I played a game this week! Only for about an hour mind but it was most definitely a game. Rain’s first trailer sold me on the game, I’m always up for something a bit different and a bit arty. Plus it had shades of ICO about it.
Things started well and I loved the watercolour intro with the accordion music. Very French for a Japanese game. Then came the niggles. The floating narrative text was fine until one line of it flashed up only briefly and I realized that its appearance and disappearance was tied to invisible checkpoints.
Call me picky but for some reason I found that really jarring. I was happy to accept the text within the environment but now I had to be careful to move at a pace through the rain-soaked streets that gave me time to read unpredictably transient text.
From that point I became a little too acutely aware of the game mechanics and that began to detract from the overall experience. I gave up a short way into the second chapter but the game does intrigue me so I will go back to it when I have more than a few minutes to spare.
Stefan has been playing the Battlefield 4 Beta on his PC and while it “still hasn’t quite convinced” him he admits that “that map is pretty darn impressive”. He’s also dived into the “quite odd, yet compulsive close quarters deathmatch game” War Of The Vikings. There’ll be more on that in ’round these ‘ere parts soon enough.
Sonic Lost World on the Nintendo 3DS has had both Dom and Peter collaborating on a joint review. Dom’s also been back to Killzone 3 to brush up on Higs-persecution in preparation for the forthcoming Shadow Fall.
A multiplayer excursion was brief and bloody though apparently parts of the scenery have a new respect for him having been riddled with bullets. He was last seen skipping merrily about having finished his joint review as he just got a Dark Souls 2 Beta invitation.
Aran has played “a lot of” GTA V and despite not yet having completed the story and being online with some of the motley TSA Crew he still thinks that “it’s good fun and the impromptu acts of violence really are brilliant”.
Also living it up in Los Santos is DanToo who’s found additional time for some more Bioshock Infinite, “a little” Crash Team Racing and has made an early start on Beyond: Two Souls, a game I’ve personally got high hopes for and therefore a corresponding sense of trepidation that it will fail to live up to them.
Blair‘s been playing Beyond: Two Souls too, and as his review shows, he thought it was above average but overall disappointing, with the story being a bit of a messy affair. He’s had more success with GTA Online, which he’s loving more by the day. Aside from that, there hasn’t been much time for gaming.
Have you been able to tear yourself away from GTA V? Are you gushing over Beyond already? Have you been chanting “Rain, Rain go away come again some other day” like me? Enquiring minds want to know!
tactical20
Tiny bit of GTA:O, but mainly Dirt 3 after picking it up for a fiver in Sainsburys. Oh, and the first couple of hours of The Last of Us.
Youles
Have you played the Cat & Mouse mode online with DiRT 3? It’s probably one of the best multiplayer modes of any online gaming, ever! We’ve had 8 TSAers playing it before and it’s amazing fun!
tactical20
Not yet! Just working my way through the epic tour mode. Think I’m about half way, but my god I suck at the gymkhana stuff!
Youles
I platinumed The Walking Dead (on Vita) and God of War Ascension this week (completed Trails of Archimedes on my 3rd attempt :p); I completed Killzone Mercenary on Veteran; I started GTA V Online with McProley which was enjoyable although it’s kinda annoying that everything is locked again, so I will need to level up asap.
I also started Dishonored although I’m disappointed that I’m only on mission 3 and I’m already visiting previous locations…I hope the rest of the game offers new environments otherwise it’ll get boring fast!
I’ve also played some Killzone Mercenary online with both McProley and Avengerr this week, although the party system is fucking annoying, quite often I’m on the opposite team to people I know, so we can’t work together!
I intend to start Lone Survivor, Beyond: Two Souls and Rain over the weekend!
Dan Jones
Even after playing only an hour of Beyond the whole thing seems disjointed. Shuffles between different time frames far too often, with no correlation between the switches.
KeRaSh
Didn’t really change up my rotation. Been playing FFXIV ARR and some Spelunky in between.
Reached Lv 46 as a Dragoon. Finally closing in on the conclusion of the story and then it’s on to maybe endgame or leveling something else.
Germanos
Or awesome gear gathering ^^ I’m near your progres – a lv41 Dragoon.
Starman
Passing my 5000th trophy and 27th platinum with MotoGP13 on vita.
allan_treebeard
Far too much Rayman Origins on the Vita. To the point that I was lying in bed and whenever I closed my eyes I could see a level in front of my eyes…I couldnt get to sleep until I had completed the level in my head…I was lying awake for 3 hours…must have been delirium or something…
Other than that; a bit of street fight x tekken on the vita. Its a great game but the controls are fiddly for the vita and the touch screen additions have an ever so slight delay in execution. In a fighting game every macro second counts so its very noticable. I dont think i’ll be getting many beat em ups for the vita, i’ll stick with the ps3/4 for them.
Also trecking on with Diablo 3, wizard is lvl 50 and just progressing into inferno. Also had a recent resurgence of dawn of war on the PC with friends :) great fun!
Eldave0
Haven’t really had time to do much gaming during the week, however I did put several hours into the BF4 beta over the weekend.
Overall its a lot of fun and will certainly be a lot better with 64 players running around. Its basically Battlefield 3.5 but that’s not really a bad thing.
Hoping to borrow my friend’s PS3 this weekend so my wife and I can rent Beyond and play through it.
R1MJAW
Mainly GTA V. Finished off the story and I’m currently in the process of collecting stuff. I did the submarine parts, nuclear waste and spaceship parts yesterday and I’ll try to get the letter scraps, stunt jumps and under bridge/knife flights done today.
I’ve also played a bit of F1 2013, though not much due to GTA V.
bunimomike
Played a bit of League of Legends with friends. Started my second playthrough of State of Decay – what a truly wonderful title that is. Hope it comes to the PS3. Continuing with a smidge of Plants Vs Zombies 2 on the iPhone although I’m very much stuck in the third map with no keys and a daunting task of mindless grinding – not even remotely pleasurable grinding – to get enough keys to continue. No problem as I might spend the money to unlock them. Makes sense as the game has been great value so far (think I’ve spent £5 or so).
Youles
The grinding ruined PvZ2 for me….I may consider doing it if/when it’s released on Vita, because as least then I’d get trophies as some kind of reward!
hornet1990
Didn’t want to risk my GTAV SP save game getting corrupted by the online so I kept away from it. Tried the BF4 beta on PS3 but wasn’t impressed at all, so much so I cancelled my PS4 preorder for it. More sensible to wait and reappraise 6 months after launch me thinks.
Then went on to finish my Blops2 SP playthough – OMG what a complete pile of utter tripe! I’ve always replayed my CODs on veteran but just can’t bring myself to relive that! W@W was good, Blops was fairly decent until the undersea bit and super cheesy ending and now blops2 utter crap – not a great progression curve for Treyarchs SP!
Now I’m finishing off the BF3 SP… may not be great but anything is a vast improvement from here on out!