Currently playing...

[VNVObit]

Yes missing"not"

Thanks for the brief overview of the level packs. Will be trying to avoid Ninjago if at all possible but he likes the tv series so may be difficult

[Chontler]

Pikmin 4 is apparently on the way so I thought I'd finish the Pikmin 3 campaign. I'd forgotten I'd accidentally wiped the console while testing the parental features many months back so I'd have to start again. I instead thought I'd try the mini-missions. I'm glad I did - they are utterly superb! They average about 10 minutes a game and trying to go for the platinum medals is incredibly, annoyingly addictive. You end up devising a strategy from the get-go that works well for the bronze/silver medals, but it's just not good enough for the gold/platinum....and so you try so hard to cut corners to get those remaining few seconds so you can get that last piece of watermelon but it never works. So you end up scrapping it all and starting from scratch and the whole level feels just as fresh as the first time. Until you make the mistake of checking out speedruns online

[Baggypants]

I've been driving around Hackenslash, Kings, Brix and New Guernsy. Yesterday I had to take a taxi to pick up some girl to take her to a hotel, but I had to collect her personal trainer on the way. Then I blew up a train. I should really get a map.

[Dio]

Pikmin 4 is apparently on the way so I thought I'd finish the Pikmin 3 campaign. I'd forgotten I'd accidentally wiped the console while testing the parental features many months back so I'd have to start again. I instead thought I'd try the mini-missions. I'm glad I did - they are utterly superb! They average about 10 minutes a game and trying to go for the platinum medals is incredibly, annoyingly addictive. You end up devising a strategy from the get-go that works well for the bronze/silver medals, but it's just not good enough for the gold/platinum....and so you try so hard to cut corners to get those remaining few seconds so you can get that last piece of watermelon but it never works. So you end up scrapping it all and starting from scratch and the whole level feels just as fresh as the first time. Until you make the mistake of checking out speedruns online

The missions are the best bit of it for me, especially co-op with the mrs and kids. The 7 year old has better pikmin control and speed but the 5-year-old is a monster when it comes to getting a task done.

[VNVObit]

On PC have been working through the Max Payne 3 which is pretty enjoyable in an incredibly violent manner. (Did the Brazilian tourist board see this game????). Like the last bullet mechanism which has saved my skin a number of times (you get health back if you managed to shoot your shooter when you are in your dying throes). Think I'm about half way through at the moment. Hoping to finish it by end of the weekend so can get back to Witcher 3

in a moment of weakness picked up the first expansion pack for Witcher 3 and have put a couple of hours into it (I tend to take twice as long as they suggest) so far. Enjoying it so far though some of the set scenes are a bit exaggerated and take away from the roleplaying element (e.g. having all of your armour, potions , etc available despite a predicament where they should all have been removed).

[MattyP]

I've been working my way through The Walking Dead on XBO courtesy of XBL gold this month.

Didn't think I'd like it but I'm hooked... like a good point and click adventure. The art style is great in this too.

[funkstar]

I noticed that Bedlam was out of Early Access, so I thought that I'd give it a spin. It's heartbreaking - the concept is so great, but the execution and exploration of it just... isn't.

Bummer.

[VNVObit]

Finished Max Payne 3 (2 is still on my to play list) and moved on to Tales of Zesteria on the PC (succumbed when I saw Tales of Symphonia was the bonus game)

Fairly enjoyable JRPG with lovely graphics albeit temperamental when it comes to sound (7.1 settings on headphone crash it). Story is fairly formulaic but well done and entertaining (though wish the cut scenes weren't so long). Not too far into it and think I will dip my toe in and out of it for a while as my love for JRPGs has waned a little. Look forward to the steam link (on my shopping list) as probably prefer to play this on the TV rather than the computer (bigger screen to enjoy the graphics).

Meanwhile on the PS4 I'm playing Assassin Creed Syndicate. Really enjoying this iteration (last one I played was Black Flag which was fun). Really like the rendition of old London and the tweaks to stealth are welcome. The two main protagonists are a bit interchangeable albeit specialising in stealth with Evie and combat with Jacob. That said the combat is fairly basic so cannot really tell the difference when playing as either character. Overall enjoyable.

Fallout 4 is due to arrive this week but will leave that until I have time over Christmas to play (and finished AC)

[Jonesey]

Getting all off the bus and that but I'm actually enjoying the Blops3 campaign..

[funkstar]

I've been thinking more on Christopher Brookmyre's Bedlam, and why I don't think it achieves what it appears to set out to do.

A slightly convoluted serious of links led me (back) to Chris Franklin's excellent Errant Signal series of game criticism. He's quite heavy on the spoilers (which I believe is a good thing, but which does hurt people like me who are years behind the times at best), but having now played quite a bit of The Stanley Parable, I checked out his video on this, and realised that I must have missed a few things (and not just what might happen if I keep pressing a button for 4 hours - no, Stanley Parable, I'm not going to do that, ever.) So, I went back, and did discover a number of great things. Not least how much more I enjoyed that compared to Bedlam. How are these related? Well, they both provide commentary on games in various ways: the Stanley Parable by subverting pretty much every expectation you could possibly have for a game, and Bedlam by blending genres and more specifically examining the evolution of FPS's throughout the years. Or rather, that's what I thought Bedlam would do, until I played it.

So, the conceit of Bedlam is that you're stuck in various games, old and new, in an FPS perspective. Constant reference is made to well-known games, but you're never actually in them, instead being limited to "Starfire" (Quake 2), "Death or Glory" (Call of Duty/Medal of Honor) etc. until you can confront the Big Bad in a meta-section of his own. Now, these individual games aren't actually very good instances of their genres - the Death and Glory section being particularly awful. This wouldn't be a problem if only Bedlam would do something with the different games to take you out of the setting, provide commentary, or break the expected mechanics in some way, but... it just doesn't. Almost without exception, there are enemies in your way, you must shoot them to get to the checkpoint, no matter the setting. There's just no use of the different settings at all, no cleverness in blending of genres. You have an array of weapons compiled throughout the different games, and that's it. It ends up being pretty much a straight late 90's FPS level pastiche with various pretty backdrops and a huge incongruous arsenal, without even something as basic as health or shooting mechanics or movement differing between the supposed genres.

Which, I think, is why Bedlam the book kinda* worked, but Bedlam the game doesn't. The book uses the games setting to provide commentary on games culture, technology, and the nature of consciousness (however shallow that commentary might be.) The game uses the book setting as backdrop for a 90s-style shooter, and nothing more.

And it is such a shame, because it seems like there are so many things you could have done with the book setting. For instance, the book very much emphasizes that the protagonist is not the PC in these sub-games. But in the actual game, the settings (almost) all treat you, the player, as exactly the PC (even when it explicitly tells you you're not.) This is the point of failure, for me: if you, as a player, weren't always forced into the generic PC role, then RedBedlam wouldn't have had to design each level for that purpose. Indeed, the most interesting things happen when you're taken out of the standard FPS campaign scenarios (not necessarily good things, but at least interesting ones.) I constantly found myself wishing that Bedlam had explored that design space, even just as much as the book: in the book, the Starfire level is reset when the protagonist actually succeeds in killing the PC. But nothing so clever is ever done with the game's Starfire section: it's simply a straightforward string of levels with straightforward PC objectives for you to complete (even though you're ostensibly an NPC) and pretty poor shooting. This extends to the vast bulk of the game.

I kept wishing for it to turn into The Stanley Parable, and have something interesting to say about the different genres or games culture, or introduce a new mechanic by blending genres, or do something different, but it just never did. In the end, out of all the possible design ideas the setting could support, the core of Bedlam seems to be "what if you had a rocket launcher in an FPS in a fantasy setting" and that, besides being uninventive, well, just isn't an idea that can support an entire game.

*I maintain that Quite Ugly One Morning and Not the End of the World are fantastic thrillers, but Brookmyre really only has had two or three really original plots in his books, and by now they're pretty deep in their recycling circles. This felt rather stale.

[MattyP]

Just finished up Pneuma : Breath of Life.

Great little puzzler game with lovely visuals. Also its free with Games For Gold this month too. Really enjoying the content I'm getting with games for gold - even better considering I only paid just over £20 for the year. Best deal ever for me... getting plenty of value out of the games they keep giving with this. Have quite a backlog.

Also re-visited Gears of War recently with the Ultimate Edition. Currently working through the campaign again. Still feels as fresh as ever good old fashioned unpretentious shooty fun. Nice graphics update too. Looking forward to play the rest of the gears games via the XBO backwards compatibility coming this month. Is this game really 9 YEARS OLD. Suddenly feel old. Bah. Actually thinking about it the Xbox 360 is 10 next month. My god where is time going....

[Misfit]

I'm currently playing Invisible Inc. on PC - a rogue-like, turn-based, sci-fi stealth game. That's a lot of ticked boxes right there. I've only played it on beginner difficulty so far, but it seems to be a bit special. I blundered my way through my first campaign as I learnt on the job, but it took plenty of ingenuity and improvisation even on the easiest setting. I think I've barely scratched the surface with this - looking forward to giving it another go at a tougher difficulty setting.

Playing it was well.
I think its utterly excellent.

I love the fact it gets more intense over the course of each mission - the reverse of many squad based games.
It really is "do the mission and get out". Not "slowly take everyone down, then sweep the map being a completionest".
I love XCom, but the intensity of this is orders of magnitude more.
And for a turn-based game to make you feel a sense of urgency is a neat trick.

Currently half price on Steam. A billion things to play, but still tempted.

There seems to be DLC for it now too.

[Darkflame]

Yup, just got the DLC. I'll be reviewing it shortly

[funkstar]

I took advantage of the the Klei free play weekend on Steam to play a huge chunk of Crypt of the Necrodancer which is very, very double-plus-good indeed. If you don't know what it is, here's the best trailer for it.



It is exactly what it looks like - a rhythm-based rogue-like, where you move (attack, buy and use items etc.) in beat with the music. This concept is greatly helped by having a fantastic score by Danny Baranowsky (Canabalt, Super Meat Boy), and charming pixel art. And, it just works. (I also tried Invisible Inc. which stayed on the wish list, and Don't Starve, which came off it.)

I've been looking to play something shooty, too. I considered getting back into BioShock, but I think I may be done with that. Instead, I played The Darkness II, which was... quite good, actually. The shooting is satisfyingly meaty, the art direction is lovely, the voice acting is actually very good (for once), even if the story is silly. Good distracting fun for 6-7 hours. Thanks, Humble 2K Bundle!

And then there's RAGE, which I picked up in a bargain bin for the equivalent of 2£ (despite not having an optical drive) a year or two ago. I haven't played much of this yet, but I'm starting to think it may be better than its reputation. There's quite a lot to like: the shooting so far is spectacular, and the voice acting and characters are top-of-class. It remains to be seen if the level design holds up, and whether the hubworld is any cop, but, you know, I'll take anything after the Bedlam fiasco.

Incidentally, SteamOS may not be the end all of gaming, but SteamPlay has the positive side effect of bringing many more games to OS X, for which I'm grateful, since it means that I won't have to boot into Windows to play. For instance, KoTOR II showed up in my library a few months ago. So now I'm considering: KoTOR or KoTOR 2?

[funkstar]

Ok, so Crypt of the Necrodancer is bloody amazing, and the soundtrack is now playing on my iPod* and keeping my head bobbing along merrily.

Although I described it as a rogue-like, it has some rogue-lite elements as well: there is a kind of story mode that tackles 4 zones individually, with permanent character upgrades, and no need to restart from zone 1. The proper rogue-like "all zones" mode also has its items from an upgraded pool, but not your character upgrades, and since the item unlocks are over with quite quickly, this mode is just a straight up rogue-like after a few hours of play.

Just play it. It's great.

As for the next choice of game, I didn't go for one of the KoTORs, but instead settled on Batman: Arkham Asylum. The port to OS X annoyingly requires me to restart every time I want to rebind a key, or fiddle with a graphical setting. Of course, this quickly stabilizes, but the process until it does it is excruciating. As for the game, I guess I'm still in an extended tutorial an hour into the thing, because it is very hand-holdy. Also, I wondering if maybe I'm not the target audience? It takes itself very seriously, indeed, and the extreme manliness of it all would be disturbing if it weren't so comical. I'll give it a few hours more, and see if it has some redeeming features - otherwise it goes in the "I'm too old for this shit" category.

*Yes, I still have one of those iPod classics, and will continue to use it until Apple starts putting in MicroSD slots in the iPhone, or the storage capacity grows to size where I can carry all my music with me (at reasonable cost - the 128GB version is how much, again?)