completed — Page 192

Lifeline (iOS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 28/10/2015 Written by deKay

Look at this. I have not only completed a telephone game, but it was a telephone game that I had to buy with actual money. How rare. So rare, in fact, I don’t think I’ve done that in years. I gave up on the whole iOS game market ages ago as it was full of clones, IAPs and rubbish. Lifeline was recommended by the Midnight Resistance podcast, and sounded interesting. So I bought it.

Remember text adventures? It’s a simple one of those, but integrates into your phone. It starts with you getting a notification (a real actual app notification too) from Taylor, a student scientist onboard a spaceship. Well, they were onboard. It crashed and somehow you’re the person Taylor’s communication device contacted.

They tell you whats happening, and periodically they ask for advice or a decision. Sometimes they’ll disappear for (real life) hours at a time while they’re busy, for example hiking or sleeping, and then you’ll get another notification when they’re ready for another conversation.

Your aim is to keep Taylor alive by choosing the best option for them (I keep saying them and they – Taylor’s gender is never given) and ultimately leading them to rescue. They can be directed to explore the not-as-barren-as-first-thought moon, and decisions are as simple as go east or west, or as stressful as fight or run. Yeah, they’re not exactly alone. Minor spoiler.

I managed to kill Taylor a couple of times, but bar that it took maybe three days to beat the game and get them rescued. There’s not a huge amount of game there, but it’s spaced out (no pun intended) and somehow feels more real due to the phone integration and the way in-game things take real actual time to complete. An interesting diversion with an original concept, if not as great as I was hoping for. The writing is OK (and the story is right out of the sci-fi books I’d read as a kid), but Taylor’s humour doesn’t really fit with their situation. Still, you can spend 79p on much worse.

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Gone Home (PC): COMPLETED!

Posted on 26/10/2015 Written by deKay

Gone Home, the game I kept writing “Grow Home” as over and over again, was in my Steam wishlist ever since I completed Dear Esther. Then, one day not so long ago, it was on sale and when I went to buy it, I discovered I’d owned it for months. Tch, eh?

Like Dear Esther, you walk around and discover what’s going on by reading things and looking at things. Gone Home includes minor puzzle elements, but for the most part, you’re exploring a slightly spooky house during a thunderstorm reading notes and letters left strewn around the rooms. The plot goes that you’re returning home after a backpacking trip round Europe, to a house left to your father by his “psychopath” Uncle. Only your family have vanished.

Reading journal scraps and messages left by your sister, you uncover secret rooms and compartments in the house; catching up with her explorations through her kept record of what she’s found. There’s a suggestion Uncle Oscar is haunting the house, and all was not well in the bedroom between your father and mother. No doubt her new job, with long hours, and his failed novels have contributed to this.

Eventually, you discover what has happened to your sister, but nothing conclusive about the rest of your family is shown. At least, I couldn’t find it if there was something. It’s a massive spoiler, but here’s what I think has happened:

Spoiler Inside	Select Show
Your sister has run off with her girlfriend. This much is clear. It’s also apparent that your parents – your father especially, it seems – is not very accepting of your sister coming out. Your mother has been having an affair with who I think is her boss, or at least a co-worker. It seems she’s been ignored a lot by your father recently, and despite attempts to rekindle the relationship (in the bedroom at least), she appears to have left your dad for her fancy man. Your father, however, I’m not sure. He’s struggled with his writing, both in his failed novels and his What Hifi? reviews, and will now have found his wife gone and his daughter turned out to be gay. I don’t know where he’s gone, but I suspect he’s killed himself. Nice.

Spoiler Inside

Select Show

Anyway. It wasn’t as good as Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (but then, very little is), it was perhaps on a par with Dear Esther, and waaay better than Proteus.

Here’s my full (and so spoiler-filled) complete playthrough:

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Life is Strange: Episode 5 (PS4): COMPLETED!

Posted on 20/10/2015 Written by deKay

It is impossible to talk about this. As well as spoilers, not least the MASSIVE CHOICE necessary at the end, there’s also the fact that the choices I’ve made throughout the series slightly change how Life is Strange: Episode 5 panned out for me. So I won’t talk about the story any more than to say this: I was not disappointed, the decision at the end was hard to make, and although I saw some of it coming, it played out totally differently to how I expected. The chapter’s title is “Polarised” (sorry, “Polarized”, urgh), and the “what everyone else did” stats at the end could not agree more.

What I will talk about is how fantastic the series has been as a whole. The twists and turns, the excellent story that draws on themes from the likes of The X-Files, The Butterfly Effect, Final Destination, and Donnie Darko. The amazing voice acting. The dreamy soundtrack. The fantastic graphics and gorgeous sunsets. Some fantastic characters – Victoria and Samuel especially, in my opinion. Everything comes together to produce a game experience unlike any other I’ve played.

Since finished Episode 4, I’ve found it difficult to wait it out until Episode 5. Hype built over that time, with so many thoughts and theories in my head. I was so worried that Dontnod would do something to mess it up. I was also worried that someone would leak a spoiler, and as soon as it was on PSN this morning I went internet blind in case anyone finished it before I had a chance to. I went in pensive and completed it in a single, almost three hour, sitting. I had to – spoilers tomorrow would abound, I was sure. And what an experience.

Even though Fallout 4 is still to come next month, it’d take something pretty special from Bethesda to beat Life is Strange as my Game of the Year. Who’d have thought that having bought it mainly on a whim? Excellent stuff, and I’m sad it’s over.

If you want to see my playthrough of the finale – I’ve a video here. Be warned though: there are spoilers. If you’ve already finished the game, then you might want to watch it (or at least the final bit) if you made the

Spoiler Inside	Select Show
right hand

choice – I did the opposite.

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Alleyway: completed

Posted on 20/10/2015 Written by Xexyz

I remember always wanting to buy Alleyway, as it had an exciting cover evoking memories of Super Breakout, but at the time I didn't have a Game Boy. By the time I got a handheld of my own (excluding my Mum's Game Gear, that would be the Game Boy Colour I bought on launch day from WH Smith in Bristol, just before I caught the coach back to London for the weekend) Alleyway was old news, a relic from a simpler time.

Simple it is. I finally got a copy for free through the Club Nintendo stars catalogue last month, and I've been playing through it since. Being able to suspend and resume play is a luxury that the original didn't have, but even with that it's disturbing how easy it is.

I did appreciate the way that levels were varied, with static levels followed by the same levels with progressing blocks, and the same levels with blocks scrolling across the screen. I found the powerups to be pleasantly understated and useful. I liked the bonus levels that popped up where the blocks didn't stop your bat and you just had to clear them in the time limit.

But that doesn't take away from the fact that on my first playthrough of the game, I completed it with seven lives left. I'd have been a bit annoyed about that if I had bought it for £30 back when it first came out.

Mega Man X3 (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 17/10/2015 Written by deKay

I’ve been playing this off and on since completing Mega Man X2 way back when. Not because I don’t like it, just because I kept forgetting it was there to play. Over the last week I’ve made a more concerted effort to finish it off (much like with Wario Land, actually) as I’m trying to complete a load of games I’ve not reached the end of yet in preparation for when Fallout 4 arrives. Clear my plate, if you will.

So Mega Man X3 is just like Mega Man X2. Which, in turn, was pretty much the same as all the other Mega Man games before it. Like previous games, you start off mostly powerless and beat boss after boss obtaining new weapons and then finding upgrades around the levels to turn X into a walking tank. So I did that. Once I’d picked the the Gold Armour (which required picking up all the health upgrades and sub tanks too) only the final few bosses even worried me.

But yes, they did worry me. I’m glad I spent the time getting X as powered up as possible (although I seem to have missed out on getting Zero’s sabre? Not sure how to get that) because Sigma at the end was damn hard. I suppose, looking back of the series, there have been a lot of damn hard bosses, but how you’d beat Sigma (in his second form especially) with only half the energy and only a quarter of the armour, not to mention a weaker X-Buster, I’ve no idea. I went through three sub tanks as it is!

And now, the all important Mega Man Game Which Is Best List:
X>X3>X2>6>4>7>5>3>2>1.

But now what? I’ve no more Mega Man X games. I know there ARE more Mega Man X games, but they’re all for the Playstation, aren’t they? Boo! And I don’t have any of them. But what I do have, however, is Mega Man Zero! Woo!

Click to view slideshow.

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