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| As with the later Doom, the chaingun eats up a lot of ammo... |
The first one was Wolfenstein 3D on my laptop. This one is
often regarded as the Grandfather of first-person shooters, and while it might
have been the first game that kicked off a huge part of what mainstream video
games eventually became, it hasn’t aged particularly well. You run through the
halls and rooms of a grey castle, shooting Nazis and collecting treasure. It
works, and it is fun. The level design has a certain “Dungeons and Dragons” sensibility
to it, and it’s challenging enough on the right level. But when all the levels
look the same with very little variety in what you’re doing, it’s hard to think
of a part of the game I’ve played that I would classify as “memorable.”
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| Robert Foster and Joey. |
I’ve also been playing Beneath a Steel Sky. This was a game that
I got for free on my GOG account, for some reason, and had never touched it in
that time. From the occasional coverage from Jim Sterling, I knew that it was a
Point and Click adventure, but unsure as to whether I had the patience, I didn’t
bother with it for the longest time. But I’m playing it now, and it’s a pretty
good adventure; it was developed by Revolution who also did Broken Sword, so it
was interesting to see the contextual mouse system being developed, even if it
was in its infancy back then. It’s pretty good, amusing in the right places,
but it has the same problem that most games of its time had – if you can’t work
out the puzzle, the whole game grinds to a halt. This has happened to me at
least once, where I had to use a guide to figure out what to do next, only to
find I had to talk to a character I had no practical reason to talk to at that
point. Nonetheless, I hope I get to the end of it!
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| Hands up who remembers THAT music... |
On the WiiU, I’ve been playing Super Castlevania IV. This is
a game I played a while ago, as my mate Matt had it on the Super Nintendo; it’s
arguably as good as the Castlevania series ever achieved and certainly an
entertaining game after all this time. A nice variety of enemies, tricky
platforming sections, and bosses that you should never be able to beat makes
for a fun time, marred only slightly by some cheap deaths and odd checkpoint placement.
It works especially well with the WiiU’s internal saving system, and I’m enjoying
playing through it again, if only to give myself some ideas on what I might develop
in my own DnD campaigns in future!
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| Spiders. It had to be spiders, didn't it? |
I also played Torchlight on the Xbox 360. This was a free
download with Games with Gold, and while I’d already bought it on the PC I
thought the Xbox would be a more convenient platform to give it a go. It’s a
dungeon-basher, with a lot of things to loot, an interesting “Pet” mechanic and
a linear and standard storyline. It’s been fun so far, but it hasn’t got the depth
of many of the RPGs I play, and it doesn’t look like I’ll be doing much more
than getting through to the end of the game. I’ll stick at it for a bit, but I
don’t know, I might have wanted a bit more than this. Still, I didn’t pay for this
version of it, so I guess it’s OK!
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| Custodes. A pain in the bum to run or fight. |
Finally, I’ve been playing The Horus Heresy: Legions on my phone.
It took me a while to get back in to it, but I got there in the end! I’ve
joined a new lodge as well – emperors Finest. The reason for this was that my
previous lodge, the Emperor’s Daggers, was full of dead accounts. I’d love to
be able to win some points for the team in the events, but the Adeptus Custodes
cards are very fiddly and I’m not sure yet how I can use them effectively.
Let’s see what next week brings, and whether I can finish
some of these games!
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