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That's kind of the point. It's a Metroidvania so it's all about exploring different parts of the map, finding abilities/items that will help you unlock other parts of the map, and so forth.

 

Ah, never played any of those. Closest i ever got to a sidescroller like that was megaman series.

 

Skyrim

I've had it on PC for ages but have made it as far as Whiterun and then stalled, really struggled to get into it on the PC and everytime I've loaded it's it's always felt like a pending drag.


As I know it's meant to be a great game I thought I'd get it for the switch as I typically have 30mins on the switch before I sleep (Tetris 99, FF7 or 9 etc...) I know graphically it won't be as good and it's not but it's not far off but I'm finding that I'm actually playing it and it's not bad.

I hope Oblivion comes to the switch as well on this basis as I've had that for donkeys and barely played it too.

 

It’s the endgame for Tales of Vesperia.

Have duffed up a dragon, resolved matters between Yuri and Flynn by way of a boss fight that ended up being far better than expected.

Have accessed some locations I couldn’t before, have the Sorcerer’s Ring fully upgraded - it is sweet. Found a new lava cavern that likely links to a hidden - and in this game they are very well hidden - sidequest. Took out a couple of the Giganto monsters too.

I’m around 55 hours, so yeah, it’s a hefty game - complex game world, some smart battle systems, the one big flaw is, from time to time, the boss difficulty will be way, way up relative to the dungeon enemies you fought leading up to it.

 

Been playing Elite Dangerous (with Star Wars soundtracks running in background). Just getting into Battlefront (2015) and Battlefront II (2017). Before, felt the game was good not great. But playing bits of both - kinda find that they make a better experience.

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Ticket to Ride US

 

Got to what I assume is the 2nd area in Hollow Knight.

This game is whooping the kriff out of me and i love it.

 

I hated Oblivion so much. The lvl scaling they did for enemies was beyond me and of the multiple times I’ve restarted it I have never ever ever ever been able to clear the 1st main story mission. So frustrating to me.

Morrowind is still where it’s at though! LOVE that game.

 

Yoshi's Crafted World

My sister bought it for her switch, but my Nephew fell in love with the game so I have been playing it with him at weekends. He is only three (almost four), but amazing at it! If he does not listen, I can eat him up in the game, and he yells at me "Spit me out!! Spit me out, pleaseeeeeee!", it is just so much fun. Definitely, recommend this game if you have others to play with as it is very enjoyable, and the graphics are very cute.

 

FIFA 19 I' m also a huge soccer fan

 

Wolfenstein: The Old Blood

Decided to give this another chance and almost decided in turn it was a stupid idea. The first main level, with the sheer amount of stealth coupled with the game's crappy - actually non-existant - signposting starts off an exercise in frustration as I'm up against a robo-hulk supernazi with a ****ing gatling gun and **** all offensive options. Turned out there's two switches and you only have to do the right one instead of the left. Even after you do this, it then removes the heavy machine gun you pick up. After the first couple, which were the hardest, the game finally starts allowing you access to guns and you can be more offensive. That's when it finally started getting good - looting an exploded super-nazi, with all their armour, ammo and guns atop a load of their splattered guts never gets old.

It stumbled a bit on a section with a super robo-dog you have to evade and threw in a new mechanic of running - using left stick, then L3 - which you have to press the top of the stick down, plus circle to slide through gaps, trying to run with the left stick and hit L3 is a pain in the arse. It's a stupid design. There were other, better ways they could have done that.

The final part of the level sees you leg it on a boat but the game neglects to tell you leaving the turret mounted gives it infinite ammo! Once you realise this the whole sequence improves greatly and succeeds at being the Hollywood big budget sequence it imagines itself to be. The one weird thing in all of this is how puny explosions are, you'll hit a red / rust barrel, it'll explode but it might not actually kill anyone.

Once you hit Chapter 2, it becomes the more traditional run and gun gameplay the series is known for. The Nazi commander idea, however, remains dumb as **** - both conceptually and in execution. The distance indicator does nothing to really help you, you can be within 2m and still not see the ****bag you need to kill. Plus, I stealth killed one of therm and the alarm still began instantly which wrecks the idea of being covert.

Now I'm past that goddamn awful stealth level, I might come back to this and do a chapter at a time, but it's not a game I can blitz or play for long periods, jut a bit too frustrating and opaque for me, even on easy.

 

Assassin’s Creed Syndicate

I think this’ll go the way of Black Flag, in that I do as much as I can of the optional stuff, taking out gang leaders etc, while not giving a damn about the main campaign.

That AC campaigns tend to rely on crappy mechanics and surprises, along with quite blatant protection for its enemies, isn’t new, but has become less tolerable for due to advances in game design of the last few years. It’s why I liked Origins so much, it was mostly free of all the bollocks and bull****. Not so Syndicate which’ll think nothing of dropping 10-11 stronger than you enemies on you without warning in an open combat sequence in a game series that is still about stealth.

Similarly, you’re allowed to kill targets you’re supposed to bring back alive but you still have to deliver the corpse. Every time I sling someone in a carriage, the enemies know where I am instantly - it’s utter bollocks. On one mission I killed everyone outside a house and then everyone inside instantly went red alert! How? They can see through walls now? Back to the carriages - the driving is crap, the other traffic are suicidal about not getting out of the way, your offensive options suck and you have to be anonymous to complete the deliver at the specific location. My solution there was crash the cart, get off, kill everyone - that returned me to being anonymous. But why can’t I simply sneak through back alleys with the corpse? Or why not smash through the fence? Too often the restrictions are in place for the reason that the game ****in’ says so.

To my surprise, one Gang War fight was far more straight-forward - it was kill everyone, no mystic cutscene protection, like what happened on the previous one. Nope, instead Jacob sliced Edith up real good. But, I’m fairly certain this’ll be the exception.

The bigger reason to play Syndicate and Black Flag are the worlds they conjure, not their campaigns - and this was pretty much true of Origins too.

 

Itching to throw on PS1 Grandia which I have never once played. Started with 2 on Dreamcast then Xtreme then 3 on PS2. I’ve heard that 1&2 are coming to Switch.

 

Breath of the Wild

I had not had much of a chance to play this game previously due to other commitments, but now I have got into this game over the Easter break I am having a great time! The music is great, it looks fantastic, and the gameplay is very fun. This is the first proper RPG g

 

Just grinding out Blackout. I think I'm on tier 93. I absolutely hate just about everything in Black Ops 4, except BlackOut, so I'm grinding it to eat my money's worth. Can't wait to have Days Gone on Thursday.

 

Mario Party 8 (Wii)

Played this with my cousin yesterday, we used to play it all the time when we were a lot younger. Apparently we had not played since 24/10/2014! It was a nice nostalgia trip, love the game so much, especially the train and hotel boards.

Mario Kart 8 (Switch)

Finally played the switch version of Mario Kart, it was so much fun! Again, another nostalgia trip as my cousin and I used to play the DS one back in the day as you could play with one copy of the game. The switch version did not disappoint, very fun and we got a bit competitive.

Mario Party (Switch)

This is not as good as Mario party 8, but it was still fun. We played the rapids mode where you have to pop balloons to get mini games. There does not seem to be as many options for boards on this game, was hoping for some old ones, but they are a little bit meh. After playing a little, we decided to go back to Mario Party 8.

 

Days Gone. Have to say that so far, the review scores seems pretty insanely low to me. A lot of them talk about glitches and technical problems, but I haven't really experience that so far. Except I didhave one glitch where, after being set on fire, the effect never came off deacon even though he was no longer damaged. He had a flaming head and it was awesome. Made me feel like ghost rider.

 

Just Dance 3 and 4 (Wii)

Playing the Wii again, this time with a just dance sesh. These games are a reasonable form of exercise, it gets my heart pumping!

 

Back into SWTOR. As soon as I get my basement finished I might make some time to jump into The Witcher III.

 

AC Syndicate

Did a rather longer than planned session on this today and it went? Pretty much depending to the degree it tried to railroad me - or not: Where it penned me in, it was spectacularly crap; where I was allowed to do a mission by any methods, it was fantastic.

One of the new missions unlocked is Smuggler Boats, which are hugely fun. You have sabotage a load of cargo and the game doesn’t care how. There’s also a Lead Smuggler aka heavy you can kill for the bonus and there’s so many ways to do it. My preference is gassing him, getting him in turn to kill a good half of the enemies for me. Then, mop up the rest and dynamite the contraband.

In contrast, a mission to unlock a schematic turned out to be a load of timed bollocks. Managed to do it but it was bad, just not very fun.

Similarly, a Darwin mission ended up being crap as the sync condition - these vary from straight forward to impossibly tricky and not worth worrying about - was be undetected but there’s guards everywhere and you can’t assassinate while guiding. So, once that bonus went in smoke, I took a bit of time to be very thorough in killing all of them. Then as it’s about to be over, he turns into an imposter, then an enemy with massive health bar that takes 10 headshots to kill.

Boat raids are also subject to arbitrary because-the-game-says-so time limits.

And then there’s odd stuff like being told to catch up and hijack a carriage but the mechanism in how you do it is really unclear.

Back to the good stuff - on one mission, I picked a fight outside a base, a few Rooks joined in, that drew everyone from the base and, about 15-20 corpses later, it was entirely empty. I’ll add it’s darkly amusing that you get people going ‘there’s been a murder’, after you’ve engaged in mass slaughter. A murder? Try 10-15, the bodies are everywhere. On one occasion Jacob killed five blighters literally outside Scotland Yard!

On a couple of gang strongholds and templar hunts, I took out the target by gassing and then watching them all kill each other. Also got the gang ambush in Southwark, but this team Evie legged it after the leader, caught up to her and slashed her up good, with all her minions. Evie kicked a lot of arse, very spectacularly. When I did the gang fight, the bastard that sets it up came out came out with the line ‘the Southwark Blighters go into the fight leaderless’ - yep, it was a short fight. The Gang War idea remains one of its weakest pieces.

And then there’s random stuff, like some Rooks storming a child factory unprompted, my hanging back - as it turns out Rooks attacking counts as not triggering the alarm and I then just mop up and free the kids.

And then there’s just running around a stunning recreation of 19th century London. One one bit I had Evie ziplining her way across the Thames, going from the top of ship masts, one to the other - and it looked amazing. Later, I was doing in rain with sun in the background, it was uncanny in how close it was getting to looking real.

The other thing that has changed the game is nabbing loads of skill points and investing in the money generation / cost reduction perks. Where before I was getting £1500 max from the safe, Jacob nabbed over £8000 towards the end. Where supplies cost more, they now cost far less. Should be able to start improving the Rooks quite a bit with the money supply amped up. I’ve a couple of driver skills and those really change how the carriages drive and handle. Add in some fighting skills and it plays far, far better - though there are still times when you’ll be fighting the controls or the game plays dirty, like giving poison immunity to a kidnap target. (Target was delivered as a corpse instead, but hey, Assassin, remember?) Evie also does have her own unique skills but focused on stealth.

Current activity is on doing bits of Sequence 5, coupled with taking the City of London - after which only the Strand and Westminster will be left. I’ve got some associates up to Level 3 loyalty which opened up some major upgrades.

 

Black Flag is the only AC I have gotten around to playing.

 

Well, time for a burial:

Here lies the main campaign of Assassin’s Creed Mission

Cause of death: A tailing mission.

And that’s that. There was a couple of very close calls before this, like an escort mission that was simply awful. A kidnap mission with a if-this-circle-touches-one-cop-cue-hive-mind-attack.

Cane close to playing the screw-it-I’m-done card on both of those, on this tailing mission I did it. It’s al l so monumentally dumb - if you don’t have your eyes on the carriage, even though it shows it on the map, a 25 second timer kicks in for you to reacquire it. In most cases it’s already legged it and you’re stuffed.

Black Flag was full of this rubbish, it’s why I got to a minimal point and then abandoned its main campaign. That moment has now come for Syndicate.

What’s left? Short of taking the city and offing the gang leaders, not that much as the Marx, Dickens and Darwin have been awful each time I tried them, ditto the criminal investigations. So, yeah, like Black Flag and upgrading the Jackdaw, here it’s take the city and fully upgrade the gang.

Origins is an inspired re-visioning of the series that also does away with a lot of the crap of the older games, even those relatively recent.

 

Had quite a good run on AC Syndicate today.

First, had the gang leader ambush in The Strand, which ended with Evie killing his arse. So that made taking The Strand far, far easier.

Finished it off and the Gang War was very, very swiftly annihilated by my fully armed and upgraded gang of of bastards.

Started hitting Westminster by doing the Child Liberation missions. I defy anyone not to get a lot of satisfaction out of these: Victorian boss ******** decides to press gang kids into working for him. You go in and kill him and as many of his underlings as you like - I tend to opt for complete termination as much as possible. Did the two in Westminster and got one hell of a gauntlet schematic, but it was Level 10 restricted, have only just equipped it now having got Jacob and Evie to top level. Ditto the Mars firearm. Both are rewards for getting Clara and Ned to Level 5 loyalty.

Had a surprise in Westminster, as after doing those two missions, the gang leader ambush triggered - went for it again and won! So, the last gang is now also leaderless.

Then did a quite well executed and interesting diversion for the most part - after Sequence 5 a portal shows up on the east edge of the map, it takes you to World War One London where you play as Lydia Frye. The story has you working for Churchill, taking out nests of Templar spies. It's mostly quite good, save for the Spy Hunt missions that aren't as much fun as the Spy Hideout missions. The final mission was also less than great as it was a chase-this-guy-before-he-inflicts-desynchronisation-death-on-you.

What made it work was two things - the depiction of London a few decades later and the addition of Tower Bridge.

Returned to 1868 London and did the final two Bounty Hunt missions. Both of these fell prey to the flaw that has dogged them for the entire game. You kill the target, you kill all the minions, no one sees you throw the corpse in the carriage - within seconds of driving off you have pursuers who instantly know what you're carrying. This last two also got Abberline up to Level 5 but the firearm it gives you access to isn't as good as The Mars - still it's done. It's also refreshing to find that the optional objectives on the gang missions are truly optional - on the Bounty Hunts, it is to kidnap and bring them back alive. All he ever got from me was a pile of corpses!

At this point, all the gang upgrades are got, most of the inventory I want is got - only a handful of items remain. I also want the Legendary Master Assassin Kukri, which I get for Henry Green hitting Loyalty Level 5 which means finishing the Templar Hunts and Gang Strongholds, both of which are kill everyone missions that I'm far more at ease with. That'll be for tomorrow. After that? Take Westminster and London will be mine.

 

Not so much the bad, as more the sad first:

Journey

Flow was Ok, one of their team went on to do the brilliant Abzu, but on the evidence of this, thatgamecompany are never, ever beating Flower.

It starts out OK, if a bit unclear and obscure about what you need to do, but you can work it out. Even so, it is set early on - the game obscures to its own detriment and disadvantage. The second area is more complex but there’s still enough visual cues for you to put the pieces together and complete.

Area three is where the game collapses utterly. It widens the level area hugely but also removes all the visual cues too. The result is you have to aimlessly explore hoping to stumble on symbols to complete the level. As a result the game died due to me becoming bored. No cues, no indications of direction, the one symbol I found was pure luck. The others? Don’t know where they are, no longer care. Yes, I could download a guide and do that it that way, but why should I have to do it that way? Why should the game be this obscure?

Flower was unique and quirky but it never thought obscuring information for the player was a good idea. Journey bets the bank on the idea that it is and loses. Fortunately, I only paid £3.99 for it so don’t consider a big loss as digital buys go.

Uncharted: The Nathan Drake Collection

I bought this cheap, £12.99, for one reason: Explorer difficulty.

Even so, I couldn’t have expected that mode would so ridiculously fun as it has been on Uncharted 2.

There’s a handful of key moments that prove this to be true:

• The museum infiltration in Level 2 is far, far less frustrating - it still has its moments, but it’s much improved.
  
  
• The truck ambush on Level 5 where you run and shoot it - far, far more enjoyable.
  
  
• The jump to the building as it collapses due to helicopter attack. Because you can very quickly kill the enemies, you can focus on when to jump - and I think they improved the graphics so the window looks more like glass so you know to aim for it.
  
  
• Grenade launcher duel with same bastard helicopter in Level 7 - again, hugely more fun on Explorer mode - you actually get to feel like the action movie style it’s aiming for.
  

At the start of Level 8 now, but I’m actually encouraged to give Uncharted 1 a go as I never got very far on that, even on Easy. Similarly, Uncharted 3, with it’s kill-an-army-a-level structure should be far better too.

 

I played them all on Explorer difficulty and had a blast, I love that series. I think they get better with each iteration. 4 > 3 > 2 > 1, IMHO.