What We Played #14

What We Played

Superhero games are always something of a gamble.  Whether they are any good is very hit and miss especially when they are a movie tie-in.  Video game history is unfortunately littered with many more that have missed the mark than lived up to their “comic book come to life” potential.

Jen has experienced both ends of the superhero game spectrum this week via a couple of rentals.  The first disc to slide home like an accurately thrown shield was Captain America: Super Soldier.  “[It’s] excellent fun but far too short”, she says, “like a much easier Batman: Arkham Asylum really”.

Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters was next on her playlist and not so well received.  “It’s not very good.  In fact it’s pretty damn tedious instead.  Boo”, offered the ever-polite Jen, admitting that she hasn’t played much of the game because she’s been having too much fun with Captain America.  Perhaps if she were less polite her capsule review might have been “in brightest day, in blackest night, you should avoid this piece of…”?

Some of the staff come up with all sorts of creative excuses for why they haven’t played many games in the past week, Blair says he just forgot.  He did play some “delightful” Portal 2 custom maps and a spot of iPhone gaming “here and there”.  Except for that it was just “a little bit of Forza Motorsport 3, which was fun”.  Presumably fun because he kept tagging a certain other staff member…

[drop2]“Oh oh I played games!”, says Kris.  “I played Forza 3 tag which is absolutely hilarious, particularly when you get t-boned by you so-called ‘friends’ from two directions at once.”  It’s not long before the excuses start, “I haven’t got the handling down… maybe I’ll stay away from the supercars next time.”

He’s also taken the Driver: San Francisco demo for a spin.  Which he says is “good” but suffers from terrible handling which makes it too difficult to take the corners.  Kris likes the ‘shift’ mechanic though (remember that in this Driver Tanner’s in a coma, the game taking place in his head, and he can jump, or shift, between people/cars) and thinks it’ll have a “pretty interesting” effect on the story.  He also had one more game to tell us about:

Finally I played Rubble Trouble Tokyo, which is a Flash title.  I wouldn’t normally mention it but it has a robotic Godzilla which fires lasers from its mouth that you can use to knock down buildings.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

Xbox LIVE’s Summer of Arcade came to an end with the release of Toy Soldiers: Cold War which Dan “really enjoyed” playing for our review.  He has also been attempting to play Dream Trigger 3D on the 3DS.  “I say attempted because I’ve never played such a confusing game in my life.”  Lastly, he desires your assistance:

I’m also determined to reduce my pile of shame, so help me out people: the Mass Effect games, the Infamous games or Killzone 3?

With the start of the new football season upon us (real football, not rugby for sissies) Toby has been playing FIFA ‘11 “to death” this week prior to trading it in.  He says it is close to being “the definitive football game” with EA just needing to sort out several aspects before they perfect the formula.  Teasingly he doesn’t say what those aspects are, so perhaps he’s got an article in the offing?  One thing you will be able to read on these pages shortly is his thoughts on his recent return to PlayStation Home.

[drop]Taking a weekend jaunt into darkest Oxfordshire Tuffcub has been indulging in some mobile gaming courtesy of his recently acquired PSP.  He “rather enjoyed” the Scary Girl minis and has also been creatively karting via Modnation Racers PSP.  Overcome by a sudden urge to conform to a social stereotype, Tap Tap Glee on his iPod was the cause of some tap, tap, tapping.  He also proudly boasts that he’s finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution.  Again.  You’ll be able to read what he thinks of the game in our review when the embargo drops next week.

Do you like homemade apple pie and Fruit Pastille ice lollies?  Then you’re in good company as they’re the latest entries on our list of Kitteh Kravings.  It has got to the point in the Tuffcub household where Kitteh now gets her own plate of food for a serving of whatever everyone else is eating to stop Kitteh hair appearing on their plates when they’re not paying attention.  A cut-down Kitteh Kraving scale would have chips at one end, cat food in the middle and whiskey as the sole occupier of the “won’t touch” end.

My gaming time is still severely curtailed so I’ve managed little but a few hours of Sid Meier’s Civilisation V.  I recently picked up The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion GotY for a tenner as I wanted to play through it before Skyrim releases in a few months.  That was the plan for the weekend but real life intervened so I got no further than creating my female Elven Agent and killing a few rats.

Taking his (unjustly?) oft-maligned Xperia Play out to bash its gaming buttons, Peter has been playing Minecraft Pocket Edition.  The streamlined play of mini Minecraft means that there is no mining or crafting, “you can build stuff or destroy stuff.  That’s it.”  You are simply provided with a selection of materials to place around the world or use to “bash materials from the world out of existence”.

One of these is Flashback, the other in Another World.  They are NOT the same game.

After that it was time to soothe a retro-gaming itch.  The salve applied was Flashback and the applicator the venerable Sega Mega Drive.  “I still love it and the rotoscoped animation is still impressive”, says Peter.  “I’d love a proper HD remake and a new generation sequel but I have no idea who would own the IP now.”  It is not just the animation style that garners praise from the boss, “the whole alien conspiracy and memory wiping thing is a brilliant way to start a game.”  Despite it being a game set in an alien-riddled future one thing strains his suspension of disbelief, “jumping down a big hole to get to a city is a bit of a stretch though.”

How about you?  What have you been playing?  Don’t forget to cast your vote to help Dan out.

21 Comments

  1. Finished God Of War 1, simply amazing :-)

    • Wait until you play 2….

      • Look forward to it, hear it’s even better! I have 3 ready to play and could well get the hd remakes of the psp games :)

  2. This is my favourite feature on TSA.

  3. Plenty of gaming again for me this week, largely because I’ve been babysitting a lot.

    On Saturday we had a 10-man LAN and played some games of Gears2 and Halo Reach.
    During the week I finished Spiderman Shattered Dimensions, played the Driver SF demo and also rattled through Tron on easy (damn that is a short game!)
    Last night I picked up the Tomb Raider trilogy for 12quid and also got some PSN points to buy the Splinter Cell HD trilogy.

    Plenty to keep me busy! Now to storm those games in time for the Resident Evil HD remakes later next month :D

  4. Love those pictures of Flashback!! I miss my Mega Drive – Kid Chameleon, ToeJam & Earl, Street Fighter II: Special Champion Edition (which was £60!!!!!), Decap Attack…..so many weird & wonderful games. Good times.

    This week I’ve gone back to Platinum Heavy Rain and Dead Nation. Then going to start Borderlands and finish LA Noire ready for Resistance 3 and Dead Island in a couple of weeks!

    • There’s only one picture of Flashback. Check the mouse-over text which addresses a common misconception. :-)

      • So it would seem. I was fooled. :(

  5. In response to Dan;

    I would actually say it depends on how much free time you have available to be honest – The Mass Effects will potentially see literally hundreds of hours of love (depending on how invested you get in the story & how much you put into side quests), Infamous (& i presume it’s sequel) will eat away about 40 hours of your life (depending on what you want to do with the Good/Bad scenarios & side missions of course) & KZ3 could potentially entertain you for probably somewhere between 6 & 10 hours (depending on how hooked on the mp you are – If at all).

    If it’s in terms of gameplay, Mass Effect has a rich & deep story that will engross you & there is a good 3rd person shooter in there too. Infamous doesn’t have so much of the deep storyline, but i found both games just damn good (almost mindless) fun. The sequel is of course better IMO, but you need to play the first if you haven’t already. & KZ is just a damn good 1st person shooter (which i must return to myself at some point!). It does what it is supposed to do exceptionally well.

    So my advice would be that if you are looking to get really engrossed in a story & have plenty of time on your hands, go for Mass Effect. If you have a little less time on your hands & are looking for a good 3rd person sandbox adventure, inFamous deserves some love. If you actually have very little time & are just looking for a quick fix of gaming (albeit a good one), i would advise KZ3.

    • Totally agree with what you said about Mass Effect. As i bought InFamous 2 and Motorstorm on the same day. I want to play them alot as they are great game but as Mass Effect is so engrossing i’m struggling to stay away from it.

  6. This week I’ve been trying to wrap up The Sly Collection (only got about half of Sly 3 left, and that’ll be 3 very enjoyable platinum trophies!) and I’ve also been playing inFamous 2. Second playthrough, on Hard, as a bad-ass :) Lots of fun. Trying to get as much stuff finished before Resistance 3 in 3 weeks! This week will also hopefully get time for Dead Nation, WipEout HD (started playing it again after watching videos for WipEout 2048!) and maybe some Mass Effect on PC. Also still got L.A. Noire to platinum. Wow… I best get started…

  7. Just been playing Little Big Planet 2 all week, I have been creating a few levels with my brother and we were shocked to receive the 24hrs of create mode trophy :L I’ve got to level 20 on the resistance 3 beta earlier this week so I will definitely be getting my preorder in for that in the next few days :)

  8. This week I finally got my new PC set up, allowing me to move on from Civ 4 to Civ 5. Thing is, not sure I’m so keen on the new game. Yeah, it’s prettier, and the move from a square grid to a hexagonal one is a game-changer (yes, really), but it doesn’t feel quite… right… I can’t put my finger on it but so far for all the new bells n’ whistles, I could just as happily focus all the extra processor and graphics card oomph on old Civ 4.

    Other than that, I’ve been experiencing the continuing weirdness in Catherine (uh, the game, that is), and sending Nottingham Forest through to the Champions League knockout stages in the Pro Evo 2011 Master’s League (with custom edit file). Good times.

  9. Mainly Mass Effect 2 for me. Such a brilliant game an as i said above so engrossing. InFamous 2 got a little bit of play time this week aswell and its a big improvement on the first one. Also played some Motorstorm Apocalypse getting some weekly challenges done and playing with some TSA’ers in the meet which was great fun.

  10. I’m now going to look for Rubble Trouble Tokyo, just for the Mechagodzilla!

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