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Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 30/03/2015 Written by deKay

You know pretty much what to expect with a Lego game. You know there’s a series of levels with fixed characters and loads of secrets you can’t get see or access, some sort of hub world with more secrets you can’t see or access, a lot of silliness, and approximately two thirds of the game locked off until you’ve finished the story.

Then it’s back to the earlier levels with new characters and abilities you didn’t have previously to attempt Free Play mode in order to find some of those secrets and unlock even more characters and abilities, mopping up minikits and red and gold bricks along the way. Usually a third run of the game is then necessary too.

Lego Batman 3 doesn’t deviate from these blueprints set out in so many previous Lego titles. It refines them, modifies them, expands on them, but the structure is ultimately the same. You’d think, after playing what must be almost a thousand Lego games, I’d be bored of the formula and seen everything Travellers Tales have to offer, but no – they keep coming up with more addictive and playable titles.

The main improvement over Lego Batman 2 is the massively increased roster of characters. Even in Story Mode, you get to play as most of the Justice League (but not Hawkman – there’s a running joke about him being trapped under the Hall of Justice), a pile of villains, several Lanterns of assorted colours, and more. Once you start unlocking more characters, you realise there are hundreds of them, including Daffy Duck as the Green Loontern, 60s Batman TV series characters, and even Kevin Smith. Travellers Tales have also fixed one of the main complaints with previous Lego Batman titles – cycling through all the various suits for the characters. Now, most of the time, standing where the suit is needed and pressing A will swap you to the correct costume automatically – very useful!

Sadly, the open world of Gotham City is absent, replaced with several small hubs: the Batcave, the Hall of Justice, the Watchtower, some Lantern homeworlds, the Moon, and so on. Although there’s a lot to do, probably as much as in Gotham overall, it’s not as impressive. I realise they couldn’t just stick Gotham in there again, but why not Metropolis or Coast City? The latter especially makes sense given the Green Lantern-focussed story.

Oh yes! The story! At the end of Batman 2, Brainiac was en-route to Earth, and in Batman 3 he nears it and starts turning cities into bottle cities and then shrinks the entire planet. Several of the early levels are then set in these cities which as well as being shrunk, are entirely constructed from Lego (which is borrowed from The Lego Movie The Game of The Lego Movie: Lego The Movie Lego Game). Brainiac has used the combined power of all seven coloured Power Batteries to do this, and it’s up to The Justice League, who, teaming up with DCs Most Wanted Villains (And Cheetah), have to reverse the damage and defeat Brainiac.

As always, the game is filled with humour. The dialogue is funny, and a lot of the “background action” with other characters doing stuff while you’re supposed to be paying attention to the foreground action is not to be missed. There are loads of nice touches that make you chuckle too, for example the character select screen. Hover over Batman and you can hear him singing “Nanananananananana Batman!”, but do the same over other characters and… “Nanananananananana Plastic Man!” and “Nanananananananana Cheetah!”. Every level also has an Adam West minifigure that needs rescuing, with plenty of cheesy puns and one-liners from him (the actual Adam West providing the voice too) as he awaits your assistance.

The best bit is a bonus level accessed from the trophy room in the Batcave. There’s a Lego set of Bruce Wayne’s manor office from the 60s TV show, complete with bust you punch to reveal batpoles behind – just like in the series. Pop down the poles and you’re suddenly in a Lego episode of Batman from that era, complete with comic book cut scenes and biffs and zonks as you fight. Adam West narrates the short plot, and most of the TV series baddies make an appearance. Even The Joker has badly applied white make-up over the top of a barely hidden moustache – just like Cesar Romaro did, famously because he refused to shave it off for the part. Batman and run around carrying a bomb, as a callback to the film of the series, and naturally, the level ends in a dance number. Of course.

There’s a lot to like in the game, and although it has the usual Lego game bugs (I broke one scripted sequence, and I managed to get stuck behind scenery twice), it’s definitely one of the best of the series. I’ve completed about 30% of it so far, but have barely touched Free Play mode, so I’ll be a while yet!

Forza Horizon 2 Presents Fast & Furious (360): COMPLETED!

Posted on 29/03/2015 Written by deKay

Just trips off the tongue, that title, doesn’t it? It does exactly what it says on the tin, though – a Fast & Furious (tenuously) themed Forza Horizon game. Oh, and it’s free.

Yes, actually free. Presumably to tie in with the next The Fast and the Furious film, but aside from “the man in your ear” being Taj from the films, and a short montage of clips from the series, there’s not a lot of The Fast and the Furious here. Instead, loading screens encourage you to buy Forza Horizon and Forza Horizon 2, menu screens have links to buy them, and the end of game screen is literally “BUY THESE GAMES!!!!111!”, so it’s more a free advert for those than the films.

I’ve not played either Horizon game, aside from demos of one or the other (or possibly both), but FH2PF&F (or as some of the cool kids are calling it, fuhtwopuffandff) feels like I’d expect. It’s a little bit Forza Motorsport, and a little bit Need For Speed Most Wanted. In the three or so hours the game takes to complete, you have to round up ten cars buy beating the owners of them in the usual win-it-to-win-it races, with a few other events thrown in, such as drifting and having to reach a point unscathed.

It’s not especially hard, as very few events required more than one attempt, and I’ve nailed all bar one of the achievements (I can’t get a high enough combo for the last one) simply by playing the game. It looks great, and the cars are fun enough to drive. The map is pretty small when compared to the likes of Burnout Paradise and Need For Speed Most Wanted, but then this is pretty much just a stand-alone DLC pack for Horizon 2.

Will I return to play it some more? Yeah, I think so. I’ve a few more boards to find and smash, one road to drive (out of 134) which is eluding me, and I need to sort that last achievement out. After that, I can’t imagine picking it up again, but for several hours of free fun, I can’t recommend it enough.

Apparently, it’s only free for a few more days, so best nab it now.

Touch My Katamari (Vita): COMPLETED!

Posted on 28/03/2015 Written by deKay

In a sale a few months ago, Touch My Katamari dropped to about £18. I was very tempted to buy it but the only thing stopping me was a full Vita memory card. By the time my 64GB card arrived, it wasn’t on sale any more and I’d a billion other things to play anyway.

This week, I spotted it for £3.29 on PSN, and, with my credit I’d bought for 20% discount, nabbed it for around £2.60. Bargain!

Or so it seemed. As it happens, there’s not much more than £2.60’s worth of content there. Only 8 levels, including the tutorial, and none of them are as large or as long as those in previous Katamari titles. Sure, there’s free DLC (8 more levels, each a separate download, although numbered 1 to 9 with number 5 missing), but it isn’t really free. You can download it for free, of course, but can you play it? No. You can’t unless you then pay 10 “fan damacy” (one of the in-game currencies) to do so. Fan damacy can be obtaining in the game, appearing as a character to roll up, but after completing the game and then replaying the entire game then playing some more, I’d found three. Leaving another SEVENTY SEVEN to find.

Lets just assume, that somehow, I managed to find 20 of them in total. That will take forever at the current rate, but pretend I hit my head or something and I play the entire game through another 12 to 15 times, in order to do this. That still leaves 60 fan damacy needed to play what I’ve already downloaded. Luckily for Bandai Namco, you can buy fan damacy with real money. Unfortunately for the player, 60 fan damacy will cost more than £16. So much for free DLC. It’s crap like this that made me stop playing the iOS version.

What about the actual game then. Is it any cop? You’ll be glad to hear that, despite the above and the shortness, yes – it is. It’s not as good as Katamari Forever or Beautiful Katamari, and it suffers from lower powered hardware as levels are smaller and prone to slowdown. The touchscreen (or back panel, if you prefer) gimmick to flatten or stretch your katamari is completely useless, and outside of the tutorial isn’t required at all. In fact, it’s sometimes a hinderance as wandering fingers on the back of the Vita sometimes reshape the ball when you don’t want it to. The Vita itself doesn’t really work well controlling it in general, as I kept finding myself tilting the console back all the time due to the way you have to hold it, to facilitate pushing up on both sticks 99% of the time, and to prevent accidental ball squashage.

The music isn’t as good as previous titles either, consisting of very quiet tracks, some of which appear to be easy listening slowjams of earlier tracks. None are catchy and some are barely audible.

There’s a lot of criticism for so many parts of the game, but ultimately it’s Katamari, and for £2.60 I can’t really complain too strongly. Short, not as good as previous games in the series, but still fun.

Mighty Switch Force 2 (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 15/03/2015 Written by deKay

It’s been a long time since I played the 3DS original, but I did always intend to buy the sequel. At £1.25 instead of the usual £5 in this week’s sale, there was no excuse. The only difficulty was choosing whether to get the 3DS version or the Wii U one. I went 3DS for the 3D effect, which really does make a useful difference.

I’m glad I did, as well. It’s even better than the first game. The water hose replaces the gun, and makes for more varied platforming (you now have to douse fires and clean mud blocks to progress) and some better puzzles (using tubes to direct water, and three coloured “locking” blocks), and there’s now a baby on each level you have to rescue. Well, I say rescue – you kick it off the screen.

Other than that, it’s the same as before – same controls, same ideas, seemingly same speech samples, mostly the same baddies. It is, however, a lot easier than before. I never got stuck, and only dies three times in the entire game – and not at all on the final level or the end of game boss. I had found the final level on the first game overly difficult and frustrating, but the last level on the sequel is one of the easiest in the game. It still has the “rhythmic auto depth switch” the previous Mighty Switch Force had late in the game, but it’s far, far easier.

I’ve a couple of babies to go back and collect, but there’s no way in hell I’m going to replay the game to beat the par times for each level. That would be nuts as even on levels where I feel I’ve been pretty quick, I’ve taken three times as long as I could have done.

3D Shinobi III (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 14/03/2015 Written by deKay

What a great game. It’s hard, but not as hard as Revenge of Shinobi, it has some satisfying platforming sections, and the music is fantastic. The 3D adds very little, but that’s not really important.

I only had a few minor complaints. One was that doing the double-jump somersault should have been easier to pull off, especially since some of the later parts of the game rely on it so much. Second was the level where you go through doors and some of them take you back to earlier in the level, meaning you have to traverse the same bits again taking pot luck as to whether you’ll progress or go backwards.

Finally, there’s the end boss. Oh my was he hard. I thought I’d nailed it when I started flying-kicking him, but then he countered with some sort of rage move which hits me, or a few dragon punches. He took so many attempts, and when I did manage to kill him, I was down to one bar of health and he was about to hit me!

Well worth a purchase, especially as it’s half price at the moment.