The new Crew game has joined Game Pass, so I thought I’d give it a go. At first it felt like I was playing Forza Horizon 2, but after a while it felt more like Forza Horizon 4. It’s just so familiar, but with a slightly worse driving model, and more unlikeable characters in longer cut scenes. I’ve still got a third of FH4 and most of FH5 to complete, but maybe I’ll get around to trying this some day – through probably they’ll turn the servers off before I do.
Radiant Silvergun: an abundance of weapons
I’m not great at scrolling shooters, though I enjoy their spectacle and the panic they induce as the number of bullets increases. Radiant Silvergun not only has a great many bullets, it also has a great many weapons, all but one of which I forget to use. This makes things very tricky indeed, especially when you’re supposed to be firing around corners using a homing missile and I’m stuck firing upwards like a lemon.
Comix Zone: comically hard
I love the concept, of being pulled into a comic and having to battle through the panels. Having the world shaped by your own hand, and then having enemies drawn in by your enemy is a work of genius. Choosing paths, having to jump across or down past the borders of the picture, is a really engaging mechanic. It looks stunning too, with large sprites which have been drawn full of character and incredibly colourful. This is paired with a fighting game engine which is very competent and fun to play with – punches and kicks carry weight, and enemies can be avoided by a millimetre.
But it’s very very hard. You have a single life, and recharges to your energy are few and far between. I haven’t worked out how to consistently kill enemies without them taking some of my health off. As such, I’ve never got very far in, and short of quick saving after every hit I’m not sure I ever will.
But it does look lovely.
A Building Full of Cats: up on the roof
I like cats. I like Little Kitty Big City, I like Pix the Cat, I even liked Blinx. If I like games with a few cats in, then I am almost certain to love games with hundreds of cats in, right?
In this case, yes. A Building Full of Cats is a hidden object game where the objects are cats. Lots of cats. Each floor of the building has fifty cats in plain sight, and some (I think ten) hidden in cupboards, behind curtains, and so on. There are two rooms per floor, including a bathroom, meaning that you can’t see everything at once, and there’s one cat who moves when you click on them, until you find their final hiding place. When you start a level, there are a great many cats who are easily visible, but by the time you get to the last few you’re searching for a couple of ears sticking out of a vase or similar.
I’ve completed floors 1 and 2, and also the roof off the top of floor 5. I find it a very relaxing game, so am saving other floors when I need to destress.
I’ve actually played and completed another game by the same people, Hidden Cats in London. I mainly started that because I needed the trophies for one of the TrueTrophies events a while ago, but it was just as charming as A Building Full. I see there are others set in Paris and other cities, so I may need to investigate those in future.
Lonely Mountains Downhill: feeling stylish
One of the things I really appreciate in a game is if it makes me look good, full of style, skilled in a way that I’m not in real life. Elaborate swordplay leading to combination hits; parkour across a cityscape; flying through buildings and structures with no effort and no fear. Many games make me feel stylish – or maybe the correct word is cool? – but there’s something about Lonely Mountains Downhill which excels in this aspect.
It seems an unlikely match. Mountain biking is hardly the most graceful of sports, with constant bumps and rattles; the game isn’t effortless either, with me constantly feeling just a tiny bit out of control. Nothing illustrates this better than the Free Rider mode of each mountain, which loses all checkpoints and tasks you with getting to the end without crashing; I’m managed to do this on just two courses. By the end of the course I was almost shaking with nerves, so much so that on one attempt, with just a couple of corners to go, I just cycled into a tree.
Not stylish at all, right? But the feeling when you get through a checkpoint, when you successfully land a jump off a cliff onto a sloped stone below, when you barrel down a steep hill and turn sharply at the bottom to meet the longer path – it’s exhilarating, and makes you feel that you can do anything.
Oddly enough I don’t get the same feeling from Lonely Mountains Snow Riders. Maybe it’s because that is a bit easier to control (skis are less unwieldy than a bike) so I don’t feel like I’ve beaten the odds every time I complete a section.
I’ve finished all the beginner challenges from the first two mountains now, and a few of the expert ones. The game is really lovely to look at, with a stylised art design which feels solid and complete. Sometimes scenery gets in the way of the path you’re following, which is an intentional decision but maybe removes you from the game a little. It’s pretty much never getting in the way though.
Which is more than you can say for the trees.
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