psn — Page 16

LocoRoco Cocoreccho (PS3): COMPLETED!

Posted on 13/05/2016 Written by deKay

A short post for a short game. LocoRoco Cocoreccho was a disappointing item on the PS+ free rental list this month. Not because it’s a bad game, more because it’s was already almost free and it’s very, very short.

It’s charming though, and reminded me a lot of Hohokum. Of course, it reminded me more of the PSP LocoRoco games, but this plays much more like Hohokum than those. Perhaps this game was a source of inspiration for Hohokum?

Er, so the game then. Or “interactive screensaver” as I think it was even sold as. You vaguely guide little blobs around flowers and platforms and water, waking up other sleeping blobs and jiggling the controller to make things move. Wake up enough blobs and you can move on to the next area. In the final area, you shoot your collected blobs at baddie spider blobs. And then you win. All while the blobs sing at you.

And I won! Yay?

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Firewatch (PS4): COMPLETED!

Posted on 27/04/2016 Written by deKay

Firewatch has been on my wanted list for quite a while, but I felt I should both clear a few other games out first, and wait for a sale before picking it up (plus, it had horrible framerate issues to begin with – these have mostly been patched out now). This week, thanks to it both being on sale and me picking up some very cheap PSN credit, I nabbed it from the Playstation Store for just £8.92. And then I completed it.

The plot, which I’ll be vague about because spoilers, involves you, as Henry, taking a summer job as a fire warden in a remote part of the Wyoming wilderness. Your marriage has run into… complications… and you’ve decided to escape for a while, so this seemed perfect. You’re stationed up a watch tower, alone but with another nearby warden called Delilah for company via a radio link. You’re tasked with chasing off some teens for starting a campfire, keeping an eye on things, and generally hiking around a bit mainly just to pass the time.

Delilah chats with you, and you get to know a bit about each other (how much is up to you via dialogue choices) as the days pass. Soon, however, it becomes clear that something is going on. Somebody is listening in on your conversations. Someone is watching. Something is happening.

It could be some sort of conspiracy. Is Delilah who you think she is? Are the teens? Who keeps starting fires? What is the fence for? At times, it’s a mystery, at others, it’s almost paranormal. From the moment things get a bit weird, though, it’s utterly compelling.

Firewatch is a Narrative Discovery Game. Some people call games like this, Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, and so on “walking simulators”, but I take offence to this as there’s more to it than that. Yes, they’re very light on actual gameplay elements – Firewatch has no real puzzles and very little interaction bar opening stuff and chatting – but the exploration is how you progress the story, so I prefer to the term “narrative discovery”. I’ve said many times that a good story in a game can overcome most other limitations, so even though most of your time is spent walking around (although having to navigate by map and compass is fun) you’re following an excellent tale.

Click to view slideshow.

Henry doesn’t see much in the way of other people (or animals) in and around his watch tower, although I did adopt a turtle and call him Turt Reynolds, so you really feel how isolated he is. Even Delilah, who can see you from her tower feels a hundred miles away. When you enter a cave system and can no longer contact her by radio, you immediately feel vulnerable as your only lifeline is cut off – this is amplified when you make certain discoveries too.

In all, it’s a wonderfully told story, with some beautiful scenery and is pretty short so the long hikes never get a chance to become tedious as they surely would if the game was twice as long. The ending is perhaps a double twist, the discovery of may come as a disappointment to some, but I actually felt it was a relief: Again, spoilers so I won’t elucidate. If you liked Dear Esther, Gone Home or even Life Is Strange, then I can’t recommend Firewatch enough.

Here’s part of my playthrough, roughly the middle third of the game. It contains lots of spoilers, so beware:

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Broforce (PS4): COMPLETED!

Posted on 05/04/2016 Written by deKay

The aesthetic of Broforce really appealed to me, with all its pixelly loveliness and explosions and stuff. Apart from having lots of things to shoot and almost completely destructible levels, and of course having a pile of action hero parody characters, that was about as much as I knew. I was going to happily pay money for it on PSN and then they made it a free PS+ rental. Bargain.

The first few levels were more or less what I was expecting. Overly patriotic soldiers dropped into various levels full of terrorists, rescuing other patriot soldiers as you shoot your way through to the end. And this was great. Then, it slowly became less about shooting and started requiring some thought. Traps meant you couldn’t just rush in. Some enemies needed taking out in specific ways. If you blow up some areas it causes the roof to collapse in, and so on. Sure, there was still a lot of shooting, but it was changing.

After a while, other enemies started appearing which changed things again. Not least the aliens later on in the game, which – like in the film – bleed acid which eats away at the levels (and you). Later still, the undead start attacking and eventually demons and all sorts are added to the mix. I think what I’m saying, is that the game is constantly changing and you have to adapt your methods a bit as you progress.

That said, it always remains mostly a platform shooter, and a very good one at that, but the main game mechanic causes problems. You see, every time you die, or rescue a Bro, your character changes to a randomly unlocked Bro. They all have similar running and jumping abilities (with a few differences), but they have wildly different weapon sets. Some have long range guns, some short. Some fire rapidly, some have a blast range, others have kickback. MacBrover only has TNT and no actual gun, making him tricky to use for much of the game (but incredibly useful in some circumstances), and Mr Anderbro has no weapons but his (very powerful) fists. What this means is that two Bros in the same situation won’t be usable in the same way, and some of the bosses in particular are virtual impossible with certain Bros. Which would be fine, but you can never choose which Bro you’re going to be!

Thankfully, levels are short and many have a mid-way restart point in case you does completely. If one Bro fails you, next time you might get someone more suitable. You rarely end up frustrated as a result.

At least not with regards to Bro selection, anyway. Bugs, on the other hand, were almost game killers. Before a recent patch, there was a particularly nasty one where about a second into each level, your Bro stopped responding to inputs for around another second. This made at least two levels virtually impossible, as you needed to react immediately – and couldn’t. After two or three patches this bug was eventually removed, instead being replaced with a new one where between levels and sometimes between restarts (which used to be instant) the game appears to hang on a black screen, sometimes for over a minute. This new bug isn’t game-breaking like the previous one, but it does annoy, especially if you have to wait ages between restarts on a difficult mission.

There are also performance issues, in particular when the screen is busy with lots of enemies and explosions, meaning some levels play out almost entirely in slow motion, the final boss in particular. It didn’t bother me too much, but you’d think a PS4 would be able to handle a 2D platformer a little better.

The final few levels provided another annoyance. All of the other missions are made up of about 5 levels each, after which you get a boss, and then return to the map screen. The last mission, however, seemed to have three times as many with no way to save the game. As a result, the last 90 minutes of the game needed to be played in one single sitting. If I’d have known, I’d have done it another time rather than have to stay up late just so I didn’t have to play it all again. The final boss also suffered from Irritating and Unnecessary Gaming Cliché #3 – having to kill him over and over in various forms until he was finally dead.

From what I’ve written you may think I’m being largely negative about Broforce, but in fact I really enjoyed it. It has faults and isn’t perfect, but I still love the style and the gameplay and with hindsight I certainly would have bought it. I certainly suggest you do.

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Nova-111 (PS4): COMPLETED!

Posted on 15/02/2016 Written by deKay

I thought I was getting quite close to the end of the game, seeing as I’d reached the lab (which I was convinced was supposed to be the goal) and beaten the big gooey thing (which I was convinced was supposed to be the final boss), and then a whole new area with new features, baddies, rock types and gimmicks opened up.

In this new region, fire and switches played big parts. Certain rocks could be burnt, opening up new paths, and switches reversed black and white rocks (and baddies). There were also special areas where time froze, and using your freeze time ability time flowed only in these areas, making for some interesting puzzles. In one section, you had to coax a flaming baddie into a time freeze area so you could push it around while frozen in order to redirect it towards some rocks that needed torching. It was surprisingly cerebral.

What was actually the final boss turned out to be a pain. He wasn’t especially hard, but he was several stages long and in each his weakness and method of attack wasn’t immediately clear. In a couple of these stages a single slip meant quick death, and all of his stages needed to be redone each time you died. Checkpoints after each would have been much appreciated. Worse than all that, however, was that once defeated for good, the game crashed at the credit sequence. And then did it again on my next attempt. And again. And again. Thankfully, it has recorded I’ve completed it as it allows me to start a New Game+, but I’ve missed out on the achievement for doing so. Odd.

In spite of those final few issues with Nova-111, it was a nice little game, using many ideas I’ve seen elsewhere in a unique blend. If I’d had known it was going to play like this, I’d probably have bought it long ago. As a PS+ freebie rental, it’s certainly better than a lot of the stuff on that service recently.

Here’s a video playlist of a mostly complete playthrough. Skip to the end for the final boss fight (spoilers!) and see it crash out!

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Nova-111 (PS4)

Posted on 11/02/2016 Written by deKay

I gave this PS+ free rental a try despite everything I’d heard about it (which admittedly wasn’t much) not being too positive. Dull, was the takeaway message from various forum posts, I think. It surprised me, then, when it wasn’t bad at all. In fact, I think it’s really rather good. It’s a bit unusual, being a sort of turn-based strategy exploration game with some real-time elements and not a lot of strategy. And you’ve only one “unit”, unlike more RTSes.

You explore a planet, looking for lost scientists, lighting up dark areas of the map as you progress, and bumping into everything along the way. Rock needs breaking? Bump into it. That wall might be a secret passage? Bump into it. Need to kill an enemy? Bump into it. Switch need, er, switching? Bump into it. Power-up container? Bu–you get the idea.

Soon you pick up a laser which needs to recharge after so many moves, and a phase shifter that lets you jump through one square, and bombs that freeze baddies, and most levels throw a new type of enemy at you. Some just head for you one square at a time, others zoom across the screen, some grab you from afar with tentacles, and others shoot glowing doughnuts at you. It’s quite funny too, with the things the scientists say and some weird mole creature that randomly pops up to say nonsense.

I’ve no idea how long it is, and although I can say I’ve reached the area that seems to be a laboratory, I can’t say how far in that is either.

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