Last Week's Games: Snakebird, Legions and Mordheim.

It's worth playing for the looks on their faces.

This week I did something I don’t do very often these days, and that is play a game within about a month of buying it! In this case it was Snakebird, a puzzle game involving moving a curious combination of a snake and a bird towards the level exit. It works on a grid-based movement system, and you move your snakes forward by one tile each time looking for the best way to get the exit, and eat all the fruit along the way if there is any. It’s bright, colourful, and sounds very twee and pleasant. This is just as well because the puzzles themselves are very frustrating! There aren’t really all that many options available to you and if you make a mistake it’s all over; either your snake will get trapped or fall on spikes or water. The puzzles where you have to move two or more snakes are even more difficult, because they rely on each other to proceed – you somehow have to find a way for them to climb on top of each other, and still have enough support to remain still once their partner has gone!

So, Snakebird is frustrating, but there is a certain amount of fun to be had in finally getting it right, even if the vast majority of the time it is more by luck than judgement.

It's good to be back...

I also came back to a game I hadn’t played in a while: The Horus Heresy: Legions. I stopped playing this for a bit when I was at the UK Games Expo, funnily enough. I found myself far too busy on the Saturday to play the game and when it transpired that I was happy enough not playing it, I didn’t go back to it for a long time. But last night I gave it another go and was pleasantly surprised to find my low-power Lucius deck was still as fierce as ever. I have been very busy with family and work commitments over the last few weeks, but I might start streaming and recording again soon if the time is right.

Finally, I got justifiably angry at one of my favourite games: Mordheim, City of the Damned. If you’ve been following my blog for any significant amount of time you’ll know I love this game; the warband development and winning the 20-60 minute battles give me no end of pleasure, and getting to know the warriors in your band gives them more character than any amount of design or voice acting could. But it was my intention to get through the campaign eventually so, having finally completed my Wyrdstone obligations, I entered into the third Mercenary mission in the Library. I took my Level 4 Ogre, knowing how useful it was going to be to have a warrior immune to fear and terror, and set about finding the grimoires.

The Daemonette did for Luther in the end. If it had
gone to plan it would have looked like this:

So, to complete this mission, you need to find three warding wands to disable the wards around the grimoires and pick them up. You also need to collect three other grimoires that are around and about, whilst dealing with the Curator, who is pretty fierce, and the Daemons, who are horrible because of the terror they inspire. They are few in number but are brutal, and few creatures will survive a 1-1 fight.

It was when I was picking up the second Grimoire that disaster struck – the game bugged out. It’s done this before where you pick up a quest item, and it is added to your inventory, but the game doesn’t register it as completing the objective. As in these missions there are only usually as many items as you need, (no extras,) it is impossible to complete the mission. The only thing you can do at that point, (and thank you to the Steam community or I wouldn’t have known this,) is to let the Dramatis Personae die – this is the only way you can end the mission without there being further consequences to your warband, as usually they take additional injuries if they abandon the battle. I did this, and thankfully most of my soldiers survived – but this bug has been going on for years! Why hasn’t it been patched?

Last Week's Games: Crash, Rayman, Mordheim and Pathfinder

My face if I manage to 100% the game...

I began this week by playing a little more of Crash Bandicoot, trying to get some of the gems and relics. I wasn’t very successful! From what I understand, the game’s puzzle involves getting the coloured gems to open up some of the paths in the earlier levels in order to get all the crates. This is all well and good but in order to get the gem, you need to clear some of the most difficult levels in the game having smashed all of the crates and not dying even once. That is a pretty tall order, especially for a game I’ve already beaten, and while it would be lovely to get all the achievements, I have a feeling that will become more work than fun before too long. 

Haven't played any of the Murphy's Touch levels yet...

I carried on with Rayman: Legends on the Nintendo Switch; pick up and play games are a great boon to have in a busy life! It’s great that you can do a few levels at a time then switch (aha!) it off and not have to worry about it, and while few people would find the levels themselves a challenge, it tests me on the right level. I could probably get to the end of the game and only really make an effort on the boss battles, but of course the real challenge of the game comes from getting all the collectibles. This isn’t particularly difficult either but I will have some backtracking to do on those levels where I didn’t quite get enough Lums, or rescue all the Teensies!

Watch out, he'll batter you...

When I’ve had some time with my laptop I’ve come back to my old sparring partner, Mordheim: City of the Damned, where I’ve been trying to get my Nordland Ravagers warband up to the point where they could tackle the third campaign mission. This mainly involves my Ogre getting to level four before someone kills him, as I desperately need a soldier in the warband immune to the fear effects put upon by the Daemons I know are coming. But I’ve also taken some time out for him to train some skills, so it’s a slow process, during which one of my better henchmen lost one of his arms, and one of my better archers died altogether (to be replaced by someone that, I found out after the fact, only had one leg.) Still, I’ve always really enjoyed this game so I’m not complaining!

Will they ever beat him?

Finally on Sunday I carried on with Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords. It took us a while to organise this one, and some people have come and gone. This time we organised it with two of our characters missing, so Dave turned up with his friend Ross who created a polearm fighter. He also took the Big Game Hunter feat that is one of the campaign traits for the adventure path. This is an interesting one because I’d read the first adventure for this, Burnt Offerings, long before I’d read the rest of the campaign and while Big Game Hunter telegraphs the larger creatures that this feat is designed to deal with, I wouldn’t necessarily think to take it knowing what was coming in Burnt Offerings! It came in useful this time, as we are at the fourth section – Against the Giants – and the party made short work of four Stone Giants, two Lamias (who are designed in the adventure to be a lot harder than the ones that appear in the Bestiary,) and two Young Red Dragons.

It’s a testament to how enjoyable the Pathfinder adventure paths are that we’ve kept this going for two and a half years, but I’ve run into a problem with Against the Giants – Action Economy. Basically what this means is that while the monsters I’m running are pretty hard in their own right, I haven’t got enough actions with my monsters per turn to pose a threat to the party. To be fair, this might be due to the fact that I didn’t do a lot of preparation (or I might have had the Dragons come to assist the Lamias, that would have been interesting!) but it’s something I might need to think about for future sessions and campaigns.

Last Week's Games: Rayman Legends, Crash Bandicoot, Papers Please, Legend of Grimrock

They're all adorable, but there's something a little... off.

I’ve had a go with a few different games in the last week or so. One game I’ve played quite a bit but forgot to mention in last week’s blog was Rayman: Legends, a terrific platformer on the Switch. I’ve got a couple of versions of the original game but games have improved in their development since then and I’m enjoying 2D platformers with more modern conveniences! There’s not much to it in principle; you traverse fantastic environments as Rayman or one of his variations, hitting bad guys, collecting Lums and rescuing Teensies (the latter two being cutesie creatures that make squeaky noises.) There’s a lot of levels so you can keep going for a while. I’ve not played all the Rayman games, but this game appears to dispense with the “Go to this part of the map and play this level” modular system started by the earlier Mario games. Instead, the levels are selected by jumping in to paintings, more of which are unlocked as you progress. There’s also not (as far as I can see) any real progression in terms of your abilities; everything you can do, you can do from the start of the game. The progression in the game aside from beating the levels is collecting all the unlockables, which is usually achieved by, again, collecting Lums and rescuing Teensies. This might seem like a grind, but Rayman is one of those games where you can easily put it down and come back to it later without having missed much. I’m having a great time with it at the moment, and I’m sure I’ll continue to do so!

Make the mask noise. I dare you.

I also carried on with Crash Bandicoot on the PS4; I’ve found myself enjoying this game more as it’s gone on! I got to the end of the game and beat it, but I don’t want to say too much about it at this point because I want to save my main remarks about the game for the review; anything I have to add to it will probably go on next week’s blog, or the week after.

Is he legit?

On my laptop I played Papers Please, because there’s nothing at all funny about coming home from work and playing a video game about going to work. If you don’t know, it’s a game where you are the inspector for the border of a fictional country which, given the volatile political situation it represents, is probably eastern European. You have to check people’s passports for inconsistencies, allow them through if you don’t find any, and deny them entry if you do. At the same time you need to be making enough money every day to feed and heat your family. It’s a bleak game, and I’ve only unlocked three out of the twenty possible endings so far and none of them have been good, but there’s something about the core gameplay loop that is fascinating and keeps me coming back to the game years after I originally bought it.

No. No no no no no no no. No.

I also had a go with Legend of Grimrock, a relatively modern update of the old-style dungeon crawler games where you had a party of four people and you had to go through the dungeon and, in this case, escape. It’s a good game; it’s a nice mix of puzzles, combat, resource and inventory management, and spellcasting from pressing the correct combination of symbols. The interface is a bit wonky but this fits in with the style of the game and forces you to concentrate on what you’re doing. I began a new play-through and got to the third level of the dungeon, where I had to call time because the spiders were making me very jumpy. The giant spiders in Legend of Grimrock are absolutely horrible, due I guess to the fact that the movement in the game looks very mechanical and inhuman, and also because I’m playing on a laptop I don’t have the option to sit further away from the screen. Usually I know they’re coming but when one suddenly appears and you’re not expecting it, I panic and completely mess it up! I’ll get through it – I’ve done it before – but this isn’t a pleasant level to play!

Backlog Beatdown: Doing Whatever a Spider Can with Spider Man

I’d had no concrete information about Spiderman when I bought it. My principle reason for buying it was that if it was a popular enough game for Sainsburys to be selling it, it must at least be passable! So I saved up some Nectar points and bought the game.

I mean who wouldn't want to do this?

And I’m happy to say this is one of the best games I’ve played in a long time. It’s an open-world action adventure, where you play as Spiderman trying to deal with the enemies that threaten New York. While it doesn’t follow the plot of any of the recent films, it recognises that most people know enough about Spider Man to know his origins and who the principle characters are. We join Peter Parker well in to his 20s; he’s been Spiderman for roughly eight years and works for Doctor Octavius as a research scientist. He and Mary Jane have broken up, and he is often found to be helping Aunt May do charity work. The same is the case with the villains; the game picks a few of them and tells its own story, including giving a lot of limelight to one relatively-recent supervillain, which I’m not going to spoil but it’s nice to see a change in the principle villains from time to time.

The two crucial elements of any game are an engaging process and a satisfying payoff, and Spiderman has plenty of both. There are many open world games on the market, but Spiderman shines in three main areas: Firstly, the in-game activities are mostly contextually accurate and a tonne of fun to play out. The campaign drives the game, but there is plenty to do on the side; beating up gangs of thugs, eliminating ‘bases’ of criminals, doing some research tasks for Octavius or Harry Osborne, they are all things that it would make sense for Spiderman or Peter Parker to be doing and don’t feel like pointless busy work. The second is that you’re Spiderman, and therefore getting around the city is an absolute joy; swinging, stunts and developing abilities all contribute to even the most mundane experience in the game. Finally, the game is neither too big nor too long, and is paced well enough that the range of tasks never feels like it’s getting on top of you.

An odd stance...

Spiderman handles very well, with a decent control system that pays more than a little respect to the Arkham games but adapts very well here. There’s plenty of things you can do with your webs when fighting enemies, for example, but none of them amount to much more than pressing the Triangle button in the right place. You have a nice selection of gadgets to use, your spider sense tells you when to dodge, and your basic attacks work as your principle means of damaging enemies. Then there are stealth sections, some of which need to be handled without anybody seeing you, and others are optional. The latter is great, as you can be stealthy if you wish (and wrapping enemies up in a web is a very satisfying move,) but Spiderman is good enough in combat that you never feel like you’ve ruined it by making a mistake with your sneaking.

The game is very well presented. The graphics are great, particularly in the cut scenes, and while the sound won’t surprise anybody it is thematic enough and does the job. The format of the video game gives the plot enough space to develop some of the characters beyond what a film would allow, and enhances the experience as a result. We all know Otto Octavius will eventually become Dr Octopus, for example, but having Peter Parker working closely with him in the first section of the game shows a gradual descent into an egomaniacal madman born out of desperation and betrayal, rather than the result of a tragic accident that usually ends up with the afflicted party becoming a Supervillain. The plot is genuinely sad in places, amusing in others, and the ending fits the tone of what the Marvel Universe has become in the last two decades.

All in all, a fantastic game that I have no difficulty in recommending to anybody.

Final Score: 5/5. Beyond excellent.

Last Week's Games: Crash Bandicoot and Commandos

After getting to the end of Spiderman last week, I felt like playing something a little bit different, so I had a go with Crash Bandicoot on the PS4. I remember playing this for a bit just after Christmas, and a more level-based platforming mentality was what I needed after clearing an open world game! What I didn’t remember is how frustratingly hard the game is. Running around and spinning in to things is fine, but the challenge of the game is very often in its precision platforming. It’s difficult enough to do this in a 2D game, but in Crash Bandicoot, which doesn’t have the openness often found in 3D games but still requires you to have some depth perception in order to place your jumps correctly, it’s very difficult. I die a lot in Crash Bandicoot, and most of the time it’s because I’ve missed a jump, or mistimed a trap. And as I play through the game, I wonder if I’m enjoying it. I guess I am – I keep coming back to it,– but am I going to want to find all the collectables after I’ve beaten the game? Given how hard it is just to get through the game – and bearing in mind that at the time of writing I’m currently stuck on the Road to Nowhere level; if you know, you know – I’m thinking probably not.

Presumably Crash Bandicoot was modelled after
whoever designed the save menu...

One thing about Crash Bandicoot I’m definitely not enjoying is the save menu. In any other game, the save and load menus are separate, right? Not in Crash. In Crash, the four save files are on one screen, and you have to press the Square button to save the game, and the X button to load it. Because of this, there have been a few times where I’ve cleared a very difficult level and gone to save my progress, only to accidently load the game at an earlier point. I’m guessing it’s kept the control scheme of the game it was remastered from, but the point of re-releasing an updated game is to address points like dodgy save menus; that was an asinine thing to leave in!

I’ve also been playing Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, an old PC game on my laptop. I remember playing and loving the demo of this in 1998, and while games have come on a bit since then, it’s still a pleasure to play now, if a little frustrating at times. If you’ve never played it, it’s a World War II game where you take a team of 2-5 commandos out on a strategic mission, usually to blow something up or assassinate a target. You command the soldiers sneaking around various environments, and have to figure out the gaps in the enemy defences so you can infiltrate and complete your objective. Each of your soldiers has a particular set of skills that they will need to employ at some point: the Sapper, for example, handles the explosives, the Sniper takes out enemies from a huge distance, and the Driver is the only one who can handle vehicles and gun nests. Your men handle some serious weapons but the emphasis is on stealth; they can’t take much damage before they die and it is necessary for all your soldiers to survive to complete the mission.

This is the bit I'm stuck on!

I’ve had a really good time with Commandos so far and it’s been an absolute pleasure to go through these missions that are tough but nonetheless fair. Unfortunately I have run in to a problem that I expect is due to compatibility; I got as far as the 6^th mission to find that the game freezes up every ten minutes or so, and the only way to exit the game at that point is to restart my laptop. Now, there is a Legacy version packed in with the purchase that I’m assuming addresses some of these issues, indeed it seems I have been playing it at some point because there are saved files within. But it looks like I’m going to have to do the fourth and fifth mission again, and given the faff it took to beat those levels, it’s not something I’m excited about doing at this point!

Last Week's Games: Cluckles' Adventure, Spiderman, and making DnD characters.

After getting nearly half way through the year and only beating one game, suddenly I find I’ve beaten two games in one week!

Chickens can stick to walls, who knew?

The first was Cluckles’ Adventure, which I beat early on in the week with all the stars and wrote a review for it later in the week. You can read it here! I’ve talked about Cluckles often enough in the blog, but I have a few additional points I’d like to make here First, I think it’s absolutely brilliant that the game is simple enough that anyone can pick it up and play. It’s not a hard core game, far from it, but it’s also not a cow clicker that relies on micro-transactions. Gamers can play the game, partners can play the game, children can play the game, parents can play the game – there aren’t enough games like this these days, and it’s great that not only does Cluckles’ Adventure have the potential to engage a wider audience than core gamers, but does it with a refreshingly simple idea.

That being said, I was hoping to get all the achievement tokens for this game and was a little disappointed when I didn’t get the achievement for collecting all the stars, which is the last one. I left this out of the review as it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of playing the game, but apparently I’m not the only one whose achievements have bugged out so, if you’re in to that sort of thing, keep it in mind.

(Incidentally, I only usually think about achievements if I’ve got a hope of getting them all. If some of them are tied up in multiplayer I’m probably not going to worry too much about it!)

I did most of the last half of the game in this suit.

The second was Spiderman on the PS4. As some of you who have been following my blog for a while will know, I’ve had a lot of fun with this game, and while it’s ended at the right time and not outstayed its welcome, I was very pleased to have reached the end of it. I’ve written the review for this one as well; I shall check it over in the next few days and hopefully have it out on Friday. There’s more to do in the game – I can replay the game in New Game + mode and aim to beat it on Ultimate Difficultly, and then there’s the DLC as well – but for now I’m happy to put Spiderman to bed and play another game.

Also when I’ve had some time in the week I created a new Dungeons and Dragons 5e character: Patrin of the Great Church of Torm. This is a Dragonborn Tempest Cleric. Am I going to use him in a game? I hope to be able to at some point but there aren’t many games around at the moment and I doubt I’d have time to play them even if they are!

He probably looks like this.

I’m mentioning it because I’ve got a way of building characters that makes the process in itself quite fun: I roll randomly for the Character Traits, Ideals, Bonds and Flaws. I’ve also been using the tables in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything that you can use to randomly determine some specifics of your background, i.e. your parents and your reasons for taking up your career or class. Rolling for these characteristics can often lead to stiff little sentences on your character sheet, but what I like to do is treat them as raw data, from which I can process a story that makes sense.

I don’t usually bother with this when I’m creating a character for 5e, simply because the bulk of my experience in playing it has come from the Black Country Roleplaying Society, and things like traits, bonds and flaws tend to come out during the course of the game which you’re only usually in for about eight weeks anyway. But what I’ve got with Patrin is a character whose background I’ve created before the fact, and can implement as much or little of it as required into the game, with only a minor tweak for settings if necessary.

I’m not expecting a huge amount of free time next week, so we’ll see what happens.