What We Played #117: Dropchord, Battlefield 3 and Pikmin 3

Scampering around the continent this week I needed something eminently mobile and quick to pick up and put down.  Double Fine’s Dropchord satisfies all but the last of those requirements.  I’d heard some good things about it this past week and I’m pleased to be able to report that they were entirely appropriate.

Resembling nothing so much as a playable music visualizer, triggering pixelated memories of Geoff Minter’s Space Giraffe and adding a dash of rhythm-action gaming with its swipes, spins and taps, it’s easy to pick up and the begin the score chasing.  Stopping long enough to write a WWP post is something else though…

And while I’m happy to recommend it be warned that it is the kind of game to get your feet tapping along with your fingers.  Should you find yourself sat on a park bench in quiet, small-town southern Germany, playing it on your Nexus 7 while wearing noise-cancelling headphones, don’t be surprised to discover yourself attracting a few questioning glances from passers-by.  Hypothetically, of course.

[drop2]Our regular music maestro, Tuffcub, has been generating his own staccato beat in Battlefield 3 and was “pleasantly surprised as to just how good it is”.  “It looks fantastic and really conveys the feeling of being in a battlefield”, he says, making me wonder what he gets up to when he’s not fighting with spreadsheets or synthesizers.

Diving into Kingdoms Of Amalur: Reckoning expecting a Skyrim-like experience the fact it’s more like “Harry Potter with beheadings” didn’t help when married to the fact that he “got a bit bored of having to constantly access menus every five seconds to equip things during the tutorial”.  That did though leave him with more time for Killzone 3, Superfrog HD (“ARRRGH!!!! Annoying!”) and Duck Tales (“AWOO-OO!”).

Aran played through Tales of Xillia and suggests that you go read his “rather long review” to find out why he liked it.  He also cautions that recent experience leads him to believe that Nintendogs does not in any way prepare you for actual puppy sitting.

Coming at his gaming with renewed vigour, helped by suddenly having more free time somehow, Peter has been playing both Splinter Cell: Blacklist and The Wonderful 101:

One is a difficult, tense stealth action game that really seems to have got a lot right and the other is a colourful, heroic caper through a cheesy script and frenetic action. Both were quite enjoyable, in different ways.

He’s also the second of our merry band to fall victim to Football Chairman over recent weeks.  “I’m doing quite well”, he reports, “guiding Belfast United to the third tier of the league system”.  With trying to build a success in Belfast let’s hope he’s got a good lookout up top checking for any of those financial icebergs that befall teams.

DanToo has “got back into God of War: Ascension and it’s bloody brilliant”.  Big thumbs up are given to the “hectic” combat and the game’s set pieces, while the “mythological creatures are just stunning to look at”. Which I think just about covers everything you’re likely to find in one of Kratos’ outings.

“If this is meant to be the worst of the series then I’ve been missing out on some great games” says Dan and I dare say many here would suggest just that.  “And I’ve bought Cloudberry Kingdom too. It’s so ducking difficult, I mean really, really hard. Stuck on the second chapter and doubt I’ll make it any further.”  He’s also played a bit of GTA IV, Football Manager 2013 and Football Chairman too.

[drop]In the inverse of Peter’s situation, Blair is finding that he has less time for gaming than he used to.  Though he is playing through The Wonderful 101 for review but is only willing to share a “great fun” at the moment.  He’s also played the “surprisingly fun” PlayStation All-Stars Island on his phone.

Dom’s been playing Pikmin 3 and some Fire Emblem as well as discovering some modern, new-fangled PlayStation Plus-powered magic.  Having picked up a new PS3 this week he quickly had it up and ready with all of his save games retrieved from the cloud and his games re-downloaded.

He believes that “it is still a huge failing of Nintendo’s that if anything happened to my Wii U or 3DS I’d probably lose everything from them – but they do seem to be learning so maybe they’ll change in the future!”  Though look what happened to Microsoft recently when they tried to bring some next-generation digital thinking to their next-generation console…

But forget the next-generation for a few minutes and tell us what you’ve been playing on your current and previous generation gaming hardware.