completed — Page 196

Lego Marvel Super Heroes (Wii U): COMPLETED!

Posted on 23/08/2015 Written by deKay

I think this may actually be the first Lego game I’ve completed entirely in co-op. Lego Batman 2 and 3 were both mostly co-op, but Lego Marvel Super Heroes I’ve played only in co-op with my daughter. Which is nice.

There’s a lot of mopping up bricks to do, as usual. We’ve done some, after finishing the story, but we’re still only at around 52/250. Finding the rest is going to be a pain, as although most of them are on the New York City map, it’s often not clear what you need to do when you get to them. Of course, a fair few are going to come from redoing the levels again in Free Play. Having said that, in recent games I’ve not bothered going for 100%. I think Lego Harry Potter 2 was the first where I didn’t, and although I had a pretty good stab at it for Lego Batman 2, I haven’t tried at all for Lego Batman 3. I really should. It’s a lot of fun.

Anyway! This is telling you nothing about this game. Which there isn’t a great deal to talk about, actually. It’s more Lego super heroing, only with Marvel characters instead of DC ones like Batman 2 and 3. Like Batman 2 there’s a massive open hub world (New York City), which seems more dense and full of life than Gotham. The split up mini-hubs of Batman 3 were a step back, I thought. There’s also a handful of things to do on the SHIELD helicarrier, up int he sky above the city.

The story revolves around Galactus heading for Earth, and Doctor Doom, Loki and Magneto (as well as a few other less important baddies) seem to be taking advantage of this for a project of their own. As, variously, several Avengers, the Fantastic 4, Spider-Man and a few X-Men, you progress through the levels trying to beat these baddies and take back the Cosmic Bricks they’re stealing. The levels are all pretty standard Lego fare – different characters can activate different things, access different areas, or destroy or build certain types of blocks. They’re pretty varied, with settings underwater, in the Statue of Liberty and on a space station, and the characters you use are swapped frequently so you don’t get bored with the same ones.

The star of the show is Deadpool. He shows up for some of the bonus levels, and has his own room on the helicarrier where you buy found red bricks and watch the in-game movies and so on. In one of of the main levels, Doctor Octopus smashes through the Daily Bugle offices, and then in a bonus level later Deadpool narrates (with silly voices) as you, as Agent Coulson and Doc Ock, have to tidy up the mess. It’s very funny, and a memorable moment.

There aren’t any real surprises in the gameplay, and it’s a shame that two player “screen each” play sometimes makes the framerate nosedive (more so than in Batman 3, in fact, and that was bad at times), but it’s a solid Lego title and probably one of the best too. Although they’re all pretty great, truth be told.

Now I just need to find copies of Lego Lord of the Rings, Lego the Hobbit, and Lego Jurassic World and I’ll be up to date. Apart from Lego Dimensions (so called because your wallet needs a 4th dimension to hold all the money needed for it) which is out soon. Sigh.

Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask 3D: completed!

Posted on 18/08/2015 Written by Xexyz

It's a while since I wrote about this, but I have continued to play it regularly. Back in June I had finished three of the four temples, and had one more to go. But before I did that, I wanted to try and do some of the sidequests, since my Bombers' Notebook was full of rumours and half-complete quests. That's what I've been doing for the past two months.

I've reformed frog choirs. I've cleansed souls. I've freed postmen from their duties. I've found bits of fairies and forged swords. I've cleared out dungeons and helped facilitate arranged marriages. And I've tried, as best I can, to make everyone happy. I had to use an online guide for a few bits and pieces - particularly the long marriage back-and-forth - but I wanted to clear as much as I could because I'm unlikely to replay the game.

It's difficult to be happy when you have a huge moon over your head, threatening to kill you in three days. In the end, I had completed most of the sidequests and moved to the last dungeon. It wasn't nice.

This bit, in particular, was annoying. You had to charge up a mirror, then run into its beam of light and charge up another mirror using the shield, and then run into that new beam of light and shine it into the door. Not easy on a moving train, where motion control makes the beam wiggle everywhere.

The end boss was difficult but fun. Putting on the giant's mask, it was just a case of jumping out of the way of a flying centipede and thumping it over and over. Last dungeon done, all giants freed, and off to confront the Skull Kid.

He went up to the moon.

I wasn't expecting the moon to be so lush and verdant. This seemed to be a bit of a dream, meeting children dressed in boss masks, who played hide and seek sending me into little dungeons and puzzles. They took all my masks from me. In the end I found a child wearing Majora's mask sitting under the tree, who gave me the Fierce Deity mask and started the boss battle.

And that was really, really easy. I can see how it could be difficult normally, but wearing the Fierce Deity mask made me effectively invulnerable and able to hit the mask's various forms without having the sneak around everywhere.

Mask defeated, evil vanquished, moon then disintegrates and I worry that I have chaos on the world with no tides and unbalanced gravity. Evidently not; the part starts and I leave, galloping through the forest.

Luigi wasn't happy.

Not just completed, but 100% completed with everything seen and everything done. A superb game.

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture (PS4): COMPLETED!

Posted on 13/08/2015 Written by deKay

I find the term “walking around simulator”, which games like this have often been categorised as, somewhat derogatory. It’s as if there’s nothing to the game at all, bar walking around, and it should be derided because of this. Which is missing the point. The aim of these games is not to “win”, not to solve puzzles and leap gaps and shoot Nazis, but to discover the story. Yes, you do this by walking around, but there’s more to it than that.

In Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, erm, everybody’s gone to the rapture. You start off as an unknown person on the outskirts of a Shropshire village in 1984, near an observatory. You can’t enter the observatory as the gates are locked, so you need to travel a massive loop of the village to try and get in the back way. As soon as you set off you hear a radio message which alerts you to “an event”, and as you explore the village radios and telephones start to fill in some of the story behind what happened.

Along the way, orbs of light direct you to places of interest, where you see some conversations and actions leading up to The Event played out. Technically, you can just walk past everything and head for the end of the game, but then you really do have just a walking around simulator on your hands, and you’re missing both the point and the game.

When you reach the end, there’s no decisive conclusion and no full exposition of exactly what happened. It’s up to you to formulate in your head what you think occurred based on what you’ve seen and heard, and how you interpret what the “glowing light” actually is.

Almost as much fun as putting this together yourself, is reading what other people thought and how their theories compare to your own. With that in mind, here’s a big spoiler:

Spoiler Inside	Select Show
I think it’s quite clear the light is some sort of alien intelligence. Kate and Stephen somehow managed to coax it over to Earth either purposefully or by accident. It then attempted to communicate with us on Earth, mistakenly trying to talk to the birds first (killing them, which is why they’re all dead everywhere), then other animals (including the cows – they’re all dead too), before being more successful with humans. In the end, I guessed the character you’re walking round as is actually Kate, and the light “thing” is Kate’s partner. Everyone else got to be with their partner once “raptured”, Kate became one with it and then revisited all the rapturings (i.e. you playing the game) – that’s why the light is guiding her to the end. She says she was able to hold time still and see how everyone left and where they went.

Spoiler Inside

Select Show

Obviously, there’s more to it than all this, but I’m not intending to write a dissertation! There are a lot of side stories as well, like the love triangle between Stephen, Lizzie and Kate, or Frank’s difficult relationship with his sister, all of which are explored literally by exploring. It’s intriguing and compelling finding out everything you can from the clues left behind, and the English village setting is beautiful to wander round.

The only minor negatives I have are that sometimes the walking pace, even with the “jog” button, is much too slow (especially when you realise you’ve missed something and have to backtrack for miles), and that there is a huge amount of asset reuse. The same shed, greenhouse, plastic garden table, white sheets on the washing line, Raleigh Burner-alike BMX bike and books are everywhere, repeated over and over again. Houses all have the same kitchen. Even the two pubs in the village have exactly the same “special offers board” and virtually the same layout inside. The worst copy and paste job is the large number of cars that are around the village – of which there are only about 5 or 6 types. This wouldn’t be a problem but they’re not just the same type of car, they’re exactly the same car with the same colour and same number plate.

Sometimes you can see that it’s intentional, with, for example, a car appearing in one location with a Peter Pan hat and swords inside, then appearing later at the holiday camp where the kids were performing Peter Pan, but most of the time it’s just jarring. In one case there’s a carpark with two instances of the exact same van in it! There’s no reason why they couldn’t have replaced the number plates and colour-swapped the cars to mix it up a bit, surely? Or had a red-and-yellow Burner instead of a blue-and-yellow one occasionally? I realise it was a small team making the game, but this would surely have been a tiny job compared to the rest?

Another thing which was unimportant in the end but seemed necessary to record along the way was all the numbers broadcast on the radios (identical radios…). I started to get a little paranoid that I might miss one. Then I wondered if the names of the books were important. Or the times on the clocks (which were all stopped at the same time, as it turned out). Or the car number plates. I ended up documenting everything and – of course – none of it was needed. In fact, there was nothing you could even do with this information anyway. This wasn’t the game’s fault of course, more mine for not having any idea what to expect and not wanting to miss anything that may be required later on. For new players: read and listen, but don’t bother making notes.

Should you play Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture? Absolutely. Will you understand what you’ve just played when you come to the end? Possibly. Will it matter if you don’t? No, I don’t think so.

Heavy Rain: completed!

Posted on 13/08/2015 Written by Xexyz

Started in 2011, continued in 2013, and completed in 2015. Heavy Rain is a game that I've always wanted to see the end of, and had admired from a storytelling perspective, but the first couple of chapters in particular didn't enamour me to the game itself. In the last update I posted, I talked about how the switching characters felt a bit jarring, and made the game feel quite disjointed. It's not a huge surprise that it's taken me until now to finish it off, then.

Now, part of what I want to talk about is the story, and that's an integral part of the game experience. If you've not played the game, and intend to do so, I recommend that you don't read any more.

A problem that all story-based games have is that you, as the player, are often obliged to do something that you ordinarily wouldn't. This happened many times in this game - shooting a drug dealer dead, cutting off your own finger - and what makes it worse is that in this game you can theoretically reach the end of the game without doing these things, but if you don't do them, you know that you'll end up with a bad ending. The game's too long to play through many times, so you want to see the end properly, so you end up doing stuff that distances you from the characters. The game gives you the perception of choice but you are aware that some choices are better than others.

So I played through the game not the way I wanted to but rather the way I assumed the developers wanted me to. I slowly grew comfortable with each of the characters - understanding the desperation of Ethan, the weariness and honesty of Scott, the panic of Madison, and the angst of Norman. Even though they were doing stuff that I wouldn't, I could empathise with their searches for the killer.

However, half way through the game, after a lot of character switching, it was starting to become obvious that one of the characters was going to be responsible for the murders. This was a huge disappointment. When playing the game, you assume that you are the character - even if you have to do things that you ordinarily wouldn't, you are doing things that the character would do.

Really, don't read further if you've not completed the game.

So, when it turns out that Shelby is the killer, I felt cheated. All those chapters where I was controlling him, the information that he was the killer was being withheld. Nothing in his behaviour indicated who he was. Why was he investigating the killings if he knew he was the killer?

Maybe things would make more sense if I were to replay the game. If I could replay chapters, and fill in a flowchart in a chapter select menu, I might do that. As it is, I was left suitably downhearted to make such a replay unlikely.

3D Streets of Rage 2 (3DS): COMPLETED!

Posted on 09/08/2015 Written by deKay

Streets of Rage 2 was always so much better than Streets of Rage 1 in so many ways. Better graphics, more moves, none of those stupid Blaze clones who are impossible to beat, and so on. It was also easier, but sadly the music isn’t quite as good. Ah well, you can’t have everything.

I played through it today on the 3DS (in lovely 3D), as Blaze (because Blaze is best and not because you can see her knickers oh who am I kidding of course it’s because you can see her knickers) and completed it faster than I was expecting to. I was certain it was at least two stages longer, but perhaps I was misremembering some levels from the other Streets of Rage games. It has been a while, I suppose.

Once completed, the game unlocked “Fists of Death” mode, which I’ve started a playthrough of, as Skate (because Skate is worst). In this mode every enemy takes a single hit. Even bosses. It’s hilarious. I managed to do the first three stages without getting hit myself (I suspected I’d die in a single hit too, but luckily that wasn’t the case).