Category: Games

Working through the pile of shame.

Jetpack outta Hell

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Just a quick entry, as I’m aware I’ve not written about anything for a while. I wanted to just assure people that I’m a) alive and b) not a fan of the terrible God of War clone that is Dante’s Inferno. You can probably glean all you need to know from that terrible trailer above.

The upshot of the game is that Dante’s Inferno is the be-ringed skeleton upon which a dire knockoff game was hung. I think I scored this free on the PSN one month, so I hadn’t had much investment in it anyway, but upon playing a couple of hours of it – ecccch. It’s derivative, features a psychopathic lead who has stitched his garment into his skin, and is trying to get his girlfriend back from the clutches of Hell because he boned someone while on the Crusades, once.

Well, something like that. Continue reading “Jetpack outta Hell” →

On Firewatch

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Despite the best efforts of my video card and Windows 10 to stop me, I recently completed Campo Santo’s Firewatch, an adventure game. It’s become the favourite thing I’ve played in the past year, I think, partially for its design, but also for the way it’s unafraid to put story first, mechanics second.

The game takes place in Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest, a wilderness of almost 10,000 square kilometres. It’s 1989, the year after the calamitous Yellowstone fires, and you play the part of Henry, a bearded, chubby dude (voiced by Rich Sommer, Mad Men‘s Harry Crane) who takes a summer job as a fire watcher to place some distance between himself and his life’s problems.

(I don’t want to explain the problems too much – there’s a surprising amount of determining your own variant of the story in its opening minutes, and they’re certainly emotional.) Continue reading “On Firewatch” →

Keeping Bad Company, twice

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Continuing the play-through-the-PS3-backlog project, I’ve just completed the two Battlefield: Bad Company games, my first proper excursion into the Battlefield world. I didn’t play any of the multiplayer, so I assume this means I am now an associate dudebro. Continue reading “Keeping Bad Company, twice” →

Running out of Forgotten Sands

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So I finally reached the end of my Prince of Persia saga, and have found it’s concluded not with a bang, but a whimper. A pretty whimper but a whimper nonetheless.

Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands is not, as you’d expect from the cover, a tie-in with 2010’s moustache-twirling film. Continue reading “Running out of Forgotten Sands” →

Prince of Arse?

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My sporadic attempt to play through the Prince of Persia games continues apace with a whip through 2008’s Prince of Persia. Fancy a trailer?

There you go.

Firstly, wow. I know that I’ve most recently been playing fancified versions of the original console trilogy, but this game is very pretty – almost pretty enough to counteract a few of its glaring flaws. In this episode, you’re wandering around and stumble into a battle between a couple of gods who’re somehow involved in a family matter.Maybe.  Continue reading “Prince of Arse?” →

Fiddling about with Forresters

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I’ve just finished another Telltale series: their Game of Thrones tie-in adventure. And while I still have a special fondness for the first two series of The Walking Dead I have to say that I felt this game really nailed the source material. It feels canonical, which I suppose is understandable given the involvement of key cast members in its creation, as well as the dedication to the look of the show that’s apparent throughout. It also helps that George R. R. Martin’s personal assistant, Ty Corey Franck, was a consultant on the thing.  Continue reading “Fiddling about with Forresters” →

Refreshed Prince (of Persia)

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Over the past three weeks I’ve been reliving some of my gaming history. I finally made time to replay the games in the Sands of Time console reboot of Prince of Persia – games which were among the first I played on my PS2, and games I thought were great. I wondered before I began playing just how they’d stack up to my memories.

(There are more than likely to be spoilers in here, so just be warned. I don’t know about spoiling games that’re now over a decade old, but you know. The internet.)

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Easy… easy…

The original Prince of Persia was one of the first games I remember having on my PC (at a time when what I really wanted was an Amiga) and it stood out because of how real it felt. There was a sense of weight, of physical presence to the little dude, and it was unforgiving and brutal: you fucked up and you were dead, usually impaled. Continue reading “Refreshed Prince (of Persia)” →

Can I get The Witness?

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A fairly straightforward question. Not a witness. The Witness. The game, Jonathan Blow’s follow-up to Braid, and a game I’d really looked forward to playing ever since I saw the first demos of it. Here’s a trailer for the most recent version, on PS4.

Yeah, that’s my kind of jam right there. Or was it? At first glance – puzzles, a weird island, an almost-real-but-not rendering style – it seemed right up my alley. But was it really? I mean after all, the game’s designer once said he wanted to make games for people who read Gravity’s Rainbow, and I’m exactly that lit-wanker audience.  Continue reading “Can I get The Witness?” →

Borderlands and breaking ice

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This post may contain spoilers for Tales From The Borderlands and Cryostasis. If you’re planning on playing either of those you might want to read this later, perhaps. 

I’ve recently finished playing Borderlands 2, a 100-odd hour epic jaunt which I mostly enjoyed. While I had reached my fill of that game’s mechanics, I was not quite ready to leave the world that had been created, so I decided to whip through Telltale’s episodic Tales From The Borderlands adventure game to get my fill of Handsome Jack action. (Jacktion? Ew.)

Continue reading “Borderlands and breaking ice” →