I didn’t get a huge amount of time to play games last week, but that’s OK since I didn’t talk about many of the games I’d played the week before either, since I went off on one about luck vs skill. So, here’s what I’ve been up to the last couple of weeks:
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| He looks a bit like a young Domhall Gleeson, funnily enough... |
I bought a few new games for the PS4 and played Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order. This is an interesting game set in between the Clone Wars[1] and the Galactic Civil War[2], where you play a young former Padawan[3] initially trying to hide from the empire, but early in the game joins up with a former Jedi trying to re-build the Jedi Order. As this story pre-dates the original films where this hasn’t happened, I can guess it’s not going to work out quite the way they’d hoped, but in the meantime we’ve got a solid character action game that has often been called the Dark Souls of Star Wars. I can sort of see what they mean, although the setting is Star Wars rather than the grim-dark gothic fantasy of the Dark Souls games – it’s challenging with a priority around parrying attacks. But there’s other influences here that are well worth keeping an eye on: 3D Zelda-like puzzle dungeons, Uncharted-style platforming and Ubisoft collect-o-thons. All this set to the Star Wars background is pretty good if you like that kind of thing, and even if you don’t, it doesn’t seem like a bad place to start. I look forward to seeing where it’s going!
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| The dungeon changes each time you play... |
On my laptop I’ve been playing Diablo. I bought this game a long time ago and I remember enjoying it but never reaching to the end, nor do I have any idea how far I got originally! I re-bought it on GOG at some point last year (even if I knew where the original disc was, I doubt I could get it to run on a laptop built nearly 20 years later, so I went for a version that I could entertain a reasonable expectation that it would work!) with the Hellfire expansion. Apparently, this puts more dungeons into the game – extra content is always welcome! But the other addition to the game is the Monk, who expands the roster of playable characters. I ignored this and played as the Sorcerer, and had a fine old time bashing the first four levels of the dungeon. It took me a while to remember that games this old didn’t necessarily have an autosave feature, so there have been a few times when I’ve had to replay substantial sections of the game for forgetting to save it, but other than that it’s been a pleasure casting spells at tougher enemies, hitting weaker ones with my staff, and managing my resources. The Sorcerer is a tough class to play because he doesn’t have a lot of close combat ability and can find himself overwhelmed in tougher boss situations – I’d long gone past the Butcher before I finally had the staying power to beat him. This is counterbalanced by the fact that he has a lot of area-of-effect spells so large numbers of enemies aren’t the threat they might otherwise be. Let’s see if I can overcome the finnicky mid-90s interface to get to the end of the game this time!
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| It's cute, if nothing else! |
A while ago Kirsty got me Super Kirby Clash on the Nintendo
Switch, and I had a go with it for a while last week while Jessie was around. This
is a game where you play as one of four difference kinds of class (fighter,
defender, alchemist and wizard) of whatever Kirby is supposed to be, fighting a
large boss-like monster. It’s essentially a mobile game on the switch and the
fighting works well enough though I have a feeling I’ll hit a wall where it
will be necessary for me to pay money to progress any further (it was a free-to-play
game.) It plays OK, and I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn’t
got Super Smash Bros Ultimate in the Switch as well – a better game that
handles in much the same way.
[3] Learner Jedi
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