Dark Souls 2

My Christmas whisky hangover is finally over, let the weekly updates re-commence!

I’ve really only been playing one game recently and that’s Dark Souls 2 on the personal computation machine. It’s infuriating to the point where you’ll take several bites out of your monitor but at the same time, it’s a magnificent game which will teach you how to dance.

There are five significant qualms I have with the game:

• The user interface is ugly and cumbersome.
• You cannot easily compare equipment you are wearing with items you are viewing in a shop.
• The icons for stats are confusingly similar to one another.
• Some stats have ridiculously abstract names (Poise? What the hell is poise?)
• Punishment for death is excessive. Punishments include:
  • All enemies respawn
  • Your maximum HP is lowered
  • If you die once then die again without reaching the point of your original corpse, any currency souls you’ve collected are pissed away forever

Besides the issues above you are never told if you are in the wrong place for your ability level, or if you need to use an item to progress. You just have to figure it out or you have to find out how to progress from an internet guide like a great big idiot baby. If your personal honour code forbids consulting guides, the first few hours of the game can feel like being frequently punched in the face from a giant with wasps for hands.

I usually consider the need to check FAQs and guides to be slothful design but in Dark Souls, the lack of information is intentional. From Software want you to talk to people about the game. Not just internet goblins either (although the online community is vast), you’re meant to ignore the repulsive smell of strangers and cohorts and actively discuss the game. You’re meant to have conversations with your even your most hideous neighbours. Exchanges like this:

“Hey did you blow up that wall on the corner in the forest of giants”

“No! I didn’t know you could do that! How can I find it? Can I touch your hair?”

“It’s where there’s a hollow guard throwing firebombs. Please let go of my hair sir.”

There’s real joy to be had learning about some secrets and missed opportunities from social interaction. Even in the game itself there are messages left by other players which literally litter the floor. They inform you of hidden paths, items, and useful cliffs to commit suicide from. It’s a wonderful mechanic which is surprisingly devoid of deviant-speak as players can only use words from a preset list. If only this were the case for all online conversations.

If you’re too useless to make any progress whatsoever, you also have the option to summon in random plebs to help you which is great but pretty much nullifies the extreme difficulty. However, you can return the favour by joining some other poor sod’s game. Ding so can reward you with the prize of returning to full health, assuming you don’t arse it up and let the poor sod die (or die uselessly yourself).

It really is a belter of a game. Every time I get crushed by a mace the size of a horse, I feel like I’m learning something. Usually, I learn fear. Stamina management and fear. The trick to succeeding is to hang back and slowly nip at enemies until they die from 1000 papercuts. There’s considerably more depth to it than that but the natural learning and adapting is a refreshing change from big neon arrows telling me what to do and glowing paths telling me where to go. I have to think, and try stuff for myself and fuck up to progress. That’s brilliant.

Learning to kill the run of the mill chumps is one thing but ridding the world of bosses is another. Bosses have patterns which you must learn but unlike Zelda games, the punishment for failure is swift brutal death. Which is what makes killing them so damn rewarding (apart from all the actual awards that is). Coincidentally, I killed the first boss on my first go so I felt like Zeus for a good 5 minutes before promptly losing everything to the the next enemy with a large pointed stick. I needed a new controller anyway, it’s fine.

Oh and my favourite aspect of the game is that you can kill everybody. Want to kill the shopkeeper? Fine. Want to kill the lady who lets you level up and make the game impossible for yourself? Go for it. Want to bump someone off to take their sweet sword? Do it. Oh except don’t do it if you don’t mean it, people who you kill don’t come back. Ever.

In many ways, Dark Souls 2 is a metaphor for life. You can basically do what you want and you can achieve great things that seem impossible but you will be given very little help and might well get decapitated a few times before you succeed.

The Wolf Among Us

To my complete surprise, a game I’ve been interested in for ages suddenly appeared in the play store, for free. I howled with delight when I saw The Wolf Among Us available for zero dollars. I immediately thought “What’s the catch?” and after googling, discovered the catch to be that all the subsequent episodes are not free. Well, that’s a whole god-damned game for free! Now for the adverts…

It’s really weird playing an android game for an hour and not seeing a single advert. It feels abnormal, like recycling or talking to strangers. Can a game truly be an android game if it’s free and has no adverts, paywalls, or  micro transactions? Perhaps it’s some kind of trick, an interactive wallpaper or hallucination. The developers at TellTale must be shitting their pants, it must be some mistake. Or, perhaps they published a game that wasn’t a total piss refinery and knew that people would be willing to pay for its equally good sequels. Nobody got hurt, nobody had to vomit out their eyeballs because they were asked to spend 79p on gems. They just made a game that was good.

Pay 79p to punch advertisers in the face. Bargain.

Gameplay is, well, it’s more of an interactive story with a few quick time events. I’ve ripped into android games for less and the controls are not the game’s selling point. Having played for about an hour, I can say that the story is interesting enough to warrant further sessions. The game is set in a section of New York where characters from mythology called “Fables” potter about trying to disguise themselves as humans using magic. There’s a gratuitous amount of swearing and violence which I suspect is to quickly dismiss any notion that this is a game for children (despite the character’s origins). It’s perhaps over eager in this regard but these help keep the narrative interesting and the dialogue is so well written that I’m genuinely interested to see what happens to many of the characters as they develop. I also think a bit of ultra violence is in short supply in the mobile games market. In fact, I’ve never seen a full decapitation or axe to the head in any games I’ve played. Such a pity. Come on Rovio, let’s see Angry Birds: Tarantino. There’s a market for it, I assure you.

Some negatives then. The game is buggy. I experienced a pretty severe crash that affected my Nexus 5’s OS and I’ve never seen any such issues from any other game. The autosave was well placed enough to prevent lost progress being an issue but I get nervous when I think about how badly my phone was chugging until I forcibly killed the power. On top of this, minor graphical issues are plentiful and the game caused my device to superheat to a temperature that defies the laws of thermodynamics so god knows what it would do to a lesser model.

I suspect the series will share some faults with the similarly engine’d The Walking Dead, with conveniently converging plot lines, completely illusory dialogue choices and too many unnecessary action scenes but these gripes don’t prevent it from being a largely enjoyable experience with engaging characters and meaningful stories that fans and newcomers to the series should enjoy.

Don’t not download this. It’s a paradise island among the sea of shit.

 

Slap!! Slap

I don’t think I’ve ever actually been slapped and to be honest I’d leave my cave even less if I thought people could dislodge my teeth by slapping me. Slap!! Slap! Is a game about slapping people and knocking their goddamned teeth out. Players must tap on green circles to slap an unfortunate opponent until a sufficient amount of damage has been dished out. This is so that you can collect their teeth like a sadistic tooth fairy.

It’s unclear why these poor souls cannot escape during this painful separation of tooth and gum, perhaps you really are the tooth fairy! A predatory tooth fairy that paralyses its victims before manually extracting your reward. Except that would be somewhat interesting and the truth is, there’s no explanation. It’s so random!

I genuinely thought I’d enjoy slapping plebs for fun but the experience is rather hollow without context or interesting gameplay. On top of that, the guys are already beaten half to death, where’s the sport in that?

My life bar depleted a long time ago.

If you miss any slaps, you lose health. Again, this is never explained or given context. Random! Retrying after a mission failure costs the game’s currency: teeth. You can of course buy teeth for real money, assuming you’re done posting fivers into drains.

I managed to amass a measly 4 molars in total. Sadly, retrying costs several thousand teeth. So if you want to retry, it will cost you real money. It’s an insurmountable paywall for an excruciatingly low calibre game, surely nobody pays for these right? You’d have to be a toothless meth addict to be barmy enough to even consider it. The game is just to shit to deserve money, at least good games with paywalls profit from laziness instead of assumed stupidity.

You could play for free forever though I suppose, assuming you want to give yourself a hate aneurism from the unbearably repetitive and shitty gameplay.

Shittily, when you complete a level, the 2D jpg of your opponent spins and scales into the distance because the developers saw pokemon once and said, “Let’s just do that team rocket thing. Who can be arsed making any thing of worth? Let’s go throw darts at pictures of players faces and laugh for hours.”.

I actually managed to suffer through the first level and was awarded some kind of cauldron. The cauldron shits out small bonuses periodically when it has absorbed enough detritus from enemy gums. This usually consists if teeth and crap like computer chips. The developers must feel like they’ve created such a cheeky absurdity with this many non-sequiturs in a game. It fills me with contempt, bile and toasters (Lol so random hurrhurrhurr).

Sometimes, I consider clicking the ad. It seems more fun than this pile of regurgitated owl faeces.

Slap!!Slap! is about as much fun as having your teeth slapped out by a 69 year old Yorkshireman dressed as the tooth fairy.

Spider-man

Wooo it’s nearly Halloween, and in that vein I’ve decided to play a spooky game about spiders. Well okay, no. It’s just Spider-man but it is horrifically bad so it still counts!

Gameplay is identical to Subway surfers because original ideas terrify marketing executives. To save on money, Spiderman runs jumps and slides across rooftops in 3 neat little lines. Players must swipe left or right, up or down in order to maintain Marvel’s bottom line. Players are encouraged to buy the usual slurry of free game tripe in order to prevent Stan Lee’s collection of golden helicopters from getting dirty.

 

12 Litres of glowing yellow fluid? Maybe these will cure my sudden urge to run only in straight lines.

It’s not all running and jumping over boxes that appear out if nowhere though. You also have to collect vials of yellow fluid. Strangely, the game doesn’t inform you why this is until after you’ve completed a level so you’re treated to a little introductory section where you can only assume that Spiderman has taken to collecting vials of piss in some kind of deranged urine obsession.

It’s really a shame that Spiderman has become unashamedly shit in this iteration. It isn’t the first crappy Spiderman game and it won’t be the last but there’s so much potential for Spiderman games to be good that it’s a pity to see the opportunity squandered.

Playing this game is like meeting an old friend in a pub who tries to hard to impress you with tales of becoming a writer and then you find out that he works for the daily mail and is looking for people to join his full body massage class. You just want to get as far away from him as possible so you can get back to ignoring him until he has a crisis and threatens to commit suicide by overdosing on Calpol.

When I purposefully killed Spiderman I was given the option to “Continue free” which implies that it isn’t always free which is a horrible thing to know and fills me with pure contempt. I know it’s the standard for free games but it shouldn’t be because it’s shit and Marvel should fucking know better.

That was too cheesy, where did you get your writer’s from- The talentless hack dimension? Woah… meta.

On top of all of the awful game mechanics, the game’s writing is hilariously abysmal. I’ll post a few examples.

Who would have guessed that a person who wears skintight lycra and covers their face with a mask would have body-image issues?

That doesn’t look like “acne” and you know it Spiderman.

If your eyes, nose and mouth are bleeding right now, don’t blame Ebola. Blame Spider-man.

Batman: Arkham Origins

Batman lives in a strange universe where he basically beats up people with less money than him as some kind of sick entertainment and gets away with it. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy his lunatic escapades. Videogame Batman is different to Film  and Comic Batman. Although he’s not meant to invincible (but is really) videogame Batman gets beaten up and slapped around in real time to hilarious effect. There’s no dramatic recovery or montage, he just gets his head kicked in and that’s brilliant.

I’ll be he would. Nice try Bruce.

Batman typically uses a certain amount of stealth and cunning to defeat his foes but in this game he’s decided he’s had enough of that boring shit and that he’ll rid the city of crime one fisticuff at a time. The android version of this game plays a lot like Hercules whereby you tap and swipe to pulverise strangers one on one. Enemies are awfully good sports about Batman’s new approach and kindly fight you one after the other in a single file line. It’s awfully nice of them considering his obvious wealth advantage. I guess criminals can be pretty noble if you give them a chance.

I do enjoy most Batman games which similarly allow for unbridled brawling so I can’t bollock the developers too much. The reason that the console games are better though, is that they allow you to use stealth and misdirection. You’re given an option other than brandishing your knuckles. If you develop a game which is just about battering idiots in the street, you might as well play as Hercules or John Prescott or Peter Molyneux.

Wanted in 41 countries.

The thing I love most about Batman games though is how amusing it is to see Batman fail. It’s hard not to chuckle when playing as the world’s greatest detective, only to see him get slapped in the back of the head with a baseball bat and kicked unconscious by a smattering of gormless thugs. There will never be a film where the The Dark Knight navigates beams in the roof of a steel mill, only to clumsily slip and fall into bucket of molten metal and subsequently burn/drowning to death but in games it happens.

I know Batman is owned by Warner Bros. but come on guys.. stars?

There’s a worry in my mind that, similar to other genres at the top of of the list, that people will outright copy Batman. They really shouldn’t though. Because that would be Robin.

I’m so sorry.

Hercules

Hercules is a game loosely affiliated with the current cinematic of the same name. I say loosely because the film stars Dwayne Johnson but the game stars a steroid abusing fitness instructor from Leeds.

It wouldn’t have made much difference to the overall quality even if the artists had ever seen The people’s champion really. The game is a tedious repetition of quick-time-events. Players must swipe in various directions to deflect attacks and then brutalise their opponent when he gets a bit knackered. Both fighters do this while rooted to the spot; making the game about as exciting as sleeping on a soiled mattress in the street.

Your oiled legs won’t save you this time Hercules!

I didn’t play it for long enough to notice if the game tries to get you to buy stupid tat  but it’s safe to assume that it does at some point.

I’ve not seen the movie. It too seems doomed to be awful. That’s not a jab at The Rock mind you; it’s just that it’s competing with existing Hercules’ is probably not a good idea. Here’s a conversation that’s never going to happen: “Hey Carl, did you see Hercules last night?” -“Yes Donald, it was pretty good.”

I feel like I can guess the plot right now. Hercules is dicking around Athens doing nothing in particular or having a rough time. Some evil git (maybe Hades) turns up and starts kicking old ladies into nettles and maybe he weakens Zeus and the other gods using some kind of enchanted megaphone. Hercules tries to batter him but gets twatted back to the dirt he came from. Hercules goes for a long walk, kills several plebs. Hercules then finds greatness inside himself and maybe a magic item too. Hercules stomps on evil guy’s nuts to great applause and then impregnates a female character. End.

Nobody insults my oiled legs.

I could write movies. It’s a piece of piss.

Boxing game 3D

As I’ve mentioned in other articles, I know more about nostrils than I  do about sports. I’ve therefore been dreading this article. What a wonderful surprise I had when I launched the game. It’s not really a macho boxing game at all, its a failed university project with 2 animated characters and some rushed 3D assets lazily plopped into a game. In fairness, that sounds better than the games I cobbled together at university.

Boxing 3D’s one and only level is set on a beach or err, a desert. It’s hard to tell as the camera doesn’t move but there’s no sea in shot so let’s roll with desert. The boxing ring literally consists of four posts and a few bits of string. The pugilists comically slide across the sand trying to dish out as many slaps as possible until one falls asleep. I found that the best technique is to spam the upper left punch button, it never fails. I could be a pro boxer no bother. Seems to me like real boxers are wasting their time trying to vary their punch direction and movements. Protip boxing readers: Stick with one move, they’ll never see that twentieth punch coming.

If you kick sand into my eyes again Gary, I’m going to put you in the fucking ground!

Colossal failings aside, you can’t help but wonder why these two guys are boxing in the desert. Do they live in those huts? Is there water in those barrels? Is this an official UFC game as advertised on the title screen? Are they fighting over the barrels? What’s in those barrels?

I enjoyed how bad this game was. It makes very little sense, it’s got bad controls, bad graphics and it blasts adverts at me. I just don’t think a lot of effort was put in and it’s refreshing in that sense. There’s no marketing department involved and if there is, it’s hilariously dropped the barrel.

Those guys both seem kind of annoyed at that outcome but you can’t argue with those numbers.

10/10 Played, Laughed, Uninstalled.

Mount and Blade: Warband

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be a Viking marauder. I wonder about it when I’m buying milk or trying on shirts. Sometimes I let out a little battle cry. Thankfully, Mount and Blade: Warband is at war-handand it is a glorious saxon of a game. On my first go I followed the game’s tutorial, purchased the deadliest hat and gloves that my ye olde groats could buy and recruited four stalwart warriors from the local idiot village. We had an unquenchable thirst for blood and cabbages and we launched ourselves at the first group of fools to cross our path. Sadly, we got our heads stoved in by their superior horses and pointier sticks.

Pictured: my army of ginger cabbage rustlers fighting at the beach desperately, trying to win before the sun comes back out

It’s been 4 years since the release of Paradox Interactive’s fantastic action RPG and though its graphics may show signs of age, it still plays like a dream. The combat is meaty and satisfying and there are a myriad of roles to play. Will you be a trader? A noble? A general? A pitiable cow thief? In summary, it’s bloody good fun, even before applying mods. After wiping the tears off my keyboard I decided to start again. One of the local barons tasked me with finding an outlaw. I cautiously trundled off to the village where he was last spotted, expecting an ambush only to find the buffoon hiding (I hope) behind a cottage. I removed his lungs and sauntered out of town, satisfied that I was finally a fierce warrior. Mount and Blade is tremendous. Your army and your nation will probably get burned and ransacked but you can do some ransacking of your own and everyone should get to see what it’s like to deprive a village of it’s cattle. Who needs milk anyway?

Criminal legacy

Criminal legacy is another gag inducing isometric shit-house with “build a criminal empire” as the shitty layer of paint hoping to disguise and profit from its shitty foundations.

I would have uninstalled it immediately if I had not blundered into an amusing situation where naming my criminal overlord “Nigel Farage” was considered profanity. If there is goodness in the world, this was an intentional fail condition and I am proud to have discovered it.

Name validation seems a bit hypocritical for a game about criminals. Why on earth can’t my criminal be called Fucknuckle, Shitears or Twatknees? Also, as soon as you progress to the next stage, you knife several prison guards so hard that they evaporate. A name has never killed anyone. Actually, they depressingly have I suppose.

Anyway, back to the game – After his dramatic escape, Nick Clegg took off for some drag racing but at first he had to build a car park. I’d like to think this is how the real clegg lives his life, first he helps some homeless people and then he smother a nun. He’s a boring schizophrenic two-face who has to pursue both good and evil to achieve a position of absolute neutrality.

Sadly, Nick’s neutral neuroses didn’t maintain interest long enough to discover if the rest of the criminals in the game ever realise that building amenities like carparks actually benefits society, even if you do race cars in them. Surely if you own it, you could actually close it and host legal races? I didn’t want to continue just in case my imagined dramatic revelation where Nick points out his new dream of becoming a liberal politician alienates and disenfranchises his criminal buddies.

This game is a Chilean Pyura, it’s pretty dammed awful, verging on inedible but damned if it isn’t at least thought-provoking.