What We Played #60: Dawnguard, Jurassic Park, Gran Turismo 5

Sadly the video-gaming fairy didn’t visit me this week to bestow me with lots of spare time so once again all I’ve managed are a couple of sessions of Mass Effect 3’s multiplayer with some friends. Despite my doubts and concerns about ME3’s multiplayer it’s surprisingly good fun with a group of friends working together. The abuse starts flying when we don’t though…

Skyrim’s Dawnguard expansion has been driving Peter batty. He’s been flitting between the two branches of the story and ultimately found it “quite enjoyable but not really large or different enough to make it essential”. He’s also been playing Gravity Rush on his PS Vita having first managed to unlock the bronze trophy Find A PS Vita Charger.

Speaking of trophies, a dual platinum quest has seen Josh restarting both L.A. Noire and Uncharted 3. Treasure hunting in Crushing mode doesn’t sound like my idea of fun but then again neither does trying to perfect cases where you need to guess whether an imperfect digital character is lying or if it’s just a graphical glitch.

[drop2]Aran’s been bargain hunting and managed to get hold of a cheap copy of the Assassin’s Creed: Revelations Collector’s Edition. He’s only dabbled with that free-running murder sim but is enjoying it so far. When not swan diving off buildings, he’s been kicking Covenant ass in Halo 3 which “looks good and plays well”.

Returning to some older games brought the sudden realization to Alex that save games aren’t immune to PS3 death. So he found himself starting LittleBigPlanet 2, Gran Turismo 5 and Portal 2 from scratch. “Gutting”, he says, “but also somewhat liberating”. Forewarned is forearmed they say so he “knew what I’d have to get through to get to the Community section, to buy a decent car, to unlock the director’s commentary, but it was still a relatively pleasant ride knowing the bits I could fast forward.”

How were the restarted games then? “LBP 2’s still brilliant, of course, GT5’s still a horrible grind through nasty UI and dodgy graphics and Portal 2’s still sublime.”

Despite having been “entirely” put off by the multiplayer beta, Jim has played through SOCOM 4: Special Forces. He says the multiplayer remains unconvincing, though the strength of the co-op and campaign somewhat make up for it as does the “accurate PS Move integration”. Because one FPS is never enough, he also played Spec Ops: The Line which improved following a “dull opening”.

He’s had “a good romp” through Rayman: Origins on the PS Vita. Although he found it a “little repetitive and bare-boned” at times, he enjoyed it enough to see it through and adds that “the music is fantastic”. Aside from those he’s played Wrath of Heroes, Magic 2013, the Wii remake of Fatal Frame 2 and The Secret World.

Lastly this week I’ll let Kris tell you about his terrible rash lizards.

Oh man I’ve been playing Warpath: Jurassic Park. It’s amazing. AMAZING. So, on Monday it was my birthday and this meant I watched Jurassic Park and The Lost World: Jurassic Park; I assume everyone does this. I mean why wouldn’t you? There are dinosaurs in it, and the T-Rex busts out of his fences and Site B and WHY WOULD YOU BRING A T-REX TO SAN DIEGO? Also who kills the crew on the boat?

Anyway, I decided to buy some of the games. I’ve played The Lost World: Jurassic Park on the Game Boy way back when, but not much since. This leads me to Warpath: Jurassic Park.

So imagine a fighting game, but instead of humans, who are weak and fragile, you have dinosaurs and they bite each other and slash with claws, that kind of thing? Are you imagining it? Because you should be, it’s awesome.

Warpath lives up to that picture, and once you get used to some slightly clumsy controls (although it’s a PS1 game and going by memory it actually feels about right for games of the time) it’s great. Dinos have their own unique move set, and, in general, the relative sizing is about right.

They even handle how you’d expect: the Raptor is quick and agile, the T-Rex is slow and chomps you a lot and there’s an Ankylosaurus that smashes you with it’s tail – it’s great. They’ve gone so far that dinosaurs have their own stages, and there are destructible environments and environmental damage.

For a game that could be terrible, it’s actually surprisingly competent. If you like dinosaurs and fighting games then you can pick it up pretty cheap second hand (I got it for about £2).

I also learned about a new dinosaur called the Gigantosaurus, which is my new favourite dinosaur name; it really gets over what it needs to. It must have been kind of a bummer for Rodolfo Coria and Leonardo Salgado, who named it, that it’s not actually the biggest land carnivore, although it comes close. With a name like Gigantosaurus you really do want to be the biggest though don’t you?

Now I’m just waiting on the home console version of The Lost World: Jurassic Park to arrive, which I’ve heard is a special kind of awful. Hopefully I’ll report back next week.

I’d say it’s a pretty poor show for a dinosaur fan to have made the layman’s mistake of confusing the Giganotosaurus with the Gigantosaurus, but he’s only young bless him. [Curses! – Ed] Somebody find him a dancing game.

Assuming you’re sufficiently well-versed in dinosaur lore to be up to date with the latest scientific thinking on whether Iguanadons were bipedal or quadrupedal you’ll have had plenty of time for gaming. That being the case what have you played?