Be Excellent To Each Other

MARIO! MARIO! It's sooo good.

They've got a moving OutRun cab at Arcade Club in Bury - it's ace.

And bloody difficult.
OutRun 2 and SP are far easier games to get to the finish line.

Yeah, I don't realise how hard it was. Bloody great stuff though. There's a Star Wars The Arcade here too but it ain't sodding working! Boooo. BUT there's an Afterburner cabinet.

Here's a game you gotta look out for Beexers: Detroit. The new David Cage game about androids. I played the hostage negotiation segment and it was absolutely wicked; really engaging, very David Cage, and with lots of right stick movement to do stuff.

The rocking cab or full 360 cage?

Remember seeing that at Mr Bs in Blackpool. Was £1 a go when all the standard games where 10/20p!

I completed both Fahrenheit and Heavy Rain and nevertheless I am going to say: hmmmm.

After fahrenheit, it's unlikely I'll ever risk another game by him.

I enjoyed them both, though on paper I'm slightly mystified as to why. And apparently not enough to play his last one (the one with Ellen Page, what was it called?). I like that he does different shit from everyone else though so I'm always at least interested in his stuff.

I want to say Two Souls or something.

Aye, "Beyond: Two Souls" to give it it's full name.

At the time I genuinely though Heavy Rain was brilliant, and some of the horrific stuff you were made to partake in there will stay with me. Searching a dirty kitchen just to pick exactly which implement you're going to use to cut bits of your own body off is the sort of forced player involvement that you don't easily forget. See also: crawling through broken glass and purposely driving the wrong way down a motorway. The latter especially because you're likely killing other people as well as risking your own life.

He obviously has good ideas, he just needs someone to parlay his worst excesses into genuinely fun stuff. I mean, on paper Until Dawn isn't a kick in the balls away from his stuff (it's all hokey horror plot and QTEs); but the exact execution of that made it brilliant while his games are still more miss than hit.

Yeah, what Bamba said.

Mind you, David Cage's games used to be derided because they were limited as games and were filled with QTE's but in 2017 Telltale Games release similar games albeit in recognisable worlds and the public laps up each instalment of the next game.

There were lots of things to enjoy about the Detroit demo but the scenario was right up my alley. This world is filled with cyborg helpers but this cyborg has gone a bit nuts and killed his family and taken the families child hostage. The scene starts as you rock up and this woman is being roughly dragged away by a fabulously well designed futuristic and military looking SWAT.

"Save my Annie. Save her. ... You're sending in one of THEM!? Nooooo." etc

It's just super world building right off the bat. Yeah, you're a robot an' all and also the chief negotiator. Anyhoo, being a robot you go about investigating the apartment where the family died reconstructing what happened and looking for clues. Find the clues and be quick about it because the robot guy will pull little Annie's head off like the top of a tube of pringles.

So you knob around a bit increasing or decreasing your chances of successfully saving the gal before you go outside and confront the guy using your knowledge from what you've discovered or any items you've got as well. You select dialogue and options just like a Telltale game and watch how it plays out. It's tense, it's groovy and I saw a few different outcomes and playstyles from other people there.

I got out there and the robot dude is standing right on the edge of the building and he's threatening to jump. I almost convinced him to come back from the edge but in the end I made a dive for it and saved the girl but me and robot Jim fell to our deaths together. My friend played it and he saved himself and the girl but robot Jim didn't make it. My friend went outside earlier than I did because I was doing all the investigation and when he got there the robot was away from the edge of the building but the scene continues to play out no matter what you're doing. I saw that there was also a leathal option from a gun that's on the scene and, presumably, if you're smart enough you could defuse the situation altogether.

All in all, it was just great stuff. It could have been a proof of concept so I don't know whether the rest of the game will be as nuanced as this scene but it stayed with me well after I'd left and I'm really interested to see what becomes of the game.

Other things I played:

1) Assassins Creed Egypt: I haven't played an assassins Creed game in awhile, certainly not the new entries black flag or syndicate, so you'll have to inform me whether this is a new thing or an old thing I've forgotten: when you start killing civilians and generally kicking off, the police arrive (on this occasion Egyptian "police") with large numbers over the head to inform you what level they are and chase you about like a crap GTA game. It's all just a bit rubbish but very beautiful. Egypt looks good and I purposefully avoided any busywork in the demo so I could go explore the map and see how far I could go and generally how interesting it was to traverse. Turns out, it wasn't that interesting at all. I annoyed the population and jumped on their roofs and nicked a boat and caused a ruck on the high seas before the coastguard police rocked up and then dashed about trying to find some high points to dive off or find what vehicles were on offer (a horse and a cart being pulled by oxen were as good as it got).

Looks like more AssCreed but in 4K by the looks of it so very yawnsome.

2) Playerunknowns Battlegrounds:

This is the biggest PC game ever and undoubtedly will be a smash hit for the Xbox exclusivity. I reckon this will be a game changer and many xboxes are going to get sold for this game alone. So you'll be surprised to learn that on the Xbox stand there were a grand total of 10 machines to play on and a giant queue that couldn't cope. They had really underestimated the demand and I've no idea why.

The biggest problem however was that it wasn't even running on Xbox hardware in the Xbox area. It was 10 PC's connected to the internet playing normally as if you were at home. It was a weird and baffling decision because this should have been a demonstration of the One X. But no. They fucked it. It was the one I was excited to see and it left me utterly cold and angry.

3) Guns, Gore and Cannaloni 2:

A sidecrolling 2D co-op shooter which was great fun and had some lovely artwork.

4) Mario Odyssey :

There were two levels available: city and desert. I played the desert one as it had the most traditional platforming stuff in it and the city had a fair bit of talking to people which I wasn't interested in. It plays like a modern 3D Mario game so there aren't any surprises there. The only change here is the hat which lets you change into enemies and is lots of fun and often necessary to progress.

The biggest change appears to be that each zone can be played through in a linear fashion without coming back out into a menu or "you got a star" or whatever. Instead, all the levels are connected in the zone are connected and you could, presumably, walk from the first desert level to the last desert level without any interruption. Each of the desert levels was entirely linear but you could explore and find extra bits and what not. Flags acted as checkpoints and replaying areas could be done by fast travelling to any flag you've activated by the pause menu. It was all typical Mario stuff and it was filled with lots of little touches here and there as you'd expect. It was utterly joyful but it doesn't appear to be another Zelda style change to the formula.

The one thing I didn't like? Holding the joycons in each hand without the connecting thing that they slide into is a miserable experience. Holding them is utterly hateful and I wanted to smash them to bits. Especially the right one with the stick at the bottom - Jesus I was struggling to move the camera without dislocating a thumb. And it was fucking hard to pull off the long jump too as they wouldn't recognise the button presses together 50% of the time. Hnnngh.

5) Super Meat Boy The Switch Version:

It's a pathetic and embarrassing mobile game that angered me more than I thought possible.

Oh and that Dragonball Z fighter! What a button mashing mess of a game that was.

Oh and Cuphead. Fuck me it looks AMAZING and plays well enough for a platform shooter. The bosses were a real highlight.

Note that PUBG is a timed exclusive for Xbox, not an exclusive-exclusive.

I haven't had that problem with the right stick myself, but maybe my hands are smaller. The only annoyance so far has been the sensitivity of the top shoulder buttons which are very sensitive; there have been a few occasions where I've used a power-up or bomb in Binding of Isaac by mistake.

Do your Joycons make a noise when they vibrate? Mine seem to be getting louder!

I've still not put nearly enough time in on my Switch yet to notice. I've only played maybe an hour of Zelda, fifteen minutes of Sonic and a couple of hours of Binding of Isaac. It doesn't help that my Wii U arrived in the same week so I seemed to spend most of last week dicking around deciding where stuff should actually go than playing games

Just keep your door closed.

If I had a Switch (which I don't), I'd be picking up one of these to resolve any controller woes.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2017-09-25-jelly-deals-8bitdos-latest-wireless-snes-pads-are-designed-for-switch-available-to-order-now

Here’s the Detroit demo I played. Just turn the sound off...