5punk

Some time around the beginning of the week I mentioned a bunch of games I was hoping to have another look at after they've had a bunch of updates. In these dark times of Steam sales it's some consolation to do that, either because you're trying not to spend too much money, or because you don't have any money to spend on them. It felt good, so I thought I would put it to the floor. Think of a few games which you've been meaning to get around to having another look at, then go away and give it a good old play. Then report back whether it was worth it.


I returned to World of Tanks. I haven't played it since they introduced the British tech tree, and there's a hell of a lot been added since then. For one thing, I had about double the amount of garage slots I started with thanks to a new nation's (Chinese) noob tank being added and, for reasons unknown, three or four premium tanks being added to my account. So that was nice, although it takes me an hour just to play one game with the four or five tanks I'm developing at the moment so I haven't tried any of them.

Checking the tech tree I noticed two things. Firstly, there are approximately a squillion new tanks. Some even nestled between tanks I've previously unlocked, leaving me with a rather patchy looking path. Secondly, it's been flipped 90 degrees, which is a little confusing as I'm struggling to easily distinguish the different paths (i.e. MBT, SPG, AT). I expect it's to fit all the tanks in.

The game itself is prettier than I remember. I knew that anyway from articles on gaming sites, but I did notice the sky textures and lighting in particular. The biggest difference I spotted was the new (well, not really that new any more, but new to me) physics engine. Rather than slopes just acting like brick walls I found my Leopard could climb onto rocky outcrops and leap down verges. This was good for me as a favourer of light tanks, it game me a lot more mobility. Other than that it was just how I remember it, and that's pretty good. With the game having reached maturity quite some time ago there are a lot of veteran players kicking about, but I didn't notice it being any harder than it always was, or have any difficulty finding matches. I just noticed a lot of pretty premium paint jobs.

I've just returned to PotBS after it got resurrected by the original developer. Still F2P and with some very reasonable pricing on the pay to do better stuff parts, it is however still the same old game - flat textures, static weather and fairly repetitive missions. For all that it's basically WoW in boats, it's fun to play with a few mates and I'm enjoying myself.

The other game I recently replayed with a bunch of mates (well, 3) is Alien Swarm. It's still much fun and the plethora of user made content gives hours of fun. Well worth a drunken night's shenanigans.

I've revisited my PS3, done a bit of Gran Turismo and finished up Beyond Two Souls, which isn't exactly old but which I'd stalled in.

Beyond Two Souls is an interesting title, bigged up on story with famous ac-tors doing the voices and is almost an interactive story in the vein of Walking Dead. While it's far from free-form and involves a lot of things like "press button to snog a boy" and "twiddle sticks to do a piss" (really) there is quite a lot of game in there. The protagonist is paired with a ghost permanently bound to her who can do all sorts of spooktacular tricks from knocking bottles over to throttling or controlling NPCs.

You control Jodie jumping around through about 15 years of her life and the scenes when she's very young are truly creepy. There are a lot of reveals towards the end which dull the impact of repeat playthroughs and it does tend to tail off in its impact around half-way through, however it's part of a very rare pantheon of games which have given me unexpected empathy with their characters, including feeling awkwardness, frustration and genuine concern - quite a rarity given I'm usually given to have such little connection with game characters as to deliberately try to kill myself just to see what happens.