Roundabout is Crazy-Wonderful

The Roundabout game is completely crackers. You play the role of Georgio Manos, 'arguably the world's most famous revolving chauffeur'. Your job is to drive a bunch of wacky characters around the town of roundabout using a constantly rotating limousine.

The game is a fantastic example of how an interesting movement mechanic (timing the moves of your spinning car around obstacles including, er, roundabouts) has been used as the basis of a weird but wonderful narrative built around the strange folk who want to be taken for a ride. 

The whole affair, from the knowing dodginess of the acting to the crackers story, is a delight. You'll play through it in an afternoon (at least that is what number one son did) but there are missions aplenty once you've finished.  You can find it here.

Amiibos United

My retirement plan. Probably.

I blame Adam for this. During the build up to our Super Smash Bros Christmas Bash he was waxing lyrical about the amiibo models and the way that some of them are quite collectible as Nintendo (who cut their business teeth selling trading cards) have stopped making them already. The one I really wanted was the villager, along with the Wii Fit trainer. I got the pink one because I thought it looked cute. 

Now I get to agonize over whether or not to take them out of their boxes....

Forza Horizons Storm Island Rocks

Forza Horizon 2 is an excellent game. It's probably not one for purists, I think that Forza does that better. I reckon it has the slightly "floaty" handingling reminiscent of Burnout and Need for Speed. But it is none the worse for that. And I know that I wouldn't even get around the first corner in a properly accurate driving simulation. 

Forza Horizon 2 has a great narrative that has you driving from town to town taking part in racing events as you build your reputation as someone who's good with a steering wheel. If you are the kind of person that doesn't like racing on the same track every time it is well nigh perfect. The environments are very well realised and there are tons of different ones. 

And now we have Storm Island. This is an add-on pack that rights one of the few wrongs with the original game. It adds lots of off road action.  For sixteen pounds you can have access to trucks, rally cars and all kinds of exotic off-roaders. Along with some suitably lumpy environments to drive them around. 

I've always loved rally driving games. Gran Turismo had some fantastic rally stages and while the cars in Forza Horizons 2 are all lovely and shiny I really missed the chance to sling them around in mud during a tropical rainstorm. The Storm Island add in brings the same quality of experience (driving narrative, excellent graphics, fantastic in car view, plenty of cars) to the off road experience. 

If you have Forza Horizon 2 I reckon you really should get this. It's around 3.5 Gbytes of download and well worth it. 

Completed Destiny?

No, I've not completed Destiny. But I have bought a copy and I watched Number One Son get to the closing stages when he came to see us. I'm still fighting way back at the start of the game, standing around admiring the scenery and getting shot in the head. 

I like playing it. Just like I liked playing Halo. In fact, if you'd sat me in front of it a while back I'd have thought it was Halo. Even the way that the music kicks in is very reminiscent of the Master Chief.

It will be interesting to see how the multi-player aspects go. The game is gorgeous to look at (although not really fourth generation enough for me - it looks a bit PS3/XBOX 360 in places) and if you liked Halo I reckon you'll love it.

If you are looking for something that will change the face of entertainment and provide the next level in massive multiplayer gaming I reckon you might have to wait a while. But you never know, the studio and the publisher are in this for the long haul and they now have the sales to back it up.

Octodad - eight legs of fun

Last night we spent some time playing Octodad- dadliest catch. This is a deeply silly game where you take the role of a man sized octopus taking the role of an ordinary suburban husband. Although your lack of co-ordination and deep seated fear of aquariums is starting to raise suspicions....

We played it on the PlayStation 4, and it at least gave us a reason to get out all that PlayStation Move hardware, which was a surprisingly good fit with the unwieldy tentacles of our hero. Towards the end things got surprisingly poignant, and I never did find out just what happens in the aquarium cafe, when we meet our nemesis, the mad chef who is one of the very few who know the fishy secret.

If you are looking for something fun to play, with a compelling story line, then it is worth seeking out. 

Spectra is Fun

Spectra 8 bit racing is produced by a bunch of developers including a sizable number of Hull graduates. I really like it, although I'm not terribly good at it. The idea (fly a hover racer over a series of increasingly complicated tracks which wind their way through space) is arguably not that original, but the implementation is very polished, the sound is amazing (and properly 8 bit) and the circuits are generated programatically, which means that you can race forever if you want to. 

I also rather like the idea that you just have to buy it to get the game. No messing around with in-game purchases or suddenly hitting a nasty paywall to go further. You just fork out a nominal sum and then the game is yours on all your Windows 8.1 devices. 

Well worth a look. Search the store for "Spectra 8bit racing".

You'll Like Girls Like Robots

Girls Like Robots is a neat puzzle game for Windows Phone. It starts simply enough, making sure that girls get to sit next to robots rather than geeks, but as the number of protagonists increases and the arrangements change it can get a lot more head scratchingly difficult. 

The presentation and the background music are fine and dandy too. It is now down to 79 pence in the UK store. I paid quite a bit more for the game and considered it good value, at that price for such a well presented and well realised game it is a bit of a steal. 

PInball Arcade for PS4

Real or Fake?

I'm quite a fan of pinball. Not very good at it, but quite a fan. I've payed with the Pinball Arcade program on my PS Vita, but today I got a copy for the PS 4. And it is ace. It really works well on the big screen, and the implementation of the Twilight Zone table is really, really, good. I've actually played the real table quite a lot, and the emulation is very faithful. I reckon it is slightly easier than the real deal, but that is not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned.

On a big screen the program looks very good. I'm not sure how much of the rendering  power of the PS4 is actually being used by the game, but it looks very good with faithful reflections of the table design in the ball is it whizzes around,and no hint of slowdown when you get some multiball action. 

The only criticism I can make is that the game sound effects don't sound very good through "proper" speakers. This is more to do with their origins as eight bit samples I suppose, but it does detract a bit from the game. I think a bit of judicious filtering on them to remove the slightly rough sound might be a help. 

But if you are into pinball, and want to try out loads of tables and get something very close to a real experience, then this is a really good bet. 

Living in Project Spark

Project Spark

Someone very kindly sent me an invite code to the Project Spark beta yesterday. Tonight I had a quick play. It looks to me like  a cross between Disney Infinity, Minecraft and Project Kodu. With some Little Big Planet thrown in. You can design and create your own worlds and populate then with objects and characters. Each object in the game has a "brain" which controls how it behaves in response to particular stimulation.

It looks really good, the world editing tools work well and the programming side is very interesting. Microsoft plans to release it across Windows 8 and Xbox One (and I'd love a copy on the phone too). 

There are lots of high quality tutorials and you can share the worlds that you make with other people. 

Nintendo are going to be just fine

Some people are worried about Nintendo. With sales of the Wii U a bit flat and Sony and Microsoft releasing consoles that appear technically more advanced you might be forgiven for worrying about the future of the home of Mario.

I’m not that concerned though. Because Nintendo are still producing great games. Over the holiday I had a chance to play Super Mario 3D World and it is lovely. And today we had a bunch of folks round and spent a happy time playing with Nintendoland. 

For attention to detail and sheer fun appeal the Nintendo brand is pretty hard to beat and I reckon this should see them in good stead for the future.

PlayStation 4 vs. Xbox One - Fight

I’ve actually had a chance to play with both the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4 now. As for which is better, they both are. I reckon the Xbox One has the better launch games and more potential, what with the ever-present Kinect and the HDMI pass through (which is not particularly useful outside the US at the moment). But the PlayStation 4 has slightly better hardware (although this is a bit up for discussion) , with a smaller, more stylish, box and no need for an external power supply.

Performance wise they are very, very, similar. Although we’ve not really seen software that will do them justice just yet. Forza on the Xbox One looks great, with car models looking lovely. Knack on the PlayStation 4 is good looking too, although this doesn’t jump out at you quite so much. The controllers are both excellent and the prices just about line up once you factor in the price of the camera for the PlayStation 4.

The magazine GamesMaster has a very good comparison of the two consoles. I felt kind of sorry for the folks who had to write this piece, if they either of them is the best they run the risk of annoying half of their audience.  I was reminded very strongly of camera magazines when they try to compare Nikon and Canon cameras. Both take excellent pictures and would make any photographer really happy. My take is that Canon are slightly more “consumer” whereas Nikon have a few more rough edges but probably have the edge in performance, but you really couldn’t go wrong choosing either one.

And so it is with the consoles. In a year or two there might be a stronger divergence but I reckon any good ideas had by one camp will be quickly taken up by the other one. The most important thing for gamers is that this on-going competition is going to drive standards even higher.

Oh, and Super Mario 3D on the Nintendo Wii U looks pretty good too…..

Breaking Games

When number one wife (she calls me “husband zero”) got her iPhone a while back one of the first things we got for it was Scrabble. The implementation was slick and it worked a treat. She played a lot.

She doesn’t play as much now. Not because her word powers have diminished, but because the game has “upgraded” itself to the point where it has become a pain to play. Before she can fire up a quick game of digital word wrangling she now has to fight past loads of login screens offering a chance for her to take on players from all over the world. She doesn’t want to do that. She wants to do what she has always done, which is play a quick game of Scrabble against the computer.

I hate it when things upgrade themselves to the point of uselessness. The game also acquired a cheery little sidekick who would tell you after each move the one you should have made and how many points you have lost as a result of not being as clever as it is. This turns out not to be particularly motivating. We managed to turn that off. And avoid all the different new board and tile designs which are now available (and will be for sale soon I have no doubt).

But as for the forced login, that one I’ve been unable to get rid of. The menu system seems to be designed to make you feel unsociable and isolationist, just because you want a quiet game of Scrabble. Ugh.

Grand Theft Auto V

What a nice bunch of people

Grand Theft Auto V was launched today. Rather than queue up at the store at midnight to see the game I took a slightly easier route. Simon set up his copy in our games lab and we had a go over lunchtime. Sometimes I prefer watching other people play games to actually playing them myself, and this was one of those occasions. After a while there was a bunch of us watching Simon as he crashed into buses and managed to land his car on top of another one. Great fun.

What impressed me most was the city of Los Santos. They always say that in GTA games the city is the star, and in GTA V this really is the case. The environment is huge and looks properly alive. When Simon hit the bus head on we could see the driver inside waving his arms and banging his steering wheel in frustration. All that must have been motion captured, encoded and then triggered at the right time.

When you walk round a corner and kick a garbage can down the road you know that someone will have drawn the textures, built the model and given it physics so that it “just works”. If you accidentally punch someone to the ground (it can happen) medics will turn up and try help him. And all this on an old, white, Xbox 360 that must have been one of the first ones they made. Amazing.

Of course there are limitations. You can only enter some of the beautifully drawn buildings, and we did see a tiny amount of “pop-up”of the skyline at one point. But you can’t take away anything from the sheer scale and detail that they have achieved. You can see where over 100 million pounds went.

The gameplay itself is pretty nasty of course. It starts with a botched bank job where just about everyone, including one of the main protagonists, gets shot. And apparently as the story develops you get to kill, maim and torture. Just like the people do in any mainstream TV drama. For me the best innovation is that if you fail a mission three times you can skip on to the next one. So that I really could treat the game as a rather long action movie that I can visit afterwards.

Much has been made of the ability to switch between the three main characters during missions. I haven’t played the game properly so I can’t really comment on that aspect, but it does look interesting.

Every time that another Grand Theft Auto is released people start going on about how this is the one that will make games finally mainstream, that will cause gaming to cross over and takes its place as one of the major entertainment media. I’ve news for you folks. It’s already happened. I’ve been playing computer games for well over thirty years. Pretty much everyone I know of my age does the same. Lots of devices, from bank cash dispensers to car dashboards, have interfaces that have drawn inspiration from the way that games look and feel. Computer games are now part of modern culture. And don’t worry, they are not all as nasty as GTA V, any more than all modern TV is just like Breaking Bad.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what the new generation of consoles can do. I’m sure I’ll be in the queue to get hold of the new devices. Or persuading Simon to bring his along so that I can watch him play.

Update on 2013-09-20 10:55 by Rob

So, on the way back from C4DI I bought a copy of the game. Then, having loaded it and played through the intro I headed out in my car, parked up underneath a bridge and spent a while listening to "The Doobie Brothers" and other classic rock tracks on the radio while the sun went down. They even had some Alan Parsons Project stuff. Amazing.

To Infinity and Beyond

Went up town today and bought the “Cars” playset for Disney Infinity. Clearly there is no hope for me.

Disney Infinity

Mrs Incredible (anyone know her first name?) I bought her so I could have two player action in the Incredibles world. I guess over time I’ll acquire the whole darned set..

Some time back I was lucky enough to be able to make a trip to Disney World in Florida. The place is amazing. The design and execution of the buildings and the rides and the way the experience is packaged is just fantastic. You can have great fun just looking for the places they have have hidden the iconic outline of Mickey Mouse and his big ears. Those three loops are in the paths, on the walls and even on the water tank. Everyone at Disney World is committed to giving you a great time, from the cheery train drivers who welcome you in the morning and say a heartfelt goodbye as you leave to the “cast” members in costumes who are happy to sign autographs all day long.

And yet, and yet, the place is really a great big machine that has been designed with the purpose of taking as much money as possible from you during your short stay. Around every corner are hot dog stands, ice cream stalls, souvenir shops and ride photo booths. While in theory it is possible to pay nothing once you have entered the park, in practice it is actually darned difficult. Particularly with kids.

Which bring us to Disney Infinity, the new release from Disney Interactive. It is a computer game and toy series that seems heavily influenced by Skylanders and Lego City, but able to draw on the vast reserves of Disney characters. For your money (and you will need money) you get a video game, high quality plastic models of Disney characters and a base that you can plug into your video game console of choice.

Each figure contains some RFID cleverness that lets the game recognise the figure so you can play them in the game, and also store game stats. In addition there are “power up” disks that you can add to give extra items, such as a horse to ride or boost a character health by 25% or so. There are also “world” models that give you access to different worlds.

In the starter set you get characters from Monsters University, Pirates of the Caribbean and The Incredibles along with a “world” block that gives you access to those three words. In no time at all you can be wandering round the campus as Sully, scaring all and sundry.

Each world sets you a number of challenges, very like the Lego City game, although for me the interaction with the environment isn’t quite as smooth as the Lego world and the narrative is nowhere near as interesting or well presented. When you complete challenges you “power up” your character, get cash you can spend on more toys and also tokens to unlock game elements that you can use to build your own worlds.

And therein lies the really interesting part of this enterprise. Because the Disney Infinity folks have also been taking a long hard look at Little Big Planet and Minecraft, and have included a mechanic that lets you build and share worlds. The only snag(and I reckon it is a big snag) is that you have to work through lots of mildly diverting, but not great, gameplay to get all the pieces that you will need to construct your creations. And a lot of the time it feels like work. And that is not what a video game should feel like.

The underlying engine seems able to handle the worlds very well. For me perhaps the most impressive part of the game was the very first stage, where you travel through a landscape that builds itself as you walk towards it. I’ve not really got far enough into the game to be able to make much interesting yet. My characters are slowly ascending through the ranks and making appearance in the “Hall of Heroes” that you must visit, simply to view the huge number of empty pedestals for heroes that have yet to be purchased…

Disney are in this for the long haul. They have spent a lot of money building their virtual theme park and the have huge amounts of back catalogue on which they can create new scenarios and sell us more pieces of quality painted plastic. The power ups provide a nice swapping mechanic (you are never quite sure what you will get in a bag) and the prices are enticing rather than completely extortionate.

If you went to Disney World and enjoyed it then you will love Disney Infinity. The starting pack is a very well thought out entry point, in that it gets you into the game but leaves you wanting more, and the beautifully painted models are an end in themselves. And if you really want to create your own fairy castle, complete with race track and pirate cove, you can use Infinity to do it. Good for children of all ages I reckon.

Possessed by Animal Crossing New Leaf

Oh well. Animal Crossing New Leaf has sucked me to its world. Last week I went to visit number one’s town, today I’m saving for the down payment on a house and I’m looking forward to tomorrow night at 7:00 pm when there is the firework display of the year.

Birthday Animal Crossing

Last week I found out that my age entitles me to a discount on my haircut. The last time this happened was when I was eight years old. I hope I didn’t upset the hairdresser though. Having asked for my age and informed me of the money I could save she probably expected me to be pleased, rather than baffled. In the end I left a rather large tip, exactly equal to the discount that I could have had. Anyone who has met me will know that I’m not one for spending much on hair styling, so this won’t really free up a lot of funds, but it still feels odd to be offered a saving just because I am now “officially old”.

And today it was my birthday. And the great thing about it was that I got given toys, among them some “Despicable Me” models and a copy of “Animal Crossing New Leaf”. I remember the first time I played Animal Crossing on the Gamecube. After playing it for two weeks I eventually had to force myself to stop because it was just taking up too much time. I fared a little better with the Nintendo DS versions, at least I could carry them around with me and play now and then. And now we have the latest version. This one is different because you not only get to take part in the community, you also get to run it when, for reasons that are not really adequately explained, you are elected Mayor as soon as you arrive in your new town.

As part of enrolment you have to tell your assistant when you were born. And she gets ever so excited if you arrive on your birthday, take it from me. I’ve not really spent that much time in the town of “Cheesy” yet, but it looks like the usual fun and games just getting along with all the folks who live in the neighbourhood, doing stuff and making friends.

If you like the previous versions of the game you’ll love this one. If you’ve not played the game before, but are hankering for somewhere to go that is just plain nicer than anywhere else, full of folks who are quirky but not nasty and lots of things to do, then it might well be for you.

Injustice: Gods Among Us

Thanks, but I’ve been around long enough to know those…..

Number one daughter recommended “Injustice: Gods Among Us” as a good game. She reckons it is a good way to find out who would win in a fight between Superman and Batman. Since you can actually do that.

Yesterday I got hold of a copy. And she is right. Great game. I was expecting a good beat’em’up, but actually it is much better than that. There is also an engaging story mode that tells of Superman gone bad and even though it uses a Parallel Universe as a narrative device (quite the story telling mot du jour at the moment – hello Star Trek and Dr. Who), this does mean that you can have more interesting fights.

I got the game for the Wii U, figuring that the platform could do with some love at the moment. It works very well, with the Wii U controller either duplicating the video screen or showing you the player moves. I really like using the Wii U to play games. It now feels very natural to have a screen in your hands as well as in front of you. In fact, with Wii U consoles now available for around 150 quid I reckon they are a bit of bargain at the moment. Hopefully Sony will do something with the PS Vita and Microsoft with Glass to make the experience available on their platforms.

Anyhoo, we spent a happy afternoon working through various superhero permutations. Recommended.

My Lego City Secret

I’m working my way through Lego City Undercover on the Wii U and thoroughly enjoying it. I still don’t like the loading times, but I’ve got used to the cranky car handling and I’m now ploughing my way through the missions. With the help of the above text. Yes, I’ve now reached the stage in my life where I’m using a cheat guide for a game which was created for eight year olds to play…

In my defence I’m only using it for when I get really stuck, in fact I’ve asked number one wife to look things up for me, so that I don’t get tempted to “cheat in advance”.

Lego City for Wii U

If you are forming the impression that I’ve spent the last few days going to movies and playing games then you are pretty much right. I’m on holiday.Go me.

Anyhoo, today I got hold of my copy of Lego City Undercover and finally got to play it. It was a bit more finally than I expected actually, as firing up the game triggered a console update of the Wii U itself and the game does have its share of loading screens. But it is well worth waiting for. I like the Lego versions of the films that have been around for ages. But this is in a different league. The story is all home spun (but none the worse for that) and there is lots of dialogue (which is all very well presented). There are lots of movie in jokes and characters that you start to care about after a few missions. The Wii U gamepad is used to very good effect, as a mapping device, communicator and crime scene scanner.

I’m really enjoying myself going round solving crimes and arresting bad guys. As the whole thing has been designed to be played by seven year old kids I’m finding that I can actually do quite well, which is nice. The only real gameplay issue that I’ve noticed really is that the handing of the vehicles is a bit tricksy. But everything else is great fun. I don’t think you should buy a Wii U just to play this game. But if you already have the console, the game is a really, really good buy.