Rock Band Lives

Just for fun we got our Rock Band setup down from the loft. I was surprised (and pleased) to discover that most of it works. I was even more pleased to discover that you can run Rock Band on a PlayStation 5 and it works too. We’ve also tried some of the original games on a PlayStation 3. You can also buy DLC for the game, including some tracks by Steely Dan, which is awesome.

The only problem we had was with one of the guitars. The strummy thing (to use it’s technical name) only worked in one direction. We’ve traced the problem to a reed switch in the guitar which is not firing when a magnet is moved close to it. I’ve ordered some reed switches and we might have a go at fixing it. I’m super impressed with the design and construction of the guitar itself. It is amazing that they could make and sell such a complicated piece of kit for such a low price.

If you have the kit in the loft and a PS5 I’d strongly suggest that you get it down and have a go. The game itself is now very cheap to buy and comes with lots of rock classics.

Final Fantasy VII Queen’s Blood

Spent a goodly chunk of today watching number one son play Queen’s Blood. It’s a card game which is part of Final Fantasy VII Rebirth The game is quite fun, the rest of Final Fantasy is very impressive with detailed surroundings, loads of interesting characters and a strong plot. As a video game watcher I recommend it.

Dragon's Dogma 2 - a spectator's review

I don’t play that many video games. But I do enjoy watching other people play them. Number one son is in town and playing Dragon’s Dogma 2. Which is a great watch. The environments are huge and detailed, the level of interaction with them is impressive and the characterisations are brilliant, particularly the voice acting.

You play “The Arisen”. You’ve been killed and marked by a dragon with which you share a sacred bond, which results in the dragon popping up and giving you a kicking whenever one of your companions says something stupid like “Together we are unstoppable”.

As the genuine Arisen you are heir to the kingdom and all kinds of good stuff, but it turns out that another arisen has got there first, and so you need to start by untangling the mystery of your imposter. Add a bunch of side quests and the action soon becomes very engaging. At some point I suppose there will be a fight with the dragon, but I think we’ll have to build up to that bit.

You are aided in your quest by a bunch of “pawns” who are characters you can recruit to help you in your mission. Your “chief pawn” (we called ours ‘Gary’) is a permanent fixture but the others can be swapped in and out as you find better fighters, mages and whatnot around the place. They all consider working for “The Arisen” a great honour and so hiring and firing is all very amicable.

It’s great fun and done with a lot of panache. Occasionally you notice that the ambition of the game slightly outpaces your console, with our PS5 chugging a bit when things on screen get complicated. But I would strongly recommend it if you’re looking for somewhere to spend the next six months or so….

Starfield

I’m sure it all means something

Starfield is a big game apparently. I spent some time watching number one son play yesterday. Strange things are abroad in the universe. You start off as a lowly recruit who is for some reason sent off to do something really scary and dangerous with inevitable (if hard to fathom) results. The game looks nice enough. The environments are incredibly detailed with lots of things to explore. But when the first significant attack is from, of all things, space pirates (which we had in Elite nearly 40 years ago), you have to wonder a bit about the originality of the premise. Apparently it does pick up speed a bit later on and start to get much more interesting. But from what I saw I was left wondering where they had spent all the time and effort that has gone into this game.

Tears of the Kingdom vs Lego 2K Drive

It’s not really fair (or perhaps meaningful) to compare the new Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom with Lego 2K Drive. They are completely different games. But then again, why not?

Tears of a Kingdom does an fantastic job of building on an amazing game (Zelda the Breath of the Wild) and making a six year old console feel new again. Lego 2K Drive is a racing game in the Lego universe with shades of the splendid Lego City Undercover. Zelda is great because of the depth and the number of things you can do. Although at the moment I’m still in the learning curve and expect to be there for some time. The nice thing about Lego 2K Drive is that the amount of learning that you have to do at the start is fairly minimal. It’s a driving game - and I’ve done those before. But the sheer scale of the game is very impressive with a huge open world to play in. I love the way that your vehicle changes to match where you are, flipping from car to boat to buggy as you smash across the terrain. The racing is intense, although the game works hard to keep up the tension by making sure there are the right number of cars in front and behind most of the time. I’ve not got the Lego game - with a bit of luck it will fall in price a bit and I’ll get a copy.

In praise of older video games: Left 4 Dead 2

This has been a weird week. What with having a visitor who, thanks to the “Magic of Covid” I’m not allowed to be in the same room as. Anyhoo, one way we have found to get around this is to play video games. The game “Left 4 Dead” was suggested as a way we could get together and play games without mixing too much, and so it has turned out. The game came out in 2009 and so it runs handily on most everything, including the Steamdeck and my rather elderly PC.

We’ve been having a great time running round shooting zombies and working our way through the levels. We’re playing in a team of 4 with two computer powered players and it works a treat. Your teammates are helpful and not at all silly. The dialogue is nicely done and the environments are large and challenging. There is lot of fun to be had in older games and you can pick this up for around 8 pounds on Steam. Well worth it for zombie slaying fun.

Hi-Fi Rush is an excellent game

Hi-Fi rush is an excellent rhythm, platform, beat-em-up. It might be the only one of its kind. The hero, Chai, is stuck in the middle of an organisation which will add extra bits and bobs to your body, whether you want them to or not. After accident in surgery involving a music player he becomes infused with the beat and the target of the various quality control systems around the place. This leads to fights, upgrades, platform jumping and finding allies. All the acting is great, the graphics are super and the whole thing moves along with a good, if probably electronic, heart. The key to winning battles is to strike your opponent on the beat. Get it right, with different beat combos and you can wreak a lot of havoc. There’s a story to follow, we’re not very far through it but we are looking forward to finding out more about the dodgy doings in the factory.

You can buy it for most platforms, but if you have the Xbox Game Pass you can already download it and play. And you should, it really is great fun.

Playing Yakuza Zero

Imagine if you took all the human effort involved in making a large bridge, or building a tower block and put it into making a video game. It feels like that is what Sega have done with Yakuza Zero. The game is enormous. There’s the main story of course, a tale of corruption, revenge and an awful lot of fist fights. But there are also side quests, racing games and all kinds of daftness just shoved in with all the rest. I’ve been playing it for a while and I just keep finding more and more stuff. It runs a treat on the Steam deck and being able to pick it up for a while, play it and then put it down again is really compelling. You find yourself indulging in the occasional street brawl in the commercial breaks between TV programs, or all the way through “Call the Midwife”. Strongly recommended, but definitely for grown-ups only.

Nintendo Switch Sports

We had a quick go at Nintendo Switch Sports this afternoon. We just played the golf (great fun) and bowling (also great fun). I’ve got very fond memories of the Wii Sports game from way back and it was nice to see that the new version keeps all the fun. And the players now have legs. I’m looking to playing the other games in the package.

Finishing Lost Judgement

It’s been about a year since number one son and I started playing Lost Judgement. (that is he plays and I watch). We had a go this evening and we are very close to the end now. This is not a game with a story. This is a game with a soap opera. Amazing value and we still haven’t done all the different elements.

Need for Speed is cheap on Steam

For the next few days you can pick up Need for Speed - Heat for just three pounds in the Steam store. I’m not sure how good the game is, but I reckon it must be worth at least three pounds.

Trombone Champ is Awesome

Thanks go to Derek for pointing me at this. It actually had me crying with laughter. I was watching one of the videos in this review of the game. I’m definitely going to get a copy. And probably make a trombone controller for it too. You can find the game here.

Immortality Game

Immortality from Half Mermaid games is a game like nothing I’ve ever seen before. You’re curating clips of movies about a missing film star from the past. The clips include out-takes, interviews and chunks of three different movies. You can pick the clips from a menu, or you can click on items in them to transition to a linked artefact in a different clip. The content is pretty grown up and the atmosphere of movie production is very well created, as are the kinds of dodgy movies that got made before everyone could get all the dodgy stuff they wanted via the internet.

So far, so murder mystery. Then things take a serious left turn that I don’t want to tell you about because you really should play the game for yourself. It must have taken a huge amount of effort to get the look and the performances that make the whole thing work. It’s both a tour-de-force and a really engrossing experience. The game is out on Xbox game pass. You really should take a look at it, but it is not one for the kids.

Tunic

Tunic is a fun isometric platformer type game that is available on lots of platforms and on Xbox Game Pass. It reminds me a bit of the famous "Knight Lore” Spectrum game from way back. One of the best bits is the way that the game is provided with a manual, but you have to decode the symbols and hieroglyphics in it to work out how to use the various game elements that you encounter. It builds a nice atmosphere as you guide a little fox around a big, beautifully drawn, environment.

If you have Game Pass you really should have a go.

Eden Ring fun

Killed a nasty monster in a cave today. Very pleased with myself.

Elden Ring

I was very surprised when number one son suggested that I might like to have a go at Elden Ring. I’d put it in the category known as “Too difficult for Rob”, especially in my brain damaged state. But he was serious. Apparently you don’t have to win fights to progress and the world is so vast and intricate that you can have endless fun just exploring. And you get a horse you can use to run away from anything really nasty.

Well, I’ve got the game and I agree with him. I’ve even beaten a few people (usually by sneaking up and stabbing them in the back - but hey, a kills a kill). I’ve also died lots. But this is how the game works. Being made dead is part of life. You just get put back in the game and then have to stump off and find the money that you dropped with you died.

The environment is awesome, the options deep and the whole thing is very impressive. Fighting is interesting, in that you go from having no idea how to beat something, to building theories about when to attack and when to retreat and finally to winning the battle and wondering why it seemed so hard at the start. Very strongly recommended by me and just about everyone else who’s played it.

Gran Turismo 7

Taking a BMW i3 through the field..

I’ve been playing the new Gran Turismo game for a couple of hours this morning. So of course I can now write the definitive review. Actually, I’ve been playing the game since version one on the original PlayStation, when we took a lowly Nissan to dizzying heights of success by a combination of a lot of tuning and bashing all the other cars off the road in the corners.

The new game is very true to the heritage of the older ones, even to the point of being a bit “up itself” with slow motion videos of the Wright Brothers and Einstein at the start. You even get to do qualifying races. Remember them? When the game first came out it was as if it was testing you to see if you were worthy to play it. It still feels like that.

Anyhoo, there are some new flourishes. There’s this strange music mode thing which you seem to have to do for a while before you get to the main game. There’s also a café where you can go and get menus of things to do. Everything loads pretty much instantly. This is literally a game changer. It means that you are tempted to have a go at shaving a few fractions of a second off that time, just because you know that you will be put back into the driving seat instantly when you retry. The graphics are better than real. I don’t think you could get these images with a camera.

Stopping for a coffee.

There are lots of races, hundreds of cars (including my beloved BMW i3) and tuning and detailing options galore. The driving experience is sublime with a special shoutout for the weather effects. There are lots and lots of things to do. You could go and live in this game. And with the state of the world today, I reckon it would be a pretty good option.

If you like Gran Turismo you’ll love it. If you’ve played a lot of Forza Horizons you might wonder what all the fuss is about, and ask why you can only race around tracks and not just drive anywhere. You might also question why the soundtrack is so bland and ask about missions. But these things are kind of beside the point. Gran Turismo really is about the driving and cars, not about narratives. And in that it succeeds brilliantly.

Pokemon Legends Arceus here we come

No wonder I look worried

The original Pokemon games kind of passed me by. Perhaps I was a bit too busy with other things when they first came out, or maybe I was anxious not to be seen to be taking over the games that my kids were playing at the time. Well, that ship has well and truly sailed now… So when Pokemon Legends Arceus came along I was tempted. The game seems to have a nice exploration angle and although the graphics didn’t look the best they looked good enough to build a solid atmosphere. So I stumped up the cash and downloaded a copy.

I’ve not done much yet. Just the training missions. But I am having fun, and it looks like there is a lot of depth to the whole thing.

How not to migrate Animal Crossing island data

Home sweet home

I’ve just got a new Nintendo Switch. I’m in the process of selling a bunch of stuff from the loft that I don’t need any more and I reckoned I could raise the price of a new OLED one. I got it today and it is lovely. The screen is really impressive.

Moving your settings from one Switch to another turned out to be one part smooth process and one part white-knuckle terror ride. It started well enough. Once the new switch was online I was able to authenticate using the phone and I was asked if I wanted to copy all the saved games and settings from one device to another. “Yes please” I replied and progress bars grew and shank. At the end of it I was asked if I wanted to delete my Nintendo identity from the old device. I said yes, because it is going on sale to pay for the new one. Feeling rather smug at how well that had all gone I then loaded Animal Crossing into the new device and opened up my little island.

It wasn’t there.

And I’d just disconnected myself from the old device. I really thought I’d lost everything I’d built up over hundreds of hours of gameplay. I didn’t know (although I should really have worked out) that Animal Crossing saved games are managed outside of normal game saves. So my island was still on my original old Switch. But could I get back to it? It turns out that I could. I re-registered myself on the old Switch, opened up Animal Crossing and was then given a chance to claim my island data which had been left lying around on the device - presumably to deal with situations like these. I was then able to use the Island Transfer tool to move the island from my old Switch to my new one, and that worked a treat. I can now wander around picking up weeds in splendidly sharp colour.

The takeaway from this is to use the Animal Crossing transfer tool if you are moving your island from one device to another, don’t expect the device transfer process to do it for you. I’m impressed that you can recover from the situation; but I’m rather annoyed that I had to do it in the first place. If at any point I’d accepted the offer to make a new island I dread to think what would have happened. I’d have lost the lot. A prospect that felt a lot more scary than it probably should be, what with nothing particularly real being involved. I really hated the idea of losing all the digital chums that I’ve made over the years, to say nothing of all the digital loot that I’d accumulated.

The Nioh Collection

The Nioh collection is a rock-hard fighting game. Lots of weapons, power ups and inventive opponents. Not quite my cop of tea (I don’t last more than around 30 seconds) but number one son seems to quite like it.