Ramble: mobile games of 2018...

There are probably quite a few of you who do the majority of your gaming on a phone or tablet.  Following the rollercoaster ride that Lemmings has recently presented me with, I thought I'd do a quick ramble about some mobile games that we've enjoyed this year.  (And some that we haven't enjoyed so much...)  After all, if you get a new tablet for Christmas you might want a few games to put on it!

Christmas Lemmings - from back when Lemmings was good!

To start with, then, three games that cost money but can go into your Google family account (so you can all play them on all your devices whilst only paying once).  All of these are great fun.

First off, there's Bloons TD 6 (PEGI-3), which is currently on sale on the Play Store (for £1.89).  This is the latest instalment of Bloons Tower Defence and it's just as fun whilst offering a few new things like tech trees.  The basic premise is there's a track along which evil balloons travel, and you have to pop them with various warrior monkeys to prevent them getting to the end of the track.  There are plenty of tower defence games out there, but this is cute, fun and really well made.  It does have in-app purchases, despite being a game you pay for, but you don't need to buy these to play the game.  Unlike free to play games you're not going to hit a wall; it works perfectly well without paying out any more money.  I should probably also mention that a free to play Adventure Time version also came out this year, which is worth a look if you're a massive Adventure Time fan...

Secondly, I'd like to mention something very, very different - Gorogoa (PEGI-3), which is currently £3.79 on the Play Store.  This game is really hard to explain.  I finished it in a couple of hours but I still don't completely understand what happened.  Not that I say this to put you off - it's a strange and beguiling puzzle adventure.  You have to look at different pictures in various ways, zooming into them, moving them around, joining them up, to move the protagonist along in the story.  I really can't think of a good way to explain it.  You ought to just spend £3.79 on it (face it, that's not a lot of money for a proper game) and try it yourself.  It's beautiful, in more ways than one.

Gorogoa: it's beautiful!

Thirdly there's a game I've talked about before (Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 (PEGI-12), so I won't bore you with that again.  But if you like motorsport, you won't regret spending £3.99 on it.  Honest.

Time to move onto the more depressing end of the mobile gaming spectrum, then.  One of the games in this section is, sadly, the surprise new version of Lemmings that came out a few days ago.  Now I will always have a place in my heart for Lemmings, and Lemmings 2: The Tribes.  I had an Amiga and I loved Lemmings.  My PSN avatar is a Lemming.  After playing this game, however, I'm severely tempted to change it...  Lemmings (PEGI-7) asks you to rescue a bunch of lemmings by getting them to an exit portal.  You can order them to do things like build bridges, stop other lemmings, or use an umbrella to land safely.  But the mechanics are simplified from the 'proper' games, and you can do whatever you like as long as you have enough energy.  You can wait to get more energy or spend your real world cash.  Then there's other free-to-play horrors in it, too.  The most expensive in-app purchase is £90.99.  I really am coming to hate free-to-play games.  I just didn't find this game fun, and I really wanted to like it.

The second disappointment of the year for me is Assassin's Creed Rebellion (PEGI-12).  I'm a big Assassin's Creed fan, so I was hoping this would be fun.  And for a few days I did play it fairly obsessively.  But then I hit a wall.  I couldn't progress without my assassins being higher level, and the only way was to grind or pay real world cash.  And I'm never going to pay real world money.  Grr.  You have a base, you discover new assassin DNA and fill the base with assassins, you send them on missions (which are kind of fun), train them, make them gear, etc, etc...  But that wall is the problem.  I don't appreciate being funnelled into a trap that's designed to make me spend my cash.  I'd rather just pay an up-front amount and get a proper game.  And if you were wondering what the most expensive in-app purchase is in the game, it's £99.99.  Imagine what sort of a game you could get for that - WHO ON EARTH IS SPENDING THEIR CASH ON IN-APP PURCHASES AND ENCOURAGING DEVELOPERS TO DO THIS STUFF!?!?

I knew I was a bit cross about these free-to-play games, but writing about them has made me far angrier about it all.  Perhaps I should just think about the good stuff from this year.  Like Gorogoa.

Please, please, spend your money on encouraging the developers of interesting, original games.  People who actually want to make a game that's fun.  Not someone who's just making a 'game' in order to make you give them more and more money.  These things are NOT games.

Drat, went downbeat again.  And this is supposed to be a fun Christmas post!  Ah well.

Hope you have a good Christmas day, and get all the gaming delights you've asked Santa for.

Ho ho ho!

Game Review: Just Dance!!

I haven't been posting much lately, I know.  I've been feeling fairly awful for ages (terrible germs) and I just haven't felt like it.  I haven't been playing games much, either.  But a few weeks ago we bought something that I fully intended to "review", or whatever it is I do on here!  Yes, we bought Just Dance 2018 (PEGI-3) on the Switch.  And let me tell you, if you're looking for the ultimate party game for Christmas, this, my friends, is it...

You may ask why we bought 2018 when 2019's available.  The simple answer is:

(Yes, Beep Beep I'm a Sheep.  We enjoyed watching DanTDM play 2018 - watch at your peril - Beep Beep I'm a Sheep is unbelievably catchy...)

A while back we tried a few different options out for Just Dance.  Seb's school had been showing the kids YouTube videos of Just Dance to get them moving in the mornings, and he seemed keen.  So we bought some old copies for the Wii, but the Wii we had didn't work brilliantly since the controllers weren't charging properly any more.  The PS4 version using the camera sounds like a good idea, but it doesn't work well with kids (they're too short to detect well).  We did try the version with the phone app, and that did work, but I'm nervous about holding a smartphone and prancing around the room.  The Switch version sounded like it might solve all our problems, and indeed it does.  I suspect that the Switch has given us the best way to play this game.

When you buy Just Dance 2018 you also get a 3 month trial subscription to Just Dance Unlimited.  This gives you access to hundreds of additional songs.  This was good since Seb's a massive Sia fan and the service includes The Greatest, Cheap Thrills and Titanium.  Hooray!  They're only adding new content to Just Dance 2019 from now on, but it still gives you a lot of stuff to play with, and if you're having a party you can buy a one day pass for the service to get all your mates jumpin' (or looking stupid).

The game is easy to get into, though admittedly hard to do well.  I'm not the most co-ordinated person in the world, and I don't dance in public, but this is ok.  I can cope with this.  And if I play it by myself I can say it's part of my keep fit regime.  (It even has a 'sweat mode' with more physical moves and a calorie counter!  It certainly got my heart pumping - I'm not convinced about the accuracy of the calorie counting but it must be doing me good.  :-)

The game did make me feel old, since I didn't know most of the songs that came with the game, which means I was hopelessly out of touch with the 2018 'hit parade'.  But hey.  There are some classics too, like Queen and Boney M.  And plenty more 'old songs' on Unlimited.  To be honest, though, it doesn't really matter what the song is if it has a beat that makes you want to dance.

The Switch joycons are brilliant for dancing with, and vibrate with the beat.  They're so small that they're super easy to keep hold of.  They pick up your moves well.  And there's even a dual mode where you can hold joycons in both hands and it will detect what both your arms are doing!  No problems here playing with small people, unlike with the PS4 camera version.

Another plus for small people (or children as they're sometimes called) is 'kids mode'.  This has some special kid friendly songs with kid friendly graphics.  It's a safe space for your super-littlies to play. 

The only thing I don't like is that for something that's called Just Dance it has a lot of ridiculous add-ons that are not just dancing.  When you look at the menus there are loads of things on there.  It's not a clear and simple interface.  It has an odd story mode, and a silly prize machine thing where you win various stickers.  I don't see why all games have to have things like that these days.  Does it add anything to my enjoyment of the game?  No.  If anything it's the reverse.  But maybe that's just me.

I'm a fan of this game, basically, despite never normally dancing in public.  It's a polished game that has survived the ups and downs that have meant the end for music games such as Rock Band.  It might make you feel like you can dance (a belief that will probably be shattered when some annoying person videos you playing!).  But hey.  It's a really, really fun family game.  A big thumbs up from me and Seb!

December 2018 PS Plus Goodies!

The PS Plus games for this month are (drum roll please)...

SOMA (PS4) (PEGI-16)
Onrush (PS4) (PEGI-12)
Steredenn (PS3) (PEGI-7)
SteinsGate (PS3) (PEGI-16)
Iconoclasts (PS4, PSVita) (PEGI-12)
Papers Please (PSVita) (PEGI-16)

We're back to another month of not particularly family friendly stuff, then, though if you have older kids then Onrush (PEGI-12) is a crazy arcade style racer that's worth a look.  It's a fairly recent release (June this year) so is actually a pretty good deal compared to a lot of the things that end up on PS Plus.  There's no local play, but you can play with 2-12 people online.

If you're still using your PS3, then try Steredenn (PEGI-7).  This is a shmup (shoot 'em up)/rogue-like (procedurally generated) pixel art space shooter.  Sadly, this is also only one player.  If I can be bothered to boot up the PS3 (every time I try I discover the controllers have lost charge or something) then I'm definitely going to give this one a try.  It looks great, in an old pixel art kind of way, and lots of crazy space shooting and boss fights sounds like fun.  A different version of this, "Binary Stars", was released in March on the Switch (it's been out since June 2016 on the PS4).  It's sad that we didn't get the "Binary Stars" version as a December download - it's two players so would have been fun to play with other family members.

I should probably also mention Iconoclasts (PEGI-12).  This is a pixel art platformer in a Metroidvania style.  As well as defeating various enemies and bosses, the world is full of brain-teasing puzzles that you have to solve.  Unlike old-style platformers, this game has a proper story, and one well worth experiencing.  The game has also had a recent release on the Switch...

That's it for this month.  I have to admit I haven't been playing anything much lately, and a few of this month's games do intrigue me.  (Including SOMA, though it sounds scary!)  :-o