Xexyz

Farming Simulator 22: not farming

Posted on 20/05/2024 Written by Xexyz

Nicholas’s current great interest is Farming Simulator 22, after he has seen a fair few videos on YouTube talking about the array of machinery you can drive around. He has been keen to get me involved in a multiplayer game, and after weeks of putting it off, here we are.

It took us 20 minutes to get a game set up, mainly because he’s installed all sorts of mods and DLC onto his Steam game, which aren’t available on the Xbox (or, in some cases, I hadn’t installed them), meaning our games were incompatible. We worked out what we needed to do in the end, and so I entered the farm with some trepidation over exactly which crops I’d be harvesting or sowing or watering or whatnot.

I needn’t have worried. This wasn’t a simulation of farming, it was a simulation of driving around a town in big expensive machines, blocking roads, turning other vehicles over, and generally causing havoc. The farm we inherited had large fields of sunflowers and wheat, which were wrecked as two large tractors had a (slow) race through them. An irrigation machine with large arms was used to block roads. Combine harvesters pushed over quad bikes.

We parked a few vehicles on the train tracks, not expecting a train to come past. For some reason vehicles clip straight through your avatar, but interact directly with other vehicles. We found that there was a large beetroot-picking machine balanced on top of a house.

It’s all a bit silly. I asked Nicholas if we could actually try harvesting the sunflowers, and he tried to buy the right equipment and it still didn’t work. So he concreted over the field instead, so we had more space to park vehicles. As long as I don’t drive more of them into the river.

Rise of the Tomb Raider: completed!

Posted on 16/05/2024 Written by Xexyz

I decided to play on. Ammo was a little depleted, but I had plenty of materials to craft arrows, and I was sure that soldiers would provide me with plenty of bullets. In fact, as I arrived atop the tower, I saw multiple ammo drops in any case, and started to run towards them.

I didn’t get there before the cutscene started. I am not averse to big end battles, as they can set the end of a game nicely. I don’t like huge difficulty spikes, and I don’t like when the skills required for the boss are completely different to those in the game as a whole. To a minor extent, these both applied here. Konstantin appeared in a helicopter, guns blazing, trying to get rid of Lara. Luckily Sofia was still at the trebuchet; unluckily she was unable to hit the moving helicopter. Instead, in a massive nod to realism, after she fired a blazing barrel towards the helicopter, I had to shoot that barrel when it was nearby, causing an explosion that rocked the flying menace. And I had to do that three times, because we all know that helicopters can survive two explosions. And between the helicopter’s appearances, the Deathless Dumbos and Trinity Tosspots all swarmed around the structure trying to kill me.

Luckily I soon found ways to avoid them – running away to an outer ledge, shooting the burning trays over the tops of their heads, and using poison and exploding arrows. It was intense, though, and I was glad to see the helicopter finally on fire and about to crash.

Into me. Into the tower. Oh dear.

So I end up in a burning room with Konstantin, who has obviously survived the crash, taking all my weapons. I have to avoid his machine gun fire and grenades, while running around finding tin cans to craft into explosives and then hitting him with my ice pick. Luckily there were some clear instructions on what I needed to do.

Eventually he submitted to multiple stab wounds, and I took my stuff back from him. And then he begged me to not leave him to die. I had a choice – there was the symbol over his head indicating a kill, but instead I just walked away.

And then the building collapsed on him anyway. Oh well.

Off to the Chamber of Souls to find the Divine Source, and there I find Ana who is desperate not to die. She has the Source, there is a fair amount of back-and-forth, the Deathless Dimwits appear in force and everything is going to be awful. Until Lara lifts up the Source over her head and smashes it. The Deathless become Dead, but so does Jacob, and everything is a bit sad. Game complete.

All being completed, I travel back to the geothermal springs valley to tidy up some loose ends, and hear some interesting post-game conversations. I may return at some point to find the secrets I missed, and complete the side missions left over, but this feels like a good time to stop.

Aero the Acro-Bat: diagonal attacks

Posted on 14/05/2024 Written by Xexyz

In the rash of character-based platformers following the rivalry of Sonic and Mario, there must have been many which were unfairly overlooked. Aero is not one of these; it sold well enough to get a sequel, so was not overlooked; and if it had been so it wouldn’t have been unfairly.

Maybe I am being a little harsh; I have only played the first five levels to far, but they are all in the circus and I am longing for some variety in the setting already. My main complaint is with the way that Aero attacks enemies, and controls in general. The control layout indicates that button A is reserved for “fire”, but I have found no way to actually fire anything. Instead, I am forced to use a drill-type attack that goes either diagonally down or diagonally up, and half the time doesn’t hurt the enemy at all (but still hurts me).

A great platform game lives or dies on the accuracy of the jumps and the momentum the character has. Aero is competent enough, but it’s not fun to control – plus there are frequently unavoidable deaths from going too fast or due to trampolines launching you into spikes off-screen. Luckily for present-day me, save states make this a lot more bearable.

Little Kitty Big City: not a great start

Posted on 10/05/2024 Written by Xexyz

When I first heard of Little Kitty Big City, in a Nintendo Indie showcase, I thought it looked fun – it was obviously inspired by the excellent Untitled Goose Game, but allowed you to play as a cat across a wider and more vertical area. The fact I had only heard of it at this point (in late 2023) rather than back in 2021 when it was first announced, in undoubtedly due to my bias to console games. But anyway.

The game is fine. The cat is well animated, but there’s an odd lag on the controls which makes it a bit finnicky to do anything. This is particularly disappointing given how graceful cats are when moving around – you’d hope that would translate to the game. In the announcement video linked above, you see the cat doing stuff like climbing up ivy and jumping into boxes, which doesn’t seem possible in the hour I’ve played so far. Instead you have the option of holding down the jump button to steer where you land, which glitches all over the place, onto the edge of ledges, and only gives an indication where you’ll end up.

There’s also little consistency on interacting with humans. Sometimes they will react to you jumping at them, dropping their phone or falling over. Sometimes they’ll just ignore you. The shopkeeper get very annoyed with me for knocking a bottle of jam off the top shelf, and picked me up and put me outside the shop – but then I walked back in and she gave me a stroke.

The missions to complete are varied but not overly inventive so far – scoring goals with footballs placed near them; knock flowerpots off walls; pounce on birds to collect feathers – but the difficulties I’m having with the controls overshadows the fun these could be. When getting the pink football around the corner to the pink goal, the ball randomly bounced off a wall into a puddle and then there was no way for me to get it – any contact with water sees the cat freaking out and jumping away. I had to wait until someone came along and kicked the ball out of the puddle, which was a couple of minutes later. While I thought that was annoying, it was nothing compared to when I fell off a wall into a puddle and the cat got wedged between the wall and a pipe, constantly jumping away from the water it was stuck in.

There’s fun to be had, investigating how the world reacts to you, but the glitches and controls are difficult to get past. I might wait and see if there’s an update soon.

Rise of the Tomb Raider: it’s not that lost

Posted on 08/05/2024 Written by Xexyz

Well, Jonah didn’t last long. Trinity had the atlas which meant they looked to see where the Divine Source was, and discovered it was under a glacier. A shootout saw Jonah badly injured, and Jacob demonstrated his marvellous healing skills. Turns out he’s a bit special. This set up the thrilling climax of the game – our objective is in the Lost City; I’m going in through the secret entrance, and Trinity’s going to try going in by force through the glacier. It’s a race against time.

Well, except it’s not, because the next urgent thing doesn’t happen until you reach the next checkpoint. But still.

I was warned about the Deathless Ones. I’d seen them briefly before, when running up a large statue of the Prophet which I’d caused to fall over, but the Lost City is where they protect. When I first heard the villagers talking of the Deathless Ones I must admit my eyes rolled – yet another game where you get to fight zombies – but having encountered them while progressing through the city they’re really just another faction of soldiers, with less advanced weaponry but better armour. Because of the checkpointing system, I spent a lot of time sneaking up on the enemies and killing them from behind, or using the handily-positioned fire jars to explode them. There were a couple of big fights where hiding was not an option, but even then using the bow meant that few got close enough to actually fight.

I fought through the lower city, using a trebuchet to break down a gate; I then found another gate which also needed to be destroyed, using two different trebuchets in the area. Lots of Deathless Ones abounded. I reached a tower, at the top of which is the Divine Source – and then Trinity broke through the glacier.

The last half hour has been action-packed, with Trinity and Deathless Dudes fighting each other and me climbing the outside of the tower. Sofia turned up to help, firing one of the trebuchets at the advancing Trinity soldiers. I am concerned that I’ve reached the end of the battle with severely depleted ammunition, although I can at least craft arrows using my stocks of wood and feathers. Only the last battle to go.