Game Review: Rime

We finally finished Rime!  If you didn't read my previous post, it was one of February's PSPlus games and is rated PEGI 7 because it contains "pictures or sounds likely to be scary to young children".  And yes, the eerie black liquid people are scary (reminiscent of No Face in Spirited Away).  But it wasn't too scary for Seb.  A bit of mild peril is sometimes needed to make a great story, after all.

The game is beautiful, visually and aurally.  Unusually, you are a boy, without all the crazy abilities you usually have in games (ridiculous jumping, climbing, fighting, etc).  He has a lot of limitations, and those jumps where he only just makes it are heart stopping.  It reminds me of The Last Guardian in a lot of ways (though it is certainly more colourful!).

The story is opaque, but I think Seb took it more at face value and enjoyed it without really understanding it.  It is supposed to be, I think, a allegory about grief, but Seb thought it was a story about a shipwrecked boy trying to save the people on an island who'd been struck by some terrible curse.  He really loved the two-legged friend you create, and he loved 'Mr Hint' (the name Dad gave to the fox, which seems to have stuck).

Seb said the story was sad, which it was, and he said there should have been more puzzles.  I'm not entirely sure if by that he just means he wishes it was longer.  He was a bit disappointed by how it turns out with the hooded figure, but I won't say more in case you want to play it and try and figure out what on earth is going on!

All in all we enjoyed it.  It isn't a game a 5/6 year old could manage by themselves.  Seb had trouble with some of the 'parkour' and we had to solve a lot of the puzzles for him.  It did keep him engaged, even when we were doing controlling.  He kept wanting to play it and find out what happened next.  I'd certainly recommend it as a family friendly adventure, so if you have PSPlus and haven't downloaded it do it now, before the March games are out.

What a desert templey day...

Today Seb decided he wanted to build a desert temple in Lego.  We do have a lot of Minecraft Lego, so we gave it a go, but apparently we needed a lot more sand!  Next time Seb says we need more Minecraft Lego I won't be able to disagree, at least if it includes more sand coloured bricks...  Still, it is probably recognisably a desert temple.  

After that Seb decided he wanted to build a desert temple in Minecraft, so we set up a super flat world in creative mode and off  he went.  You can't see the inside of the temple in the pic below but he has been copying that from pictures we googled, so it looks accurate (though no traps and no underground loot).  Oddly he didn't want it to be a sandy super flat world, he wanted to replace the grass blocks with sand as he went.  It's keeping him occupied though!  We did set it to be a desert biome, so it has interesting hostile mobs like Husks.

I have to admit I didn't know about Husks, but Seb bought a Minecraft sticker book from the book sale at school last week and it had a whole bunch of hostile mobs in it I'd never heard of!  I can't have played Minecraft enough in survival mode.  (Seb usually wants to do creative mode, though personally I much prefer survival.)  I had never heard of the evil 'illager' villagers, such as the Evoker, Illusioner or Vindicator, or the Vexes that the Evokers summon.  Seb said he'd seen them in a StacyPlays video.  So there you go, you learn something new every day.  ;-)

Just started watching - ThinkNoodles

This week I thought I'd try introducing a few new (to us) YouTubers into our video watching rotation.  One of the YouTubers I picked, having watched them to check them out first, is ThinkNoodles.  ThinkNoodles is family friendly, though he does say 'Jeez' fairly often, which annoys me.  I don't know if my blasphemy threshold is set too high, since a lot of (especially American) YouTubers seem to say 'Jeez' even if they don't say any other 'naughty words' (as we call them in our house!).  Anyway...  Having introduced ThinkNoodles I am now made to watch his videos every time we turn on YouTube.  I'm beginning to regret showing him to Seb.  :-D

Seb's favourite ThinkNoodles videos so far are 'Fan Choice Fridays'.  I have been allowed to watch a few Subnautica videos. But his main content seems to consist of Roblox and Minecraft videos.

Dad likes him because he finds his enthusiasm about everything entertaining.  For instance, when watching Subnautica videos there's a lot of shouting things like, "It's a fish!!!".  Also, we love it when people are so family friendly.  It's unfortunately rare for YouTubers to be family friendly, which is a massive shame.

Seb likes him because he makes him laugh and he likes the games he plays.

One of our favourite videos so far was this one...  Enjoy!

Game Review: Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime

This week we went back to one of our family gaming favourites - Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime (or Dangerous Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime as Seb calls it).  This is a fabulous co-op game which involves up to four of you piloting a spaceship around in order to rescue space bunnies and defeat baddies.  There are various workstations that you take charge of - 4 normal guns, one special super gun, a shield, engines and navigation.  Usually Dad does the engine, Seb does whatever he feels like and I dash about to different guns as needed.  We don't usually die, and sometimes we actually seem to be quite good at it!  It's great fun though, good teamwork.  The worst thing about the game is that it's called Lovers in a Dangerous Spacetime, which people find quite odd when Seb tells them about it...

The game was free on PS Plus a while back, but it's not a huge sum of money now.  If you're looking for something really child friendly and not too complicated, that the whole family can play, I'd certainly recommend it.  It's rated PEGI 7.

Also when I think about it I get Lovers in a Dangerous Time by Barenaked Ladies in my head.  They're a bit of a geek musical pleasure from the past.  (In the UK their big hit was 'One Week'.)  Getting that in my head can only be a good thing, so hooray for the space bunnies!

February 2018 PS Plus Goodies!

Sometimes it can be hard to find child appropriate games for an (only just) 6 year old, so this month's PS Plus games were a bit of a win!  We have been playing Rime and Knack and both are just about possible for him, controls wise, as well as holding his attention.  Rime is rated PEGI 7 and Knack is rated PEGI 12.  However, I haven't see anything that makes them unsuitable for a boy of 6 (the violence so far in Knack is no worse than the violence in a lot of cartoons).

Rime is a rather mysterious tale of a boy who's shipwrecked on an island full of ruins.  You have to solve a series of puzzles to progress, with the help of a fox who gives you hints.  Some of the puzzles are a little tricky and have required parental help, but most of the steering has been done by Seb.  He's very excited whenever you see the strange red hooded figure, he really wants to meet them!  I think we're quite near the end now, so we will find out soon, one way or another.  I should also say, the art style is beautiful.

Knack is a cartoonish robot vs goblins game, in the vein of Ratchet and Clank.  He's 'cute' (in the words of Seb) when he's small, but by collecting artefacts and incorporating them into himself Knack becomes larger and more powerful.  He's got to help the humans defeat the goblins, who have somehow acquired tanks, so we'll see how that turns out!  We haven't played much of this as yet so I'll keep you updated...

Anyway, I'd definitely recommend both as a way of keeping your kids entertained.  Good games to play together, even if (in the case of  Knack) the 'together' mainly comprises of my husband shouting "JUMP!" every 5 seconds.  :-)