What We Played #48

With Kris’ known proclivity for dancing few would be surprised to find him doing the timewarp. The time warping he’s been doing this week though is to go back to those heady days of 2007 when it seemed the year-on-year growth of the video gaming market might continue ad infinitum.

He’s busy driving up hill and down dale in the Mako as he tries to get his Commander Shepard recruited into the storied ranks of the Spectres in the original Mass Effect. “I’m quite enjoying it”, he says despite the tribulations of trying to second-guess decision. His one criticism is that “it’s very poor at highlighting you taking damage”.

With his review of EA’s latest adultery simulator, Tiger 13, out of the way Peter turned his incisive attentions towards every ‘real’ Star Wars fans’ third most popular hate target, with Jar-Jar and that Christmas Special being the top two.

Indeed Star Wars Kinect has seen many fans, at least those over the age of seven, producing more venom than even the deadly spider-like kinrath that inhabit Dantooine and Kashyyyk. Peter truncated the original text of his review by about 60% to remove the galaxy-spanning tangents “that were half Star Wars fanboy geekery and half ranting irrelevance”.

I didn’t think that would be fair to the game, which actually has one or two decent points buried beneath the very dodgy controls and the odd choice to include a Dance Central clone. I’m glad I don’t have to keep playing, although I will go back to the Rancor Rampage mode, that was lots of fun.

When not leaping around in front of his TV like a seven year old he’s been spending his time in a more grown-up manner by finger-painting on his iDevices. Singled out this week is Saturday Morning RPG, a “delightfully self-aware, classic RPG which offers a tribute to Saturday morning cartoons from our childhood“.

Of course depending on your age saturday morning cartoons may not have been a feature of your childhood. These days Saturday mornings on BBC One aren’t the home of multi-coloured swap shops showcasing spectacular jumpers, beards and cartoons. Instead it’s a mix of news and cookery shows and as all true PlayStation fans know if you go back to your gran’s Saturday mornings all she had for entertainment was pushing a hoop with a stick. With a stick!

Dan’s been lucky enough to be spending time with various forthcoming games. He can’t tell us about Dragon’s Dogma yet, you’ve hopefully already read his impressions of the much-anticipated Sorcery and he’s not allowed to tell us how amazing the new minis title Velocity is until its embargo is up.

Aside from those he’s also found room in his gaming schedule to start playing Inazuma Eleven 2 which he calls “the most insane game I’ve ever come across”. It’s an RPG for Nintendo’s DS that “looks very similar to Pokemon, has cutscenes in the style of Professor Layton, and has you taking on aliens who are threatening Earth, and defeating them by winning games of football against them”. Only in Japan.

Since the excitement/emotional engagement/despair/disappointment (he doesn’t specify which) of playing through Mass Effect 3 Blair hasn’t found a game that really grabs him. This week his dabbling has been confined to MotorStorm RC, some Rock Band and a little mod-trying in Skyrim.

Tuffcub spent Easter trying to catch up on some games.

I played Hydrophobia: Prophecy from start to finish. Neat little game but the inclusion of mystical water powers five minutes before the end of the game seems rather rushed. Also for a game about water it doesn’t do much with it apart from making you wade through it. Could of done with more water based puzzles.

Apart from that he invested another 40 hours into Skyrim, which probably equates to a short quest or two following by some smithing and then trying to find a merchant how could afford the freshly-made shiny goods. He also tried to finish Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time “but really couldn’t be arsed” which sounds like my own last attempt at the same thing.

Finally there was some time spent with a borrowed copy of Soul Calibur IV. “I had no idea what was going on but I fought about ten different characters then the credits rolled. Is that it? Did I finish the game? Confuzzlement.”

Halfway through BioShock 2’s main storyline we find Aran who’s been revelling in the chaos that can ensue when stray shots from a Big Sister attempting to recover a recently liberated Little Sister get a Big Daddy all riled up. With the whirlwind of combat spiralling past a hacked security camera resulting in the summoning of security bots too Big Sis’ didn’t stand a chance. Scenting blood Aran then descended on the wounded Big Daddy like one of the ocean’s oldest, rough-skinned, pointy-toothed denizens.

As for myself I fired up Skyrim for the first time this year to make the most of the improvements brought by patch 1.05/2.04 (delete as appropriate for your region). I was enjoying the reduction in ‘rim-lag before three hard-reset-requiring, water-inspired crashes had me heading enraged towards the forums. Of course there was also the regular couple of hours of Gran Turismo 5.

My 3DS hasn’t seen much action lately but does get flipped open at least once a week so I can watch the latest episode of Shaun the Sheep as I’m a big Aardman fan. It’s a cunning strategy of Nintendo’s to load transient weekly content to keep you returning to the console.

Sony’s recent attempt to copy that strategy on the PS Vita with its weekly firmware updates isn’t so welcome. Another new unwelcome ‘game’ I’m having to play with my PS Vita is memory card pruning. To download the patch and expansion for Escape Plan I had to cull some existing content.

Fortunately the three free AR games were still on there so they’ve now been deleted. Played once, now deleted never to be installed again. I’m still looking for my first compelling AR game or experience. Perhaps Microsoft’s version of Google’s AR glasses could be it?

Or perhaps not. What have you been playing this week?