Good day.

As the festival of football continues in Brazil, we bring you coverage of a game that’s as terrible as England’s performances: Actua Soccer.

I don’t know about you, but I thought the Steam summer sale was a bit of a bust this year. In a way, of course, I’m glad, because it means I wasn’t too tempted to add yet more titles to the backlog, although I’ve long since fallen off the ‘no new games in 2014’ wagon.

One title I did pick up was Gone Home, which was one of the most talked-about games of last year – although, being an out-of-touch old so-and-so, I didn’t really pay much attention to that talk at the time.

For once, such ignorance probably did me a favour, seeing as you’re probably best off approaching Gone Home while knowing virtually nothing about it. I’m not about to ruin it for you now, either, other than to say that I really did enjoy it a lot.

All you really need to know is that it’s an adventure with plenty of exploration but virtually no puzzles, and it’s fairly short (2-3 hours max I reckon) – so if such things bother you, make sure you acquire it at an acceptable price point.

Any further explanation is pretty redundant. The mechanics will be obvious to anyone who’s ever played a game (and even those who haven’t), while uncovering the story in little pieces – from the very start – is pretty much the whole point.

(I should point out that such secrecy is advised not because there’s anything mind-bendingly shocking to uncover here, more that the uncovering itself is such a fundamental part of the game that to say anything beforehand is to spoil a rather large proportion of the overall experience.)

Having finished the game and taken some time to look at the reviews, the general consensus seems to be that Gone Home is a triumph, a touching and original title that also represents a refreshing counterpoint to the macho nonsense that makes up the majority of the gaming world. I’d go along with that.

Best of all, though, it’s set in the 90s. What more could you ask for?

Hello.

It’s time for the World Cup. A time when people who don’t like football get bored by the constant talk of football, and everyone else gets bored by the people who like to go on about how much they don’t like football.

Anyway, in a vaguely topical update, we’ve reviewed a football game: Sensible Soccer: European Club Edition. (Don’t worry – it has international teams too).

Ahoy, mateys!

A tale of adventure on the high seas be awaiting ye, if ye dare follow the treasure map (by which we mean link) to a review of Sid Meier’s Pirates!

So the other day I posted some positive opinions on Diablo 3. This weekend I’ve had a chance to see it from another perspective, by trying to play on a crappy 1 Mb/s rural internet connection. Last night I didn’t have too much trouble, but today it’s unplayable; the game chucks me out a few seconds after logging in.

It’s especially galling when we consider that the console version works offline. I suppose the justification is, keeping a large portion of the game’s information on the server side is a defense against both piracy, and the sort of hacking that afflicted Diablo 2. With consoles, both of these are harder to do so the need for protection is reduced.

I’m back to my 57-jiggabits broadband tonight anyway. Still, it’s a reminder of the appeal of getting the happily offline-available Torchlight on our favourite DRM-free source, gog.com.

(PS I’ve no idea why the comments were turned off in my last post. Sorry!)

Recently I finally caved in and bought Diablo 3. I’d been a bit wary of it over the past couple years; as I sometimes find action-rpgs become a repetitive chore to slog through. In fact I remember posting here a couple of years ago thinking I was maybe simply bored of the genre. However, for the past week or so I’ve been totally hooked, once again slaughtering my way through a host of Demons and picking up stacks of shiny loot. It’s just as addictive as this sort of faster paced dungeon-crawling experience should be. Blizzard have refined their arpg framework, making it ever more slick and user friendly, but also addressed problems that previously could make playing for more than a few hours tedious or discouraging.

A lot comes down to how it handles development of character skills. Previously you had the “tree” system where with each level-up you were granted a point to gain a new skill, or upgrade an existing one, and with certain choices new options became available for next time. Originally in Diablo 2 your choices were permanent so if you made a crappy character or just got bored with the current abilities then, well, tough. The only option was to start again. Later patches let you reset skills, but only a few times. Titan Quest, following this sort of model, gave some reset options but only to a limited extent.

With Diablo 3 you basically have 6 ability slots for each character. Typically 2 slots represent stuff you’ll use constantly, so bound to mouse buttons, others are stuff like situational abilities, cooldowns and constant-effect. As you level you gain new skills to choose for each slot. So for the mage the primary slots might be stuff like the freeze ray, fireballs, lightning shots etc whilst the others are emergency teleport, defensive shields, or panic-button “root everyone in place while you run away” spells.

Each ability chosen can then have a further customisation option selected – so the wizard’s lightning might be one big blast, lots of little shots, one that adds freezing effects and so on. So it might sound like there’s a lot of options to choose here, and there are. But here’s the important thing – none of it’s permanent. You can change any or all of your chosen abilities at any time (except right in the middle of a fight). No choices affect how your character handles further down the line.

I guess some RPG veterans might bemoan the lack of lasting consequences in your character development choices. Myself though, I welcome it. I spend an hour with my wizard shooting magic missiles and freeze beams, then change tack and have him use the disintegration ray and lightning. Just for the sake of variety, or to field test some newly available options. It holds my interest for longer periods of time, and if I have a crappy build then, eh, can change it when I need to.

There are a few other minor quality of life tweaks – automatically picking up gold, unlimited ability to teleport back to town to sell stuff whenever I like. Also they’ve thrown in an item-crafting facility, which I think is quite popular in RPGs these days.

Diablo 2’s system of followers has been expanded on too. You have a choice of 3 characters each with very different abilities of their own. They also have their own personalities and backstories, so you can feel a little more attached to them as they follow you into battle I tend to take along the Templar as he complements the wizard quite nicely; he can charge in and get monsters attention while I hang back at a safe distance. Also he boosts the representation of Yorkshiremen in videogames. (I can’t think of many others. Sean Bean in Oblivion?)

Graphically I don’t think it was cutting edge for 2012 but I suppose that’s never been Blizzard’s priority. It does look good, though. I recall some fan gripes about it being too colourful, which is bizarre as vast swathes of the second game were yellow or green. It’s still got that ominous atmosphere to it, that reminder that you’re up against not just monsters but the forces of evil itself, crawling up from hell.

Regarding a couple of other concerns that were raised originally – that auction house that used real money is gone now. I don’t know exactly how players felt about it, for people but I imagine feeling pressured to spend ££ for weapons to participate in high-level multiplayer wouldn’t be fun. Also, the game does require you to be constantly online, as if playing an MMO. This doesn’t bother me personally as I have BT infinity, but it still seems kind of un-necessary.

So all round it looks to me like a sensible evolution of Diablo 2, and a great piece of work from Blizzard, accessible and enormously entertaining. I still giggle every time my mage hits the Archon button and briefly turns spitting death rays all round, and the game happily announces I’ve just scythed down 12 monsters in 2 seconds. Then pick through the resulting loot whilst Templar guy makes exuberant noises about how much fun that was. There’s still innately something super-repetitive about this sort of game, but from what I’ve seen so far they’ve set up the right sort of satisfaction and rewards to keep me coming back for more.

Hi there.

Today we’re looking at an old pinball game: Pinball Fantasies. For reasons that will be explained, I also decided to go back and write a little more about its sequel, Pinball Illisions, too.

Currently playing: FIFA 14

I’m not sure if it’s my inability to get on with the 360 pad, my sloth-like reflexes and arthritic fingers, or just the fact that I haven’t practised enough, but I’m finding the latest FIFA fairly hard going. I’ll reserve judgement on the main game for now, but in terms of presentation, part of the draw of FIFA is that it has all the licenses and money behind it to deliver an authentic experience, as opposed to the enjoyable but intermittently ludicrous alternative reality offered by the older PES titles.

It seems to me that the more EA strive for perfection, the more it jars when they miss the mark. The decision, for example, to have Alan McInally interrupt your game with updates from other matches initially seems an impressive touch, but it soon becomes tiresome as you realise a) his performance isn’t that convincing; b) these updates repeat themselves very quickly; and c) you actually don’t care about what’s happening in the other matches. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard Martin “Puma World Football ’98” Tyler refer to a player as ‘this lad’ in real life, which he does repeatedly here.

Most crucially, though, the feeling persists that, for all the real names and photos, you’re never quite immersed in another world of football in the same way you are with, say, the Championship Manager/Football Manager series. I mean, they’ve improved things quite a bit since the screen below made me despair, but it still sort of sums up my feelings on what they’re getting wrong:

Fan imagines Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a LucasArts-era adventure game

Some artwork of scenes from TV series Buffy The Vampire Slayer, drawn in the style of a classic Lucasarts adventure.

For a 30-something nerd and Joss Whedon fan like myself it’s a perfect combination of two different sources of 90s nostalgia. If such a game was to actually exist I’d be reaching for my wallet in microseconds.