Sunday 12 January 2020

Last Week's Games: Aracania, 8-Bit Armies, Assassin's Creed 2, Trivial Pursuit, Codenames, Labyrinth, One Night Ultimate Werewolf, Hey! That's My Fish


As I’ve been off on Christmas Holidays for the last couple of weeks, I’ve had more than the usual amount of time to play games! There’s been quite a few of them so I’ll be brief:
At least the guy begins the game equipped for his
supposed profession - shepherd.
On the PS4, I’ve been playing Arcania. This is a grim dark western Role-Playing Game, of little surprise to anybody familiar with The Witcher or the Elder Scrolls. This has been a mixed bag for me so far. There are some major flaws in the game, not the least of them that the cut scenes don’t work. I thought this was deliberate when I first booted the game and started playing as a King in the middle of a nightmare, then woke up a few minutes later as some rustic pretty boy whose name I don’t know and had no greater aspirations than to perform a few fetch quests and marry his sweetie-pie. But then, after going through what I presume was the magic tutorial in which I defeated a giant beetle-like monster, the game jumped straight to the adventure being on a different island altogether, a malevolent force (of Paladins?) having apparently invaded your home and killed everybody there. I didn’t see any of this. Also, by the standards of what I expect from roleplaying games, Arcania is very basic. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing as it sustains under its own weight, but people who play these types of games may be expecting a little more. Nonetheless, I’ve enjoyed my time with it so far and I may see it through to the end!
On my laptop I’ve been mainly playing 8-Bit Armies. I beat another couple of missions on the Renegade faction. I like that the game is structured in this way, because it gives me a definite start-stop mentality; I can play it for a bit and then stop without necessarily having to carry on for ages. With a sometimes very busy schedule, this can be a blessing indeed!
The Ultimate Faffing About Franchise!
On the Xbox 360, I’ve been playing Assassin’s Creed 2. I started this a couple of years ago and didn’t get very far. This was during the time where I was trying to play one new game every week; AC2 was my new game for that week but I don’t seem to have played it much beyond the first couple of hours. I wasn’t far off beating the first Assassin’s Creed game at that point and perhaps I was a little “Assassin’s Creed”ed out to put much time in to it’s sequel, but I’m enjoying it now. It’s a good game, hopefully I’ll see it through to the end as well!
Finally, we had a few Board Games! At Fran’s birthday party, we played a mixture of Harry Potter and Friends Trivial Pursuit. We didn’t have a board; we just asked each other the questions and I surprised a few people with my knowledge of Harry Potter! I didn’t even touch the Friends cards; I’m not saying I’ve never watched it, but I don’t know enough about it to be good at trivia questions. We also had a go at Codenames, which everybody likes; it’s a very simple concept – Word Association meets Spy Networks – and you can have a lot of people playing so everybody’s enjoying themselves!
I was so close! (Blue.)
But Kirsty (Red) was closer...
Later in the week we had our own games night around our flat with Fran and Phil, where we played a few games. Labyrinth is an interesting game where you must search for six treasures in a constantly shifting maze, then return to your starting block. It was a surprisingly competitive game, which Kirsty eventually won, but not before I’d embarrassed myself by playing the choral introduction to Inside by Stiltskin prior to making what I thought was the winning move – only to find out it wasn’t. We also played One Night Ultimate Werewolf, which was ok and put Fran in mind of a game she runs with her Youth Theatre group called Mafia. We rounded it off with Hey! That’s My Fish, which is an old favourite, if surprisingly competitive and is always a nice one to come back to.
I’m back at work next week, let’s see what I have time for!
 

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