It’s been a scorcher of a week, but it’s not stopped us playing some games. Here’s what we’ve been up to.
PlayStation Developers Report
Yep, I’m really quite sad and will often mix my hobbies with my work skill set. While this report is bog standard excel, I’ll be integrating the raw data into a database or maybe just plugging the raw data into from excel to PowerBI, either way, my intention is to create a PowerBI report based off Sony 1st, 2nd and 3rd party developers and games developed. I’ve done Sony Santa Monica as a trial run in Excel to build up a plan of how I want it to run. But SSM include incubated development programmes as we all collaborated development programmes, so picking them first as a trial run was perhaps a bold choice.
Grand Theft Auto IV
As mentioned last week I was replaying through GTAIV in an attempt to clear the game in less than 30 hours and mainly because I’m running low on PS4 games as of late and clearing the backlog pretty well. Well I did finish the game on Friday afternoon and hit a completion time of 21 hours and 20 minutes. So plenty of time to spare.
I can remember the final mission originally being pretty difficult back when completing the game on Xbox360 way back when, but this time round there wasn’t so much of an issue. In fact I found I struggled more this time round on missions I’d completely forgotten about like kidnapping Gracie. As she hits Niko and tries to make him crash. I ended up doing this mission several times.
Another thing just when you feel the game is winding down and you must be nearing the finale, a new character is introduced who then in turn has 4 or 5 more missions to do. I completely forgot about some of the latter characters you meet to do missions for. As I was racing against the clock those occurrences did frustrate me a tad. But had I not been rushing It wouldn’t have been an issue.
But now with that all done, I can just happily drive around Liberty City which was the intention when I re-bought this game 2 years ago. Little would I know that Spider-Man PS4 would release and do an even better job of mapping New York City out.
– Murr
Slay the Spire
As the steam sale is going on, over the weekend I thought I’d have another browse through what was on offer and Slay the Spire popped up, a game that has had an incredible response to it from players with 96% overall positive ratings. I’d heard people talking about how good it was previously so finally decided to take a close look.
Slay the Spire is a rouge-like card game where you will fight your way though random dungeons with multiple encounters culminating in a big boss battle, along the way you’ll be collecting new abilities cards, new relics that offer powerful advantages and upgrading some of what you already have.
What you end up with is a really steam lined gameplay experience, that offers satisfaction at every turn, rewards given to you after every fight, you collect gold along the way to buy more cards at traders scattered along your routes.
I didn’t really know what to expect from the game, but damn it’s fun. The gameplay loop is really solid and feels great fun, there is a load of variation to every run you do, the decks you collect offer huge variety in gameplay. Plus you have different characters to play as who have entirely different decks that all play very differently.
In a way it reminds me of Risk of Rain 2 in that each time you play you have an entirely different experience and I love that.
Reviews & Recommendations
Last week we published our review for table top miniature game, A Song of Ice & Fire. You can check out our review for it here.
Spider-Man: Far From Home
On Friday evening I go the opportunity to see the final Marvel Cinematic Universe Phase 3 film, Spider-Man: Far From Home. I was very keen to see this film given the implications that Infinity War & Endgame have caused prior to this film. And obviously with it closing the Infinity Saga, curious to know what is next for the MCU.
Well firstly this film does an incredible job at explaining the time paradox that people who were ‘dusted’ then return experienced and why Peter, Ned, MJ are all the same age they were prior to the original snap in Infinity War and why some other have aged the 5 years.
It’s odd to say this, as the the films are titled Spider-Man, but in Homecoming Iron Man was used quite a lot, and despite some events of Endgame, Far From Home does seem to rely on Iron Man in this film a lot too. Not just Iron Man though, in fact this film might be one that contains the most Avengers and MCU name drops and references to date. But I was absolutely fine with this as I don’t want Spider-Man & Sony to start moving out of the MCU, So the fact it was rich with references was great for me.
I can’t recall ever being in a cinema in the UK and having the crowd react to scenes with cheering, wooping and applause, but that would be the case while watching Far From Home. I didn’t mind, it added to the atmosphere of what is actually a really great entry to the long going MCU franchise.
I’m trying to keep this as spoiler free as possible, but Jake Gyllenhaal and Mysterio are incredible in this film. I loved what they did to this character and how they made him in this film. It was brilliant. The way this played out references so many scenes from previous Marvel films, it’s so damn clever.
As for the after credit trailers, Far From Home contained 2 scenes. The first scene was incredible, absolutely incredible. It had some humour but dropped a fucking huge bomb which I kid you not, had people sat on the edge of their seats with visible shock on their faces. Myself included. Scene 2 is equally massive with whats coming next to the MCU. What implications there are for the next journey in this massive running franchise. I can’t wait and really hope Kevin Fiege blows the lid of the reveals soon like he did those years back with the timeline from Civil War up to Endgame.
I thought after EndGame I might be a bit deflated, How can they top Thanos, what can they possibly build up to as threatening as him. But with 2 credit scenes in the final phase 3 film, they got me back, just like that. I’m hyped and shook.
Warframe
Warframe is a game I’ve struggled to get in to, but every time I see something new I think I’d like to give it a shot again. This weekend was Tennocon the annual conference for all things Warframe and well, basically loads of cool new stuff was shown, but it was the Empyrean demo that really impressed me, if you have time and are interested in the game I suggest checking it out!
