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:
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| 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!
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| 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!
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| 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!
