 |
| I've never once played as Juventus. |
I’ve been quite busy with work this week so the vast
majority of the games I’ve been playing have been “pick up and play” games, when
I needed to either pass half an hour or switch my brain off for considerably
longer than half an hour. I’ve been playing Sensible World of Soccer on the Xbox
360; as the matches are only a few minutes long and there’s never really an awkward
place to stop if I need to. I’m still terrible at it, although I did manage to
get the achievement points for scoring a goal off a diving header –
incidentally, the only time I’ve a been able to capitalise on a corner. But I
enjoy the game enough to keep going at it, and maybe at some point I’ll get good
enough at it to win more than one game per season. Yeah. It’s that bad.
 |
| One of the massive overblown boss battles these games are famous for... |
I also had another go at Sine Mora, the great shoot-em-up
that I downloaded a couple of weeks ago. I’m not much better at this, to be
perfectly honest, but analysing attack patterns and making the most of your
opportunities is half of the fun of these games so I expect I’ll dive in to it
whenever I feel like giving it a go – though I doubt I’ll ever be put the time
in to it necessary to score the higher grades, even if I do manage to clear the
game in the end!
 |
| I recently read that the actor's costume didn't actually fit him properly... |
On my laptop, I keep coming back to Mortal Kombat every now
and then. I wasn’t too impressed with it when I played this game initially, but I’ve
got into a rhythm of the control scheme now, got used to some of the things you
need to do to win the fights, and even beat the game with Sub-Zero at one
point. Sub-Zero is probably the easiest character to do this with simply
because of his freezing powers; I don’t even know how to do the floor slide but
being able to stop the opponent moving for a second or two often provides me
with the opportunity I need to do a lot of damage and take the win. I’ve been
trying to beat the game with Scorpion ever since; I tend to favour the two ninjas
over the other characters in the first game because they have a slightly longer
reach with their kicks. Interestingly enough, I’ve found that the two boss
characters, Goro and Shang Tsung, rarely provide the same challenge as the
mid-game. They’re powerful – Goro requires a lot of patience, and Shang Tsung’s
flaming skulls do a horrible amount of damage – but they’re nothing compared to
the endurance matches you must go through to get there. Pretty much all the
characters you’ve previously defeated turn up again for this, and characters
with high mobility – Kano and Rayden, for example – make for a very significant
challenge. If those two are paired together, you’re in for a long fight. I’ve
played many Mortal Kombat games in my time, and I’m not the slightest bit
surprised that, as far as I know, the first game was the only one to include
endurance matches in the main game…
 |
| Run 'em and Gun 'em. |
I also played Syndicate on the Xbox 360. Now, obviously this
game isn’t a patch on the strategy game that came out in the 1990s, because nothing
ever is. (I’ve had similar conversations with people who enjoyed the first X-COM
games as well.) However, I never actually played Syndicate in the 1990s, so
that wasn’t going to put me off! It’s a standard First-Person Shooter game with
some hacking mechanics that reminded me more of Bioshock than anything else. It’s
pretty good; I’ve enjoyed it so far and it’s nice to play a cyberpunk game – it’s
not a setting I’m massively familiar with! Hopefully I will see it through to
the end.
Finally, my daughter bought me two games for Father’s Day: Funky
Chicken and Monster Match. These are developed by the same lads who brought us
Happy Salmon, and they’ve got the same level of fun attached to them! We’ve had
a go with both, but I think I’ll talk about how that went down in a separate
blog.
