Life is a Mind Bending Puzzle

 When I immersed myself in Elden Ring for several weeks back in January / February I invested in strength and tried to build a melee focussed character. Last week on a whim I reinstalled the game and started over as magic using glintstone sorcerer prioritising intelligence. Now I find I am progressing through the game far more quickly and enjoying the experience more. A lot of this is due to my familiarity with the game born from experience but I am enjoying the playstyle more as well.  Before I go much further I must address the elephant in the room. There is a section of the Elden Ring community who look down on magic as easy mode. They consider it an inferior playstyle to the carefully timed parrys, dodges and counters that are a hallmark of Souls games. I would like to think I am above being influenced by this kind of snobbery but that isn't entirely true. I am pretty sure that my decision to initially play as a melee character was influenced by a niggling feeling that tha...

 I was only a couple of hours into Assassin's Creed Odyssey when a young street urchin friend came and asked for my help. Her family it seemed lived in another town which was in the grips of a terrible disease called "The Blood Fever". I'm not sure what she thought my warrior character could do but the girl looked up to me so I set off. Perhaps I would find the source of the mysterious illness,  a polluted well or some such.  I was surprised on arriving at the town to find that it had been burned to the ground and the last few survivors including my friends family were being held captive by a priest and his guards. When I talked to the priest he explained that he had to kill everyone in the village because it was the only way to stop this terrible plague from spreading to the whole island. The remaining villagers begged for their lives and pleaded that they weren't even very sick but just wanted to leave the cursed town.  This left me with a surprisingly distressi...

 I would like to share two moments from my recent playthrough of Horizon Zero Dawn: Moment 1: I was only a few hours into the game but I had already sampled enough to realise that this was a very good game with a stunningly beautiful game world, interesting gameplay and combat, rich and  interesting lore, and great characters and story.  However a couple of hours in as I was beginning to get to grips with the game mechanics another realisation hit me and my heart sank.  It was the bags that did it The game has about half a dozen bags for items that you have to level up by collecting stuff. It also has all the other hallmarks of an open world Ubisoft game. A beautiful open world map populated by  creatures and sites of interest for you to explore and get distracted. Towers to climb to open up new sections of the map (in this case the towers are giant robotic giraffes which is a nice touch but still the principle remains). It has tonnes of make-work errands and si...

 I am currently playing and enjoying Remnant from the Ashes a Soulslike game that has  a few twists of its own.  In common with other Soulslike games Remnant is a third person adventure where saving at a checkpoint re-spawns all non boss enemies. Even regular enemies are dangerous and death is a frequent occurrence as you progress through the world.  Perhaps Remnant's most significant difference is that it relies far more on ranged combat than melee combat. There is a wide range of guns and gun powerups available but the melee combat is quite simplistic in comparison to a typical soulslike game. There are no blocks or parries and a very limited number of melee moves. I find myself using melee only as a fallback when I am out of ammo or an enemy gets in too close.  Another feature of Remnant is that is uses procedurally generated maps and levels within an overarching plot framework. Even the boss fights you encounter on any given play through are randomised...

I am about three quarters of the way through a Dark Elf vortex campaign in Total Warhammer 2. Unlike previous campaigns I am deliberately limiting territorial expansion. I hold only three provinces and I am using diplomacy instead to secure borders. This slows down the game but it makes it much easier to defend against the random chaos armies that spawn during vortex rituals. With so few settlements it did take a while to get my economy off the ground but at this point some 150 turns in I am the strongest and richest faction and I have managed to disrupt the plans of my vortex rivals with expeditionary forces, allies and intervention armies.   Dark Elves are a very enjoyable faction to play with no obvious weaknesses and some very strong creatures and magic. The armour piercing crossbows of tier one Dark Shards mean that even early game Dark Elf armies can inflict serious damage. Dark Elves unique faction ability allows them to build black ark ships and use them as mobile...

I actually bought a second hand PS3 in order to play this highly acclaimed game.  I love the strong characters. I loved the atmospheric music and settings. I loved the attention to detail in the rendering of a post apocalyptic world.  I loved the fact that  the game had such a strong story line. I am still trying to figure out whether or nor I actually enjoyed the story but that doesn't take from the fact that I know it is an exceptionally well done story.  I have more mixed feelings about the game-play. Shooting was awkward although it did get easier towards the end when I had a better selection of weapons and was more used to it. Melee combat is actually easier than shooting and more effective but melee weapons break after a few hits which severely limits the usefulness of melee. The stealth abilities in the game are really superb but there are many section s where you still have to kill all the enemies even if you use stealth. My biggest gripe with the ...

Over the last week or so I have taken finishing my gaming evenings with a short spell of Tell Tale Games  point and click adventure "The Walking Dead" . (My current main game is Dishonored but more about that in a later post). I am a fan of the recent trend for very strong story lines in games like Spec Ops: the Line , Max Payne 3 and Bioshock Infinite . The Walking Dead is a logical next step for me because it is acknowledged to be an episodic story first and a video game second. I have only played episode one so far and it has for the most part lived up to my expectations of being a very good example of comic book story made interactive. The biggest surprise for me is that some of the gameplay is more challenging than I expected. Its been a while since I played a point and clicker and I had forgotten about non intuitive puzzles that require clicking every item in your inventory with every object on the screen in the hopes of getting a result.  Walking Dead has a very ...