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Rocket League: scoring a pizza

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There’s a new temporary mode on Rocket League, with some sort of collaboration with the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles. Yes, I said Hero. It’s similar to Snow Day, but played on a split-goal field and with a giant pizza instead of the puck, and you can’t jump, and you have a grapple hook which regenerates over time, and boost which also regenerates. So not that much like Snow Day.

I’m not a huge fan, because of the lack of jumping and aerials, but the game I’ve embedded below was pretty good fun.

You will note that most of my team left, and then were replaced, after a couple of minutes when we were a couple of goals down. They don’t know what they missed out on.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City: completed!

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It turns out that pootling around finishing up side missions was actually the right thing to do. I started by finishing up the taxi and ice cream van missions, unlocking the regular payments from them, then I headed for the golf club to see if there was anything more to do there. It turns out that there wasn’t, but I jumped in a boat and found myself on Prawn Island where there was a film studio in need of some tender care. Tender care through the production of tender movies, apparently, but fortunately Tommy Vercetti isn’t the sort of man to be directly involved in those – there’s no hot coffee here – and the missions associated with the film studio were altogether more entertaining and varied.

Two in particular stood out. First, I had to pilot a plane around the city, dropping leaflets advertising the new film along set routes. Second, I had to take a motorbike up in a lift and jump out an office block window in order to land on another building’s roof, and then follow a path of jumps and ramps around until I finally got to a spotlight – which I could again use to advertise. Why I couldn’t just fly there in a helicopter, I’ll never know, particularly because a later mission at the studio had me using one to follow someone to take blackmail photos.

I raised a lot of money through these side missions, so I went to buy the Malibu Club, and completed the missions there as well. Finishing those, and unlocking the earning potential of the venue, suddenly gave me a new marker on the map, next to the Vercetti mansion. So, naturally, I didn’t go there.

It’s always fun to set cars on fire, and then set the fire engine on fire when it comes to help. Fire.

I went and did some other stuff instead. I searched around for hidden packages, to limited success. I delivered pizzas, I robbed some stores, I managed to complete a course over the rooftops using a dirtbike, I went to the shooting range. And then I decided to try to finish the game.

It took me many attempts. The last mission sees you being betrayed by a good friend and meeting the city’s main crime lord, with many enemies attacking and trying to ambush you. The shotgun came in very useful as I chased Lance up the corridors to the roof. The mafia were trying to steal cash from the safe every time I left it, so my foray up to the roof was kept as brief as possible, although I had to progress slowly to avoid being shot by a seemingly endless supply of enemies. At last I killed Lance, after sniping him from a higher platform, and then returned to meet Sonny and kill him as well. Mr Extravagant Lawyer found me sitting on the stairs, and we walked out the front door to the sounds of the 80s.

On to San Andreas next? Maybe. I’ve never played it; I own it for Xbox and PS2 and Xbox 360 and Xbox One and PS4 and PC, but the setting has always put me off a bit. I like the mafia setting of III, and I like the 80s Miami setting of Vice City, but 90s rap culture has never captured my imagination. Maybe I’ll try it in a few months.

Grand Theft Auto Vice City: the second island

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I’ve never completed Vice City, and I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because some of the later missions have a huge difficulty spike, or maybe it’s because the mission structures aren’t quite as well defined as in GTA3. More than once I’ve found myself at a bit of a loss as to what to do next, with a main story missions appearing at first as a side quest. Maybe it’s because Vice City is such a fun place to drive around, watching people interacting with each other and the gangs, chasing people who are being pursued by the police and getting a “good citizen bonus” for knocking them down (and then more and more bonuses for kicking them again and again). There’s more to do here than in Liberty City, with businesses to buy and shops to rob and a golf course to tear around in a buggy.

But, similar to when I played GTA3, over the past couple of years I’ve been picking at missions from time to time, and I’m not at a position where I think the end of the game is nigh. Tommy Vercetti owns the mansion in the middle of the map, many of the gangs have been beaten down, and I am left with a single mission marker.

Yet when I go there, there is nothing to start.

I’ve been enjoying the variety of missions, but the instant death in water means I am overly anxious on a boat

I last did a mission in which I had to steal some police uniforms and a car, then go and plant a bomb in the shopping centre. I did that, then ran away very fast, with a five-star wanted level (which I knocked down to two-star by planning an escape route through some police bribe markers). That was all fine, but nothing else opened up. I did get a phone call, but it seemed unrelated to the story.

I am hoping that the game hasn’t bugged out. In the meantime I’m travelling around finishing some of the side missions I hadn’t done before – buying a couple of the properties (not the Malibu Club though, it’s far too expensive), carrying out an assassination contract, and racing around in a fire engine. It’s very pretty.

Worms: stupidity kills

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For some unknown reason I have the Playstation version of Worms registered on my account, and so when looking over potential reasons to upgrade Playstation Plus I noticed I was able to download it to the PS4. And so I did.

I’ve not played the Playstation version before as far as I’m aware, but I put many hours into the Mega Drive version and also played the original Amiga game at Kevin’s house several times. There’s not a huge amount of difference, to be honest – the Playstation has some pretty cringy FMV segments, where the worms use a different art style to in-game – but the options and game types and presentation is all very familiar. I tried to set up a StOGS team, but fell at the second hurdle when I was told there was already a worm called “John” – part of the Beatles, of course. My team ended up being Timbo, Kieron1, Johnno, and Hiscock.

I chose initially to play against teams where the AI was set as “poor”. This was a mistake, because rather than making the game easier it seems as if the AI was programmed to use up airstrikes and teleportation in the first couple of goes, meaning that I often found that members of my team were killed before I even got a chance to move them.

Moving to compete against other teams, more average in skill, actually made the game easier. I wasn’t that easy to work out which ones to choose, mind – the only place the AI level is noted is in the team editor, and they’re not listed in order of difficulty, so you have to go as if to edit the teams, make a note on which to compete against, and then back out to the menu.

The game still works well, and benefits from a lack of bloat which later games have introduced – there is a focussed and tight selection of weapons here, making weapon drops genuinely exciting. I may suggest we play this next time we have an in-person games day.

It’s almost worth it for the logo nostalgia alone.

Rise of the Tomb Raider: completed!

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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.