Game Review: Just Shapes & Beats

I thought Seb would like this because it reminded me of Geometry Dash when I saw it, and he does.  The trouble with these games is he starts playing them in the real world, moving objects around and 'singing' the songs.  Ah well, at least he's happy...

Just Shapes & Beats (PEGI-7) is a game about, er, shapes and beats.  We bought it on the Switch, and it's an ideal Switch game.  Good fun if you're playing on the small screen, or step it up and turn up the bass on the big screen.  Plus you can have up to 4 players in local co-op, or play online, if you want to.  Basically, it's one of the fun 'play anywhere with your mates' games that Nintendo likes to talk about when advertising the Switch.

It's a 'bullet hell' game, defined by Wikipedia as:
A relatively recent subgenre that features overwhelming numbers of enemy projectiles, often in visually impressive formations.

It certainly fulfils those criteria!  You are a small shape and you have to dodge all the pink things on the screen.  There are some really intense levels with crazy pink stuff everywhere.  Some are hard!  (Though probably not as hard as Geometry Dash, which is impossible for most people, after all.)  All you can do to dodge the pink shapes is move and dash.  

There is a story mode (with bosses), score attacks, challenges, and also a party mode, which is easier and goes on forever.  It's a way to enjoy the music, which is one of the main draws of the game.  It's chiptune stuff by artists like Danimal Cannon, Nitro Fun, Sabrepulse, Bossfight, Chipzel and Big Giant Circles. Seb loves this stuff.  He memorises the music to games like this....

If you're playing co-op you can 'help' your friends when they've taken too many hits, which helps prolong more difficult levels. (Some of the bosses are insane compared to the difficulty of most of the game.)

The visuals are kinda hypnotic and fit brilliantly with the music. I was going to say it's almost a work of art. But then I felt that was a bit pretentious...

The game is £15.09 on Switch and is also available on PC (£15.49 on Steam).

Game Review: Slime Rancher

Here's a decent game you should play, if you haven't already - Slime Rancher!  (PEGI-3)  Seb has been playing this on the PC with an XBox controller and he's been having a LOT of fun.  It has a metacritic rating of 81, and the award '58th best PC game of 2017'.

You are Beatrix LeBeau, and you've moved to the Far Far Range to farm slimes.  These strange blob-like creatures are all over the place.  They eat then they poo 'plorts', which are used for all sorts of things.  Pink Slime plorts are used for things as varied as household cleaning products and coffee sweetener.  Tabby Slime plorts are taken by athletes to improve their performance, though overuse can result in 'uncontrollable butt wiggles'.  (Hehehe.)

The idea is you vacuum up some slimes, take them to pens you've constructed on your ranch, feed them, vacuum up the plorts, and sell them.  This is more complicated than it sounds.  You have to feed different slimes different things (they have favourite foods too), so you need to grow veggies, chickens etc as well.  To make this easier you can create hybrid (largo) slimes (crossing Pink Slimes with other slimes can make them less fussy about food).  To create a hybrid you feed a slime a plort from another slime.

A large part of the game is exploration.  There are lots of areas to unlock, with slime keys you get from gigantic 'Gordo' slimes.  How you get them is a little mean, since you feed them until they explode.  Still, they don't have to eat the stuff, so I suppose it's their own fault.

The areas have different dangers.  Feral Slimes are particularly nasty, ferociously attacking you if you go near them.  The Tarr is a type of slime created when a hybrid slime eats the plort of different slime.  It's black and rainbow coloured and looks scary.  And it will destroy all slimes (and ranchers) in its way, given the chance.  (The games's Slimepedia informs you that water can stop these guys, though it also says, "Alternatively, many ranchers recommend running away with their arms waving, screaming."  An option I often like to use.)

Some slimes aren't deliberately dangerous but are still problematic, like Rad Slimes (which give off radiation) and Boom Slimes (which explode).  To farm these tricky slimes you need different equipment and care regimes on your ranch.  Other slimes need specialist environments too.  For instance, Phosphor Slimes need darkness, and Puddle Slimes need water.

Those are the basics, then.  It's hard to explain why it's so good, but it's just so, well, charming.  The slimes are super cute.  It's fun to expand your ranch and add new pens and gadgets.  The latest update has introduced further farm automation in the form of drones.  (The most useful automation comes in the form of automatic feeders and plort collectors, which give you a bit more time to go exploring.)

It's fun finding rarer slimes and rearing them.  Failure isn't too harsh, since you just end up back at your house with a bit of time having passed, having lost what you were carrying.  You can decorate your ranch and house, if you want to, and there are little quests where you fulfil orders for people, and 'star mail' that progresses the story, such as it is.

The only down side to this is that it gives me motion sickness really quickly!  (Dad and Seb don't have this issue.)  Googling the problem shows that I'm not the only one.  Adjusting the Field of View did help a bit, but the game still makes me sick.  I think it's just too fast paced for my brain...  Poor old brain...

[You can also play on PS4 and XBox One.]

Ramble - Nintendo - ROMs and other (slightly odd) decisions

Today I'm going to ramble about ROMs, defined by Wikipedia as:
"A ROM image, or ROM file, is a computer file which contains a copy of the data from a read-only memory chip, often from a video game cartridge, a computer's firmware, or from an arcade game's main board. The term is frequently used in the context of emulation, whereby older games or computer firmware are copied to ROM files on modern computers and can, using a piece of software known as an emulator, be run on a computer."

I'm sure someone at Nintendo thinks these things are a good idea, but sometimes it seems like they're shooting themselves in the foot.  This week in the news we learned that Nintendo was suing two ROM sites, and this has led to other sites preemptively taking ROMs offline.  But why should we care about this?  It IS technically illegal to download the things, after all.

Well, as someone who worries about digital archiving as part of my job, I worry that decisions like this mean games are going to be lost forever.  And even if they're one of the few games 'remastered', these are not the originals.  If, one day, you want to play an old game, perhaps you really want to play the original version, not some shiny HD thing.  And how can you do that?  Emulators.  (Unless you have serious money to buy old consoles and old cartridges etc - and cartridges, tapes etc are decaying, so they won't work forever anyway...)

I haven't played many things via emulators, but I have dallied with SCUMMVM.  Using this brilliant piece of work I've played a game that I never finished on my Amiga - Flight of the Amazon Queen.  And I played it on my phone using the original point and click interface.

Most old games end up as 'Abandonware', defined by Wikipedia as:
"Definitions of "abandoned" vary, but in general it is like any item that is abandoned – it is ignored by the owner, and as such product support and possibly copyright enforcement are also "abandoned". It can refer to a product that is no longer available for legal purchase, over the age where the product creator feels an obligation to continue to support it, or where operating systems or hardware platforms have evolved to such a degree that the creator feels continued support cannot be financially justified. In such cases, copyright and support issues are often ignored."

Often the only way to play old games is to download ROMs and use emulators.  If ROM sites weren't collating these games, who would do it?  Maybe what is needed here is better rules. Clearly games that are currently available for sale shouldn't be available for download - that's piracy.  There's a line there somewhere.

I'm guessing that Nintendo's latest action has something to do with their launch of Nintendo Switch Online, coming in September.  Maybe they want people to pay to get their 'classic Nintendo library', so they don't want to risk them getting the games for free elsewhere.  I wonder whether it really would lose them money, though.  If you can conveniently play games on your Switch then you'll probably do it.  You're unlikely to go to the effort of emulating the things if there's an easy option.

Using me as a case in point, I've bought Broken Sword on more platforms than I can remember, just because it was more convenient.  And Monkey Island.  I'm sure people will still give Nintendo money to play their games. If anything, playing a few games via emulators may be more likely to get you interested in classic titles and more likely to pay for the privilege of convenient Switch-based playtime.  Hence shooting themselves in the foot.  Retro is in right now - people want to play games they played when they were young.  They want to show their kids games they remember fondly.  So yeah, I know it's technically illegal, but it's sad it has come to this.

This isn't the first time Nintendo has gone a little over the top - they are notoriously harsh on YouTube copyright issues; they introduced the Nintendo Creators Program so they could make money from YouTubers' videos.  Ok, the games are theirs, but surely it's better that YouTubers are playing the games.  You don't want to put them off.  It's basically free advertising.  Making YouTubers pay for the privilege of advertising for Nintendo seems a little extreme!

If you want to have a go at some old games, go to the Internet Archive - they have a massive archive of old PC games playable in your browser via the emulator DOSBox.  Awesome.  :-D

Article - Why can't I beat my 12 year old at computer games?

Hehe this article about playing with your kids makes some good points. I do feel I'm not that good at some kinds of games these days. Us old folks could never make it professional gamers, after all... but I do like to stress the importance of playing with your kids. Even if you are a n00b.

August 2018 PS Plus Goodies!

So, it's that time again, and I have to admit that once more I'm not super excited by this month's offerings...

On the PS4 there's Mafia III (PEGI-18), which has a metacritic score of 68, and Dead by Daylight (PEGI-18), which has a metacritic score of 64.  The PS VR title is Here They Lie (PEGI-18), which has a metacritic rating of 62.  Obviously, none of those are good family games.

On the PS3 there's Bound by Flame (PEGI-16), metacritic rating 53, Serious Sam 3:BFE (PEGI-18), metacritic rating 63 and on the Vita Draw Slasher (PEGI-16), metacritic rating 69 and Space Hulk (PEGI-12), metacritic rating 51.  Still not a lot of family fun here, though some Warhammer 40K fans might enjoy Space Hulk!

Then we have Knowledge is Power (PEGI-3), metacritic rating 71, which is a Playlink title, so you play it on your PS4 but everyone answers with their own smartphone/tablet (with the Knowledge is Power app downloaded).  You can have up to 6 players on the same wi-fi network.  (It's more fun with more people.)  There are 12 stages of trivia questions to work through.  Players choose from one of four categories in each round.  Questions are scored on your answering speed.  You can throw in Power Plays to try and slow your opponents down.  There are also three mini games - a matchmaking game, a name association game, and a pyramid climb game (this is the final part of the quiz; you start climbing the pyramid based on your score to far).  So yeah, this is a fun family game!  (If you all have Android/iOS devices that support the app...)

Not a brilliant family friendly haul, then, quite PEGI-16/PEGI-18 heavy, and not highly scored on metacritic either.  At least Knowledge is Power is a decent game.  And it gets the family together in one room to actually interact!  Shock horror...

Still playing - Animal Crossing Pocket Camp

I played this on holiday too.  Or I should say I was still playing it.  And still am.  I dread to think how many hours I've spent on it. It's kind of relaxing. Like colouring. Or jigsaws. It often near enough sends me to sleep at bed time!  So yes - Level 100.  Ack...

Incidentally, the last fishing tournament was fixed to impossible levels unless you spent the in-game currency 'leaf tickets'.  I don't really approve of this, I'd like the option of grinding my way to victory...  With the terrible 'loot box' fortune cookies and impossible challenges, and more craftable items that you can only craft using leaf tickets, I don't like where the game's headed.  Grr.  You can send feedback in-game via 'More Options' > 'Misc' > 'Feedback'.  They have been known to listen...

Just started playing - Motorsport Manager Mobile 3

We've been on holiday, so we've played several mobile games while we were away, some of which have only just come out.  I'd just started playing MM Mobile 2 (which was in our Google family library) before the holiday, then Motorsport Manager Mobile 3 (PEGI-12) came out! It bills itself as the 'ultimate race team strategy game'.  I don't know about that, but it is fun, and certainly more in depth than a lot of mobile games.  The only thing I can compare it to is Kairosoft's Grand Prix Story (PEGI-3), which is a rather sillier take on things!

MM Mobile 3 is more complicated that MM Mobile 2, with additional things like the 'supply chain', which gives you bonuses when you acquire assets.  '3' basically takes '2' and makes it, er, more complicated.  I find it a bit sad that whilst I've read reviews that say it's more realistic than '2', '3' has taken away the setup options for qualifying and replaced them with a blackjack type card game to establish your car's setup.  (I am a fan of F1, so bear that in mind; it might be at least partly why I like games like this and why I dislike the card game aspect here that my husband finds appealing!)

You have to build new parts for your car, which means you need engineers with the right stats to produce good parts.  You need good mechanics for both drivers, who can give extra bonuses when they have a good relationship with the driver they're paired with.  Halfway through the season you can put money into developing next year's car.  You need 'appealing drivers' so that good sponsors are interested in the team.  The drivers develop, gaining points that you can put into different things like 'overtaking', 'braking', 'smoothness' and so on.  You can put money into a young driver development programme, which is definitely worth it since you can get some good drivers into your team for not much money.  You have to negotiate contracts with your drivers, and this time round it gives you hints as to what they find important.

On top of all this, there are various types of racing - sports cars, open wheeled cars, etc.  Some formulae you need to worry about tyres, refuelling and energy recovery systems as well as the insanity of things like reverse grids instead of qualifying.  The formulae are split into four 'tiers' that you have to work through.  There are also 'invitational' races that pop up and give you the chance to try something different.

It has to be said there are a LOT more women involved in motorsport in this game than in real life.  Unrealistic, but I like it.  :-)

All in all it's good fun, in depth for a mobile game, and it looks great.  POLE POSITION!

It costs £3.99 on Android and iOS and can be shared via your Google family library.

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

Article - More than half of parents let their kids play 18+ video games

Saw this on my Twitter feed today: "More than half of parents let their kids play 18+ video games".  This is no surprise, I'm sure if you're a parent you know other kids who are playing games they shouldn't, even if you don't let your own kids play GTA!  I'd quite like to see the survey data for this, it seems a bit like an advert for the people who (rather inexplicably) conducted the research, but hey!  It's relevant to this blog.  :-)

Game Review: Tearaway

Seb's decided to start playing Tearaway: Unfolded (PEGI-7) again on the PS4.  We have a total love affair with the Tearaway games. If you don't have Unfolded, buy it!  And if you have a Vita you should DEFINITELY own the original Tearaway (PEGI-3) game.  It may well be the best game made for the Vita.  (Metacritic ranks it 8th out of 257 games.)

Hmm, I don't know why the original game was rated PEGI-3 and the PS4 version is PEGI-7, since they are both essentially the same game.  (Though slightly different.)  Anyway...

It's a joy watching Seb play it now - last time we played he couldn't really read.  Now (apart from some tricky words) he's pretty much reading all the text himself. 

The game was made by Media Molecule, who were the geniuses behind Little Big Planet.  They're currently working on Dreams, which is hard to describe, though bound to be awesome.  :-)

The Vita version, which came out in 2013, is the only game I've come across that uses all the Vita's strange functions - the rear touchpad, the touch screen, camera, etc.  It doesn't use them in a stupid "oh this exists so we might as well add a slightly pointless thing to use it" way, but instead a way that gives them purpose for perhaps the only time in the history of the Vita.  (Especially that odd rear touchpad.) 

The game looks amazing - it looks like it's made out of paper!  What makes this even more exciting is that you can collect papercraft models in the game then go to the Tearaway website, print templates, and make the things in real life out of card.  The instructions are easy and we've made some great models that really replicate what's in the game.

 

Two of our creations!

Then there's the amazing music, such as 'The Orchards' (below) by Kenneth Young.  The game has a wonderful soundtrack that we've sat down and listened to on more than one occasion.  It totally goes with the folksy and eccentric feel of the game.

The game is telling a story - the story of a messenger (his head is an envelope!!) called Iota or Atoi, whose adventures lead him/her to the You (that's you, in case you were wondering).  There is a hole in the sky and the villainous 'scraps' are falling into their world.  There are so many fun adventures in the game - it's anything but a typical platformer.  The crows are super sinister.  Then there are times when you'll just want to stop and look at the world.  The level with the lighthouse was beautiful.  And I'll always fondly remember decorating the pig and riding it afterwards.  :-)

The PS4 game was released in 2015.  It's still a great game, but it loses something without the integrated Vita stuff like the rear touchpad (which you could use to rip through the paper of the world with your finger).  It does use the PS4 controller's abilities though, like the light, which you shine like a torch onto the screen to hypnotise scraps.  It also uses the touchpad to do things like cut out shapes in paper, though this is oddly fiddly.

Both games are atmospheric, quirky, original, brilliant fun, and you'll want to replay them.  If only to collect some of the papercraft plans you missed...

July 2018 PS Plus Goodies!

I can hardly believe another month has gone by!  Unfortunately, this month is (again) not a very exciting month for family friendly games.  On the PS4 we have Absolver (PEGI-12) and Heavy Rain (PEGI-18), on the PS4 and Vita Space Overlords (PEGI-7), on the PS3 Rayman 3 HD (PEGI-7), on the PS3 and PS4 Extreme Exorcism (PEGI-7) and on the Vita Zero Time Dilemma (PEGI-18).

Absolver is a fairly well regarded multiplayer (online) fighting game, rated PEGI-12 for its 'frequent scenes of mild violence'.  I have read that there are some technical issues with the online matchmaking, but I haven't experienced this myself.  You can play it co-op with friends.

I was put off Extreme Exorcism by the title, but it's not the terrible evil game you might think.  Though it may lead to some questions about exorcism.  And I've found people think your child is watching things they shouldn't when they start talking about games that have odd things in them.  Like exorcism.  (Hehe...)  But this is a platformer where you use various weapons to destroy ghosts in a non-threatening haunted house (think Scooby Doo here, people), with non-scary 8-bit retro graphics.  Most of the game can be played with friends through local co-op.  This might just be this month's family friendly pick!  I will let you know what we make of it when we've tested it further...

As for the other games, Rayman 3 HD is fun for younger kids, but having been gifted the excellent Rayman Legends in May it seems a bit rubbish to be given an older Rayman game.  I'm also disappointed that Heavy Rain is here, even if it is remastered.  I played it on the PS3, I don't think I can be bothered to play it again, even if it is prettier!  (But if you haven't played it, it is good, just don't play it with kids around!)  I'm also interested to try Zero Time Dilemma (again, not one for kids!) but I use my Vita so rarely these days it always needs charging when I do pick it up.  Poor Vita.

:-(

Ramble - Gaming Addiction... should you be worried?

Almost certainly the answer is no.  If you're a gamer and you're reading this, without doubt you've found a game so amazing that you've put your life on hold for a bit to play it.  You've played into the night.  Maybe you took the day off work on the day when a game came out.  But does that mean you're addicted to games?  No, it does not.

On 18th June it was widely reported that gaming had been classified as an addiction in the World Health Organisation's latest disease classification manual.  This in itself is controversial amongst those in the know.  An article by proper science type guys who know about this sort of  things has the following abstract:

Concerns about problematic gaming behaviors deserve our full attention. However, we claim that it is far from clear that these problems can or should be attributed to a new disorder. The empirical basis for a Gaming Disorder proposal, such as in the new ICD-11, suffers from fundamental issues. Our main concerns are the low quality of the research base, the fact that the current operationalization leans too heavily on substance use and gambling criteria, and the lack of consensus on symptomatology and assessment of problematic gaming. The act of formalizing this disorder, even as a proposal, has negative medical, scientific, public-health, societal and human rights fallout that should be considered. Of particular concern are moral panics around the harm of video gaming. They might result in premature application of diagnosis in the medical community and the treatment of abundant false-positive cases, especially for children and adolescents. Secondly, research will be locked into a confirmatory approach, rather than an exploration of the boundaries of normal versus pathological. Thirdly, the healthy majority of gamers will be affected negatively. We expect that the premature inclusion of Gaming Disorder as a diagnosis in ICD-11 will cause significant stigma to the millions of children who play video games as part of a normal, healthy life. At this point, suggesting formal diagnoses and categories is premature: the ICD-11 proposal for Gaming Disorder should be removed to avoid a waste of public health resources as well as to avoid causing harm to healthy video gamers around the world.
(PDF) Scholars' open debate paper on the World Health Organization ICD-11 Gaming Disorder proposal. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/311981176_Scholars'_open_debate_paper_on_the_World_Health_Organization_ICD-11_Gaming_Disorder_proposal [accessed Jun 23 2018].

This is not to say that some people aren't addicted to gaming.  But whether it's actually gaming they're addicted to, or their problem with gaming is due to some other underlying cause, is far from clear.  Many games are designed to have rewards built in that make our brains happy.  As this article in the Guardian puts it:

Other games, particularly those played on smartphones and tablets, and which bill themselves as free, are designed to extract money and attention from players with countdown timers and “streak” mechanics that encourage you to come back several times a day, or spend money to speed up progress. 

We know that every time someone 'likes' one of our social media posts it makes our brains happy, causing us to do it more.  Just go for a walk and see how many people are glued to their phone screens.  Or sitting in a cafe looking at their phones rather than talking.  I honestly don't know what they're looking at.  (The problem here is that adults should make sure they don't spend too long on their phones.  Adults cannot take the high ground here.  Various surveys have been carried out where kids have said they've had to ask their parents to stop checking their phones.)

Then there are things like loot boxes, which have recently been declared illegal under Belgian gambling laws.  These things are a horrible addition to games and I, for one, will not be sorry to see them go.

So, there are things built into some games, particularly "free" games, that are bad.  And can cause you to spend more time playing that you mean to.  But your kid probably isn't addicted to gaming.  Following the initial scare stories, some more balanced articles about the WHO classification have been appearing saying it was "premature" and based on a "moral panic".  Playing games for a couple of hours a day isn't the end of the world.  How much time do you spend watching TV?  Or reading?  Games can be positive things.  They can be social.  We all have to watch our screen time - adults and kids.

There's been a major furore over Fortnite.  Some parents are very negative (probably because they don't know what all the fuss is about), but I was talking to someone this week who finds the videos her son makes in it really fun and loves his creativity.  I don't really get the game (it's not my sort of thing) but I have watched some hilarious videos of other people playing it.  Like Squid going to max height with the shopping trolley:

It seems that every time something becomes a popular thing amongst kids adults get worried.  Spend a little time googling - it's kind of fun.  For instance...
Fortnite
Fidget Spinners
Minecraft
POGs (remember them?)
Panini football stickers
Even Harry Potter books

The bottom line here is... understand what your kids are doing on their computers, join in with them (while they'll let you), and don't be a hypocrite..!