads: This one started off well with an early try from Detlef Doolist, but after a massive srap, the Orcs scored just before the half. They pulled another one through early in the second half, and it all looked like it was going to the Orcs. Then, right at the last moment, a very risky pass play gave a Lineman the chance they needed to break through and score a try, forcing overtime. In the dying moments of this, Detlef scored another try and won the game for us. Nihilists win the match, 3-2 and are the winners of the Clean Cup.
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