Last Week's Games: Spiderman, Reigns, Bubble Bath Bunny and Roleplaying Speculation

Spins a web, any size...

I find myself at a point I knew I was going to run into when I started the blog again – not picking up a new game every week means that sometimes I have to search to find something interesting to say! I’ve been playing Spiderman a lot, of course, but that’s been the case for weeks now. I’m getting quite close to the end-game, and I want to make sure I’ve at least done everything else I need to do before I get there. I also researched the trophies available for the game to find out what the hidden ones were, as I don’t want to get bogged down by having to look for them. One of them requires you to visit Uncle Ben’s grave, I’d never have thought of that! It’s looking like I’m going to need at least one more play-through to 100% clear the game, because I need to beat it on New Game + mode at maximum difficulty, but it appears as though all your unlocks, suits etc. are carried over into the new game so I only need to focus on the story elements; less of the faff that comes with open world games!

Looks basic, but surprisingly addictive...

I also had a go with Reigns, a whimsical game which I must have talked about in the past at some point but I don’t know when. (I usually name the text documents I write these blogs on after the games I’ve been playing in the week; that combined with the date stamp on the file usually gives me a useful clue but I don’t always write all the games down!) It’s a game where you are the king, and every year you have to make a decision based on what an advisor or character has told you. Each decision affects your kingdom in four different ways: Religion, People, Military and Money, and if one of those indicators reaches the bottom, you die. You are then replaced by a different king and you start all over again. I usually play this when I’ve got half an hour or so to spare at work; it appears to be an unlock-fest rather than any particularly-driven plot, but it’s fun for a while, even if the interface and control method lends itself better to a mobile game (which it is.)

During her first game...

When my daughter stayed with me over the weekend we played Bubble Bath Bunny, a board game I bought at the UK Games Expo. I won’t say too much about it as I want to do a full review of it at some point, but it’s a memory game aimed at very young children; ages 2 and up. You roll a lovely big dice and try to pick up a face-down token that matches colour or symbol. We have a lot of fun playing it, and even though Jessie can only really manage one round before she starts to lose concentration, she is equally happy playing, winning or losing. That’s the mark of a good game, I think!

Mad as a fish. And so is Xanathar,

I’ve been reading a lot of the Dungeons and Dragons rulebooks, and watching a lot of Taking20 videos about Dungeons and Dragons while wishing I had time to play it. While I still run Pathfinder for some friends from time to time (and indeed will be doing so next week so I might actually have something interesting to say about it,) I do miss playing on a weekly basis; work and family commitments got in the way of my regular group so I don’t go anymore. I’m particularly enjoying Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, mainly for the little remarks Xanathar makes throughout the book which are amusing but also a salient representation of how a monster might react to human-level conventions! I also discovered through the videos the potential for Multi-classing, which is something I’ve been against up until now but I’m starting to recognise some of it’s potential for combining effects! It will be a long time, if ever, before I return to playing role-playing games on a regular basis but I hope that when I do, I can bring some of those mechanical concepts to life while my character remains a convincing-enough entity to role-play.

 

Last Week's Games: Crazy Taxi, Reigns, Mordheim: City of the Damned, Guitar Hero, New Super Mario Bros

Pretty crazy...

I started this week by downloading Crazy Taxi off Xbox Live’s Games with Gold. This is a game that has been talked about fondly for many years but as far as I can remember, I never actually played. I didn’t own the Dreamcast, and while a version of it did come out for the PlayStation 2, within six months of buying one I was bought Grand Theft Auto 3 for Christmas, in which the same essential experience can be created by stealing a taxi and starting the taxi mission. I initially thought it was going to be another pick-up-and-play game, which was fine by me, but I sat playing it for two hours so I definitely enjoyed it! I’m not very good at it though; the advanced driving techniques performed by the somewhat clunky gear-shift mechanic elude me at this point, and I haven’t yet managed more than a “C” rank. I’ll probably keep trying, though!

I also had a quick go with Reigns, a whimsical decision-making game about being the king, and trying to remain so as long as possible before you die in some way. I didn’t get too far in the game before being pulled apart by various people in the church. I’m not quite clued up on how all the mechanics of the game work yet, as in what decision is likely to affect what outcome – but it looks like this isn’t a game you “beat” in the usual sense. More likely, you’ll be unlocking all the possible characters, all the deaths, all the events etc. I’ll probably have to look at a guide or something to get to the last few, but it looks like a game that would work great on mobile; a filler for a spare ten minutes.

Of course I returned to Mordheim: City of the Damned, and continued my campaign as the Red Death Possessed warband. At the moment I seem to be doing well against most of the other factions except the Sisters of Sigmar, whose morale and resilience are at odds with my somewhat low level of damage output and not quite having the right spells to deal with it. The first campaign mission is ready to go but having attempted a playthrough as Chaos before I know that the opponent for this is the Sisters, so I’m making sure my warband s is ready to go before I do this – even though this is usually how I get bogged down in the game and find progress very difficult.

Not sure which game this shot comes from,
could be any of them...

And then for some reason I had an urge to dig up my old Guitar Hero controller and try the first Guitar Hero game. I’ve never been especially very good at these games because I find that when I watch the scroll bar going up for a while, my vision starts to do the same so five or six songs is usually quite enough. Somehow in spite of this I managed to get through the entire game on Easy mode and earn a 5-star rating on all the available songs.  I had a go on medium difficulty, but I found myself thinking that if I’m going to work that hard to get through a game, I might think about doing some more practice on the real thing so I can play some more songs!

Someone want to tell me how to
open up that bottom path?

Finally, I continued playing New Super Mario Bros. I beat the first world, and got up to the first save point in the second before going to bed. One thing I’m noticing about the later Super Mario games is how well it accommodates varying levels of play; the levels aren’t that much of a challenge to get through and you could potentially get through the whole game by running to the right and jumping at the right time. But some of the content is gated off by a certain number of collectables you have to pick up, in this case the large coins. It gives an incentive to take your time, explore the levels and really get the most out of the game. I found it was a similar situation when I covered Super Mario 3D World last year; it’s a sign of good game design!