Post — Page 60

Grow Up (PS4): COMPLETED!

Posted on 19/02/2017 Written by deKay

Just a brief thing about Grow Up here. It’s good, it’s not as good as the original (Grow Home), and I enjoyed it.

OK, perhaps a little more than that. The premise is slightly different to the first game. You now have to find the parts of M.O.M. (literally your mothership) scattered around the planet. There is more than one Star Plant. The onus is more on jumping and (later) gliding from place to place. For some reason the game pauses sometimes when you collect things or land. It’s very pretty. The strange animals are cute. You can still drown them while they look at you with disappointment.

Despite the game, there’s less growing up than in Grow Home. Instead, you have to scale multiple heights rather than one main one. Each feels less high, and although you ultimately reach the moon, it doesn’t seem nearly as high up as in the first game.

Still, as I said, it was fun, the skies were blue, and I very much enjoyed it. 100%ing it, by doing all the challenges and finding (or rather, stumbling across) all the crystals though? Nah, y’aight.

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Bioshock Infinite (PC)

Posted on 12/02/2017 Written by deKay

Finally, after much configuring and tweaking and getting a wireless adaptor for the 360 controller, I managed to get my Steam Link working both reliably and without cables all across the lounge. Which means, in my mind, I now have a new games console and an instant library of hundreds of games I’ve collected over the years and barely played.

Bioshock Infinite is one I picked up ages ago, probably in a Humble Bundle (that’s where most of my games come from), but was still on the lookout for a 360 or PS4 version to play on my telly. Now, I don’t need to!

I’ve played about 4 hours of it so far, working my way through Columbia, rescuing Elizabeth, taking photos of toilets, that sort of thing. It looks very pretty, especially since I realised my iMac can handle running the game on the highest possible graphical settings, with blue skies and stuff, but there’s something I can’t quite put my finger on that’s missing from the game.

It’s all a bit linear so far, with “free roaming” only bolted on for those who wish to explore. There’s quite a bit to explore, but the rewards are pretty poor. The “vigours” I’ve collected up to now are pretty dull – one is a grenade, essentially, and is useful, but the other two are very underpowered. “Murder of Crows” seems to do little but distract, and the possession vigour isn’t a patch on the berserk darts from Assassin’s Creed.

These are negative points, but minor in the scheme of things. I don’t know what is making it feel a bit poor, but hopefully things will improve and it’ll go away?

Another observation about Bioshock Infinite is that it isn’t Dishonoured. I remarked when I played that game that it felt a lot like Bioshock, and the world of Bioshock Infinite feels a lot like that of Dishonoured. So far, Bethesda’s game is the better of the two despite coming an year earlier. We’ll see.

As for where I am – I’m just working through Soldier’s Field. It’s been very easy until now. Does it get harder?

Oh! And I think I’ve figured out why they exist already, and why The Prophet can “see” the future, but hearing the barbershop quartet singing Gold Only Knows by the Beach Boys, and a brass band playing Girls Just Wanna Have Fun, when the game is set in 1912, was a little… awesome. And confusing. The way it just permeates your subconscious and you realise what you’re listening to. That bit where Tears for Fears plays though – that pretty much explains it.

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Lego Dimensions: Portal 2 (PS4): COMPLETED!

Posted on 12/02/2017 Written by deKay

After a short hiatus while I finished off a few 3DS games, my daughter and I got back on Lego Dimensions and ran through the Portal 2 level.

It was good! Full of Cave Johnson, some nice Portal 2 puzzles (including the blue bouncy gel and the orange accelerating gel), and of course, it was pretty funny too. I’m not sure the game considered just how easy it was to skip massive sections with a flying vehicle, such as the Cloud Cuckoo Car, as two large areas we missed almost entirely, but that doesn’t really matter.

The hub world is decent too, with plenty of referenced – you have to grow the potato, for example. And the shed from the end of the first Portal game is there too, as is Chell’s “room”, complete with toilet. Toilets are important.

We’ve just the one level pack remaining now – Mission Impossible.

Oh! And before I go, you’ll be wanting an updated List, right?

Sonic the Hedgehog > Adventure Time > Midway Arcade > Portal 2 > Doctor Who > The Simpsons > Ghostbusters > Back to the Future.

There you go!

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Viscera Cleanup Detail (PC)

Posted on 10/02/2017 Written by deKay

Am I missing something, or is it really this dull and tedious? Funny as it might appear, dragging bits of carcass around and using the worst mop ever is actually dire.

Putting stuff in stuff is an excercise in futility since the controls and physics combine to make every manual handling action catastrophically imprecise. No sooner have you put a leg in a biowaste bucket, you’re cleaning up as it flails comically, spewing blood everywhere and leaving you back at square one.

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Earth Defense Force 4.1: The Shadow of New Despair (PS4): COMPLETED!

Posted on 09/02/2017 Written by deKay

Shooting a billion giant insects whilst simultaneously avoiding the purple chaos spewing forth from massive robots, all the time contending with framerate issues not seen since the days of playing NES emulators on P100 CPUs, never gets old.

Certainly, for the most part, little has changed from previous EDF games. A few new enemy types, slightly different level layouts, and probably some new weapons. Oh, and some new – but currently unused – character classes. That doesn’t matter.

No, there’s something just so good about these games. Low budget, terrible slowdown, mostly unimpressive graphics, and the worst voice acting in living memory, but none of it matters. In fact, it could be argued that some of these outcomes were entirely planned. Whatever, I’ve completed it now and it was a lot of fun.

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