On top of the games that I’ve blogged about this month, my wife and I have been playing Yoshi’s Crafted World. We’re always on the look out for some co-op action and I decided to buy if for my Wife’s birthday on the whim of it looking cute and being met with positive reviews. It’s a game that highlights a big problem with blogging about Nintendo games; namely they’re so remarkably well put together it’s pretty difficult to say much about them at all. In this respect Yoshi’s crafted world doesn’t disappoint; it’s a solid platformer with a balanced array of puzzle mechanics that’s brimming with charm. As a co-op experience it’ll have you smiling & laughing as you both bumble around the levels landing continually on each other’s backs and more often then not eating and then firing your teammate back out at some foe. I’m not saying that it’s going to be to everyone’s tastes or that it’s the greatest game int he world ever… it’s just exactly what you expect it to be and the highly polished product of a company that … let’s face it… know what they’re good at.

The Next Stream: Metal Gear Solid

The more perceptive of you have noticed that I’ve run a few streaming “events” so far this year. This kind of kicked off because I managed to track down my original PS1 and wanted to revisit Resident Evil 2 before the remake hit and invited all of you along for the ride whilst I filled your head with useless bits of trivia and the reasoning as to why I enjoy certain aspects of that game.

Following a Twitter poll a few days ago I decided that my next game would be that other classic of the PS1; Metal Gear Solid. It’s also a game that I played a heck of a lot of… maybe not quite as much as Resident Evil 2, but still a heck of a lot of. Now I did revisit MGS last year, but didn’t offer it up as an audience event so thought I’d go back to the start again and see how far I manage to get in a few hours throughout an evening. You are of course all welcome to join me and I’ll have my mic on from the outset rambling away about the game in general and just my thoughts as I play through it. Feel free to stop in on my Twitch Channel next Tuesday evening 7th May from 7pm UK time!

April Wrap Up

I started the month still on a bit of an Apex Legends spree, and even though my playtime has dropped in the past couple of weeks I’m still pretty enamoured with this game. The big problem is that I’m not sure I’m getting much better at it. So much of my performance just depends on the team I get … as with everyone I guess… but there are days when I seem to be moving well and hitting targets consistently and other days when I’m bumping in to doors and magically managing to miss with every shot I fire. I have however accepted some of the slowing of age and moved from the attack heavy character, Bangalore, to the more supporting Lifeline. Being a medic makes me a little more cautious when charging in and I tend to pick up mid-range weapons rather than close range to keep battle at a little more distance.

… maybe it’s working… I don’t know… 

I kicked things off on the blogging side of things with some reminiscing about Microsoft Flight Simulator ’95. It’s just one of those childhood memories where I’m baffled by my own youthful behaviour. The truth is that you really shouldn’t be buying games from Staples; you’ll only be disappointed.

Next up my wife and I found ourselves at a loose end one weekend and decided to pick up World War Z on the Epic Store. We’ve still been playing it quite a bit and it’s a fair game… assuming you want a rehash of Left4Dead, which is luckily exactly what we wanted. Gradually we’ve been dialing up the difficulty and have ploughed through most missions on very hard. I’ve still yet to give the ‘multiplayer’ a go yet though…

Finally I strolled through the newly released demo of Backbone which takes the form of a Prologue. It’s a game that I backed on KickStarter some time ago and it’s good to be able to finally get hands on and see how its shaping up. Visually it’s nicely put together and there are the inklings of a great plot there ready to be explored and unravelled by the player. I hope that the reminder of the development goes well for the team and if you like detective stories, plot focused adventure, and of course raccoons then you should give it a go.

Looking Ahead to May

After next Tuesday’s stream, I’m really not sure what’s going to be happening. I took a vacation a couple of weeks ago and for various reasons I know that work is going to pick up the pace (including a bit of work travel toward the end of the month). Hopefully I’ll have a chance to pick up the few side projects that I’ve been meaning to get back to at some point too…