Well here we are, another Monday. Boo. But it’s not all bad as that mean’s it’s our latest Geekly Review. Yay!, Here’s how we geeked up over the weekend.
After last weeks less than Geeky weekend in Prague, this one was right back on track. It began perfectly on Friday night as some colleagues from my old job came over to my place for a gaming night. We’re trying to hold one every 2 months just to catch up and geek out and this particular Friday was my evening to host. Previous game nights we spend playing co-op games on Xbox360 or any 4 player split screen games we could find on 360. To change the pace a little we opted for PS3 and Wii U on this occasion.
First we kicked the night off with some Motor Storm Pacific Rift. I’ve not played this game, the only Motor Storm I had played was the original launch title. This was a good start to the night with some frantic fast pace racing smashing people off cliffs on the amazing track simply called “Edge”. After a fair few races, numerous shouting and a majority of wins coming from me we switched to a fairly old game but one that was fun nonetheless. We opted for London 2012 Olympics. I really enjoyed this with 3 other players and it was another game getting people quite loud and angry, but it’s all in good fun. After a few events we moved onto the Wii U and I introduced the guys to Game & Wario, and in particular the multi-player game Islands. It’s one of my favourite multi-player games for the WiiU it’s so simple but entertaining. And thankfully the other guys all enjoyed this too. In fact it went down so successfully one of the chaps who owned a WiiU was going to look to buy the game himself. And onto the main event, Mario Kart 8. We played this for numerous hours and it was really good fun. While playing having to school one particular individual…“dude you’ve got a weapon fire it, Dude don’t forget to slide round corners for a speed boost, dude don’t forget to press the jump button off jumps for a speed boost… Dude what did I tell you, fire your weapons!” From then it was back to PS3 for a little more London 2012, and then finishing the night off with some Virtua Tennis 2.
Saturday instead of gaming as much I opted to watch some new shows that had already started in the United States. I’ve been wanting to watch Marvel’s Agent Carter, so I started off watching this. So far there are only 5 episodes from the season that have been aired so I watched the first 3 back to back and have to say I really enjoyed what I watched of it during that stint. I liked the throw backs to Captain America: First Avenger and the little Easter eggs to the other Marvel cinematic films set in present day such as Iron Man 2. Rather than watch the final 2 episodes I moved onto a comedy I’d heard was pretty odd called Man Seeking Woman. The first episode alone had me in fits of laughter as Josh is set up on a blind date with a Swedish Troll, And I don’t mean troll as in she’s ugly, I mean a legitimate troll. And later on we find out that Joshes ex girlfriend has moved on and found a new man a lot older than her. In fact her new love is 126 years old and goes by the name Adolf Hitler. Yes, the Adolf Hitler. I can’t explain it or justify it enough, I loved it and watched all 4 episodes so far aired back to back. A particular highlight being his hand breaking up with him as it’s bored of their relationship and confessing to have been with another guy to Joshes confusion. Just give it a try it’s awesome.
I then went over to a friend’s house in the evening for much more Mario Kart 8 and to watch some WWE Network together with beers.
And finally onto Sunday where I decided to finish off Agent Carter. I enjoyed the 5th episode in particular as it featured some awesome cameos from Captain America First Avenger. Much preferring this show over Agents of Shield. I then played some more games spending a few hours on the Battlefield Hardline Beta and clocking a few hours into my latest PSPlus title Transistor. Man Transistor is a truly beautiful game. I like the little touches like the DualShock 4 light kind of flashing in time with the voice that is speaking to you while you play.
And once the gaming was done, I finished the weekend off with watching Family Guy Simpsons crossover episode and then Dumb and Dumber To which was a film I’d been wanting to watch but unsure if it’d ruin my Harry and Lloyd memories. While it’s not as funny as the first by any means it still had it’s moments of stupidity that brought a smile to my face.
And that was me.
– Murr
There was quite a lot of new stuff to play this weekend. The Battlefield Hardline Beta, Telltales Game of Thrones Episode 2, and the Beta for Neverwinter. However on Friday night I wouldn’t be playing any of these as I was heading out for the night, as my girlfriend was DJing at a local drinking establishment. After a few sherbets, and a fair amount of dancing we got home just before 4am – I think.
This meant that Saturday was likely going to be pretty lazy, as we were both a little delicate – although not as bad as I thought I’d be. Days like this are pretty good for ploughing through some games.
Like I’d said I had the Neverwinter Beta to play, but I didn’t actually receive my email code until Saturday morning. This meant that I wasn’t really able to play it until Saturday evening, so whilst it was downloading I got on to episode 2 of Game of Thrones, The Lost Lords. Now, the first episode I loved, it was just what I wanted from a Game of Thrones game. I’d seen a few reviews for ep2, and they were a little underwhelming, but I was going to play it anyway, and I’m glad I did, because I absolutely loved it.
I want to talk about it more, but it’s hard to do without spoiling it, but I will try.
This episode introduces us to some new characters, Asher Forrester who was exiled from Westeros and now living in Yunkai with his Sellsword friend Beskha. We also finally get to see The Wall as Gared makes his way there to start his new life as a man of the nightswatch.
The Forrester’s remind me a lot of the Starks – spread out, under threat of being wiped out, but still a family with loyalty and honour. But just like the Starks, thing look pretty grim with for them, but I won’t go in to any details!
For me Telltale are fantastic story tellers, and they have really done the series justice so far. But they still seem to suffer from the same technical issues that The Walking Dead and The Wolf Among Us had – stuttering gameplay and odd audio loops. Granted they are very minor things, but even so, I thought they would’ve sorted them out by now… However, it’s still worth playing that’s for sure.
I’ve also been putting a fair amount of time in to the Battlefield Hardline beta. I’ve enjoyed it, but I haven’t really been convinced to buy it. Heist mode, which sees you either trying to rob a bank, or protect it from the criminals seemed like an utter mess, it was way to hectic, with everyone basically trying to pile in to one or two rooms the whole time. I really didn’t like it. Hotwire however was pretty good fun. Blasting around the map in vehicles whilst trying to take down others was enjoyable. But I fully expect this mode to be tweaked upon release, because right now, it’s way too easy to take out multiple cars when you have a car full of players as mechanics with grenade launchers and repair tools, you can easily survive for a long time like this. I don’t know what it was about this game mode, but the matches never really seemed very close, it was always dominated by one side, and I don’t know whether this was down to a car or two utilising the team of mechanics or not.
Then there was conquest, this mode is still pretty much like the other battlefield games – capture and hold various points. I seemed to find the most success in playing this mode as the Professional, which is basically a sniper.
Like I said, I enjoyed it, but it kind of felt like it was just a mod someone had made for the game, and not a standalone game. Trying to justify spending £40+ on it will be tough, and to be honest I don’t see myself doing it.
I finally got around to having a quick play on Neverwinter on Saturday night, but only for around an hour or so. From what little I played I enjoyed it, but I don’t really feel like I played it enough to get a full grasp on what the game is like so it’s hard for me to really talk about it. I’m pretty sure they beta is now over too, which is a little annoying. For and RPG, I thought it might have run a little longer.
On Sunday I managed to get back on to DayZ for a little while. I hadn’t played it much for a while, and there are a lot of changes now, one of which is the inclusion of vehicles. There is only one at the moment, and it’s only got two seats, so for the five of us who were playing we needed multiple trucks to be able to get around quickly. We only managed to find two, and one of those ended up upside down in the ground for some reason (I didn’t see it happen, but it sounded pretty funny). After a while of basically messing about we headed to the North West airfield to find some action. It was actually pretty quiet, as we rolled up the runway in our truck. We eventually found a couple of other players, but the ensuing fire fight was swiftly over without me firing a single shot.
– Will
