Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction
I will admit to being cynical about this title, hence not buying it until I saw it for £15 in a failing retailer’s store. However after sinking several hours into it, I am genuinely surprised by the gameplay. I haven’t read any reviews so I don’t know if this comparison has been drawn, but as I played this game I got a greater sense of it being an open-world platformer, even though it clearly isn’t. I readily admit to not playing a single game in the franchise before this one, so therefore I was expecting strictly linear game progression. However once you get your spaceship about three missions in, the game opens up and you can start exploring whereever you like. At this point I draw comparisons between this game and Mass Effect. Two very different genres of gameplay, however they are linked through their mission progression.
I think it’s more to do with it not meeting my expectations at all, but completely destroying them and in doing so, I found a game I genuinely enjoy and cannot wait to go back to.
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts
I bought this game after Brad Shoemaker’s (Giant Bomb) glowing recommendation. I had already tried the demo and didn’t get on with it at all. I got frustrated that even though I made vehicles they wouldn’t show up in Showdown Town, the game’s hubworld. Little did I know that that was intended, I just didn’t notice the game telling me that in the demo.
However, I bought the game, and I have sunk more time into that than any other game recently. I like to pretend to be a creative person, which is why my LittleBigPlanet level is still as-yet unpublished, so Banjo’s vehicle creation system tickles that part of my brain in all sorts of ways. The sheer number of parts the game gives you is staggering, and the limit placed on vehicle creation, 250 parts maximum, doesn’t seem like it’s going to hinder me that much. If anything it will force creativity when resources are at a premium.
This is another game I cannot wait to get back to and can see myself sinking a lot of time into.
Knothole Island DLC for Fable II
Oh dear.
It was all going so well, too.
Knothole Island is the first in a totally presumed line of DLC for Fable II. It costs 800 Microsoft Points (around £6.80) and is a complete and utter waste of money.
Here’s a summary of the first quest you will get from this DLC. You are asked to go to an island to help the settlers there with a weather problem. When you get there you will talk to the village leader who asks you to go dig up a key in order to get into a tower to manipulate a totem. The village’s problems are then solved and you leave the island.
Copy and paste the above paragraph two more times and you will have a perfect description of the three quests in the DLC, not including a completely throwaway moral choice at the end, which is as far removed from the moral choice at the end of the main storyline as you can get.
Sure there are plenty of new items to find, but they all do precisely nothing except undermine everything that happened during the course of the main storyline.
All in all, not worth the money, making this the first piece of DLC I truly regret buying.