Bin: Marvel's Spider-Man - I'm just bored of this now. About halfway through the story and no real impetus to continue. The combat's repetitive, the story is uninteresting and criss-crossing the city to select yet another icon or do yet another shitty MJ stealth section has got really, really boring. Think I'm going to shelve it.
Want: I'm getting very tempted by an Xbox One X. I know it's a daft idea really, there'll be a new console out within 18 months, but the base Xbone really hasn't stood the test of time and I'm looking at Game Pass enviously, there's a bunch of stuff I'd like to play on there and I'd much rather do it at 4K with HDR than whatever sub-HD resolution the base machine will struggle to hit. Plus there are all the X-enhanced 360 games now too. My PS4 is pissing me off slightly now too, it's just so damn loud when playing any sort of recent game. Hopefully in a few days I'll have talked myself out of this silly idea but I'm keeping an eye on discounts… just in case.
Bin: Marvel's Spider-Man - I'm just bored of this now. About halfway through the story and no real impetus to continue. The combat's repetitive, the story is uninteresting and criss-crossing the city to select yet another icon or do yet another shitty MJ stealth section has got really, really boring. Think I'm going to shelve it.
THANK GOD. I thought I was the only one and felt a little crazy about doing it. Glad I'm not alone in thinking this isn't nearly as good as everyone says it is.
Spoiler - click to showShao Khan hits the other person so hard on the top of their head with his mallet, it travels through their body and shoots out of their arse.
Spoiler - click to showShao Khan hits the other person so hard on the top of their head with his mallet, it travels through their body and shoots out of their arse.
Yeah it has a really interesting system where each character has a armour rating and a strength rating per battle. You need to break the armour to do damage, but the strength is tied to your attack power. So it's a constant challenge to consider between breaking the armour or going an attack that will do minimal damage but lower some of their next attack.
Also means sometimes you won't kill and enemy as they are blocking off more powerful units from getting to you. Really enjoying it.
Spoiler - click to showShao Khan hits the other person so hard on the top of their head with his mallet, it travels through their body and shoots out of their arse.
Video games were a mistake
You're right. I mean, it's videogames - one word - for starters.
I played one of the recent ones on the Vita - I think it was 9 - it was given away on PS+ anyway. It was OK. I cheerfully button mashed my way through the entire story and never touched it again.
It's just so aggressively adolescent. The EXTREEEEEEME violence, the back-of-a-math-book "badass" characters, the deliberately-misspelled name; I think the most impressive thing is that it's actually managed to last this long as a Thing, given how determinedly '90s the whole enterprise is committed to being.
I'm impressed at how a western company managed to make a legit fighting game when the genre is absolutely dominated by japanese games and has been for years, this also when before MK9 the games were absolute trash as a fighting game as far as mechanics were concerned.
Play: Anno 1800. Exactly what I hoped it would be. It's basically Anno 1404 brought up to date, free from the sci-fi excesses of the last couple of instalments and back to the series' roots. I'm building wheat fields and windmills and pig farms and slaughterhouses and clay pits and iron mines and having an absolutely splendid time. I'm sure as I progress it'll reveal more of its subtleties (there's stuff going on with trade unions and printing presses that I'm not sure I quite understand yet) but I'm pretty delighted with it so far. Looks absolutely beautiful too and runs very smoothly.
I'm impressed at how a western company managed to make a legit fighting game when the genre is absolutely dominated by japanese games and has been for years, this also when before MK9 the games were absolute trash as a fighting game as far as mechanics were concerned.
It goes:
MKII
MKX
Injustice 2
MK9
Everything else Netherealm has made sucks. Like, really reaaally badly.
MK is terrible as far as adolescent guffawing at blood and violence goes, but I still really enjoy it. The shit just washes over me, meaning I can enjoy the fighting system which is definitely solid. It's definitely a different fighter, more Tekken combos (locked, harder to be creative) than SF fluidity. You can tell it's a Western game. But that's okay, there's room for everyone.
(except Dead or Alive, the sexy nature of it puts me off entirely)
(except Dead or Alive, the sexy nature of it puts me off entirely)
People say the same about me.
Dead or Alive is a strange one though, it's actually quite a fun fighting game and pretty unique in terms of its reliance on counters more than attacks; but yes, the whole paedo aesthetic is more than a little off-putting.
Yep, both MK and DoA are legitimate fighters in their own right despite the sex/gore (not that I care about either, I actively love it in MK too). I do kinda' hate though, how DOA5/6 took something that was free and one of the best things about DOA2 Ultimate (the unlockable shit) and made it into a DLC package that spans more than 2 or 3 times the full cost of the game. But whatever, I guess I can't say it hurt the mechanics and that's the main thing.
If Sega would give us Virtua Fighter 6 and supported it, I'm pretty sure it would kill DoA6 stone dead. Please give us Virtua Fighter 6, Sega.
Katana ZERO - This has got really good reviews, but it's only on Switch so I don't want it overly yet. Even though I do. If it hits PS4, I'm all over this.
Steamworld Quest - Same as above, except I know this one's coming to PS4 later. Looks great. Glad to hear the gameplay departure hasn't stopped it being another great Steamworld game.
Playing the gacha game (is there any other type of game on a mobile phone? lol) for Revue Starlight, and it's so addictive this might be the first one I spend money on fuck. Of all the gacha I have and have played, I think the gameplay sits only underneath Dragalia Lost (Which I had to delete, not enough space) but of course if you didn't watch the anime you probably won't 'get it'. First phone game where I ran the batery down to near 0 from 100%, not even Fate/ Grand Order or Fire Emblem Heroes compelled me that far.
Additional Play: Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney Trilogy. Comfort gaming for a shitty weekend where I've been constantly ill. I love this series and this is a handsome re-release for the first three games; it's been years since I played these and I'm very pleased to discover that I remember a lot less about them than I thought I did. The trilogy re-release is a very good fit for the Switch (although other platforms are available) and while the redrawn graphics don't quite capture the character of the original DS pixel art, they're a lot better than the last attempt at this sort of thing on the iOS versions and they scale up very well indeed to higher resolutions, so it was probably the right choice in the long run.
Hopefully this will eventually lead to a similar re-release for games 4-6 (equally good in my opinion) and maybe even start a push to get some of the untranslated Phoenix Wright titles brought over. Well, I can dream.
