After the previous post’s self-serving revelation that I
should be getting on with beating some of these games I’ve been buying had gone
live, I went back to my Xbox 360 to try to reach the end of Army of Two; a game
that you’ll remember I played over the summer. I knew I was up to the last bit
and it shouldn’t have taken me too long, however I ran into a rather
fundamental issue: My Xbox 360 broke.
What’s happening is the controller isn’t connecting to the
console. (This is happening with both controllers we own. “Try a different
controller” is the first thing that comes up on every bit of advice I looked
up. I tried. It didn’t work.) It’s still turning the machine on, but not
connecting to the point where I could control anything. I tried re-synching it;
it didn’t work. I tried moving the console and controller around (this has
happened before and carrying it around in my backpack apparently fixed it last
time!) but still nothing happened. I looked up a YouTube video on how to get at
the parts, got as far as taking the side panel off that gives you access to the
hard drive, and gave up when I realised that even if I had the screwdrivers I
was going to need in order to get at the motherboard, and even if I could access
the correct part, I wouldn’t know what to do with it.
So, my old Xbox 360 has gone in for repairs; I dropped it in
this morning. From what I understand, if it’s a component part that can be
replaced then it shouldn’t be too difficult to repair. If something’s gone
wrong with the motherboard, they’re manufactured by machines at a micro level
so there isn’t much that can be done. To be fair, I bought it in 2012, it was
second-hand then and I’ve got a lot of use out of it since; it doesn’t owe me a
lot. And it’s not like I’m short of video games to play!
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| It's well characterised, I'll give it that! |
To that end, I decided to play a game that I’d bought for
the PS4 nearly a year ago and hadn’t got around to playing yet: Uncharted:
Drake’s Fortune. This is the first in a trilogy of games in Uncharted: The
Nathan Drake collection. I’d seen some coverage of it, and it came across as,
rather crassly: “Tomb Raider with a bloke.” And to begin with, that’s exactly
what it is, though with a 7th-gen design sensibility that made the
game more like the later Tomb Raiders than the earlier ones. I’m enjoying it so
far; the game is fun to play and while it doesn’t look particularly long
(apparently, I’m roughly 40% of the way through having just beaten the first
bit?) there’s a lot to do. I don’t know what, if anything, the PS4 remaster has
done for the quality of the graphics or game but for me it’s all about whether
I enjoy it, and at this point, I am.
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| Massive amounts of Vek and environmental hazards make this a very difficult mission to beat. |
I also played a couple of games on my laptop I hadn’t played
in a while: Into the Breach, which I’ve talked about before, and The Witness,
which I haven’t. Into the Breach is always a fun game; I really like how it can
potentially only take about an hour to get to the final mission so that you’re
not bogged down in an hours-long campaign, and I like that the final mission
scales up with the rest of the game so it’s not as though you can level up and
cheese your way to victory. I haven’t beaten it yet though, as either way it is
very difficult. I came to within one turn the last time I tried, but all my
mechs got destroyed before I could finish the mission.
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| These tree puzzles were easy, until they weren't... |
The Witness is an odd puzzle game that is about exploring an
island solving puzzles on computer screens, such as you might find in a puzzle
book. I played it last year briefly during a time where I wasn’t doing the blog
and came back to it now because I figured if I have 20 minutes dead time at
work I could jump in and do a few puzzles, but I find myself oddly engrossed
whenever I put it on and often find myself playing for a long time when I put
it on. It’s a weird game, but there’s something quite satisfying about solving
the puzzles. I’ve had to look up a guide to find out the conceit of some of the
puzzles, but there has only been one so far where I had to look up the actual
solution, and even when I found it, I couldn’t see how the clue fit the puzzle!
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| Fiendish. |
Finally, I ran Pathfinder for the usual crew at the end of
last month. I had a really good time with it this time; the problem with a lot of
the battles in upper-level Pathfinder is the characters often have abilities
which trump most of the monsters that you throw of at them. Action economy
becomes an issue as well, especially with 5-6 player characters. However, at one
point they come across a Forgefiend who can move through the walls and create
very difficult environments for them to fight in. Also, it does a huge amount
of damage by spewing molten slag out of its belly, which makes me sound quite
vindictive, but the PCs have quite high defensive capabilities as well, so
getting to a point where I do some damage to them isn’t all that common for me!
I am hoping to get the next edition of Pathfinder again quite
soon, but for how often I play roleplaying games and the fact that I’ve got at
least another year in Rise of the Runelords, I can’t justify spending the money
on it currently. But we’ve got Christmas coming up, so you never know!
Let’s hope next week starts a bit better…
