Lost Judgement Game Review

One of the great pleasures of the holidays is watching number one son play video games. This time he was playing Lost Judgement which is at time of writing on discount in the Sony PlayStation store. In the game you play as a detective/lawyer/ninja type solving a murder that gets murkier with every chapter. You do this by beating people up, solving puzzles, interviewing suspects and beating people up. With a bit of beating people up on the side. The violence is very cartoony (which is just as well considering what the fighters do to each other) but the fighting is quite deep (number one son says).

You have free range of the environments and the amount of freedom you have is very impressive. You can go into pretty much every shop, bar, café or gambling den that you find on the street. There are gaming arcades full of retro Sega games to play. You can dress up as a mascot and go around town doing good. Or you can teach the the local school dance troupe some new moves. The side quests are numerous and some are hilarious. The main story is by contrast pretty gruesome.

We are a few chapters in now and the plot is really thickening. It really is like taking part in a glossy TV detective show, with all the camera moves and captions you’d expect. Very strongly recommended.

Forza Horizon 5 is super wonderful

Forza Horizon 5 is awesome. I got round to downloading it onto my Xbox One X over the weekend and it looks amazing. I’m not sure what the latest Xbox will add to the experience, but for now I’m really enjoying zooming round Mexico in a variety of very shiny (at least at the start) vehicles. They’ve don’t seem to have messed with the formula much, just made it all bigger. You start the game by being dropped from a plane in a variety of different cars. The car handling seems spot on to me, with lots of opportunities for off-road action - whether you intend that or not.

The only jarring part of the experience was the return of loading delays to my gaming experience. Spending time playing Ratchet and Clank on the PS5 with its instant start and level swaps has spoiled me a bit. One day I’ll get the latest Xbox, which should improve things a bit. And if you just drive around and admire the scenery as I’ve been doing there’s no loading at all.

If you have an Xbox you should get this game.

The Good Life is good fun

The Good Life first appeared on Kickstarter but has now made it onto XBOX Game Pass. You play as a somewhat desperate photographer/investigator working off a 10 million pound debt. How she got the debt is not revealed at the start, perhaps we find out later. Anyhoo, you have been despatched to the Lake District to discover the dark secret behind “the happiest town in the world”. One secret emerges pretty quickly, others will take a bit of time to emerge. While you wait you can earn money by taking photos and building up an on-line following.

Number one son says that the developers were in the Lake District taking pictures while we were on holiday there. Not sure about this, but the artwork gives a nice sense of place and the voice acting is good, if a bit eclectic. It’s a great game to pay socially, you can all watch the play and discuss what is really going on. If you’ve got Game Pass you should have a look.

Beware Zookeeper World - you may never escape

Zookeeper World - https://kiteretsu.jp/en/projects/zookeeperworld.html has me in its’ grip. It is like the original, but with an Animal Crossing like Zoo building engine. There are lots of different puzzles and not many are time limited, which I really like. There may be no hope for me…

..but then again - I have just bought a penguin…

12 Minutes is frustrating fun

This iteration is not going too well….

If you’ve got an Xbox game pass you can already play 12 minutes. If you haven’t, it is still worth getting and having a go. You won’t play it for the graphics though. They are fit for purpose, but viewed close up they fall apart a bit. On the rare occasions that you can see the characters in close up they look a bit scary. The gameplay is essentially a bunch of repeated attempts for a “happy ending” in a situation which doesn’t seem to allow for one. Well, what would you do if cop showed up and accused your wife of murder a few minutes into an evening at home?

Play it right and everyone ends up happy (I hope). Play it wrong and you get thrown back to the start with hopefully a bit more knowledge about what is going on. Some parts drag a bit, you end up trying everything on everything, but so far it has been making sense and we are making progress

This type of game is best played as a group effort, as you can all pitch in and make suggestions. There’s an apparently dodgy plot twist right at the end that we haven’t met up with yet, but we’ve enjoyed the game enough so far for it not to matter. It’s worth mentioning the voice acting, which is very good - with proper actors building a nice atmosphere.

Ratchet and Clank - A Rift Apart

I’ve just spent nearly seventy quids on a video game. Oof. That ‘s a lot of money. And I haven’t got anything to show for it. Just an entry on a server somewhere in the land of Sony noting the fact that they have just made me a bit poorer. My PS5 is one of the ones that doesn’t have a disk drive. I was very happy to get it back last year when they were very hard to source. I don’t buy many video games. This is the first one I’ve purchased since the first week of ownership. I find that the PlayStation Plus monthly subscription gets me enough new toys to play with. However, I’d been planning to get this game since the console came out.

It is very good. The only jarring note for me was the way that the first screen I saw after downloading (a 45G download in about 12 minutes or so - thanks KC) was one offering me a chance to spend an extra 10 quids on the “deluxe” edition of the game. As if. However, the gameplay, the writing and the effects are very impressive. Movie impressive. They’ve used all the colours in their paint box, plus a few new ones, to make a bright and vibrant environment for you to blast your way through. I’ve not played it for that long, but I know enough to want to play it through to the very end. Then I want to go back through again and spend more time looking at the scenery.

And I seem to remember that when the first PlayStation came out all those years ago some of the games were nudging 60 pounds or so a pop which, allowing for inflation must have been a sizeable chunk of change back in the day.

Arizona Sunshine for the Quest

First the bad news. The graphics in Arizona Sunshine are not the best all the time. Zombies are not just hard to kill, sometimes they float backwards into the air and bits of them appear through walls. However, when playing the game this is not a problem. I guarantee you’ll be too busy hunting for ammo or frantically trying to reload to spot these glitches.

I’ve played about twenty minutes of the solo campaign and it seems quite fun. A story is unfolding and up until now the zombies I’ve bumped into have been quite easy to dispose of. However, I really bought the game for co-op play and last night four of us had a very happy time fighting off waves of zombie hordes.

The way that you hold and wield weapons works very well. You can manage both a rifle and a revolver quite comfortably. The reload action is nicely realistic although you’ll find your clip always runs out at the most inconvenient times which adds a lot to the atmosphere of panic. The networked group play is rock solid, and you do get to see the entire figures of your fellow players, which adds a lot to the gameplay.

At the time of writing this post the game is available for a third off in the UK, which makes it around 19 pounds. At that price it is very good value.

Riches Beyond the Dreams of Avarice

I’m really enjoying playing Animal Crossing. It provides a good chunk of escapism every day. And last week this happened. If you know the game, you’ll understand how exciting this was. If you don’t, the game lets you buy turnips and do a little speculating with them. I’d bought my turnips at a 94 bells, so this price had me turning a tidy profit. In fact the price was so attractive that I had folks turning up to sell their turnips too.

Great fun.

Animal Crossing is keeping me sane

Well, probably not. But it is keeping me occupied. As distractions go it is hard to beat. And I’ve even tracked down an electronics kit to play with. If this doesn’t convince people of the social worth of video games, then I don’t know what will.

Super Mario Party for Switch is awesome

It’s a measure of the greatness of this game that I really like it even though I’m not that good at it. And we’ve only really played the mini-games. And there are lots of things we’ve not unlocked.

It works best if there are four players so you’ll need to get four controllers from somewhere. But once you’ve done that a whole slew of fun and games awaits. The mini-games are both crackers and genius at the same time. Anyone looking for tips as to how you can take simple gameplay ideas and realise them perfectly should take a look at this. We’ve not played any of the longer games, or even any of the structured activities. Instead we’ve just picked things out the roster of minigames on the basis that “this looks interesting and fun”. And we have hardly ever been wrong.

If you’ve got some folks coming round who like silly games you should so get hold of this. It might be worth waiting for a low price deal (that’s what I did) but if you want to get cracking right away I think it is well worth full price.

Root Letter: Last Answer for Switch

What did I do today? Well, I went to a small town in Japan, checked into a hotel, met a strange old bloke in the communal baths, had a meal in a nice restaurant and discovered my fortune in love at a local shrine. Not in real life of course (I wish), but in the game Root Letter: Last Answer which I found in town today at a very nice price. It came in a box with some nice artwork too.

It’s an interactive graphical novel. I expected that the graphics would all be hand drawn, but that is not the case. Instead there is a lot of photography, plus a smattering of video. The locations look like lightly processed images of real places and all the characters are all pictures of different people. I’m not sure if the production process actually involved going to a town, taking pictures of the library, museum etc etc along with local postmen, chefs, bartenders and creepy old men, but it looks like it could have been.

The plot is rather slow moving, but for me it is all about the journey anyway. You do get a quite nice glimpse of Japanese life along with the gameplay. What you do affects the outcome, so I’ve already decided that a few dodgy decisions that I made at the start of the game may have doomed me a bit, but I’ll be happy to come back again and have another go. You can save your game progress at any point, so you can always save before a momentous conversation and then re-do things. You can’t really compare the gameplay to that of a fast moving video game, it is more like reading a book or listening to a play on the radio (does anyone do that any more - you should).

For the price of entry I reckon I got a good deal, and I’m looking forward to finding out just what happens.

Minecraft Earth

I’m not as into Minecraft as I probably should be. If I want to have fun I tend to fire up Visual Studio Code. Sad but true.

Anyhoo, I’m fascinated by the idea of Minecraft Earth and today I fired it up and had a go. It’s free to download and play on your mobile device (Android or Apple) and it works a treat.

You find yourself in a Lego Mindstorms version of your surroundings and as you wander around you can pick up bricks, pigs and chickens. Just like in real life.

You can use what you have picked up to build things (perhaps not the chickens though).

Your creations are presented using augmented reality so you can plonk them on the living room floor and then walk around them, adding bricks and poking ducks, as is your want.

If you’re prepared to walk about a bit you can gather quite a bit of loot and some locations have challenges associated with them.

If you love Minecraft you’ll love this. If you don’t love Minecraft it might convert you.

Links Awakening looks good

Number one son has spent a big chunk of the day playing Zelda - Link’s awkening on his Switch. As well he might, it is very good.

Astral Chain for Nintendo Switch

Astral Chain for the Nintendo Switch looks like a very good game. I can say this with confidence because today I spent a good chunk of time watching number one son play it.

There’s a nice mix of fighting, exploring, problem solving and interacting with people. Along with a nicely mind-bending premise. Amazing that such a rich environment can fit into a tiny card that then goes into handheld that you can carry around and play on the bus.

Wreckfest Review

One of my favourite Playstation 1 games was Destruction Derby. It was one of the first games I bought for my brand new console and it was really groundbreaking in gameplay and vehicle damage. I really liked the mode when you just had to survive as long as possible with every other car trying to smash your car into pieces.

I reckon Wreckfest is a good spiritual successor to my PS1 favourite. It has car damage, plenty of devious opponents and some seriously wacky races. I’m running it on an Xbox One X and it looks lovely. My favourite level so far (although I can’t do it) is one where you are placed in a Reliant Regal three wheeler and asked to take on 24 school busses in a battle for first place. I’ve only managed to get as far as 11th so far, but I’m enjoying working on it. Apparently I’ve got combine harvesters and lots of other things to look forward to in the future. I’m not a fan of the racing couches though. Very hard to control.

There’s lots of customisation available. The cars in the game are not licensed but it’s pretty obvious what each is modelled on. The only criticism I have is that the loading times are a bit on the long side. I actually started to worry that the word “LOADING” would be burnt into the screen I spent so much time staring at it.

However, the good news is that if you want to restart a race (usually because someone sneakily sent you into a spin or off the track) the restart time (the one you really care about) is pretty much zero.

I’ve not actually gone into a shop and bought a physical copy of a game for a while. In this case I’m glad that I did.

Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum 'n' Fun is awesome

Favourite birthday present so far: Taiko no Tatsujin: Drum 'n' Fun

Absolutely. I’ve always liked rhythm games and I really love the exuberance of Japanese productions like these. The enthusiastic commentary (all in Japanese so I’ve no idea what they are saying), the bonkers animations and the crazy soundtrack are all really infectious.

But the thing i really like is the collection of crazy music. I think it is fair to say that, save a few game sound tracks (including Ridge Racer), there are no pop tracks that you will ever have heard of. Ed Sheeran is not on the playlist. In a good way.

But what is there is proper daft. There are pop tracks and anime sounds that are just fantastic, along with a version of the alphabet song that just has to be heard and drummed to. It is deeply silly and, of course, there is a lot of skill required if you want to crack the harder levels.

You can drum with controller buttons or on the touch screen but I’ve got the version that comes with a plastic drum and a pair of drumsticks. The drum worked very well for me after a bit of fiddling to sort out the timing. Word on the street is that waving the joycons around doesn’t make for a great drumming action, but I’ve not tried this yet. There are also some multi-player modes that I’m looking forward to having a go at.

The biggest limitation for me is that the drum controller is wired to a USB plug, so you can only use the drum if your Switch is plugged into a docking station. It might be possible to do something cunning with a USB C hub , but since this connection is on the bottom of the Switch it would be hard (and potentially damaging) to stand the Switch up when using it. If the drum was wireless and battery powered it would be great for portable drumming action, but as it is I’m having a lot of fun and enjoying the crazy music.

Universal Paperclips

In Universal Paperclips you play the role of an artificial intelligence that was created to maximise the production of paperclips. Thing start off slow, with a button to press to make a paperclip. One mouse click equals one paperclip. But pretty soon you've earned enough to afford one or more "auto-clippers" that will press the button for you. Then you can start to set the price of your paperclips and advertise to drive demand. 

After a while your anonymous sponsor starts to reward you with trust that brings your AI system more memory and processing speed. So you can start having ideas about paperclip production and marketing. And you make more, and more paperclips. And perhaps sing some songs.

They say that the game ends when the entire universe is made of paperclips. But they might be wrong, I've not been playing the game long enough for that. 

It's a delightful little game. I mentioned it yesterday at Pint of Science as an example of the way that, given a goal, an AI system will behave in a totally amoral way. You can play it online or you can buy a copy for your iPhone or Android device. 

Mario and Rabbids for Nintendo Switch

Another game I've been playing with over the break is Mario and Rabbids on the Nintendo Switch. It's a fun little game that was on offer at a temptingly low price over the Christmas break. I like it because it's turn based. You give your characters their instructions and then watch the action unfold as they get into position and shoot at the enemy. Then the enemy takes their move, and your carefully laid out plans collapse before your eyes. Although that might be just me. 

I really like the way that there's no limit on how long you can spend thinking about what to do next. I'm rubbish at most "shooty" type games because I have a habit of standing and thinking, never a good plan when there are snipers about. But with this game I can spend as long as I like choosing who to send into battle, which of the wonderful weapons to give them and what to make them do when they get there. There seems to be a huge depth to the action too, with stuff laid around the levels that really encourages you to go back and play them again once you've levelled up a bit. 

If you've got a Nintendo Switch you really should get this game I reckon. 

Dark Souls III

Number one son has brought his Playstation 4 Pro along for the Christmas break. And he's bought Dark Souls III

I'm finding it great fun to watch him play it. There's a lot of death involved. Quite a bit of it involves the player. It seems that you learn the right thing to do in every battle by doing the wrong thing first and finding out that it kills you. The graphics are impressive, if a bit murky, and the animations and actions of the different forms of the evil hordes that you need to kill are very well realised. The voice acting of the characters is well done, and the story is suitably preposterous. Worth a look if you've got the patience of the un-dead. 

Player Unknown's Battlegrounds

I'm more of a video game buyer than a video game player. Over the years I've acquired consoles, controllers and a whole bunch of games and some I've played quite a bit. But often I just end up playing Zoo Keeper in front of the telly. 

I'd not heard of Player Unknown's Battlegrounds until number one son mentioned that it's lined up to be the biggest game of the year. So much for my street cred (if street cred is even a thing these days).

The premise is very simple. One hundred people land on an island. The winner is the last one left. There are weapons, vehicles and nicely drawn surroundings that contract during the game so that you are forced together into one part of the island to duke it out in the final minutes. 

We used my PC to play it, and it worked really well. It's also available for Xbox. It's network only (which is not particularly surprising) and a fast network connection is probably a good idea.  

If I played it I'd last as long as it took for someone to find me. After some discussion we reckon that the way to progress is to parachute into heavily populated areas so that you can practice your gunplay. Strongly recommended if you like shooty games.