So, last year was all about Doctor Who. Nothing wrong with that, but I'd thought it might be nice to make the first blog post of this year about something different. Because, you know, I do have other interests. Like games, for instance.
I’ve no idea what
the top games of 2014 will be. There are a few titles – like Thief, say – which show promise
and no doubt many gamers are anticipating the release of Call Of Battlefield 37: Modern Black Special Ghost Ops Recon. But
not me.
Microsoft and Sony would probably like me to get all
excited about the PS4 versus Xbox One debate, but while I’m not averse to
upgrades I’m holding fire on either of those until a combination of significant
price drops and improved range of available titles proves too irresistible. In
conjunction with a nice windfall.
No matter how strapped for cash we are, we plebs need our
bread and circuses. And for now the Xbox 360 is my arena of choice. Then it’s
just a matter of your preferred entertainments in that arena. Me, I don’t mind
a spot of blood on the sand. Just whatever you do, don’t throw me to the
Christians.
Anyway, since the immediate new year seems barren of
fresh titles that appeal to me, it seems a good time to cast an eye or two back
over the games that won my admiration during 2013. They could serve as some
indication of the kind of thing I might go for in the coming year, assuming
there’s anything similar in the pipeline.
At worst, it’s a chance for fond reflection.
All my top highlights surfaced in the latter half of the
year and it seems appropriate to kick off with the one that’s still currently providing
much fun and entertainment for the whole family. (That’s me and my wife; not
the cats especially, although one of them appreciates having a choice of laps
as both of us are fixed to the sofa for a few hours at a time.) I refer, of
course, to:
LEGO
Marvel Superheroes
A perfect marriage of two mighty franchises! LEGO games
rarely disappoint – the only one we’ve played that wasn’t quite up to par was
LEGO Indiana Jones and that had more to do with the limited cast of standout
characters. No problems with that in the Marvel universe. From Ant-Man to
Galactus, Avengers to X-Men, they’re all unlockable and playable here – and
they’re all cute. There’s the usual array of inventive puzzles and challenges
that encourage multi-hero (and villain!) co-operation and there are brilliant
little touches, like having to rescue lots of little Stan Lees throughout each
adventure and the fact that musclebound bulldozers such as The Hulk and The
Thing are unable to assemble Lego bricks. Hulk smash! And Thing clobbers!
Others build.
It’s a vibrant, colourful world and it’s almost a shame
to smash bits of it up. Haha, who am I kidding? It’s fantastic fun. But in my
defence, it’s the most creative rampage of destruction you are ever likely to
experience.
Batman:
Arkham Origins
In contrast, the Batman games are on the darker
side. But in a good way.
While Assylum benefited from the confines of its setting,
I welcomed the more sprawling open world of City and it’s back here in Origins.
There’s a bleak midwintery ambience, affording plenty of shadows for Batman to
lurk in while the villains provide the splashes of comic-strip colour. Bruce
Wayne’s a moody sort and to be fair he’s not given much to laugh about this
particular Christmas Eve but there’s no shortage of humour amid the gloomier
proceedings: Alfred with his dry butlery stand-up routine and a rich supply of
comic banter from the thugs scattered across the city. It’s worth listening to
them before you beat them up.
Combat is nice and varied with a great range of moves and
gadgets, as you’d expect, and the free-flowing frenetic melees are almost as
much fun as the clever stealth takedowns where I like to imagine even Batman
indulges in a quiet tee-hee as he slopes away to prey on his next unsuspecting
victim.
(NB In Dark Knight
mode, the game becomes an altogether different beast – I found it ranged from
annoying to impossible. So I wussed out and settled for being an ordinary hero.
Those tougher modes are your reward for completing the game on Normal
difficulty and I don’t know about you but after a long Christmas Eve doffing up
bad guys I like things to get easier.)
It’s no mean feat to construct a story that embraces
quite such a large cast of diverse enemies for Batman to confront and the
developers have pulled it off on three occasions now, with this instalment
introducing some of the less widely known villains along with some very
familiar (evil) faces.
Luckily Gotham doesn’t enforce capital punishment and
these baddies are only ever banged up in prison, all set to escape and fight
another day.
Assassins
Creed IV: Black Flag
But if crime doesn’t pay in the DC universe, it pays
rather handsomely on the islands and open seas of the Carribean. Yes, me
hearties, I heartily enjoyed the naval battles in Assassins Creed III, so I was
very much looking forward to swashing my buckle in Black Flag. The game lived
up to expectations and then some.
Although, like all AC games, it did have this annoying
habit of butting into the action with those dull and comprehensively
uninteresting modern bits. Dear Ubisoft, I didn’t care about Desmond and I’m
even less likely to care about some faceless corporate slave blundering about
the Abstergo offices. Fortunately, you’re not tasked too frequently with this
mundanery, but it’s still an occasional intrusion when you just want to get
back to your piracy and, well, like it implies in the title, assassinating.
These episodes run counter to the immersive experience in
what is – again – a vast and richly constructed historical setting laid out for
you to explore and plunder. Especially as the scenario here assumes you are
plundering memories in the interests of making movies, games and other
merchandise based on characters and events within the main story. Luckily, the
main action is so much damned fun that it fends off these misguided attempts by
the developers to distance you from it all. But I’d love Ubisoft to drop all
the modern drudgery altogether. Round it all off in a separate game if you have
to – so I won’t have to buy it – but ditch it. Then release further games that
pack me off on historical adventures.
Like this one, with more swashes and buckles than you can
shake a cutlass at.
Melee combat isn’t quite as free-flowing as I’ve found in
previous AC instalments – it seemed trickier to string together parries, which
resulted in more interrupts – but fights tended to retain their semi-cinematic
qualities and our ‘hero’ has a nice array of moves and gadgets (albeit not
quite enough to rival Bruce Wayne’s).With treasure maps, side games and side
missions, the opportunity to upgrade your weapons and fit out your ship with
various improvements, there’s heaps of stuff to occupy you outside of the main
story.
You can even collect an extensive library of sea shanties
for your crew to sing – if only to tell them to shut up a few bars in. Highly
recommended. Silence is golden, after all, whether on stealth missions or manning
the wheel of your brig and admiring the beautifully realised ocean view. Just
before engaging that legendary ship coming at you over the horizon.
GTA
V
Of course, if piracy isn’t your preferred brand of
criminal activity, you can always play the stockmarket using insider
information and giving shares a nudge in the right direction with a well-placed
bullet, that sort of thing. This is only one of the more white-collar
activities available to you as one of the three leading characters in GTA V,
last year’s game blockbuster from Rock Star.
Seriously, seriously good. In major part because it
doesn’t take itself too seriously. The fact that much of its content horrifies
Daily Mail readers is just a bonus.
Once again (and I’m sensing a theme here) it’s a truly
expansive, beautifully realised world to roam and freely explore in between a
terrific range of story missions and side activities. It’s a modern epic with a
spectacular blend of over-the-top action setpieces and compelling human story.
The characters are worthy of an Elmore Leonard novel – often unpleasant,
dysfunctional, even psychotic and invariably funny. Heightened reality with a
touch or two of the utterly surreal and a bumper, brilliant colour catalogue of
stuff to do.
The heists, in particular, are immensely satisfying,
taking you through the planning, the prep and the score. There are vehicular
and aerial stunts, diving to explore wrecks, stick-ups, races, shooting sprees,
tennis, a golf course (finally, Tiger Woods meets GTA!) and walking your dog,
to name a few.
At first, I wondered if the facility to switch between
lead characters might dilute the sense of involvement, but the truth is they
are all so well-written and portrayed I grew attached to each of them and
wanted them all to live by story’s end. There was one (by now notorious) scene
I was uncomfortable with – because I’m a sensitive soul at heart – but there’s
something about the dangerously unstable and thoroughly disturbed Trevor that
makes him a winning personality in spite of all he does. Michael and Franklin
go about their criminal ways with a few more principles between them and again
they and their situations are so exquisitely scripted and played that it’s
impossible not to empathise with them.
And it’s probably worth stating that for the benefit of
concerned Daily Mail readers I’m not in the least bit tempted to go out and do
any of the above activities for real. Except maybe golf or tennis, assuming I
was fit enough. I’d walk a dog, but we have two cats.
Still, on top of grossing out some folks, GTA V
outgrossed a lot of movies last year. And deservedly so. It’s better than most
of last year’s movies.
Saints
Row IV
Last but by no means least, I have to mention Saints Row.
Often considered a poorer cousin of GTA, it may have been that once but it has
evolved to become increasingly dafter with each iteration in the series. To the
extent that this one kicks you off as President of the USA, plonks you into a
virtual world and gives you superpowers to help you fight off an alien
invasion.
Already makes GTA V’s collecting UFO parts sound kind of tame, right?
It’s good that these games retain their distinct styles
and Saints Row has style aplenty. Big, dumb, bold, bright and huge fun to play.
Have yourself a tremendous blast, leaping, bounding and/or flying across the
cityscape, freezing, torching, shrinking and otherwise kicking alien butt in
all manner of imaginative ways.
Alternatively, pimp yo ride and drive around the streets
like a normal human being and shoot the aliens with the customary array of
firearms or beat them down with the, er, flexible choice of melee weapons.
Ironically, the driving’s one thing I sort of missed from the previous
instalments. I mean, you’re free to have and use as many vehicles as you like,
but you’ll find as you develop your superpowers that driving is a bit, well,
pedestrian.
Some of the activities, like hacking stores, can get a
little repetitive but it’s not that difficult to get those done and out the way,
leaving you to focus on more important (and entertaining) things. As with GTA V, I cheerfully frittered away a
lot of time in this virtual world because I didn’t want the story to be over
too soon. Okay, this story is not worthy of Elmore Leonard, but it is a
wonderfully hokey action blockbuster with a good variety of missions, decent
challenges and enough silliness to keep Mr Silly in silliness for a whole
string of silly seasons. Winner of the best side activity has to be the insurance
fraud, where bouncing and ragdolling all over the city even beats flying as a
mode of travel.
Mad, bad and great to know.
And it has one key feature over and above all the others
– and, as far as I can tell, the vast majority of the coming year’s titles...
A female protagonist. Well, it’s a choice anyway.
Maybe I have a heroine addiction, but surely someone in
the games industry has noticed that their market consists of about a 50%
male-female mix. Add to that all the lads who’d surely rather watch Lara
Croft’s derriere than the chunky armoured buns of some hardened space marine
and it leaves me honestly perplexed as to why there aren’t more titles that
feature a female protagonist – or at least, as with Saints Row, the choice.
It’s the one area I’ve felt that Rockstar have been consistently lax in – fair
enough, it’s never done their sales any harm so maybe they know their market better
than I do, but with three characters to switch between in GTA V it felt like
more of an omission this time.
Okay, Lara Croft used to bounce around like a cartoonish
sex doll and we’ve moved beyond that. But the reimagined Lara of the latest
Tomb Raider is a mature, strong female character and there’s call for way more
of those. Points also go to Bioware for Mass Effect and their female Shepherd –
so popular she warranted her own cover for Mass Effect 3. That’s right: players
demanded she get her own cover. There’s a demand.
So where’s the supply, games industry?
While you’re busy pushing your next generation consoles
with pride, you might consider the next generation of gender attitudes and
representation.
Just a thought.
In the meantime, if the gaming highlights of 2014 turn out to be anything comparable to those listed here, 'so last year' will be no bad thing.
Games industry, bring your A game.
SAF
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