Gaming Blogs

This week, I have played a little more of Mark Of The Ninja - finally reached the next level/chapter And I played some of 1954 Alcatraz early in the week - Controlling Joe, I now have him in the infirmary area, where i've managed to get out of the hospital cell and acquire a bunch of various items from the nearby area. Mostly this week, though, I've been playing Max Payne 3, in which I finished the stadium level/chapter and the bar level/chapter, and am now someway through the following level (which is hot onthe tail of the kidnappers) And also I've played quite a bit on Goodbye Deponia, having now reached the point where Rufus gets thrown off the Organon ship and lands on the junk press.  I've managed to do all this this past week without having to look up even just a hint! So I'm feeling quite proud of myself for that =+)

On Tuesday, I played several 4-player boardgames online.  First up was Cacao, a kind of tile-placing game where you're just trying to earn money - the most money at the end wins.  There are various types of jungles tiles, which you earn actions and resources from, and then each player has the same set of meeple-labelled tiles (with different combinations of meeple counts on each edge).  You earn stuff from jungle tiles by having the most meeples pointing at it from adjacent meeple-labelled tiles.  I had not played it before, and came last.  It took me a while to get the hang of it too.  Netx up was Kingdomino, a nice simply tile-placement game, with several different colours of tiles, that you are trying to place on your own area so that each different-coloured area is continuous, as you score more points that way.  Somehow I managed to win this one, but it is a really simple-to-understand game! Finally we played Love Letter.  I'd played this before a few times, albeit a while

For those who don't know, The Secret Of Monkey Island is the first game in the series of Monkey Island point-and-click adventure games, starring the unlikely hero Guybrush Threepwood.  It was actually released in 1990 so this year is its 30th anniversary! I first played this game many years ago, back on the Amiga A500 which was our family's first computer (which is where I discovered a love of computer games) The copy I borrowed off a friend, unfortunately, crashed at a certain point so I could not even complete the first part. Fast forward a couple of decades or so, and I see the remastered version on Steam.  So I bought it.  It was still another couple of years before I started playing it, but this time around, I was able to finish it! The remaster on Steam has the option of switching the graphics between their original low-res-ness, and the smoother remastered graphics, so I opted to keep the newer graphics, having seen plenty of the original style. This is one of those clas

This week I completed the indie point-and-click adventure game Ben There, Dan That.  The end credits show it was actuallly made in the Adventure Game Studio, a free tool for creating adventure games on PC. I've also returned to Bioshock (the first one, and not the remaster as unfortunately you can't move savegames from the original to the remaster) and played a bit more. I'm currnetly at the point where I'm trying to get access to "Fontaine's Fisheries", and I just defeated another of the Big Daddy bosses, again choosing to rescue the accompanying "Little Sister".  Having looked online, this means I'm roughly a quarter of the way through the game at this point. I installed Goodbye, Deponia, the 3rd out of 4 titles in the Deponia series. I've had to look up hints a couple of times, but mostly been able to figure out the puzzles myself. And finally I played some more Command And Conquer: Red Alert 3, completing the next (6th) mission in th

This week I completed Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge.  I admit there were times when I had to consuly a guide online, but luckily i found a site that only gives hints rather than full solutions, to the various puzzles in the game (think it has this for other similar titles too) I already knew a little about what happens at the end, I don't want to spoil it but it is...interesting (and not 100% obvious the meaning behind it) I've also been playing another point-and-click adventure game: Ben There, Dan That - an indie-made game from a few years ago.  I've still got a way to go on that game. Tuesday's online boardgaming involved a 5-player game of Celestia (my first of it - it's a push-your-luck game and quite fun) and a 5-player game of the co-op card trikc-taking game The Crew, in which we managed to complete...4 missions I think it was? Apparently the site we use saves your group's progress so hopefully we can carry on from there at some point. I also p

This week I managed to finish (not saying "complete" as i only played one of the 2 timelines, and did not get all of the collectibles) Wolfenstein: The New Order.  I had to consult a walkthrough again for the final boss fight - it's split into 3 main kind of sections, the first is fine, once you know what to do, but the second part is really tricky. I gave it several attempts before I (embarrassingly) had to turn the difficutly down to the lowest level! But i didn't want to spend a lot of time trying it because I have plenty of other singleplayer games that need playing.  However for the last section i handled it fine at the next-lowest difficulty, which is the one I played most of the game on.  I originally began playing on "normal" difficulty but turned it down a notch when I reached the first level that requries some steath - the one where you find more knives and get the ability to throw them. Having finished it, for now I have no desire to either go ba