I spent most of last week playing games that, for me at
least, were new…
Fallout 4 had been talked up by the various pundits I follow
on YouTube, and I’ve always enjoyed the Fallout games to a certain extent
though I’ve only seen one of them through to the end (Fallout 3, if you want to
know,) so I bought it last year and have just got around to playing it! I’m
enjoying it so far, the settlements bring something new to the series and I
also like how the VATs system doesn’t stop the game completely, forcing you to
make snap decisions as to where to call your shots. The plot is interesting,
starting before the nuclear war and showing a time where everything was all
sweetness and light, though it gets dark very quickly. I don’t know that I’ll
be able to suspend my disbelief that, on a quest to find your son, you quickly
get side-tracked in to doing quests for Non-Player Characters, but heading
straight to the place I was told he was resulted in me getting killed as it was
too high-level for my character, forcing you to “game” it and build up your
skills and hit points.
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| Screenshot taken from a version I don't have. |
I’m also not sure about levelling up; as with previous
games, you level up and pick a perk, except that in Fallout 4 all the perks are
shown from the beginning along with the characteristic it relates to. You can
also choose to increase a statistic. This doesn’t restrict you too much to
begin with but later the perks become tied up in your abilities being at a
certain level. I find this to be a double-edged sword: on one hand it stops you
choosing perks that it wouldn’t make sense for your character to be able to do;
on the other hand, with all the perks mapped out it’s hard to justify aiming for
them either, which I find a little more restrictive. But I’ll keep going and
see what we get.
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| Bright and colourful, like every game should be. |
I bought Putty Squad on the PS4 completely blind; I had no
idea what it was or whether it was any good. My motivation for buying is that I
wanted something I could play when my three-year-old daughter was around. Most
games I play have mature themes, and while I don’t necessarily buy into the
idea that video games cause children to be disturbed or violent, I want her to
enjoy them as well – which she’s not going to do if I’m trudging through a
post-apocalyptic wasteland, as she can’t relate to that in any meaningful way!
So I had a go with Putty Squad. My first impression was that it was a PS1 game,
given the graphics, frame rates and game-play which must at least have come
from a time prior to controls being standardised! I wasn’t far off; the
original game was released on the Super Nintendo. It’s interesting; you play as
a blob of putty who is trying to rescue his putty friends. It’s a platforming
game with a lot to do and an unconventional control system, but I couldn’t help
but wonder what it was doing as a physical release on the PlayStation 4!
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| Lictors... |
A while ago I bought Legacy of Dorn: Herald of Oblivion. I played
it this week; if you could imagine Space Hulk as a choose your own adventure
book, it’s basically that. It’s presented well, and has you initially searching
for your squad on the space hulk. There’s a basic combat system that has more
in common with things like Phantasy Star than anything else, and an odd Purity
system where certain choices are restricted depending on how you’ve conducted
yourself in the plot. However, as the former resulted in a cheap death (if your
combat system relies on random number generation, don’t put a turn limit on the
battles!) I didn’t remain engaged for long.
I carried on with Wolfenstein 3D too; I’m not far from the
end of the game now. I’ve not got much more to say about it so I’m going to try
to beat it and leave any future remarks for a review, but I’m glad I’m still
enjoying it!
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