Decisions Decisions!
What to play after Fallout 4?
The first course of action was to finish Bayonetta 2 (B2) on my Wii U because I only managed to get around three quarters of the way through it before Fallout 4 came along.
B2 is a game of three halves. It starts off and pierces your brain with synapse scrambling gorgeousness and action but about half-way through the game it starts to get a bit “samey”. Although Bayonetta has more moves that John Travolta I found myself sticking with my favourite three or four and it turned into a bit of a grind for an hour or so.
There is a shop system but getting enough currency to buy anything but the very basics seemed impossible. I think the idea is that you go back and improve your score on each level to build up the amount you can spend. I rarely play games twice though so that wasn’t going to happen in my case.
Then, for no reason, it decided to show the world exactly what the Wii U can do and lavished the rest of the game with the guts, finesse and style of nothing I have ever played before, propelling this to the lofty heights of the being the greatest action RPG I have ever played.
B2 is emphatic in its “Japeneseness” {that’s a real word, in my head at any rate}; the music, the graphics, the sexiness, the flow and the unfathomable story all taking me back to a time when Japanese games ruled the world.
As I said to my mate in a text, “I have no words. Ridiculously hard, beautiful , stupidly fantastic, immensely astounding Japanese punishing slog-fest of a billion health bars with incredible pulsating mash-fests of doom in a wonderfully unfathomable story and eye bleeding colour. With bad accents.”
The best action-game ever, bar none. Nothing comes close.
Going retro
The next game was going to have to be stunning to come close to B2 so I thought I’d give the universe a chance and play some retro goodness. That way, the game scan be fantastic but doesn’t need to get close to B2 on account of old age.
Up first was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. I’d heard nothing but good things about this game but no matter how hard I tried I just couldn’t get into it. I decided to go on a Sci-Fi odyssey and loaded Deus Ex because that is supposed to be a fantastic game too, but, again, I just couldn’t get into it, mainly because it was so dark I couldn’t see anything. I don’t know if that’s the way it’s supposed to be or whether it’s a bug.
Going even more retro
I may have forgotten to mention that around this point I bought myself a New Net City arcade cabinet to replace the Egret 2 I sold a year or so ago. It’s an awesome machine, currently running my Neo Geo set up, so I’ve been giving Strikers 1945 Plus some welly. At some point I will get Gradius V running in it but that’s something for another day.
Going retro – but not quite as retro as before. Actually, is this retro at all?
A friend of mine gave me a PS3 which had Red Dead Redemption with it. I gave the game a go for a couple of hours and found myself getting dangerously sucked into it, however I wasn’t really up for another 100+ hour open-world RPG after playing Fallout 4 so this one is in the playing queue.
I eventually settled on Batman: Arkham City. You might recall my adventures into Arkham Asylum and I was expecting a similar experience but to my surprise it’s been improved in almost every way, transforming it from a good game to a great one.
Arkham City is organised in a more open-world manner and contains side-quests you can have a go at if you like. The Riddler collect ’em up seems much more cunning if you are into that kind of thing. Rocksteady have tweaked Batman’s movement just a tad and the whole game flows better because of it which becomes strikingly apparent when navigating the city. Rocksteady have nailed the feeling of gracefully floating around using a bat-cape but managed to keep real weight and heft in the fighting sections. It feels like you are Batman. The characters are possibly the best acted I have come across in a game and the story does just enough to be not too crazy but allow the inclusion of a load of antagonists.
I’m a bit Batmanned {again, definitely a real word} out now so I’ll give Arkham Knight a go later in the year I think. Hopefully it’s as good as everyone says it is.
So, what next?
Well, I was going to load up Red Dead Redemption and start playing that but a certain daughter of mine decided to “borrow” my PS3 so that’s out of the window for a while.
I’m minded to finish off Sin and Punishment 2 and then Super Mario on the Wii U, but who knows?
I’ll let you know how I get on in my next post.
Avaguddun!
