Geekly Review #71

Monday’s are a bit rubbish aren’t they? Oh well, not much we can do about it. But it does mean it’s Geekly Review time. So, you know. Swings and roundabouts, every cloud, and all that jazz.

Friday night we watched Fury, well I say we, Meg chickened out after about an hour or so because it was ‘too gory’… Which I don’t really get because she will quite happily watch other gory films. Anyway. Fury follows a tank crew during WWII. After losing a member of their crew, they’re assigned someone new who is basically a pencil pusher for the Army and is in no way ready for the grim realities of war. Initially the crew don’t really like him much, but as you can expect over the course of the film he gains their favour and becomes part of the ‘family’.

It’s all pretty run of the mill stuff in terms of story, and is pretty predictable. But the action pieces are where I think the film really shone. It’s gritty and pretty gruesome, but that’s what war was like, and I’d rather watch a film that was more realistic than see one man take on an army in some over the top action film. Seeing the Sherman tanks duke it out with the far superior Tiger tank – in terms of armour and firepower, was pretty awesome. The story is actually fictional, which I didn’t realise before watching. But apparently the actual tank warfare is very close to how it would’ve been during WWII, and I felt like it was a pretty believable story for the most part. All in all, I thought it was a really good war film.

I’ve also been getting back on to GTA 5 a fair bit recently. Believe it or not, I haven’t actually completed the single player side of it, not even on 360. I feel like I really should, partly because I need to reduce my backlog, and partly because it’s an awesome game.

I made some good progress over the course of the weekend. A few stand out moments from this weekend’s missions were Caida Libre, where you have to shoot down a jet and then chase it across country on a dirt bike as it slowly goes down. Flying down the side of a mountain, jumping across roads, navigating tight valleys, it’s just all great fun, and is visually a really great set piece.

Also doing the bank robbery in Paleto Bay is a great mission. The getaway is just so much fun.

I’ve just finished off the mission Monkey Business where you have to steal a nerve toxin from the Humane Labs & Research facility. I had actually played all of these missions on the 360 version. But for some reason I just got to a point where I stopped playing it. It was probably right around the time I got my Xbox One… I am absolutely loving playing through it again though, and I forgot how good it looked on the new consoles too. Sometimes it really can be pretty breathtaking.

I also stumbled across the deal I’ve been waiting for, for a long time. Mass Effect going on sale, now I know it’s pretty  cheap normally now, but I wanted it to be really cheap. Well Origin answered my prayers and offered up all three Mass Effect games for under £10. £9.59 I think it was in total.

The Mass Effect series is easily my favourite ever game series, I even don’t mind the ending to 3. Sure it could have been better, but it wasn’t terrible in my opinion. Needless to say I’ve been wanting to play it again for a long time, I’ve just not wanted to stump up much money for it, and generally the price has been around £20-£30 for the whole trilogy which is in no way a steep price for the amount of content you get, but I knew it would be cheaper at some point.

So Sunday afternoon I decided to jump back in the Shepard’s shoes and save the Galaxy from the Reapers once more. Now, I don’t know if there are other people that feel this way, but with Mass Effect when it comes to character creation, I don’t ever want to alter the way he looks. To me Shepard is the Shepard you see on the box. I remember when I first played it, and I customised him. After about an hour or two of playing I restarted because Shepard just didn’t look right to me.

 

So, naturally I left him as is. I’ve opted to be from Earth and a War hero, and have picked the Sentinel class, who can use a combination of tech and biotic abilities.

I’ve only put in a couple of hours so far, and have just got to the point where you are indoctrinated as a Spectre, it still gives me all the feels!

The game has generally held up pretty well I think. There are a few areas where it’s looking a little tired, but generally it still looks great. But playing it on PC is taking a little getting used to, but I’m sure I will get there.

Oh yea, we also bought a new car. Both of us aren’t really in to cars much, as long as it works, doesn’t cost too much and gets us where we need to go, we don’t really care what we have. We haven’t actually go it just yet, but should have it by next week.

– Will

Well I’m officially broken, I feel like I was in a train wreck, and it’s all thanks to another stag do. I’m getting too old for these kind of weekends.

But before the weekend, Sony finally revealed the PSPlus games for the month. After many rumours Valiant Hearts, Abe’s Oddysee: New & Tasty, OliOli2 and Counterspy were added.

Despite the great reviews of OliOli and the buzz about OliOli2 I personally didn’t get on with it at all. Granted I only spent 15 minutes on it, but nope, that was enough for me to be insanely frustrated with it. Next I went onto Valiant Hearts. I couldn’t put this down, I completed it within 2 sittings and loved it to bits. I missed out on a few of the collectibles unfortunately, but this game is one i’d happily play again to make sure I get everything. Not quite the ending I expected, but still one damn emotional game.

With Valiant Hearts done I started New & Tasty. Now mock if you will, but I was oblivious to the fact that it was a remaster of the original Abes Oddysee for PlayStation 1. Once I hit that familiar menu screen and watched the introduction to Rupture Farms a massive amount of Nostalgia came flooding back. So far I’m further into the game than I had ever been back when I played it on PS1, but I guess that’s because back then I spent more time making Abe and his other Mudokon friends fart and laugh.

So as touched up on, the weekend itself was spent in Birmingham for a stag do, and it’s one that had truly made me feel old. My body is broken and it feels like this one will take a while to recover from. Mostly in part due to the GoKarting we did on the weekend. After successfully qualifying in 2nd, and then on the opening lap of the actual race taking first place from the start, I eventually finished 6th as the chap I overtook to take 1st place wasn’t overly happy with me pipping him from the start grid and admitting he tapped me on corner 3 putting me into the barrier and causing a 15 kart pile up. Cheers then! But it was still a great laugh and a great weekend away.

Arriving back home fairly early on Sunday I spent the remainder of the day relaxing in bed watching WWE network reliving some of the hall of fame award ceremonies. A nice way to end an excellent week and weekend of gaming and fun.

– Murr