Be Excellent To Each Other

40. Grow Home (PS4)

Got to the top and plopped in a seed and watched the credits. No I sharn't be returning to find the 8 seeds scattered about.

Short, irritating, clumsy.

1. Crysis (PC)
2. Octodad (PC)
3. Crysis Warhead (PC)
4. Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)
5. The Evil Within (PC)
6. Torchlight (PC)
7. Mass Effect (PC)
8. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)
9. Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC)
10. Monument Valley (Android)
11. Impossible Mission (Commodore 64)
12. The Tender Cut (PC)
13. Far Cry 3 (PC)
14. LIMBO (PC)
15. Fallout 3 (PC)
16. Project Zero II (PlayStation 2)
17. 3D Out Run (3DS)

It's the iconic arcade game, but enhanced with widescreen, 3D and 60fps - and two new tunes as well that fit right in. The resolution of the original game fits the 3DS like a glove. The 3D is very deep, but with no annoyances or pop-out effects, and just looks really fantastic in combination with the smooth framerate. The game controls perfectly.

This is so well done, it feels like it was always meant for the 3DS, with only the small size of the screen detracting from the experience.

1) Broken Sword 2 (iOS)
2) Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (iOS)
3) Machinarium (iOS)
4) SlitherLink (iOS)
5) Conceptis SlitherLink (iOS)
6) Assasin's Creed II (360)
7) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (iOS) - have played I think all of the Phoenix Wright games before as I used to buy the Gyakuten Saiban games from Japan and then switch the language from Japanese to English on the DS so that I could play them ahead of the U.S. releases. Anyway, this was good, but it was the original game. Now to replay it in HD as the trilogy app is free with a £5.99 in app purchase for the first full three games. Bargain!

81. Tengami
82. Cube Escape: The Mill
83. Cube Escape: Seasons
84. Cube Escape: The Lake
85. Cube Escape: Arles
86. Cube Escape: Harvey's Box
87. Cube Escape: Case 23
88. Mind Snares: Alice's Journey
89. Mystery of Haunted Hollow
90. The Mystery of Blackthorn Castle
91. Sometimes You Die
92. Die For Metal
93. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
94. Infestor: nice little puzzle platformer for Android which sees you controlling the titular infestor by taking over the bodies of the various humans populating each level and using their specific abilities to get through each level (then amusingly exploding them when they've served their purpose). The difficulty's a bit odd in that 99% of the levels have a challenge that could be best described as 'gentle' and only slightly increases as you go; then the penultimate level is much harder than anything that's come before and I had to look up a walkthrough to know what the hell to do.

1. Proteus (Vita) - finished the game
2. Desert Golfing (iOS) - played 1,000 holes
3. Heavy Metal Thunder (iOS) - finished story
4. Driveclub (PS4) - finished Tour with 175/225 stars, finished free DLC trophies
5. Peggle Classic (iOS) - finished Adventure Mode with 18m points
6. OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood (PS4) - completed all stages on Amateur
7. Daytona Rush (iOS) - unlocked all tiers, top on friends leaderboards for all tiers
8. Super Mega Baseball (PS4) - won the League Championship
9. Please, Don't Touch Anything (Mac) - 17/21 endings
10. Rocket League (PS4) - finished a full 27-game season on Pro
11. The Way of Life (Mac) - completed the game
12. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (PS4) - completed the game
13. Score! Hero (iOS) - completed four seasons
14. Sound Shapes (PS4) - completed campaign
15. Score! World Goals (iOS) - completed all four decades challenges on Amateur, Professional and Bonus with at least 40 stars for each difficulty
16. Lara Croft: GO (iOS) - completed campaign

Not a pure board game experience like Hitman GO, it's been given animations and boss fights etc. Still excellent fun though, and looks lovely (a few cues taken from Monument Valley, I feel).

41. Teslagrad (PS4).

What a shit name for a brilliant game. Metroidvania with fewer "upgrades" as you go along but it has plenty of ideas even if they do all revolve around blue and red lights. Blue attracts red and visa versa; red repels red and blue repels blue and that's about it. There's your puzzles - go finish me you little dick.

It has a great hand drawn look about it. The animations are nice. The puzzles aren't too taxing but sometimes they can be fiddly as fuck. Moreover the boss fights, and some areas too unfortunately, are just memory tests and this is where the game is at its absolute worse. Your little character is one-hit killed and so entire sequences have to be repeated in one perfect go. This is easier said than done especially where something will pop out or a boss will do a move that you couldn't possibly anticipate which kills you instantly and you have to go back and do the whole thing again and try and remember what it was that deadid you.

Persistence pays off however as the story, characters and art are all fantastic. There is not a single character that make a word other than the odd grunt. This is brill because it allows the background artwork, occasional collectible and intermittent puppet show to advance the story. I approve of this no end.

No stupid voice recording on a tape.

No rooting around in bins for no reason.

No cut scenes.

The story is there to be seen and acted out by you as the character. Wordlessly. It's absolute bliss.

The campaign is fairly short about 4-5 hours maybe? I lost track of time. But that's a perfect length for it. Once complete you can, if you are so inclined, to seek out the 34 collectible scrolls that tell the full story and leads to the secret ending. I got 16. And you need 15 to get to the final boss. Ah well, I wasn't try that hard then. The main problem with the collectible scrolls is that unlike most Metroid games the map screen doesn't show the location of these things. Most of these types of games show the collectibles when you've seen them on screen or, like Ori & The Blind Forest, shows them up as areas are unlocked usually in tricky places to get that force you to use your abilities to get to them. There's none of this 'ere. They don't show up on the map and whilst you could probably pound your way around the map once you've got the full set of skillz, I couldn't be bothered because that would require essentially going through the entire map for a second time and I'd only just cleared it for the first time. So they can get fucked. It's a shocking oversight really and doesn't encourage continued play without the aid of an internet map or guide which, frankly, is a bit cheap. Had they shown be the ones I'd spotted but forgot about then I'd have gone back to mop them all up just like I did on Ori & The Blind Forest.

Anyway, I watched the secret ending on Youtube. It was pretty cool, but some twat thought that when I wanted to watch a secret ending that I couldn't be bothered to do myself that I would be interested in seeing his face in the corner of the screen. Worse than that, the pillock is commenting over the top of the secret ending. "Oh my god. Will he see his mom? That cat is so random." Seriously, is this what a youtuber is? These people who get tons of followers for some unknown reason. God I hate some fads online.

Oh, Teslagrad! Play it. Real fucking good. PS+ was awesome this month dontchaknow.

Don't watch this if you're going to play it, but here's that dick on youtube.



Am I being unnecessarily harsh? I don't think so.

EDIT:

And this dick at 28 mins in doing a "Like Spike." Who is watching this shit?



Full disclosure, I was not watching this, I was trying to find this other dick doing the GTA Mods who I happened to see one day and who made my blood boil and just happened to come across this knob jockey begging for Likes. Hnnngh.

God, look at this prick.

Jesus.

Christ.



That's not the guy I was looking for either, but jesus...

OH FUCK, THIS IS HIM. I HATE THIS GUY.

WHAT. THE. FUCK.

God, I hate him so much. Did I mention I hate him?

You. Clearly.

You still added +1 to their views. More, indeed.

91. Sometimes You Die
92. Die For Metal
93. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
94. Infestor
95. Framed: a well received puzzle game on iOS that's finally been released on Android. The central conceit is that the story in each level is told through a series of comic book panels which you need to reorder to get your character to the end of the page. So, for instance, in the initial setup your guy might run round a corner straight into the sights of a waiting policeman; so you reorder the panels to have him climbing a set of stairs first in an earlier panel and when he gets to the cop he runs unseen over his head. Basically it's a genuinely unique game and great fun so people should play it.

Thanks for reminding me about Framed.

Be warned, it's not very long but it's totally worth it and it's actually quite good it doesn't outstay it's welcome.

It's well priced at 79p, so I'm fine with that.

It's £1.79 on Android grumble grumble.

And sometimes I go out and leave the telly on and Coronation Street might get another addition to the TV viewings numbers but that doesn't mean that I'm going to series link coronation Street.

I don't think that's how that works.

What a massive waste of electricity. You should be ashamed.

Not unless you've got a BARB box attached to your TV.

and then it's like +10000 or something.

I do.

(not)

((know what that is))

"I'll show you, if you like!"

No. It increase the chances of Great Yarmouth disappearing forever.

I can't do this one.

Aha! Ta.

I was right near the end - at least I think I was. Does it just loop, or have I missed something?

It loops a little bit then finally finishes. I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure what was going on with it at the end but yeah, just keep playing and you'll hit the credits.

Also, the looped levels have been rearranged and are slightly more difficult than the first time through so you're not just doing the exact same thing again.

I thought so, but I wasn't sure. And I had to get out of bed.

91. Sometimes You Die
92. Die For Metal
93. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
94. Infestor
95. Framed
96. The Journey Back: a point and click sort of thing for Android where you explore and interact fully with the environment rather than just getting static screens to tap on. It's got a nice, if very basic, graphical style but the controls are annoying and the puzzles relatively basic. It's also got quite a lot of rooms and stuff that don't do shit so there's more time spent just tapping on unresponsive objects than you should really need to spend. Also my character got completely stuck on a bit of scenery at one point forcing me to restart the entire game and spend the next playthrough nervously manual saving all the time.

2) Fallout New Vegas (360)

...rushed to the ending as I realised I had this on the PC with all the DLC from a Steam sale last year.

Was it good?

Not as good as Fallout 2.

1. Proteus (Vita) - finished the game
2. Desert Golfing (iOS) - played 1,000 holes
3. Heavy Metal Thunder (iOS) - finished story
4. Driveclub (PS4) - finished Tour with 175/225 stars, finished free DLC trophies
5. Peggle Classic (iOS) - finished Adventure Mode with 18m points
6. OlliOlli 2: Welcome to Olliwood (PS4) - completed all stages on Amateur
7. Daytona Rush (iOS) - unlocked all tiers, top on friends leaderboards for all tiers
8. Super Mega Baseball (PS4) - won the League Championship
9. Please, Don't Touch Anything (Mac) - 17/21 endings
10. Rocket League (PS4) - platinum trophy & all DLC trophies, reached Pro (level 20), completed season on Amateur
11. The Way of Life (Mac) - completed the game
12. Everybody's Gone to the Rapture (PS4) - completed the game
13. Score! Hero (iOS) - completed four seasons
14. Sound Shapes (PS4) - completed campaign
15. Score! World Goals (iOS) - completed all four decades challenges on Amateur, Professional and Bonus with at least 40 stars for each difficulty
16. Lara Croft: GO (iOS) - completed campaign, collected all gems and treasure, Game Center max
17. Lifeline (iOS) - completed game

In essence a text Choose Your Own Adventure-style game, but you play in real time in conversation with a stranded astronaut. Nice to play something a bit different, but I wouldn't say the story was at all gripping.

I was pretty gripped by it up until nearer the end where it kind of rushes through the denouement. I thought it did a pretty good job of building up tension and dropping hints of weird goings on for the majority but it just blew all that in a confused run for the finale.

It's now £3.99 on the App Store so it must have been a sale price. I'm not buying it for that, given that it's quite slight.

91. Sometimes You Die
92. Die For Metal
93. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
94. Infestor
95. Framed
96. The Journey Back
97. Wolfenstein The New Order: gets a resounding 'meh' from me unfortunately. It started off pretty strong and I was really enjoying the mix of stealth and full on shooting but it doesn't do anything I haven't seen a million times before and the flaws in it's formula started to show pretty quickly. The pacing was all over the place as well and, while I realise it was often done to mix things up a bit, a lot of the time you were never sure if you were in a firefight because you were supposed to get spotted or just because you'd fucked up a stealth section. There was also too many times where you were chucked into an arena fight with shit guns (the space station level and the one just after had some truly teeth-grinding examples of this problem) which just made the entire section a grind. It's not a bad game per se but there's just something a bit wonky about it's design and frankly I was glad to see the end of it. Also, very unexpectedly, the visuals were really patchy. At first glance everything looks pretty nice but there was a lot of awful textures on display and some quirk of the anti-aliasing meant that whole chunks of floor or wall would have this weird strobing sort of 'glisten' to them which would sometimes disappear after you first pointed the camera at the offending area. Very odd!

1. Danganronpa (PSV)
2. Unfinished swan (PS4)
3. Everybodys gone to the rapture (PS4)
4. Bloodborne (PS4)

Took a long time to get round to playing this. Combination of preferring ruined medieval worlds to somewhat dilapidated Victorian worlds. And missing my shield in new areas. Combat did feel a bit more one paced and a bit small as compared Dark Souls. I would say best game of the year, but for the lack of disappointed bear noises.

I'm a slug.

I finished Super Time Force Ultra!

It was lots of fun. I hope someone does the same thing with a prettier FPS game.

1) Broken Sword 2 (iOS)
2) Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (iOS)
3) Machinarium (iOS)
4) SlitherLink (iOS)
5) Conceptis SlitherLink (iOS)
6) Assasin's Creed II (360)
7) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (iOS)
8) Plunder! HD (iOS) - All maps completed, all treasure collected, Kraken defeated and all ships upgraded to maximum class.

1. Crysis (PC)
2. Octodad (PC)
3. Crysis Warhead (PC)
4. Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)
5. The Evil Within (PC)
6. Torchlight (PC)
7. Mass Effect (PC)
8. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)
9. Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC)
10. Monument Valley (Android)
11. Impossible Mission (Commodore 64)
12. The Tender Cut (PC)
13. Far Cry 3 (PC)
14. LIMBO (PC)
15. Fallout 3 (PC)
16. Project Zero II (PlayStation 2)
17. 3D Out Run (Nintendo 3DS)
18. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance)

Another entry in a seemingly endless series of variations over Symphony of the Night (A game which I've played, but not finished. I should get around to that, really). But they always manage to be incredibly well made, fun and addictive. Some of them can also be slightly frustrating in places, but this one pretty much avoids that.

Now I made it to the credits, but the ending was fairly muted, the last boss a bit easy, and I haven't explored the entire castle, so there is obviously more to this. Something for a rainy day.

1. Crysis (PC)
2. Octodad (PC)
3. Crysis Warhead (PC)
4. Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)
5. The Evil Within (PC)
6. Torchlight (PC)
7. Mass Effect (PC)
8. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)
9. Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC)
10. Monument Valley (Android)
11. Impossible Mission (Commodore 64)
12. The Tender Cut (PC)
13. Far Cry 3 (PC)
14. LIMBO (PC)
15. Fallout 3 (PC)
16. Project Zero II (PlayStation 2)
17. 3D Out Run (Nintendo 3DS)
18. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance)
19. Trine (PC)

I had no idea what to expect here. I don't even remember when or how this appeared in my Steam library. It turned out to be a quite original and surprisingly pretty physics puzzle/action platformer. I played the original version over the bloomtastic "enchanted" edition, because I actually preferred the way that looked. And like I've mentioned elsewhere, I don't have much time for remakes.

I played it with mouse and keyboard, and I don't think I would have enjoyed playing it with a gamepad to be honest. It gets rather fiddly and a bit frustrating at the end, but not enough to prevent me from finishing and enjoying it.

1. Crysis (PC)
2. Octodad (PC)
3. Crysis Warhead (PC)
4. Tomb Raider: Anniversary (PC)
5. The Evil Within (PC)
6. Torchlight (PC)
7. Mass Effect (PC)
8. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter (PC)
9. Tomb Raider: Underworld (PC)
10. Monument Valley (Android)
11. Impossible Mission (Commodore 64)
12. The Tender Cut (PC)
13. Far Cry 3 (PC)
14. LIMBO (PC)
15. Fallout 3 (PC)
16. Project Zero II (PlayStation 2)
17. 3D Out Run (Nintendo 3DS)
18. Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow (Game Boy Advance)
19. Trine (PC)
20. The Talos Principle (PC)

I am listing this now because I've seen an ending and the credits. This actually happened a couple of months ago, but I was unsure if I wanted to list it, since there is a whole new slew of puzzles to complete to see the "real" ending as it were. However, they are ridiculously hard and involve a lot of exploration and a whole different way of thinking about the game*, and it's probably going to take me years of playing once in a while to get through them, if it will ever happen, so there you go.

All I can say is, if you have any love for Portal style puzzles you must play this game. It is amazing.

* Not that I mind this, I've solved some of them, and it is actually very interesting.

1) Broken Sword 2 (iOS)
2) Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (iOS)
3) Machinarium (iOS)
4) SlitherLink (iOS)
5) Conceptis SlitherLink (iOS)
6) Assasin's Creed II (360)
7) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (iOS)
Plunder! HD (iOS)
9) Final Cut True Escapade (iOS) - Hidden object nonsense. Good, but not worth full price.

Heh, I'm glad I'm not the only one that enjoys those as a guilty pleasure. Sorting the good from the bad is definitely a challenge though given that each publisher puts out stuff of wildly varying quality from different developers. On the Android side of the fence though every one of them's available as a free version which lets you see a good chunk of the game and then pay to unlock the rest so if it's shite you don't waste any cash.

Yeah same here. Played the free trial and then unlocked the rest afterwards. It was ok, just not uber awesome.

91. Sometimes You Die
92. Die For Metal
93. Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris
94. Infestor
95. Framed
96. The Journey Back
97. Wolfenstein The New Order
98. Lara Croft GO: brilliant stuff. Not as long or as varied as Hitman GO but that just meant it didn't outstay it's welcome and I was perfectly happy with it as it was. Also, the 'metagame' of hunting for hidden treasure was more fun than Hitman's alternative level completion criteria. I didn't like the presentation quite as much as Hitman but that's not to say it's not lovely looking because it is; it's just that Hitman's faux-board game aesthetic looked brilliant and I really liked it.

1) Broken Sword 2 (iOS)
2) Phoenix Wright: Dual Destinies (iOS)
3) Machinarium (iOS)
4) SlitherLink (iOS)
5) Conceptis SlitherLink (iOS)
6) Assasin's Creed II (360)
7) Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (iOS)
Plunder! HD (iOS)
9) Final Cut True Escapade (iOS)
10) Hidden Object Carnival (iOS) - Awful game, sub 5 minute completion, and three were spent avoiding adverts.