This has been a busy week for me with birthday arrangements,
so I’ve not found much time to play many games – and the one I managed was
another pick-up-and-play job.
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| How many of you have wondered what Goro is packing down there? |
I speak of course of Mortal Kombat, where after trying for
weeks to beat the game with Scorpion, I finally managed to do it with Johnny Cage.
It’s been an interesting journey for me since I have been recognising a lot more
of the technical aspect of the game, rather than just brutalising the opponents,
fun though that is. In Cage’s case, what won it for me was his special moves – for
their additional effects as much as their damage. As with most of the characters,
using them is not without risk, as they don’t return to their ready positions
for a second or two, which makes them vulnerable to reprisals. With Cage, the
Shadow Kick gives a great knockback effect, but if your opponent blocks it,
they can very easily follow through with additional attacks. The Force Ball,
however, won the game for me, because it stuns your opponent for a precious moment
for you to either get your bearings or launch a follow-up attack. I never even
did the split punch, as the command for it is fiddlier than the version that
appeared on the Sega Megadrive and it was rarely useful.
As usual, the end of the game came down to the last credit
(I wouldn’t have it any other way!) and a lot of it depends on what Shang Tsung
morphs in to on the final level, but I managed to come through and beat the
game. Cage’s ending, while not canon, nonetheless is representative of the
direction his character made in the later editions of the game – in spirit, if
not in activity!
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| The Naga Temple. Might need to grind some XP before I tackle that bit again. |
About a week ago I had a go with Might and Magic X on my laptop.
Might and Magic sounds right up my alley in terms of game theme, but I’d never
really played one before because the reviews I’d seen on the game were coming up
at the bottom end of average at best. However, the games in the series were on
sale, I bought it, and the other week I played it. I quite liked it, as well.
It’s a role-playing game that basically works on a grid; even though it is a first-person
game, the game works by moving your characters to certain squares on the grid
and filling in the map from your line of sight as they go. On the one hand this
is unrealistic, on the other hand, I quite like games that remember they’re
only games, so I ran with it and was pleasantly surprised with how much fun I
was having. The nearest game I’ve played to this so far has been the Legend of
Grimrock, but the difference here is that the game progresses when you act, so
whatever you can see will only move when you move. This works well for me as it
gives me time to figure out what to do, as opposed to dealing with Grimrock’s
horribly clunky interface in real time. Whether I’ll see it through to the end
or not, I don’t know – it’s actually quite rare for me to do that with RPGs, as
regular readers of the blog will know – but I’ve enjoyed my time with it so far
and I hope I continue to do so.
I played Syndicate at some point as well and managed to get
through the level where you must make your way through the Downzone. This is
interesting as you can no longer rely on your hacking powers to kill your
enemies, as the better ones are shut down. It also ended in a boss battle where
the enemy uses stealth, which took a few goes, mainly because he explodes when
he dies, and because I didn’t realise this, he killed me too the first few
times. It took the story in a direction where, as I’m sure is quite common in
Cyberpunk games, the lines between good and evil are blurred, and you don’t
know who to trust – a familiar trope, but it works well for these games.
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