I knew it! I knew it was a good idea to hold on to Lego Star
Wars: The Complete Saga. I knew I’d want to come back to it eventually!
As regular readers will know, my daughter Jessie has recently
taken an interest in Star Wars. She’s now watched all nine mainline films and a
lot of the Clone Wars series, and last I looked she was going through the Lego
Star Wars series as well. At some point, I asked her if she wanted to play Lego
Star Wars with me on the Xbox 360. She did, and thus began my next trek through
the Star Wars Saga…
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We haven't even touched
Free Play mode yet... |
In all honesty, this is one of the many things that Lego games
were designed for – a safe, easy game aimed at younger players, but enough implied
humour to entertain older gamers, and collections and achievements for the hardcore
completionists. If you’ve been following my blog long enough you’ll remember that
this is one of the few games I’ve actually managed to complete 100%, so there’s
nothing left for me to do in the game now – except to guide my young daughter
through the game. It will take a while before she builds up the skill and dexterity
needed to handle games much more intense than this, but Lego Star Wars is
designed almost perfectly. Jessie doesn’t like fights – at least, not ones where
she doesn’t know she can win – and is happy to let me handle most of the
enemies. Instead, she likes using the force on the build-its, and the droid
characters to do their various utility functions in the game. She’s still got a
role to play in the game, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be the combat,
which she can do when pressed and really enjoys piloting the vehicles. She’s less
fond of the vehicle levels, and there’s some tricky platforming sections she
had to drop out of the game to allow me to complete. She also absolutely refused
to take part in the section from Revenge of the Sith where Anakin fights Obi-Wan.
But ultimately gaming is and always has been a large part of my life, and it’s
lovely to be able to share some of that with Jessie.
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Hagravens start out tough, but can be
dispatched with a well-placed hit... |
The other game I’ve been playing for far too long over the
last few weeks is Skyrim, and I’ve reached as deep into the game as I’ve ever
managed before. It certainly requires some pacing! I became briefly involved
with a discussion on Facebook about the quality of the game; it’s obviously
very good but some questions were raised about the fact that there is so much optional
content to pursue. I understand what they were going for; the mainline quest is
what you must complete to beat the game but at the same time there are other
situations in Skyrim and other stories to be told. If the aim was to increase
the immersion of the game though, it doesn’t really work, as it requires you to
suspend your disbelief that the main quest is happy to wait around for you to
do it while you look for ten bear pelts, or get involved in some other side
quests that have absolutely nothing to do with it. I also find myself spending
a significant amount of time trying to sell or store all my loot, so I don’t overextend
my character’s weight limit! For these reasons, I tend to like Skyrim best when
I can set myself a goal – clear out a dungeon, resolve this particular quest,
that sort of thing – and can therefore keep the game going, rather than be overwhelmed
by how much there is to do. In terms of scope, yes, Skyrim is amazing. But does
a world really want to wait around for you to happen to it?
You may also have noticed that there was no painting blog
for December. Sorry about that! Through all the things I had to do during that
month, painting was the last thing I wanted to be doing. I have been working on
something for this month which I’m hoping to finish in time.
And there’s a very special blog coming this Sunday…
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