Category: Games

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order Review

I came to Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order as a refugee from Assassin’s Creed Valhalla having been disappointed with its floaty, contactless combat. SWJ:FO did not leave me disappointed.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order is an action-adventure game in the vein of Dark Souls. It is characterised by crisp, precise combat and sometimes gruelling enemies. Fallen Order has been on my radar for the year since its release and building a new PC has given me a chance to get around to it. Additionally, it can be obtained through the EA Play program for a quarter of its RRP.

Fallen Order reveals its world in a thrilling and visually stunning opening sequence. We’re introduced to our jedi-in-hiding hero who is swept into a narrative larger than himself. The first thing that jumped out at me in FO was the combat. It’s responsive and specific in a way that I had really been looking for. It takes some time to get a handle on (I played on the second-highest difficulty) but your successes truly feel well-earned. This, of course, is a double-edged lightsaber (?) and means you run into some tough enemies (a la Dark Souls) that can end you in one hit. Or more frustratingly, lock you into an inescapable cycle of blows until you are finally, frustratingly, ended.

As he proceeds our Hero Cal Kestis is adorned with extra force abilities that add to the jedi power fantasy. They serve to enhance platforming, unlock new areas and add depth to combat; certainly on the harder difficulties your new skills are an absolute necessity for crowd control and big bosses.

Proceeding a few hours into the game it became clear that the story in Fallen Order isn’t your usual, cut-and-paste good versus evil tale. The characters have shades of grey and compelling motives. I found myself interested in the turns of the story in a way that I have found in few video games. SWJ:FO features some fan-service which, while expected, generated nostalgia that I didn’t see coming. There’s a lot to look out for for fans of the Clone Wars/Purge era of Star Wars history.

Much like its Metroid forebears, Fallen Order has a scanning mechanic which adds flavour to the world. I really enjoyed the details of the flora and fauna of the planets, specifically the ones that aren’t out to kill you. I didn’t read them all, but they fleshed out the world and made it feel alive and lived in. I was a little disappointed with some of the more narrative scans, which tell stories of events that have taken place in that location. You can usually track a parallel narrative as you move through a level, but in general these were fairly lightweight.

The game is set across a handful of planets and has you return to them repeatedly, your newfound skills now granting access to previously barred zones. On the surface this didn’t appeal but there is something satisfying in returning to a previously explored area with fresh eyes. The map is brimming with things to collect, providing improvements both cosmetic and mechanical. I cared more than usual for the cosmetics in the game, which provide a layer of customisability and variation to Cal and his little robot buddy BD-1. Nevertheless, my main interest in the collectibles were the ones that made Cal a stronger Jedi. Here I found myself a little frustrated: the map does show how many collectibles are left to be found in a zone, but the map itself is messy, hard to read and does not show you precisely where the collectibles are. As much as I like the upgrades I’m hardly going to return to a location for the fourth time just to look in every nook and cranny.

Fallen Order looks awesome. Having just come from the clay figurine faces of Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, the characters look and move in an impressively realistic way. The landscapes are some of the most epic I’ve ever seen in a game but equally each nameless corridor has been lovingly created with production value you would expect from a Star Wars product. The music is perfect, swelling at the right moments and giving you the little flute trills characteristic of the series. Overall a smashing presentation.

In summary, SWJ:FO is the full package. It controls beautifully, it looks amazing and has a story with appeal both to newcomers and fans of the series.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla Review

I wouldn’t describe any of the Assassin’s Creed games as my favourite of all time (or even in the top ten), but the franchise does own some of my most memorable gaming moments. Recently: the exhilaration of crossing the nighttime Mediterranean illuminated by the glow of ancient Greek towns clinging to the shore in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and back to the true open-world enjoyment of the first island-hopping adventure Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag. The pure mechanical fun of the simple air assassination speaks for itself. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla seeks to bring these elements together into a single, definitive entry.

Valhalla sees you take the reins as Eivor, an upstart viking seeking glory, honour and, well, Valhalla on the distant shores of England. AC: Valhalla feels at once familiar and different, being a game entirely recognisable to series veterans (you will be climbing towers, sailing and assassinating) while introducing new mechanics which add more than superficial value.

The game’s exciting opening sequence flows into a lacklustre prologue act which fails to take advantage of the open-world features that, in the end, make Valhalla shine. You pootle around Norway while mechanics are introduced and you can take your baby steps in a mini open-world, but it is only when Eivor reaches England that the game really hits its harmony.

The gameplay itself contains much mechanical fan service. The hidden blade is back after clamour from the community, allowing any enemy to be killed instantly from stealth – although meatier enemies require the completion of an additional quicktime event, which is not entirely unwelcome. I was delighted to see the return of the “chase disembodied object through the world to unlock cosmetic item” minigame, fondly remembered from AC: Black Flag (I played through the excellent Switch remaster earlier this year). This time you’ll be pursuing “paper” in order to unlock tattoo designs. Of course sailing is represented, albeit now primarily as a mode of travel and exploration rather than combat. In many ways Valhalla feels like a greatest hits of Assassin’s Creed mechanics, while also bringing freshness of its own.

Eivor feels slower and meatier than Odyssey’s Kassandra, and lands with a heaviness emphasised by the fall damage she takes. That is, except in combat, which feels light and weirdly contactless. Playing on the default difficulty is easy and disappointingly doesn’t encourage you to use the exciting range of varied abilities at your disposal. You can one-button, light-attack your way through a horde of English savages who will attack one at a time in a manner familiar to the franchise.

The stealth in Valhalla is so clunky it is almost discouraged (frustrating to me as a fan of stealth in games). It is more difficult than ever to track enemy positions, so stealth takedowns are regularly spotted by other NPCs. Eivor’s heftier movement doesn’t lend itself to dodging quickly out of sight and the general jankiness of open-world games works against the stealth mechanics. I was left laughing when I stealthily took down a guard, which caused a nearby flammable jar to inexplicably explode, which caused the platform I was on to collapse and drop me into the middle of the enemy encampment. So much for going unnoticed. 

The whole affair feels less gamified than Odyssey and at the same time more organic. The plethora of items on the map, which were already reduced in AC:O have now diminished further to ethereal glowing points-of-interest. Side quests are interestingly not logged in any menus which encourages you to do them there and then, lest you forget about them later. These “World Quests” are reminiscent of the spontaneous encounters in Red Dead Redemption 2. They are fun, short and zany (quite the tonal shift from the rest of the self-serious narrative) so I have found them to be overall worthwhile. I can totally see what they are going for with this more organic approach and the result is definitely less intimidating, although I can’t help but feel it takes the edge off the addictive “one-more-thing-before-bed” gameplay the other recent instalments cultivated.

Visually, the game is stunning and certainly a series highpoint. England is represented in vibrant realism, making it a joy to explore. Descending a Scandanavian mountain in the dark to arrive at a warmly lit Viking settlement reaches the same heights that Odyssey found. The wilderness teems with life, both human and animal. While the landscapes are lovingly composed, I have to say they don’t feel quite as English as I felt the masterful Witcher 3 achieved (but those were the best landscapes I’ve ever seen in a game). The addition of Roman ruins to England’s countryside is a wonderful touch. It makes the world feel lived in but more than that reminds us of the series’ millenia-spanning arc. The game runs smoothly on PC which is impressive for the number of characters that can be rendered on screen at one time. Some criticism should be levelled at the facial animation which, while still an improvement on Odyssey, can be clunky and awkward. I also have to call out the weirdly low frame rate on some of the small birds which, while by no means a deal-breaker, is oddly incongruous with the rest of the lavish graphics.

Sadly, in the end I found myself failing to connect with Valhalla. The game lacks a single stand-out feature to keep me hooked. The narrative is one of the best in the series, but I found ploughing through line after line of just-passable dialogue a drag. I wanted to get back into the open-world. But when I did, I was reminded that the mechanics were not quite crisp enough to keep me interested. With stealth ruled out, the default approach to each encounter is to summon your viking hoard and button mash your way through it. Valhalla should be commended because all side-activities feed into character progression however when every combat encounter can be solved with the couple of moves available at the beginning of the game, there’s not much incentive to do it. In summary, none of this is enough to set the world (or monastery) on fire.

Watch Dogs: Legion Review

To begin with the good, Watch Dogs: Legion’s rendering of London is quite phenomenal. The iconic areas are suitably recognisable and some of the less well-known parts are still true to life. I have found myself recognising streets that I used to run down and feeling nostalgic about pubs once frequented. The streets teem with a diverse population that makes London feel alive and realistic. There have been reports of poor performance on PC but it runs well on my admittedly beefy machine *humblebrag*.

WD:L is an open-world action game set in a near-future London, which casts an underground resistance movement against authoritarian forces wrestling for control of the city. The player will use cameras, traps, drones and an incredibly useful spiderbot to take down those who seek power.

The flagship feature of WD:L is the “play-as-anyone” technology. It is possible to recruit any NPC to your ragtag team of resistance fighters, and it works fairly well. After completing a couple of procedurally generated missions, the character is now yours to control and comes with their own unique skills and abilities. This is good fun and the visual variety in “agents” is tremendous, but the downside of this effort is there simply isn’t enough voice-acting to go round. This leads to repeats and awkward dialogue. For these reasons, the story (wisely) doesn’t hang on the player character at any point and is carried by supporting characters. However, the occasional inclusion of the player character rarely works.

The moment-to-moment gameplay in WD:L is fun, but can be repetitive and, on the default difficulty, too easy. Each scenario almost always involves infiltrating a building. With upgrades easily obtained in the first hour of play, you can do this using drones and your trusty spiderbot without ever entering the building. On the occasions when the player is needed in-person, it’s trivial to “neutralise” all the enemies patrolling the area before you breeze through a corridor of corpses. Despite DedSec’s vague ethos of non-lethality, there is no punishment for hacking a drone with a machine gun and mowing the guards down.

When the player is required to do some shooting themselves (how last-century!), the mechanics are competent but sometimes buggy. Due to some interaction between the crouch, cover and gun systems I was, more than once, left pulling the trigger but no bullets were coming out. Frustrating in clutch situations.

While moving through the world of Legion I can’t help but miss the sense of fluidity that comes with other open-world games, most notably Ubisoft’s own Assassin’s Creed. WD:L feels a little stunted in comparison. This seems intentional, as the game encourages more calculated, careful strategies for problem-solving but when this turns out to lack much flair and creativity it ends up feeling awkward. Fingers crossed for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla next week.

The most interesting combat occurs in the pseudo-boss battles which involve holding a point against waves of incoming enemies using all the skills at your disposal. It is very satisfying to defend a point while a download is happening with a swarm of drones helping you, some of whom have been hacked moments before to turn on their masters. Not to give too much away, but the final boss is a fun spin on this which, while not entirely awe-inspiring, felt appropriately climactic.

The city of near-future London is thoroughly enjoyable to explore, but there’s very little incentive to do so. Available to be collected we have ETO (in-game currency) and Tech points (used for upgrading skills). ETO can only be spent on buying new clothes. Perhaps this belies a sad lack of imagination on my part, but I have no interest in customising the look of a character (they already look wacky enough!) so the ETO is literally worthless. The Tech Points unlock and improve skills, which are shared between all agents. This is more-or-less the extent of progression in WD:L. I unlocked most of the skills I used after a few hours, so there was little need to seek out more (plus you are rewarded with them for completion of story missions!). When I identified Tech Points late game I simply ignored them if they were even slightly out of my way.

The small remainder of the game’s progression is built into the Agent Recruitment system. Some agents have unique skills and skills that improve the whole team, such as faster recovery from injury. This is very light and the combination with Tech Points means you don’t get much out of exploring the world except for its own sake.

The story is where the game is at its weakest, rolling out cliche after cliche about the dangers of technology, governmental oversight and authoritarian ideologies. To be fair, the conclusion of the parallel narratives was gratifying, if heavy-handed. It’s always nice to see an ideologue die by the sword that they lived by. However, the overall tone is so up-and-down as to be almost offensive. It is possible to have your street-magician character, adorned with pink LED-illuminated jacket and top hat, helping to free victims of human trafficking or modern-day slavery. The game can accidentally, though inevitably, make light of some very dark and important themes.

Additionally, so predictable is the story that when the third-act twist was revealed, it was something I had thought was assumed from literally the opening sequence of the game. And I had been skipping through the boring, stunted dialogue.

As a native to the north of England myself, it struck me as odd how much this game treats London as an island, its own sovereign state. There is literally no mention of how the game’s events are affecting other parts of the country. Are they also under the control of technocratic authoritarians? I realise this would only really bother Brits, but as London-centric as things in the UK tend to be, even this was extreme. It broke the immersion because this was so clearly a marketing decision – London holds much more capital on the world stage than Liverpool or Birmingham, so they were just ignored completely. Also, to be picky, there were a few annoying non-britishisms that snuck into the script. I’ve been a british nerd my whole life and have never attended a “science fair”.

Overall, Watch Dogs: Legion is an enjoyable but bland romp. I have to give it credit for having something to say, I was just luke-warm on the execution. Generally, this is one that can only confidently be recommended to fans of the series. To everyone else, you might be better off finding your open-world kicks elsewhere.

Top 5 Games of the Year 2018

It’s that time of year again.

Honourable mention: Red Dead Redemption II.

Holy Moly. Say what you want about RDRII, that game is a hell of a thing. In terms of scale, attention to detail and sheer quality it is unparalleled. It is really a sight to behold. The problem with RDRII, in the end, is that it just wasn’t that fun. Unlike this year’s fantastic Spiderman, the moment-to-moment action in Red Dead II was simply tiresome and dull. Yes, the story was great, the voice-acting was spot-on, the shooting was fun. The bits in between – as in, the majority of the game – were not fun. When it came down to it I think I resented Red Dead II for not respecting my time. I felt like I was constantly having a hypothetical argument with the Houser brothers, where I wept for the 50th time “Why can’t I just fast-travel there?!” and Dan Houser spits back through gritted teeth “Because you’re going to fucking ride a horse for ten minutes instead”

5. PlayerUnkown’s Battlegrounds

It’s back. Flying against the rules of my top 5 list that I made up, I am including the same game two years running. PUBG was my game of the year last year and it has remained such a constant feature in my life that it has to make the list again.

The ongoing criticisms of PUBG are well-documented and as I approach 1000 hours of playtime I am not going to argue with them. The netcode can be bad. The microtransactions are shitty. The performance is spotty. But the core mechanics of the gameplay are so damn good.

There is something about the long periods of peace, frantic moments of violence and satisfying shooting mechanics that keeps me (and my friends) coming back to PUBG. It has to be said that I would not be so keen on the game if I didn’t have a close group of friends still playing it – but that fact it has kept us all so hooked is testament to the game in itself.

Further in the defense of PUBG Corp, they have made a concerted effort to appease fans this year with the Fix PUBG campaign and the release of a huge update in December. The new snow map has proved a big hit with the community (and me) and PUBG‘s concurrent player count once again surpassed one million. Despite fierce market competition from the likes of Fortnite and Black Ops among many others, PUBG is not out of the battle royale just yet.

4. Into The Breach

Released early in the year on PC and more recently on Switch, Into The Breach has proven to be a huge success. From the makers of FTL, Into The Breach is a turn based strategy puzzle game that pits teams of mechs against alien insects.

The most remarkable thing about ITB to me is just how solvable many of the predicaments you find yourself in are. If you stare at the field of battle long enough, you can frequently find a way out of the seemingly hopeless state you have gotten yourself into. You might have to accept some damage here or sacrifice a city to the Vek there, but you can get out of it (most of the time).


ITB really makes decisions feel meaningful and impactful and encourages – or rather, insists upon – sacrifice and compromise in order to move forward. It is satisfying and frustrating in just the right ratio and gives you the feeling of being a strategic battle commander in both ways – when you lose, you know it’s your fault but when you win, it’s you (and not the roll of a dice) that made it happen.

3. Spiderman

The swinging in Spiderman is excellent. This is a really important point because it makes up most of the game. If you like the swinging, you will probably like this game and it feels truly majestic to move around Manhattan this way. Unlike the ponderous RDRII, every moment of Spiderman is good fun.

The combat has come in for criticism for being Arkham-lite, and that may be fair. Nevertheless, I found it to be enjoyable, strategic and generally what one would expect from an arachnid superhero.

I found the story relatively luke-warm but for me the sheer joy in every moment of Spiderman got it easily onto this list.

2. God of War

The hype for God of War was one of the reasons I bought a PS4 earlier this year. The console did not disappoint, and neither did GoW.

The axe mechanic – which can be thrown and recalled by magic at any time – is enough for GoW to score highly, but in addition to that there are breathtaking visuals, an intricately designed world and a relatively in-depth loot system.

Despite the criticism God of War received for lack of female representation, I think the game should be praised for its portrayal of the difficult aspects of masculinity and the nature of the father-son relationship. Sure, it may be a little clumsy at times but the game makes good use of voice-acting, cut-scenes and game mechanics to develop the relationship between Kratos and Atreus to make a truly compelling story.

After completing the game I took great pleasure (and a little frustration) in beating all the Valkyries, which added many hours to the game and is an indisputable marker of the good time I was having.

1. Horizon: Zero Dawn

So H:ZD didn’t actually come out this year, but I played it for the first time in 2018 and was so blown away that it not only made the list – it made the top of the list. Horizon swept in and became one of my favourite games of all time. H:ZD is Dutch studio Guerilla games’ first attempt at the open-world genre and their fresh and unique approach has produced a very fine contribution to the field.

The first thing that stands out is the combat mechanics. The game revolves around fighting various kinds of robot animals – from ostriches to dinosaurs. The player gradually acquires a variety of weapons to take on these cybernetic beasts and the range available keeps the fights fresh, fun and strategic. It is possible to just brute force your way through the encounters, but much more satisfying to scan the creature for weaknesses and use the most appropriate weapon to achieve the most devastating results (which could be a catastrophic explosion, the removal of a limb or freezing). It is by far the most engaging combat mechanic I have ever seen in an open world game.

I must also highlight the story in Horizon, which could easily stand alone as a book or film. Guerilla opted for the conventional open-world technique of drip-feeding narrative through written and audio logs interspersed with cut-scenes. The characters are compelling, mysterious and supplemented by on-the-mark voice-acting, with the fantastic protagonist Aloy chief among them. I was keen to seek out every available audio log to find out more about the world.

The open-world of H:ZD is densely-populated and beautiful. Sun-scorched deserts give way to verdant forests, all in a vibrant and varied colour pallet. Tribal hunting parties roam the dangerous wilderness and well-developed side quests are ever-present. In harmony with the story-telling Guerilla have built something that feels very like a living world.

Of course, nothing is perfect and H:ZD is no different. The inventory management is clumsy at best and off-puttingly overwhelming at worst. However, the flaws in Horizon only serve to underline the potential for a sequel that builds on the strong foundation that the first game started. Here’s hoping for some news on a follow-up in 2019.

Battlefront 2: Thoughts

So far I have played 30 hours of Battlefront 2, significantly more than I spent with the 2015 entry and have had some time to reflect on the criticism the game has faced. Largely the consensus has been “the progression is broken” and “microtransactions are bad”, so here I’d like to go into a bit more detail about what is wrong (and right) in BF2. And there is a lot that is wrong.

The removal of microtransactions has actually done very little to change the game’s problems. It is still very disheartening (often to the point of hitting Alt-F4) to be defeated by a player with Star Cards that are many levels above yours. Sure, maybe one day you can be as strong as that player, but that might be tens of hours away – and probably never. The design choice to surface the Star Cards your killer has equipped is an interesting one, and I suppose at least I can tell myself I was beaten because the other player was objectively better but it still leaves me with a bitter taste.

This knowledge would not be so tormenting if achieving the same Star Cards as another player felt achievable, which it absolutely does not. The random nature of the loot boxes combined with the minuscule quantities of credits and crafting parts that get doled out mean the yields are at best small and at worst irrelevant. This could have been somewhat mitigated by adding the ability to breakdown unwanted Star Cards into credits or crafting parts, but instead the player is left with a majority of Star Cards for classes and heroes that are never used.

The only glimmer of control players have is to use crafting parts to craft or level up cards of their choosing. This is nice as it allows focused improvement of the stuff you actually use, but the aforementioned scarcity of crafting parts means that satisfaction here is severely limited, minimising the feeling of useful progression virtually to zero. It also means the best thing you can get from a loot box – crafting parts – is the most boring.

(It’s also worth adding here a general frustration with class-based, first person shooters: if you spec into a particular class – e.g. assault – but a particular situation, like holding a point, would be better suited to the officer class, if you pick the officer you will be left using an underpowered soldier. This discourages optimally playing to the objective – more on this later)

Further to this, there is very little point in an average player spending the relatively huge amount of credits needed to make the cool hero characters like Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader available. In order to actually play them in a round, you have to gain a certain number of battlepoints (distributed based on performance). Very often you will not accrue enough points to play as them, and even if you do there is a high chance another, better player is using that hero which makes it again unavailable. This is despite the fact that you often don’t see these heroes trying to play the objective. Perhaps they are just hiding in a corner enjoying the fact they finally got to play as their hero of choice and don’t want to risk dying… Anyway, my credits would have been better spent (again, relatively) on loot boxes to at least give me a chance to upgrade my basic classes. I didn’t know this when I first started playing and the game does nothing to even tell you that you are making the choice of “Heroes v.s. Class Progression”.

In addition to progression issues, there are some real problems with the structure and set-up of the rounds themselves. I mainly play Galactic Assault, the large 40 person game mode, which is the game’s flagship.

To kick us off, the desire to get a hero (mentioned above) often encourages players to lose certain objectives to avoid winning, lengthen a match and give them enough time to get enough points to play the hero they spent so many credits on. This is quite stupid, but I can’t suggest a way around this because it is baked so fundamentally into the game. Similarly, credits are administered at the end of a match based on the length of the match and not on whether you win. So again you are encouraged to drag the match out and lose rather than winning. What were they thinking?

Secondly, some of the objectives are so banal they actively discourage players from attempting them. Several involve “hacking” a terminal by holding G. For two minutes. You can’t shoot to defend yourself, or do anything, while taking the objective. Who the heck wants to do that?!

Finally, there are some serious quality-of-life issues that further limit my enjoyment. Text chat is disabled after a round, preventing any kind of post-mortem, congratulation or anything else. Presumably this is to try to stop people from getting toxic, but they can do that plenty within the chat while the round is going on. There are also spots of downtime where you can’t look at the leaderboard, which again is just silly.

More frustratingly, on the waiting screen after you have picked a class or hero, YOU CANNOT LOOK AT YOUR ABILITIES despite often just staring at this screen of 10 seconds doing nothing. This is one of the craziest to me, because it forces you to wait until you are in the round, when you could be helping or getting shot at, to look at the screen that tells you what your hero can actually do. Again, this discourages experimentation and continues the general theme of BF2 forcing you down very narrow play-style choices.

Well, I’m glad I got all that off my chest. Despite everything I have said above, I keep going back to Battlefront 2 in a way that is confusing even to me. The urge to play it will not go away. Maybe it is because the game looks fantastic. It sounds fantastic. I am unashamedly a Star Wars fan and interacting with this universe, even with all the problems, garners a sense of childlike glee. The gameplay itself can also be quite engaging, and does deliver a sense of satisfaction when you start to feel the force and contribute to the success of your team.

The game has imminent DLC and there have already been two patches, so there is hope that some of my complaints will be addressed. So far it is enough to keep me going. My time with Battlefront 2 is not over yet. The saga continues.

The Joy of Travel (in Videogames)

pyre_wallpaper_01

There is something comforting about being “in transit”. I like being on buses and trains and planes and just being conveyed from one place to another. You can sit back, relax and watch the world go by. “I like the peace/ In the backseat”, as Arcade Fire put it.

I think the main reason is that you’re not really expected to be doing anything else when you’re travelling. I’ve never had to commute long distances, Leeds-to-London-style, so I’ve never been obliged to do work on a train. For me it has generally been for leisure and therefore I can spend the travel-time as I please; a welcome retreat in a world of constant stimulation and distraction.

My first recollection of having a similar feeling in a game was in my excitement for the release of Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles. I liked the idea of me and my chums hunkering down in our caravan and journeying from one adventure to the next – even though I was aware that that would actually make a pretty boring game and the fun itself revolved around the bits in between the travelling. I liked the concept nevertheless.

This was brought to mind in the time I’ve spent this week with Supergiant’s new game, Pyre, which offers the familiar opportunity to lead a mismatched bunch of companions on a caravan-based foray. Pyre actually offers a bit more time inside the caravan than FF:CC, albeit only while the caravan is stationary (I don’t quite get the same cosy feeling if the vehicleisn’t moving).  Still, the game captures the excitement of a travelling adventure quite admirably.

Some of this feeling is even captured in open-world games such as The Elder Scrolls Series, where one experiences the quiet anticipation of setting a distant waypoint and journeying through the wilderness to reach it.

Ultimately I suppose travel is a fundamental part of being human, harking back to our ancient nomadic routes. This is underlined by other art forms, which frequently employ the “travel tale” as part of their narrative to inspire a feeling of wonder in the audience (The Lord of The Rings, On the Road, Heart of Darkness). I’m happy to see Pyre using this technique in its unique graphic-novel-esque setting and hope to see more games packing me up in a wagon and sending me off to war.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe- Impressions

As a day-one Switch adopter, Breath of the Wild kept me interested for about 70 hours and I loved playing the console handheld, on-the-go. I was disappointed with Zelda’s lack of end-game content, however, and left wishing I had something else to play on my shiny new console. Enter MK8D.

Everything about Mario Kart radiates quality, craft and fun. The game looks stunning, and is incredibly easy to pick up and play. I quickly set to work attempting to get gold on all of the Grand Prix, which up to the Mirror Cup was challenging but not overwhelming. 200cc mode was whole other beast, and many of the cups took several (many) attempts. All of it was thoroughly enjoyable.

In comparison to my previous experiences with Mario Kart games, MK8D feels fairer. It is still frustrating to be blue-shell’d, but knowing there are ways to avoid it mitigates this considerably. Items can be used to repel the blue shell, and letting an opponent cruise into first place only to get nuked from above is extremely satisfying. Similar goes for red shells and other obstacles in the game. Ultimately it feels more like a game of skill.

This has been evident through the online play as well, in which I have seen my ranking slowly improve as I gained skill and finesse. Again, nothing seems unfair and the consistency of the top players within a tournament indicates that the role of luck is minimal. Furthermore on the online play, the netcode seems good once in-game with little to no lag and generally good performance. I have been kicked from pre-game lobbies more than a few times though.

My main criticism of MK8D is that after around 15 hours I have gold in all the cups (unlocking the Gold Mario character) and feel unsure what else there is to do. More gold equipment can be unlocked by getting 3 stars in all the cups, which sounds like much more of an ordeal than it is worth. I still need to investigate Time Trial mode which could reveal some more addictive challenges, but (while fun) I don’t feel compelled to go back to the online mode. Hopefully MK8D has something to hook me back in lest I return to my wanderings in the Switch release schedule wasteland.

PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – Impression

After seeing a Quick Look on everyone’s favourite videogame entertainment site GiantBomb, I knew PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds (henceforth referred to affectionately as PUBG) was a game I would like very much. I struggled to justify the expense on an early access game, but succumbed one lonely evening. And I did not regret it.

The streams of PUBG fail to express the sheer intensity of the experience, especially when playing solo and especially when you’re new to the game. Every sound spawns terrified jamming of keys while trying to go prone. I am a particularly jumpy person and this can be embarrasing when dead team-mates (more on squad play later) are spectating my play and see my view leap up and down again when a gunshot rings out. Despite being in early access it’s clear that PUBG neatly walks the fine line between the thrill of looting, the fear of being shot, and the sadism of ending another player’s round in a bloody haze.

I was fortunate to notice friends also playing on Steam (not surprising since everyone is playing at the moment) and was quickly able to form a regular squad. The game takes on a slightly different tone when playing as a group of up to four, the abject fear of a lonely death replaced with considerations of strategy, positioning, resource management and not humiliating yourself in a more public way. The best way to describe squad play in PUBG is to say it is the best game that I have ever experienced at replicating children playing soldiers. You get to shout “Moving to cover!”, “Reloading!”, “Check my six!” and other such pseudo-militaristic jargon in a non-ironic way that actually means something in the game. It’s cool.

Frustrations are definitely present, however, particularly for those of us who are not very good at shooting. I find myself regularly able to get into the top 15 or 10 living players, only to be deftly outgunned by more skilled opponents. This is not unfair, but it’s vexing that the only practice I get at PUBG’s shooting is in a live fire situation. One cannot help but feel that you’re in the ever-closing circle with 12-hour-a-day streamers, but I’ve got a day job. Some kind of training or deathmatch mode would definitely be appreciated.

Despite this, I have definitely spent a lot of time thinking about PUBG recently and am keen to see its development in the coming months. More on this to follow, probably.