So, I’m back from Mauritius (Boooo), But I’ve got back just in time for the silly season of gaming to start (Yaaay). I had an absolutely incredible time away in paradise for 2 weeks, sunning it up, drinking cocktails and enjoying the Mauritian cuisine. Not much geekly news to report from my holiday, but I did catch a few films on the plane on the way there and on return.
On the way out I watched San Andreas, the disaster flick featuring Dwayne Johnson. It wasn’t all that great to be honest. Corny, cheesy and such. It was easy watching though and passed some time on the 12 hour flight. I followed that up by Pain and Gain which I’ve seen numerous times before but love. Coming back I watched Pixar’s Inside Out which I’ve watched before and reviewed. Upon watching it again, it actually climbed a few pegs on my favourite Disney Pixar film list. After that I watched Kingsman which I’d heard lots of positives and praise for. It was incredible, an absolute joy to watch.
While over on holidays I managed to get through one book too. WWE Superstar Daniel Bryan’s rise to the main event of Wrestlemania 30 titled “YES”. It was a nice read and told the story of the determination of Bryan from his beginnings paying for wrestling school, to his days on the independent scene and his back and forth relationship with the WWE. While reading this, it was a real eye opener to just how many indie wrestlers now populate the main WWE roster. It also made it appear that becoming a wrestler is easier than you’d think, but I’d assume that he glossed over the real hardship as the main point of the book seemed to be about his rise in WWE to main eventing Mania 30.
I arrived back in England yesterday morning at 6:30am. I was home in my living room by 11:30. By 3pm I’d bought my first game of silly season and made a start on it. I bought WWE 2k16. I was a little hesitant as despite favorable reviews (IGN Scores 8.8 for it, Halo5 got a 9 for comparison… but then again it’s IGN) I’d read numerous comments on it still being a standard Yukes glitch fest. Also I’d read that the submissions, reversal and genuine game play was a bit of an art to master. It took me a while and after numerous frustrated messages to my wrestling friends on whatsapp It finally started to click and I began getting the hand of the collar and elbow tie up grapple scheme and the submission scheme. I complained that despite 3 finishers I couldn’t pin my opponent, but was pointed out again thanks to my wrassling friends that I’d not done enough damage to the opponent and his stamina was still high. With these tips in place I’ve now got to grips with it and have made progress through the Showcase mode and the MyCareer mode.
I can see me enjoying the MyCareer mode alot. So far only 4 matches in and my first televised match was a tag team of me and Baron Corbin vs Finn and Itami. I’m currently a heel and this works fine for me. Yet to 5 star a match, but hopefully that’ll come to me soon enough.
– Murr
I’ve had another weekend of playing quite a few games.
Firstly I’ve been on CS:GO a little bit more recently. I’ve talked about my issues with CS:GO before – mainly the fact that I suck at it. But I think I’ve actually started to make a few improvements and I don’t feel like such a reliability any more when I play with my group – I’ve still got a long way to go before I’m actually good though.
As you can probably imagine I’ve also been playing a fair bit of Halo 5 Guardians. I haven’t actually made any more progress on the campaign – I’ve mainly just been playing Warzone as it’s great fun. I did a first impressions of the game that you can read here if you want!
Whilst Warzone is fun, I do still think it could be a little better balanced. As it stands it just seems to be that if one team gets ahead, then they win pretty easily. This seems to be down to the bosses that you can take out and award you with 150 points, which is a lot. Netting that early on will give you’re team a boost in REQ points meaning you’ll probably have access to the higher level stuff a little earlier, meaning you can control the map a little easier.
Maybe part of the issue is that people are still learning the game mode, and don’t really know how to get back in to a match if they’re losing. You’ll often find a team just rushing a base trying to take it over and failing a lot – admittedly I’ve done this too. One possible thing is to maybe add more bosses but they offer less points, meaning you don’t fall so far behind if you don’t get one killed.
Another issue with the bosses seems to be that whoever gets the last shot gets the kill. So in theory you’re team could be going ham on a boss and then one enemy strolls in at the last minute and gets the last shot to nick the points. It’s happened to me quite a few times and its frustrating. I don’t really know what a solution to this would be though…
Trials of Osiris made a return to Destiny this weekend too. Weirdly I’ve never actually played Trials of Osiris before, and I’m not sure why. Like the Iron Banner power matters in Trials, the better you’re gear is the better you will do (in theory). I’m light level 295 at the moment which isn’t bad, but there are also a lot of people higher than me, in fact most people I played against were. However, I was still very much able to hold my own and in a few matches actually carried the team. But we all had our own moments of glory during play.
Simply put Trials of Osiris was great fun. It was intense, tactical, nail biting and full of clutch plays.
We weren’t trying to get a perfect run of wins – which gets you access to the Lighthouse and better loot, but I still think we did pretty well. I can’t wait for it to come around again.
In the end I netted some new boots and a chest piece along with an artifact at light level 310 which was pretty cool.
Here is one of my highlight moments from playing.
Is Fallout 4 here yet?
-Will
