Quite a bit to get through this week…
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| Get ready to blow stuff up! |
My new game for this week was Split/Second, a racing game
recommended by Metal Jesus in one of his Hidden Gems videos. It’s an arcade
racing game with a TV show-like aesthetic, where you drive in various
challenges to compete for enough credits to advance to the elite races – and
hopefully the next episode! What I like about this is that this is purely an
arcade racing game; there’s no micro-managing your vehicle, no sense of realism
in the game. It’s just you against the cars and the environment.
Oh yes, the environment. The main gimmick of the game is
that you can, once you’ve drifted enough and been on someone’s tail for long
enough to build up your power meter, trigger certain parts of the environment
to cause problems for your rivals. More often than not, these come in the form
of explosions that throw them off the track, but there’s some fun ones as well.
In one of the earlier tracks, triggering a certain point causes a digger to
swing its shovel around that creates an obstacle. It works for a couple of
reasons: Firstly, you can’t just press the button to ruin someone’s day; it needs
precise timing and knowledge of the track in order to make it work effectively.
Secondly, certain of these trigger points change the entire layout of the
track, so chances are you won’t be racing on the same bit of track on the next
lap!
I played Split/Second for a couple of hours and I was really
enjoying it so I’ll definitely be playing some more!
I carried on with Eternal Crusade, there’s a live campaign
running over the next few days where you have to win five battles for a large
reward of Rogue Trader Credits. These are used to buy weapons and armour that affect
the character aesthetically. They’re no better or worse than the equipment you
can buy; they just look different. This is the Micro-Transaction element of the
game; you can pay money for these things but since it wouldn’t increase my
level of enjoyment of the gameplay, I certainly won’t be spending money on
them! But if I can get enough RTC to get an upgrade for one of my guns, I might
do that. Otherwise they’ll just sit there gathering e-dust!
I found myself with a little more time to be out and about
than I normally do, and on Wednesday I went in to Warlords and Wizards and had
a game of X Wing with my old friend Mason. I’ve known Mason a while and his
collection of Imperial ships has grown in that time! I took on his force with
my Trenchrunners, and had a run of good luck in the beginning of the game.
However, the ferocious abilities of Quickdraw, as well as the support provided
by a local shuttle, meant it was a very hard game that I eventually lost. Great
fun though, cheers Mase!
Then on Friday I had a game of Catan with a couple of young
lads who go to the shop. They’re getting quite in to it now and with that comes
a certain amount of skill. I got off to what I thought was a good start by
heading straight for the ports, but they managed to break up my Longest Road,
and one of the lads won the game on at least three bought victory points. Well
done!
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| All sorts of different roles... |
We also had a quick game of One Night Ultimate Werewolf; I
had the app on my Kindle Fire and we sat down for a four-player game. I was the
Werewolf with one of the other lads, and I tried to bluff it to claim to be the
seer; they saw through it eventually but time had run out by then and we all
voted for the Troublemaker. Great fun!
Finally on Sunday I continued Pathfinder: Rise of the
Runelords with Dave, Victor, Morgan and Ian. For the first time, I’ve run a
campaign all the way up to level 8, and the lads were happy to level up!
I’m expecting a quieter week next week, so see you then!
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