Article - God of War: Games no longer where actors careers 'go to die'

This isn't a family game, but I read this article about God of War this morning and thought I'd mention it.  It's interesting from the point of view of the quality of acting and scripts that games have these days.  I have to admit I also find it cool that Christopher Judge is the subject of this interview, since I was a massive Stargate SG-1 fan 20 years ago.  I even had a Christopher Judge fan site called 'Jaffa Kree!'... 

Game Review: Plants vs. Zombies

I know, it's another old mobile game (ok, so it wasn't on mobile first), but what a game!  Plants vs. Zombies (PEGI-7) is a complete work of genius.  Originally released in 2009 it has spawned all sorts of other games, including Plants vs. Zombies 2, Garden Warfare, Zen Pinball and Heroes.  Originating as a tower defence game, it has successfully crept into card game territory and even third person shooter territory.  Considering its premise this is remarkable!

The idea of the game is that you are defending your house from a zombie apocalypse.  You do this by planting special plants in your garden that have different defensive abilities, from the sunflower (which creates your sun currency) to the peashooter, to walnuts, tallnuts, cherry bombs, chompers and so on...  The zombies also become more dangerous, beginning with a basic zombie and progressing all the way up to monsters like the gargantuar.  And at the end, there's Dr Zomboss to defeat.  The levels also have different settings - your front garden is just grass, your back garden has an ornamental pond, and in the end you're battling the undead on your roof.

There's a zombie on my lawn...!!

The game has a simple but engaging storyline, improved further by the addition of Crazy Dave (he's pretty hilarious).  It progresses well, being tricky without infuriating.  When I originally played it on iOS I think I ground through and unlocked a lot of things without paying - sadly the 'free' Android version we have now makes that impossible.  I don't think you'd be able to avoid paying real money to unlock some of the extra things.  That said, the main game is free, albeit with adverts.  (I know you can pay to get rid of the adverts, but it's not in the Google Family Library, so I don't want to do that on all our devices.)

The game really got into Seb's imagination.  We've been making zombies with air drying clay, pipecleaners and cardboard, and we've drawn MANY zombies onto paper and laminated them.  Once they're laminated you can play a live action PvZ game with the laminated cards!  (That's what he makes us do...)

This is a great game for all the family.  We've all been playing it - it's simple enough for Seb and complicated enough for mum and dad.  Thoroughly recommended.

[We have been playing using a Samsung Galaxy S7 and a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge]

Still playing - Animal Crossing Pocket Camp: Gulliver Must Die!

I don't get what the point of Gulliver is, he's taking all my things for very little reward!  Having Googled him, I see I am not the only one who's getting annoyed.  This thread made me laugh.  Basically he takes ten of your things on his ship, sails off somewhere, and comes back with one or two "treats" you can give to your animals, or if you're lucky one of three new guests.

If you're not bothered about the "treats" (and why would you be!) and just want to get the three new guests he can bring with him, you can basically send anything.  It has been suggested that Minimalist Lamps and Dharma Heads are the way to go.  (I have been crafting many Dharma Heads and so far have two of the three villagers.  I play this game too much...)

The thread went a little like this...

parKb5: I would like to take Gulliver behind my camper, put a lost pouch over his head and beat him with a lost book.
MamieKate09: So perhaps the game developers corrupted + turned Gully away from his previous task of delivering interesting historal stuff. (Is that what he did? I kinda get that from different posts.) He has become a greedy, penny-pinching conman.
RibbonQuest: He used to smuggle historic artifacts and exotic treasures. Now he runs a shady import/export business with "special treats" and "new friends".
MamieKate09: I was starting to think he might have been a smuggler. And he didn’t need to be corrupted just turned. Well dealing in illegal trade in animals is the 3rd biggest money maker after weapons + drugs.
CrescentShadow: I miss when Gulliver had a UFO.
parKb5: Now I wish a UFO would kidnap Gulliver and use him in horrible experiments.
Alex_Masterson: They already did. The Gulliver we are dealing with is his evil alien clone who is taking all our stuff and laughing at us.
Melanielll: Okay - suitable punishments...his ship sinks under the weight of all of the dharmas. He manages to cling to one for a few moments to avoid drowning. But - he is knocked in the head by one of the minimalist lamps floating up from the wreckage. He loses consciousness, drowns, sinks to the ocean floor and is buried by thousands of amps.

Easily the most infuriating event ever!!!

April 2018 PS Plus Goodies!

I have to admit I'm finding it hard to be excited about this month's offerings, which is partly why it has taken me so long to blog about it.  There are a few family friendly ones here (and Mad Max, which I am more excited about, because I'm a sucker for post-apocalyptic stuff).  The two that are probably best for family fun are Toy Home and Trackmania.

Toy Home (PEGI-3) has the dubious honour of being the '83rd best game of 2007' on Metacritic (there are 95 games reviewed from that year).  It looks like a PS2 game in places, which is perhaps unsurprising since it's an early release PS3 game.  But there are far better looking games that were released that year, like Motorstorm and Dirt (and that's if we're only thinking of racing games).  I'm confused as to why, out of all the PS3 games that exist, Sony are giving this away!  Ok, so it's kind of fun for a bit (you drive with Sixaxis), but it's not amazing.

I might be being more negative than I need to be (Seb did seem to be enjoying this for a few minutes) , but when thinking about games where you're a toy car driving around in various rooms I measure all things against Micro Machines on the Amiga.  :-)

The other racing game then is Trackmania.  Although this is rated PEGI-3, it is HARD.  Fun but horribly HARD.  I doubt any 3 year old would cope with it - and despite my negativity, they WOULD cope with Toy Home.  (Incidentally Metacritic says it was the 56th best game of 2016, though they have 357 games in the list for 2016, so that's better than it sounds.)  Something Seb might enjoy, though we haven't tried it yet, is the track editor.  He loves games where you can build levels.

This month there's also In Space We Brawl (PEGI-7), 99Vidas (PEGI-12) and Q*Bert Rebooted (PEGI-3).

Fast internet is here!!!

We upgraded our broadband, much excitement in the house!  :-D

I'm just perplexed as to how Plusnet are charging us less per month for the privilege..!! 

A Boy Made of Blocks

Just thought I'd mention that this book by Keith Stuart, A Boy Made of Blocks, is currently only 99p on Kindle.  It's a fantastic story about a boy, his dad, Minecraft and Autism.  Generally described as 'heartwarming', I heartily recommend it!

Just started watching - Paul Soares Jr

This guy's a recent edition to our evening family YouTube watching - Paul Soares Jr.  Apparently he started in 2010 with Minecraft tutorial videos (he was one of the first Minecraft YouTubers).  He certainly has impressive Minecraft credentials - he even co-wrote the official Minecraft: Essential Handbook.  

These days he plays lots of games (such as Stardew Valley, PixArk and Subnautica).  I like him because he's professional, grown up and completely clean, language wise.  So though his videos may not be about typical kids games, they're great for watching as a family.  I wonder if it's because he's older?  Plus he's a Dad who plays games with his son, so perhaps the family side of things led him to make 'clean' videos.  I know I harp on about the language side of things, but I wish more YouTubers could be like this!

Recently he started a series on a game called PC Building Simulator.  This should probably be the most boring thing to watch in the world (you're basically watching someone fix broken PCs in a game - blowing dust out of computer cases, connecting cables, buying RAM and fitting it), but I find it strangely compelling.  I'm not sure Seb and Dad like it as much, but they watch it with me!  Dad likes to criticise the game since he worked in IT for years.  Likewise Paul Soares seems to be enjoying it partly because it brings back memories of fixing other people's PCs for a job.

Anyway, this guy's definitely worth a watch.  Entertaining viewing for the whole family and no nasty surprises...

Ramble - Problems with old mobile games!

I don't know about you, but I find it hard to discover great mobile games.  Perhaps this is one of the reasons we've been going back to old mobile games like 'Where's my Water?' (2011), and more recently 'Plants vs. Zombies' (2009).  I don't know if there's a way app stores can be improved to make discoverability better.  To be honest the PS Store is not great, either...  Anyway, since we've been introducing Seb to 'old' mobile games, this set me thinking.

There was an article in April's Edge Magazine (issue 317) about the topic of old iOS games.  These days we don't play iOS games.  We used to have an iPod Touch; these days we're all Samsung Galaxies.  But Android games have the same issues, and indeed different ones (there are so many different spec phones/tablets you could be using, for instance, even before you take into account the version of Android it has).

The article says that in the year 2010 Edge published a list of the top 50 mobile games on iPhone and iPod Touch.  Of those 50, only 10 can still be bought or downloaded today.  Considering that this is the 50 best games available then, you might think that those would be more likely to survive.  If they're that good, there's no reason people wouldn't still be downloading them today.  A lot of people have never played them; a lot of people have grown up in those 8 years!  The disappeared games involve big hitters like Bejeweled 2 (released 2004).  If giant companies are unable to 'fix' their games there's little hope for the Indie people.

According to Edge, another issue with iOS is not only the OS changing, but the increased number of iOS devices that need to be supported (still less than the Android problem, but not good if you went into iOS because it was simpler).  And big technology jumps like the move to 64-bit can be a massive problem.

Obviously games being incompatible with things is not a new thing.  I remember loving my Amiga because things always worked, the same with my PlayStations.  With PCs you had all sorts of daft issues like games being incompatible with graphics/sound cards.  (A veritable minefield!)  But now with Steam and modern Windows games do seem to work better and survive longer.  I look back at games like  Blade Runner (released 1997), now lost to the mists of time, with sadness.  Boy, I loved that game.  And thankfully many of the old classics are coming back.  (Though I hate rebuying things for the millionth time - and I have issues with PlayStations not being backwards compatible.  I guess I'll get over it one day.)

We'll keep playing the old mobile games, as long as they're available.  The only one  that Seb has been sad about is Sandra Boynton's 'Blue Hat, Green Hat'.  We bought a bunch of those Boynton books and this is the only one that has stopped working, after the Android Lollipop update c.2015.  I e-mailed the company, but no reply.  And they're still selling it, years after it stopped working.  There are loads of sad people reviewing it on Google Play.  I don't know why it's still on the store.  Investigation reveals the app's maker 'Loud Crow' last tweeted 3 years ago, so I suspect they're no longer around to support their apps.  The money must be going somewhere though, presumably!

In conclusion, this is the issue - either people leave stuff on the app store and it stops working and makes people grumpy, or they wholesale remove stuff that might not work any more.  And that makes people grumpy too.  Perhaps some way to flag which devices/version of Android apps will work on, generated by users, would be good.  It would be horribly complicated, though.  The current compatibility flag appears to be configured by the app maker.  Which isn't so useful if they've disappeared.

I don't know what the answer is.  But the situation doesn't make me very happy.