Last Week's Games: Pathfinder, Rhino Hero, Sonic Generations, Dragon Quest, New Super Mario Bros U

Seven deadly sins, seven ways to win...

Over the last weekend, I continued running Rise of the Runelords for my Pathfinder group. We are trying to maintain the game during lockdown by doing it as a video call; it worked well with some connection issues. Long-term readers of the blog will know that running a game online is nothing new, but when I’ve done it before, it’s how the game stared – not as a contingency plan for not being able to meet! The group completed their task in the Vault of Greed, and journeyed on to the Shimmering Veils of Pride where they encountered their own reflections in the mirrors! Not to put to fine a point of it, but there could have been no better time for me to not have to hand out their character sheets, as for perhaps the first time I had access to all their information and was able to run their characters. Unfortunately, I had to cut the battle short due to family illness, but we will hopefully pick it up again in the future.

There is talk of members of that group doing a game in the week as well; I’d like to be a part of that but we’re in discussions about that system to run and who will be running the game. I’ll see how it works out; I would prefer to play this time as I don’t get to play very often, but it depends on what the other lads want to do.

Spider monkeys. See what they did there...

Earlier in the week, Kirsty and I had a go with a board game that I’ve had for a while and not done anything with yet – Rhino Hero. This is a game about stacking cards to resemble a skyscraper and getting your hero to the highest point on the skyscraper without knocking the whole thing down. It’s aimed at younger people and is a good game; perhaps not with the depth of some of the other games that we play, but certainly the most dextrous and one of the better ones for spectacle. We had a great time building the towers and trying not to knock them down! Kirsty won both games that we played, and we’d be happy to show this to our friends when we’re out of lockdown and they can come around again!

Sonic Generations. It's a lot of fun!

One game I forgot to mention I’d played the previous week was Sonic Generations on the Xbox 360. I was inspired to play this partly by YouTube’s The Completionist, partly because I’d downloaded if for free off Games with Gold, and partly because I’d just finished Assassin’s Creed 2 and wanted something light-hearted and fun to play. I’ve enjoyed it so far, although I find it better in short bursts rather than prolonged sessions. If it were just a case of getting through the game, I might have beaten it by now already, but while the number of stages may appear to be small, there are a lot of challenge modes attached to each stage and that is taking a decent amount of time at this point! I’ve been playing Sonic for almost for as long as I’ve been playing video games and there’s little to surprise me now, but it’s a good fun game and one that I’m hoping to see through to the end.

You would not believe the faff I've got to go through
to get a screen grab from the Switch to my computer...

One game that I actually did see through to the end was Dragon Quest on the Nintendo Switch. I’d bought this a few months ago, played it for a few hours in November, and didn’t play it again for a while, mainly because knowing the time investment generally needed for RPGs, I waited until I had some time before committing to it! I don’t want to say much more than that right now because I’m hoping to get a review out either this week or next week.

Finally, I’ve been playing New Super Mario Bros U on the Wii U. As it’s been a while since I played it, and the levels I tried to play through last time were very difficult, I started a new save file. I may or may not see it through to the end but it’s a Super Mario game; they’ll always be fun while they last!

Last Week's Games: Cities: Skylines, Super Smash Bros. Ulitimate, Fortnite

Strewth, I’ve been playing a lot this week! I beat Assassin’s Creed 2, you can read about that here, but I’ve talked enough about that game so here are some others:

Yeah, mine doesn't look that good.

On one of the nights in the week I had a go with Cities: Skylines, a city building game on the PC. It’s been out for a few years now and has been talked up quite positively as an alternative to SimCity. From what I’ve been hearing about the most recent iteration of SimCity, an alternative was needed, as many people weren’t happy with the always-online DRM (Digital Rights Management,) and the fact that it almost forced a multiplayer mode on what has been traditionally a single-player experience. Having not played a SimCity game since SimCity 3000, however, I went into Cities: Skylines without much prejudice; games like this have moved on since I last played one and I was willing to see what has changed since then.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised thus far! The zoning is much the same as I remember, but the roads can bend (not that I’ve been able to make it happen yet!) and while there are a certain set of utilities you need to make happen straight away like power and water, other public services – police, fire, healthcare – don’t actually come in to it until your town is big enough to give rise to the need for them. If I have any issues with it, I would say that once the game starts moving, it moves a little fast for my liking. This is arguably because I’m still trying to learn the mechanics, I can’t see the veterans of the game saying the same, and I know you can pause it, but I couldn’t help the feeling that the game was running away with me somewhat.

Absolute chaos for most of this!

I charged my Nintendo Switch and played a couple of games on that as well, namely Super Smash Bros: Ultimate. I bought this game a couple of months ago, and knowing the scale of the game, didn’t touch it for weeks. I’ve had a go with it now and I’ve quite enjoyed it; I’m not sure about the controls (Combining platforming with two-finger fighting is an odd one!) but they can be re-bound, so that’s ok. Fighting in arena battles with characters from major gaming franchises is fun, and with a lot to unlock it’s the kind of game I can dip in and out of and continue to make progress as I’m going along. I’m still getting used to the mechanics; getting your opponent’s damage to a certain point then knocking them off the edge of the stage is unlike any fighting game I’ve played before, but it’s an interesting challenge which I’m enjoying so far. If I get enough games to justify it, I might consider buying a subscription to the Nintendo live service – I haven’t yet, but I think with Smash I may always have the fact that I haven’t got a hope of unlocking any of the online achievements at the back of my mind…

Better get used to seeing this load screen...

Finally, I’ve had a go with Fortnite, the Battle Royale game that everyone’s been talking about, for better or worse. I had a go with it on the Switch; I don’t know how well that version stacks up to everyone else but that’s what I’ve chosen to play it on. It’s alright. Again, I’m finding the controls a little off, and I’m not sure how mapping some of the game’s key controls to the face buttons lends itself well to such a compact machine as the Switch. But as a shooter, it’s fine, I’ve played it for long enough to have an idea of its addictive qualities and have fallen into the trap of the “Just one more go” mentality. It is worth the hype? I don’t think so, but then again I haven’t bought the battle pass (and until I’ve earned enough, what was it again, “V-Bucks” in game to buy it, I won’t,) so I probably haven’t had much of the core experience yet. I don’t know how frequently I’ll come back to this, but it’s not like I’ve spent any money on the game, so...

Backlog Beatdown: Assassinating more Creeds with Assassin's Creed 2

I bought Assassin’s Creed 2 a few years ago, not long after beating the first Assassin’s Creed game. By all accounts the second game in the series was the better of the first two games, but I found when I played it that I wasn’t quite ready to come back into the rhythm of Assassin’s Creed games at that point, and left it for a couple of years. I came back to it with the intention of getting to the end…

The double assassination was a pretty cool move...

Assassin’s Creed 2 picks up the story of Desmond Miles from where the previous game left off, as he escapes from Abstergo’s laboratory. Teaming up with a group of assassins in a safehouse, he investigates the memories of Ezio Auditore da Firenze, a charming but foolish young man. After witnessing his father and brothers being executed after being framed for treason, Ezio seeks out his uncle Mario who trains him in combat and sets him off on a quest to kill the men responsible for arranging his family’s death. On the way, Ezio develops new skills, finds new weapons, makes new allies, and is eventually inducted into the order of Assassins, who seek peace through freedom. But where do the motivations of the conspiracy truly lie? And what is at stake?

The initial run of Assassin’s Creed games were the early stages of what would eventually become the Ubisoft Open-World Sandbox game, and while Assassin’s Creed 2 was released before this kind of thing became the standard, many familiar tropes are here. Tall buildings to climb to unlock certain areas of the map, the side activities that involved racing and puzzle platforming, collectibles, assassinations, funnily enough, and the occasional story quest to keep the narrative of the game moving. Some changes were made to the handling of the character between the two games, but we know what we’re getting here – go around the cities, complete all the tasks, and find out what is happening in the long-running battle between the Assassins and the Templars. Talking about it in 2020 makes the whole thing feel a bit old-hat to be honest – but at the time, this was on the cutting edge of what could be done with video games.

This is some point early on in the game, judging
by the length of the health metre...

Assassin’s Creed 2 brings to the game a couple of differently handled sections. There’s a bit where you get to test out Leonardo Da Vinci’s flying machine, for example, and race a carriage. Probably the most significant addition to regular play are the assassin’s tombs that you can investigate, since they involve some puzzle-platforming that is quite challenging in places. Plus, there are a few new weapons you can play with; smoke bombs and poison. Some of these are more useful than others, but they add an extra dimension to gameplay.

The Assassin’s Creed games that I’ve played so far have always been good to look at, and this one is no exception. The cities you visit are cleverly designed and have their own feel to them, the character models are looking a little of their time now but do at least have expression, and the cutscenes are well-presented. The voice acting is fine; the characters are straight and serious when they need to be, and overblown caricatures for the one-shots, and the sound-effects are suitably visceral. And there were no incompetently coded bugs that I could see.

You know that look...

So, is Assassin’s Creed 2 a good game? I reckon it is. It can be to play and tells an interesting story, if a little contrived. It goes on maybe a little longer than it needs to, but sometimes I need to remember that these games are designed for people who would buy this game on launch, and that would be the only game they bought for about three months so there would need to be plenty to do to keep them engaged. I expect that playing the game constantly would get old after a while; I was determined to finish it and was playing the game past the point where I was having fun with it. I don’t expect I will get the DLC for it either, since it adds nothing to the overall plot, but Assassin’s Creed 2 was fun while it lasted.

Final Score: 3/5. Worth a look.

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!