Last Week's Games: Baldur's Gate, Doom and Dark Void

 This week I’ve mainly been playing Baldur’s Gate on my laptop. I mentioned last week that I’m enjoying this game a lot more now that I’m in the frame of mind to go around the different areas grinding for Experience Points, but first impressions of the game are a little misleading in this respect, as there is really only one way you can go at the start of the game – the Nashkel Mines is the first major dungeon – and if you don’t go there reasonably quickly, certain party members leave you behind. I wouldn’t want to have to handle the first part of the game without Jaheira’s healing powers! Now that I’m well into the game, having cleared the Cloakwood mines – the second major dungeon – I’m touring round the Southern part of the world map, trying to tie up all my loose ends before I head to Baldur’s Gate itself.

Apparently he gets much
better later on...

The other thing to keep in mind was that while I was initially willing to allow some of my party members to die, I’m building a party around the six I have now that I’m happy with: The main character is a Paladin called Roisin, who I’ve given a two-weapon fighting style. Imoen, of course, is essential for her trap-finding skills and as her main weapon is her bow, she also serves as most of the party’s artillery. I picked up Branwen in Nashkel, and I held on to Jaheira as well – multiple healers in the party give it a little more longevity, especially in the later areas of the game where you need to cast several healing spells to heal a party member completely. Dynaheir is my wizard, and she is at her most useful when her area-of-effect spells flatten a combat encounter before it even starts. Finally, I have Rasaad, a monk who is new to the Enhanced edition of the game I have. He can do a decent amount of damage up close, but doesn’t seem to be able to take much himself – I had to use magic items[1] to bring his Armour Class down[2] to a reasonable level, and even then, he appears to get hit a lot and doesn’t have a particularly high hit dice.[3] Nonetheless, I’m happy with the party I’ve got now and I’ll hopefully see it through to the end!

I mean, I'm assuming this is an updated
version of the Revenant...

Elsewhere, I’ve been playing Doom on the PS4. I’ve had this a while and I’ve just gotten around to playing it; I’m liking it so far! While the graphics and gameplay have obviously been enhanced by increasingly good technology since the 1993 originals I still play from time to time, the fast and frantic game play is still there and makes for some intense, thrilling battles. Hit-scan weapons are thankfully a thing of the past, but it’s a lot harder to dodge projectiles unless you’re really on it with your strafing! I’m not very far into the game yet, but it’s one I will come back to when I need a cathartic shooting spree. I don’t have a PlayStation Plus account though, so you’re unlikely ever to see me on Multiplayer.

Has the same 7th gen problem of having
unnerving eyes...

Finally, I downloaded and played Dark Void on Xbox Games with Gold on the Xbox 360. This is an interesting game that looks like it’s going to be a jetpack-based shoot-em-up, but then the main plot kicks in and it’s a 7^th-gen cover-based shooter with some jetpack elements added later. It’s based just before the World War II, where your plane crashes somewhere over the Bermuda Triangle and you find yourself under attack from strange metal beings called The Watchers. It’s alright; it’s tried to implement verticality into cover-based shooting which was a brave move, and I probably would have liked it a lot more were it not for the fact that I’ve just played through Uncharted 2. I’ve heard that Dark Void was something of a let-down in its potential, but I’ll try to beat it and see for myself!

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[1] Monks can’t usually wear armour.

[2] Baldur’s Gate is based on the second edition of Dungeons and Dragons’ weird THACO – To Hit Armour Class Zero – system, and any enhancement to your armour class goes down rather than up.

[3] D8, I think.

Backlog Beatdown: Being Among Thieves with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves

I played through Uncharted 2: Among Thieves as part of the Nathan Drake Collection on the PS4, so please note that my notes refer to that version of the game and completely ignore the multiplayer functionality on the PS3 release. I felt it had been long enough since my playthrough of the first game to give this one a go, and here’s what I, er, charted…

My hands were sweating in this bit...

Uncharted 2 is one of those rare games that surpasses its predecessor in one way: The story. Mechanically, there’s not much in Among Thieves that wasn’t in Drake’s Fortune; there are a few new weapons here and there, but other than that it’s functionally identical. And on the surface, it appears to carry a similar story – a search for treasure, exploring forgotten tombs, betrayal, car chases, train rides, the discovery of an ancient power best left forgotten, and even a couple of things that weren’t taken from the Indiana Jones franchise![1]

*MAJOR SPOILERS COMING UP IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH*

In case it wasn't blatantly obvious
where this was going...

But it’s the characters that make the story this time, as they are well written and performed, and really bring the tale to life by developing along the way. Nathan Drake’s dialogue is performed by the always-excellent Nolan North, who improvised a lot of the lines for a more organic performance. The primary antagonist, Lazarevic, is as “tropey” as they come, but builds up a maniacal desperation that makes all the difference. Harry, the double-crosser, betrays Drake early in the plot, and while he won’t admit he was wrong to do this, it becomes increasingly obvious in every encounter you have with him that Harry is in way over his head without his old friend. Chloe, the sultry femme fatale sidekick, is a better Catwoman than most interpretations of Catwoman I’ve seen – ostensibly friendly, but you’re never quite sure of her motivations or whose side she’s on until right at the end. And it would have been far too easy to create a jealous love triangle between Chloe and Elena from the previous game, but this never really happens – the two girls bond over Drake’s insufferable narcissism and lack of forward planning. Elena, for her part, keeps the heroes on the moral high ground when they’re at their lowest point and ready to give up. This does a fine job of keeping the stakes high, which is particularly relevant in those set-pieces where Drake is running from a rapidly-crumbling bridge or train, getting himself into situations which no one should be able to survive – but he does, because the story is presented in a way that gives him something to live for.

*SPOILERS OVER*

A beautiful mess.

Uncharted 2 is absolutely gorgeous for a 7^th-generation game, with particular care gone into the scenery. Considering that you experience comparatively little of the scenery presented to you in the game, a lot of attention to detail went into making the places you visit look alive. The sound design is bang on point, with high praise for the voice / mocap actors in particular, and the gameplay is on par with the first Uncharted game. This brings with it a few niggles – I still don’t know why the grenades are mapped to L1 by default. Gun battles are telegraphed by going into areas littered with strategically placed chest-high walls, and the game has a habit of providing the situational weapons at precisely the point you need them: sniper rifles for long-range battles, rocket launchers for heavily armoured enemies etc. This isn’t really a bad thing, as not having access to these weapons at the point you need them would mean backtracking at best and de-railing[2] the game at worst, but it breaks immersion somewhat!

Ultimately, though, Uncharted 2 is a very competently designed game that is well worth at least one play through. It’s a curious situation for me: I liked it better than the first game purely for the story, but is that an appropriate benchmark for a successful game? Given that, unlike the first game, I’d love to come back and play Uncharted 2 again at some point in the future, I reckon it is.

Final Score: 4/5: Great game.

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[1] Yes, if you’re wondering, I borrowed that joke from Yahtzee Croshaw.

[2] No pun intended!

Last Week's Games: Baldur's Gate, Uncharted 2 and Ultra Street Fighter 2

It’s been a while since my last mainline blog. Nothing happened that specifically made me stop, but there were a couple of times where I found myself wanting to play games more than write about them so that’s what I did. And I’ve built up a backlog of things to talk about as well; so big that talking about them all wasn’t the right approach. I could talk about how I’d beaten Crash Bandicoot 2 and Skyrim, but both of my reviews are available if you want to read about that. No, instead I’ll talk about the games I’ve been playing recently.

To try to manage the backlog of games, (fighting for a lost cause, I know, but I might as well try!) I find myself organising the kind of game I’m playing across different platforms. I might have an RPG on one system, a platformer/action game on another, a fighting game on another, and a strategy game on yet more. This works well; it can take a while to settle into the routine between beating games but once I do, I’m a lot more focussed.

Hopefully the map will be a lot more
full by the time I'm done.

For my long-form RPG I’ve come back to an old save file on Baldur’s Gate on my laptop. This is a game I’ve started and re-started many times over the years, and I’ve always enjoyed the first few hours before drifting off to another game. The game is not particularly well-balanced and unless you think to save in the middle of an area or dungeon, you can potentially lose anything up to an hour of play for having your protagonist or a favourite party member die. But I think what frustrates me most is that I always feel like the player character (A paladin, in this case!) and the party are always under-levelled for the mainline quest; I’ll go to deal with whatever I’m supposed to be dealing with and be destroyed within moments. There are also moments in the game where certain of the side quests and enemies are presented to you far sooner than you can deal with them. But this time around, I found myself thinking: “Hey, you’ve just beaten Skyrim. Whenever something was too difficult in Skyrim you’d go and clear another few dungeons to level up your abilities and get some more weapons! Just do that.” And then I knew where I was, and everything started to fall in to place. Hopefully this will keep me playing long enough to see it through to the end!

Chloe's a great character...

On the PS4 I’ve been playing Uncharted 2. This was my action-adventure game that, in a move typical of many 7^th-gen console games, are entertaining while they last but don’t take too long to beat. Some of you may remember that I played through the first Uncharted game the year before last; I enjoyed it at the time but felt that one play through was enough, and Uncharted 2 is shaping up to be much the same, with one exception: The story is much better. I’m all for keeping a tight focus on your plot, but having a well-performed cast of characters with conflicting interests and personalities, as well as having a betrayal and revenge saga alongside your quest for gold and glory, makes the game a lot more engaging. I’ve about three quarters of the way to the end at the time of writing and I’m hoping to beat it by the end of the month.

Zangief is much better in USF2, because
he has a special move that blocks projectiles
without losing ground.

And finally, on the Switch I’ve been enjoying Ultra Street Fighter 2: The Final Challengers. This is always a nice game to play with Jessie, but I’ve been playing through the game on the hardest difficulty with as many of the characters as I can. So far I’ve managed to beat it with the original eight Street Fighter 2 characters, and I’m always pleased to see that the endings have been modified slightly from their 4^th-gen counterparts – it gives something new to those of us who have been playing Street Fighter 2 for years. I also find myself spamming medium jump kick more than I ever did before!

Hopefully by next week I’ll have finished Uncharted 2, and I’ll tell you about that. See you then!

Backlog Beatdown: Crashing into more Bandicoots with Crash Bandicoot 2

Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back is a game Kirsty bought as part of the N-Sane Trilogy when she first had the PS4. I play Crash every now and again, usually as some sort of intermission between long-form RPGs and open world games! Regular readers may remember I beat the first Crash Bandicoot nearly two years ago, and after coming back to Crash Bandicoot 2 I reached the end of that a few weeks ago. Here’s what I found:

Watch out for that plant...

Crash Bandicoot is abducted by Dr Neo Cortex and instructed to retrieve 25 crystals for him so that Cortex can harness their power to stop a cataclysm caused by an up-coming alignment of planets. Crash must traverse 25 levels in search of these crystals, and hand them over to Dr Cortex. However, all is not as it seems, as Crash’s sister Coco warns him against Cortex and his former assistant, Dr Nitrus Brio, contacts Crash with an alternate plan… which path will Crash choose?

The Mascot Platformer was declining in popularity during the mid-late 90s but given that Crash was flying that flag for Sony’s PlayStation, it shared a remarkable number of the same tropes as Super Mario or Sonic the Hedgehog. The groundwork was set in the first Crash game – the characters, the villains, the basic gameplay loop – and Crash 2 was more of the same but expanded upon in ways that made the game better. In addition to everything he could do in the previous game, Crash also acquired a power slide and crawl move, which came in useful for certain puzzling sections of the game. Late in the game, Crash acquires a jetpack, which is a little fiddly to use but shakes the gameplay up a bit. And the post-game content contributes to the end as well – the “alternate plan” I referenced earlier involves getting all the gems – much harder than the crystals – which affects how the game ends when you defeat the final level.

As a tribute to my Dad's recollection of a 
Monty Python sketch, I called these hedgehogs:
"Spiny Norman."

Most of the levels in Crash 2 are designed with the 2.5D sensibility that worked well for the Crash Bandicoot series at the time. You run from one side of the level to the other, smashing all the crates, spinning, or dodging the enemies, picking up the crystals – they’re always in the path of the level and are impossible to miss – and defeating the bosses once every five levels or so, which are quite a bit easier than the first game. The levels require some quite precise platforming, and while there’s nothing as irritating as the bridge levels from the first game, there are certain sections where jumping on platforms that are ahead of you require some trial and error! The levels where you ride an animal for extra speed make a welcome return, as do the levels where you’re running away from a much larger obstacle – a giant polar bear or rock! The latter are hard because you are running into the screen in this case, and it’s very difficult to see where you’re going. It wobbles on the line between satisfyingly challenging and frustratingly hard, so while getting to the end of the game is far from impossible, I find that Crash is better enjoyed in small bursts. Having reached the end of the game, I have no desire to go back and find all the gems – I haven’t got anywhere near as much investment in this as Spyro!

Keep Rollin' Rollin' Rollin' Rollin...

The game is presented well; the graphics are fine, and the sound is good. The voice acting is in line with the larger-than-life cartoon characters of the 90s and works as well as it needs to. The plot is a little thin – it is obvious that a “betrayal” twist is on its way – but that’s hardly the point of a Crash Bandicoot game!

I enjoy Crash Bandicoot as a distraction from longer and more serious games, as I described above. But the frustrating difficulty makes it hard to enjoy as much as some other games I’ve been playing. Crash 2 is definitely better than its predecessor, and remains a good game, but for me, never quite reaches the levels of being a great game. I’ve enjoyed it – but that’s all I did.

Final Score: 3/5: Worth a look.

Last Week's Games: Painting Backlog, Necromunda, Spyro 2

The biggest thing that happened to me this week gaming-wise was completing the painting of my Space Hulk boxed set. I tend to keep anything I want to say about painting separate these days, so I’ve written a blog for them that you can read here. I’m mentioning it in this post because it inspired me to think about painting my models, how many of them I still have to do, and whether ever actually doing it is a realistic option for me.

Painted, and ready to play...

I’ve run into the same problem that every wargamer / hobby gamer runs in to at some point: The backlog. I’ve bought a lot of models from hobby shops in the past, most of them Games Workshop, some of them not, and for one reason or another never got around to painting them. The reason for this is mainly because I give priority to whatever army I’m currently working on, as there is a certain expectation that they will be painted should I ever wish to use them in a shop game. At least, that’s the case with Games Workshop, or Warhammer as the shops are called now. Other, independent stores may be a little more lenient about it but having all my models painted is a standard I set for myself during my time as staff. The box games that I’ve been buying have therefore taken a back seat. This changed during lockdown, where I had more than the usual amount of free time (though not much!) and once I’d painted all the models from the Black Legion force I was working on, I made a start on the Space Hulk set. You’d think, with not even 40 models in the set, it would have taken me a little less than eight months, but somehow that’s where we are. I paint intermittently; always have, always will. But that means that my backlog of models is taking a long time to get through.

So, what does that mean? Is clearing my backlog a realistic goal for lockdown? Possibly; it’s been going on for longer than I originally anticipated, and with the UK Conservative Government changing its strategy about as often as most people change their clothes, it could go on for a great deal longer before we’re finally clear of Covid-19. It’s not likely, though. I’ve got quite a few sets to get through! However, it may be possible to make a large dent in it. And that will be fine too.

Close Combat doesn't happen often,
but when it does, it's brutal!

With video games, there’s not much new happening this week. I’ve been playing Necromunda: Underhive Wars, reaching the part in the story campaign where the three factions make an uneasy alliance to reach their goal. I’ve got a fairly shrewd idea on how that’s going to work out for them, given that their alliance is about as stable as, well, the UK Conservative Government. It will be interesting to see how the story ends, I’m not too far away from it now – but as the missions take anything up to an hour and a half to beat, and that’s if you manage it first time, I need to make sure I’m giving myself enough time when I sit down to play. Even after all that, I’ve still got to go through the warband mode, which is the next step!

Struggled to find a screenshot of the
underwater levels from the PS4 version...

Time management is an easier task with Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage. I’m about halfway through the game now, having 100%ed at least half the levels on the Autumn Plains. It’s an absolutely beautiful game and is always a joy to play, and I’m enjoying the gimmicks and minigames that occur on almost every level which break up the gameplay quite nicely. I’m aiming for 100% completion for this one – none of the achievement trophies are tied up in multiplayer modes, so I could potentially manage it – so I feel absolutely no shame whatsoever in looking up how to do certain of the puzzles, which isn’t always obvious. Plus, it’s a great game to play when Kirsty and Jessie are around. Jessie likes the fact that Spyro can swim in this iteration of the game and loves playing around in the water on the Summer Forest level!

Last Week's Games: The Sexy Brutale, Necromunda, Spyro 2, Crash Bandicoot 2, Warhammer Quest, Camel Up

 I missed last week, sorry about that – certain things going on at home meant that writing blogs was the last thing I felt like doing! I’ve been playing quite a few games in the intervening time though, so here they are:

You can get this for the Switch too, apparently...

The Sexy Brutale is a heavily stylised and utterly brilliant puzzle-adventure game for the PC, whereby you play a priest (I think) at a masked ball where all the guests get murdered. You must figure out not who murdered the guests, but how – and put the mechanisms in place to prevent it from happening. It’s a brilliant idea and a good game, but the fact that I’ve had to look up a guide to get through certain parts makes me wonder whether I have the stomach for this sort of game anymore.

The Zip line provides some much-needed
mobility into the game...

I went back to Necromunda on the PS4. I wasn’t so keen on this when I first bought the game, but it’s grown on me a little bit now that I’ve figured out the key differences between this and Mordheim. It’s a lot less reliant on random number generation – it is there but it’s also a lot easier to set up high percent hit chances. In its stead, the game is a lot more about action economy; the winner of the battle will come down to who can do the most things per turn, so it’s worth getting a few kills in the isolated gangers as soon as possible.

Moneybags will teach you to swim -
for a price...

I’ve also started playing Spyro 2: Ripto’s Rage. Regular readers will remember that I enjoyed Spyro the Dragon hugely last year, and it is a pleasure to play this one. I’ve been playing it quite a lot lately and I’m not even 20% of the way through the game yet. I’ve noticed that some of the collectables – the real challenge of the Spryo games – are tied up in abilities acquired later in the game, so there’ll be some backtracking this time around. This is neither a good thing nor a bad thing; it’s nice to see the character progress, but it’s also nice to have all your abilities unlocked at the start of the game. We’ll see how it goes!

Watch out for that plant; it'll eat you.

On those occasions where the N-Sane trilogy has been in the PS4 disc drive, I’ve been playing Crash Bandicoot 2 as well. As with Spyro, it is a game I can play when my daughter’s around, and an experience I can share with my girlfriend who likes games but isn’t interested in war! It’s fun and frustrating in equal measure; the frustration at missing daft 3D platforming sections (which kill you far more than any enemy in the game, I think I can almost guarantee that!) has to be there for the payoff, but once you do beat it, there’s an immense feeling of satisfaction.

Can you flatten them all with an Area of
Effect spell before the fight even starts?

I continued to play Warhammer Quest on the PC. I have a feeling this is going to be one of those times where I love the game because it’s Warhammer, but I’m going to have to concede that the game itself isn’t that great. It feels a lot like a Baby’s First Dungeon Crawler game, where you have characters and abilities to use, dungeons to explore, treasure to acquire and monsters to slay – all of which becomes  easy once your characters get to a certain level! But sometimes that’s all I want out of a game, so I’ll keep playing!

Yes, there's a new edition out.
But I kind of prefer this box art...

Kirsty and I also had a go at Camel Up last week, a board game about betting on racing camels. I remember playing this at the UK Games Expo in 2015 and I enjoyed it a lot more this time around when I could take the time to figure out the mechanics of the game, and what we were supposed to be doing. As a one on one game, it’s great because each of us were constantly reacting to what the other was doing. With multiple players, it would be a very different beast as there’s a higher chance that our ideal actions would go before our turn came around.

I suspect most of what I say next week will be a continuation of this, if a little more focussed! See you then.

Last Week's Games: James Pond 2: Codename Robocod, Necromunda: Underhive Wars

 I’ve got quite a bit to say about the games I’ve been playing this week. I don’t know how much of it is going to make sense; I’m not very well today. But we’ll see how I get on:

The first thing I should say is last Friday I reached the end of the main campaign of Not Tonight; you can read my review here. I’ve enjoyed it, and it hasn’t outstayed its welcome so I might give the extra part of the game called One Love a go as well, but I haven’t got much more to say at this point.

I also reached the end of God of Word. As a game that I installed onto my laptop so that I’d have a game on there I could play without necessarily having to plug in my mouse, it certainly served its purpose, and I managed to spend quite a long time playing it over the last few weeks! I’m hopefully going to get a review out on Friday so I’m not going to say too much about it now, but it was a good time.

Back in the day when pickups increased your
score and didn't have to make any sense...

It was my birthday last Wednesday and my daughter Jessie bought me a game for the Nintendo Switch: James Pond 2: Codename Robocod. The James Pond series never really broke out of the fourth console generation (Megadrive / Super Nintendo) and hasn’t had the longevity of some of its contemporaries, but they’re still fun to play. A couple of my friends at school had Codename: Robocod, so I’ve played it a few times before, but never beaten it. It’s a side-scrolling platform game where you traverse colourful locations in Santa’s workshop, fighting your way through traps, hostile creatures and rescuing hostages. Interestingly, of all the James Pond games, it was Codename: Robocod that was ported and re-made onto several consoles after its generation, with some differences including level layout, music, and hostages. I have a vague memory of the hostages in the old versions of the game being penguins; these days they are Santa’s Elves – I suspect mainly because the penguins in the original game were a product placement for the McVities Penguin Bars, and the sponsorship deals have long since expired. The game was altered several times over the generations it was released on, so I don’t really know which version I’m playing – it could be that there was a new version entirely for the Switch!

I bet she's a sight for sore eyes...

Finally, on the PlayStation 4 I’ve been playing Necromunda: Underhive Wars. I’d been looking forward to this game for a long time and is one of the very few games in years I have bought close to release. I’d rather have got it on PC to tell you the truth, but for some reason it’s not designed to work on Windows 8.1 (My PC specs are fine in most other respects, but I wasn’t going to waste my money risking a purchase when it says on the Steam webpage it will only work on Windows 10.) So, I bought it on the PS4. Now, some of you will know that Mordheim: City of the Damned is one of my favourite games, and Necromunda looked like it was going to work much the same way but with guns. And it does – but there are other things going on as well. The campaign – the small amount of it I’ve played, anyway – is far more narrative than Mordheim, with each mission I’ve played so far supporting a plot point. I haven’t tried making my own gang yet, as the story mode drops you in with the Escher gang and presumably allows you to explore the other gangs (Goliaths and Orlocks) as you proceed. I’m not sure whether I like this or not – part of the fun of Mordheim for me was taking your warband through its own story and progression and having the occasional mission to do in between to move the plot along. I appear to have less agency over how the Necromunda gangs develop, but we’ll see how it goes. It may take some getting used to but I’m sure I’ll find the fun in it; it’s a GW game and I usually like those by default!

Last Week's Games: Injustice 2 and Mortal Kombat 2

I’ve been playing some fighting games last week, funnily enough…

Mad as a fish.

The main game I’ve been playing on the PS4 lately is Injustice 2, a fighting game based on one of the DC storylines. Years ago, in 2013 I played Injustice: Gods Amongst Us on the Xbox 360, and I really enjoyed it at the time – but this was before I was doing my blog anywhere near as regularly as I’m doing it now. In actual fact I only published five blogs that year, before the No Game New Year event really began to develop the drive and structure in my writing. The result is the position I find myself in, writing a 700-word blog every week as I’m playing the next-gen sequel to a pretty good fighting game. I’ve really enjoyed this one as well, not least because I’ve been able to play it with Kirsty – it’s not often that we play video games together, but when we do it’s a lot of fun. The thing is, we take very different approaches to playing through the game. I like to learn a few moves and combos, and some of the real fun in Injustice comes from finding the environment interactions and using them to great effect so I like doing that to and getting through the game that way. It works fairly well. Kirsty doesn’t necessarily know how to find all the special moves and combos but does know how to press all the buttons until something falls over, and it works about as well as playing methodically.[1] Of course, the Super Moves are spectacular and we really enjoy doing them, and seeing which character does what. Highlights include Green Lantern’s super move, which looks brutal, and Harley Quinn’s, which is quite representative of her madness even though she’s turned face for this game. At the time of writing, we’ve played through the story mode twice and got both endings, which I won’t spoil but it does a fine job of blurring the lines between morals and necessity. I’m also trying to play through Injustice 2’s equivalent of the Ladder mode – I thought they’d omitted this, but it turns out it’s in the Multiverse mode, and I’m playing through with each character to try to get their endings. So far, I’ve got six – but at the point I’ve got them all, I’ll consider the game “beaten” for my purpose.

I suspect that number of wins is going
to go down by quite a bit...

I haven’t been having quite as much success with Mortal Kombat II, though. The problem I’m having is quite common with the Mortal Kombat and Netherrealm games – horribly cheap difficulty spikes. The game requires you to beat all 12 playable fighters, to begin with. Notwithstanding the fact that most of the special moves don’t work properly as your opponents almost always block or dodge them, you can beat the required 12 fights without trying; even Shang Tsung is nowhere near as powerful as he was in the first game. Then you’re put against Kintaro, and you might as well go home at that point. Your attacks do half the usual amount of damage, his moves are disgustingly powerful, and he has a jump/stomp attack that you have about 1/14^th of a second to react to and is absolutely devastating if it hits. Even the usual cheap tactics of jump kicking doesn’t work well, since if you land too close to Kintaro he just picks you up and throws you. The only way I’ve found to beat him – and this has only happened once, not enough to win a match – is to freeze him with Sub-Zero, which leaves him open to an uppercut which is your most powerful attack. It works sparingly at best, since actually doing the freeze move with Sub-Zero leaves you open to the jumping stomp attack. This isn’t to say that Mortal Kombat II is a bad game; as a multiplayer experience it’s excellent and I have fond memories of playing this with my brother when we were both well into adult life. But it’s a very hard game in single player mode!

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[1] In our experience, anyway. Anyone who plays the game at a pro level might tell you something different but we’re a long way from that!

Last Week's Games: Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder, Injustice 2

This week I was delighted to return to the Black Country Roleplaying Society. I had to stop going for a while due to childcare issues, but currently neither Kirsty nor I are going to work in the usual sense so it’s not the issue it very often can be. The lockdown situation has caused a lot of restrictions on a great many aspects of life, but ironically in this case it’s freed me up a little.

This is what my character
will look like eventually...
or something like it.

So, it was a pleasure to be welcomed back, and I joined a Dungeons and Dragons game with the Odyssey of the Dragonlords setting. While the published player’s guide is quite insistent that it’s not based in Ancient Greece, that’s clearly where it’s drawn some of its inspiration. I created a female human ranger called Halia with the intention of making her into an Amazon later down the line; this happens at level three. At character creation, I like to roll up random personality traits, ideals, bonds and flaws from the Player’s Handbook, and also the background information from Xanathar’s Guide to Everything – this creates some instant background for the character which is surprisingly easy to tie into a motivation for becoming an adventurer. In this case, Halia was raised in a conclave, but at some point, was wrongly accused by an adventurer of a smuggling and assault, and did a year’s time before escaping with the assistance of another adventurer. This means she is wanted in one of the key cities of the game. Also, since I put charisma as her dump stat (currently at 9) I decided that during her incarceration she was badly burned on the side of her face and now has burn scars that she hides with her hair when she isn’t fighting. She’s also quiet, withdrawn and overeats (I rolled up a surprisingly high weight for her) so there’s some personal issues there, which I’m hoping will be addressed and maybe even resolved during the campaign. As for the adventure itself, it took a while to get going, but we ended up hunting a giant boar which had the potential to wipe any one of the party members if it managed to connect an attack. Unfortunately, it suffers from a problem that 5^th edition very often runs in to – action economy. As it’s only one giant boss monster against five characters, chances are we’ll drop it before it has a chance to do any significant damage, which we did at very little harm to us since when it managed to connect an attack, our Dungeon Master rolled spectacularly low on his damage roll. But we levelled up to second level, and I’m looking forward to seeing where this goes.

These provided more of a threat than the boss...

I ran into the same problem when I ran Pathfinder: Rise of the Runelords over the weekend. We’re in the fifth chapter out of six, and the dungeons in the adventure should be terrifying my players, but as they’re almost all hysterically overpowered, very little is presenting a challenge for them anymore. Yesterday, they fought what was supposed to be the hardest boss in the dungeon, but because of a combination fire snakes and some disgusting fighter feats, they dropped the boss in two turns and wrapped up the entire combat in three. I speak no exaggeration when I say the party have done more damage to themselves than I ever have!

In video games, I had a go with Injustice 2 on the PS4. It’s a fighting game featuring some DC Superheroes, a couple of Netherrealm’s characters, and whatever other major properties they license. I played the original game on the Xbox 360 and I really liked it; this version has more mechanics and strategies added – not necessarily a good thing for me because I’m awful at it – but I did note one of the most crucial improvements I’ve ever seen in a fighting game: The tutorial and training modes offer the option to view a training video to give a much better idea of what those moves and combos are supposed to look like, and give a better idea of the required timing! They require very fast presses though – I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get there.

Last Week's Games: Star Wars: Jedi: Fallen Order, Diablo, Super Kirby Clash

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:

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!

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!

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.

---

[1] Episodes 1-3

[2] Episodes 4-6

[3] Learner Jedi 

Backlog Beatdown: Being Arcane with Arcania

First, let me say that these notes refer to the PlayStation 4 version of Arcania. If you’re considering playing this game on a different platform, you may have a different experience to me, which is just as well really, because my experience of this game wasn’t great.

This is quite early on in the game when you're fighting
your enemies off with a... what is that? A stick?

Arcania is part of a series of games called Gothic, a collection of fantasy-themed Roleplaying games with perhaps a darker tone in terms of its design than the usual affair. You play as a nameless hero, who after having his village destroyed by a horde of enemies, vows to take revenge. This takes him on a quest across the lands to find the truth behind the attack, and the malevolent forces controlling it all. Nothing, of course, that we haven’t seen before.

One thing unique to this version of Arcania I certainly haven’t seen in any RPG since the 5^th generation of consoles is a game with no cutscenes. I thought this was deliberate at first, and quite liked it – a game that drops you straight into the action without faffing about with exposition, in medias res, and what appeared to be a nightmare sequence, no less? That was a great way to get into the game, and I was looking forward to seeing where it was going. Alarm bells started to ring, however, when I’d got past the first area of the game (basically a 1-2 hour tutorial,) to find the hero in a different area entirely with some hints that his home had been destroyed with nothing in between. I finished the set of caves that formed the dungeon and found the hero on a different island altogether. Nothing set this up; nothing explained what exactly happened and why. I surmised that there probably were cutscenes in the game at some point but for some reason hadn’t got as far as the PS4 port. A quick glance on Youtube confirmed my theory – I have an incomplete game here.

These wasp-like creatures are a
pain in the bum...

Nonetheless, I kept going, wanting to at least get to the end of the game and finish what I started. The game is… OK. It’s a pretty standard role-playing game that reminded me of a grim-dark version of Fable more than anything else. You can develop your character in fighting, ranged combat and magic, and while there is some overlap in how your invested skill points develop your character’s attributes, you’ll have to stick to one build or another if you want to maximise your stats; spreading them out across the board makes for a balanced but less-than-spectacular character! The quests are one fetch quest after another, or kill a certain monster, or number of monsters. The combat is functional at best but not at the standard you might expect for a 7^th generation game; there’s very little feedback so you don’t always know you’ve been hit until your health bar is ticking down, the enemies barely react to being hit either, and the game has an odd habit of glitching enemies behind you – presumably as an error macro to being caught in the scenery. It’s the jankiest game I think I’ve ever played.

The set-up to this quest is absolutely ridiculous,
but the beast provides an interesting challenge.

I did enjoy some of what Arcania had to offer – the game is quite linear, so there was no wandering around becoming hopelessly lost and confused, and while the combat was a bit wonky in places, at least the challenge of the game was at the right level. The graphics are OK, if a little, er, “Bioware” in terms of the faces, and some of the monsters were fresh designs on a western RPG setting that can get quite stale. The sound was alright, even if the nameless hero sounded like an absolute wazzock and the voice acting for the rest of the cast is only marginally better than PS1-era games. The music score was suitably epic, and one of the better parts of the game’s presentation.

Ultimately though, I played Arcania to its story conclusion and found very little to recommend. If you like RPGs there are far better ones than this, and if you don’t, then this certainly won’t change your mind – even overlooking all the faff that comes with the PS4 version. A very poor game.

Final Score: 1/5. Nah.

Last Week's Games: Final Fantasy XV, Mortal Kombat 2, Patrician

Due to a family member being in hospital, (not for COVID-19, don’t worry!) my time for playing games has been restricted mainly to the middle of the night.

And what a middle of the night it’s been! I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy XV over the last few nights and I’m really enjoying it. I had a bit of a faff getting it started – even to this day I still have to remember that playing a new game on the PS4 is contingent on still wanting to play it in the hours it takes for the download, and the first time I tried it, it turned out that I’d overextended the memory limit on the hard drive so I had to delete some games off it (games that, as far as I know, we don’t even own, so I’m not missing anything!) It really puts it into perspective how big games are now; I’d tanked the memory on my Xbox 360 as well but that was from putting roughly 60 games on there; not about 10!

Seriously, this could be a shot of the first arrivals
at a rock festival...

But once I’d got going, I played through the tutorial that I suspect has told me roughly half of what I need to know, and then started through the main campaign. You play as Prince Noctis and his entourage of… I don’t know what to call them. Bodyguards? They’re called the Crown Guard, but they all seem far too friendly with Noctis for their relationship to be entirely professional. The effect is to make it seem like you’re playing an adventure game about four lads on a camping trip, (indeed, that’s initially what it is!) and that is what’s making the game for me currently.

That might sound odd, but I play a lot of role-playing games, and when there is a party of characters, they’ve usually acquired each other along their journey. There’s rarely a pre-existing relationship between the characters at the start of the game, and if there is, it’s rarely developed upon. Whereas with Final Fantasy XV, Noctis, Gladiolus, Ignis and Prompto look, sound and act like they’ve all been friends for years. That one detail has put a fresh spin on the idea of them all taking a journey together and it’s a really nice way of presenting the game.

One of the many side-quest "hunts."

As for the actual gameplay, well, it’s good. SquareEnix couldn’t quite break free from the shackles of turn-based combat for this iteration of Final Fantasy, as there’s a mechanic that stops time for a limited time when you’re not moving – you can turn this off, but it is necessary to keep it on initially, as this is the mode in which you can analyse your enemies and find out what kind of weapons and spells they might be weak to. Other than that, the combat works well; the characters have a broad array of situational weapons and Noctis has an ability to phase in and out of different locations by throwing his weapon there; a nice touch! One issue I have run into is that as all the characters are dressed in black and so are most of the monsters, it can be a little difficult on a busy screen to see your contribution the cluster bomb unfolding before you. I’ve also manged to get caught up in all the side-questing and treasure hunting, as though I’m terrified that I’m going to miss out on something if I don’t! So it’s going to take me a while to get through this, as it always does with RPGs – let us hope that the rest of the game is as engaging as the first bit!

That's the pits...

I had a go with a couple of games on the PC as well: Mortal Kombat 2, which is great fun up to a point but there’s an absolutely horrible difficulty spike when you get to Kintaro, and I haven’t managed to get to Shao Khan yet, and the Patrician, where you trade goods around a medieval Europe. This comes from a bygone era of gaming that didn’t necessarily feel the need to tell you what to do, and while some autonomy is nice, I’ve currently got no idea what I’m supposed to be doing!

Last Week's Games: Pandemic, Arcania, Assassin's Creed 2

I’ve slowed down on the painting since last week. I made a start on six of the Terminators from the Space Hulk set, but after the third rather thin layer of red paint I put on, I didn’t take that any further. I probably will this week – but I struggled to find the inclination last week. There were a few different reasons for that, including the fact that I was enjoying playing some other games in the evenings!

Not looking good for Europe...

At one point me and Kirsty had another go at Pandemic so that we could try to beat it again with proper regard to the rules this time. Some of you may remember we tried the game a few weeks ago but got two rather important points wrong: you’re supposed to draw two infection cards after an Epidemic, and for that reason, we didn’t get a single Outbreak; and you’re only allowed to give or take a card if you’re in the city of the card you’re trading, unless you’re the researcher which neither of us were. So, we tried again with those rules in place and the game beat us this time; we arrived at the end of the Outbreak track but there were only two cards left in the draw deck so we would have lost the following turn anyway. It didn’t help that we’d got a particularly harsh draw at the start of the game and an early Epidemic; both New York and London had three infection cubes on them and as they’re next to each other, when those cards came up again they were a part of a triple outbreak across Europe and North America, and the blue cubes even found their way to South America.

The Shadow Beast.,,

I spent a couple of evenings playing Arcania on the PS4. One of the problems I run in to when I’m blogging long-form RPGs is finding things to say about it without repeating myself; if you’ve been following my blog for a while you’ll know that by the standards of most of what you can buy for the PS4, Arcania is pretty poor. And yet this is the game I’m sticking with! I’m not far away from the end of the game now (the target level for the end of the game is 30 and I’m at 25,) and I think that, for all its faults, Arcania does have some positive qualities. I’ve never particularly liked Crafting systems, for example, so it’s nice to play a game where I don’t necessarily feel obliged to use it. But I think the main benefit for me is the linearity. This is no open world game where you can wander around the map becoming hopelessly lost and confused; it’s always obvious where you’re supposed to be and what you’re supposed to be doing. The dungeons are challenging in their own way, and often quite fun. And while there are side quests, there are not too many of them – they don’t necessarily distract from the main storyline. Sadly, the main storyline is also marred by the cutscenes not working properly, and I missed some crucial pieces of information – thankfully you can read the finer points of these in your quest log – but there are some redeeming qualities. The voice acting, for example, while far from great, somehow manages to convey the urgency of your mission. And the unnamed lead character, while a complete doofus in many situations, has a B-movie-like self-awareness – almost as though he knows he’s in a video game. I might even get to the end of this one!

Just done the bit with the Golden Mask...

Contrast that with the other long-form game I’ve been playing a lot of lately: Assassin’s Creed 2. While this game is far more competently put together, Ubisoft were finding their stride in creating huge open-world sandbox games, with plenty to do in them, yes, but a lot of it feels like it’s padding out the game. I guess it represents good value for people who bought this game new and that might be the only one they buy for three months, but for me there’s quite a lot of unnecessary faffing about in Assassin’s Creed games. Still, I’m close to the end of it now!