February Game Round Up

Having Finished My Current Games I'm Looking for New Entertainment!

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Ending the Game Drought!

My daughter and I completed a couple of big games over January which left us a bit up the air about what to do to do now. On top of this, I'm looking around for a single player game I can play on my laptop when gaming casually on the sofa.

Above: To keep us going until we find a suitable new co-op game, Stace and I have
turned up the difficult in BACK4BLOOD and a redoing the missions again!

 So, scouring STEAM I've found a few candidates that were on sale and I've been tinkering around with them to find 'the one'.

On the matter of a big co-op game that we can play on Dad'n'Daughter game night, there actually nothing new out at the moment that's really caught out attention. Therefore, I've had to look back through my STEAM library. Anyway, here's what I've been trying out...

Single Player World War 2 Games

I fancied something historical by way of a shooter and a couple of games seemed to fit the bill and weren't too expensive.

1. B17: The Mighty 8th Redux

The first game is a remastered version of an older Microprose bomber sim. Now, I've always quite liked the idea of having a good bomber sim but I never played the original version of this game. And despite it being a USAAC themed game centred around the B17 Flying Fortress - and not, as I would have preferred an RAF bomber game - I was attracted to the fact that you could take over the roles of any of the crew, while all the other work was done by the computer.

I always wanted to try out the roll of turret gunnery! Here's a little video tour of the gun positions (non-combat)...

Above: Please note - the long silent pauses between changing gunnery stations
are part of the clunkiness I mention about the game! Bear with it.

Now while I enjoyed the turret play, I have to say that the interface of this game is somewhat clunky, plus - unfortunately - player feedback about it has been very mixed. Some note the problem with the interface but also some bugs and general optimisation issues which has left some people finding the game does not compare favourable with contemporary games.

Not hard to understand this being as it's a remaster of an old game. Basically, those bits of the game that have been modernised look good, while some of the older parts leave something to be desired.

So, worth the £10 I paid? Well, as I only playa very specific part of the game - gunnery - and don't meddle with the rest of the flying part of the sim, it's a 'maybe'.

2. Beach Invasion 1945 Pacific

Now I have played the first game in this series - Beach Invasion 1944 - and quite enjoyed it. It's basically a casual tower defence type game that owes a lot to the 1983 classic C64 game 'Beach Head' (which I used to play to death in my younger days).

So I thought I was on to a safe bet with the sequel to Beach Invasion, but - sadly - it didn't take me long to discover that this version was a bit of a flop!

Here's a clip of the initial US map (you can play a Japanese map too) and it gives you a fair impression of the bugginess and horrendous sluggishness of the game.... 

Now, perhaps predictably given the large negative response to this release the developers were quick to do some damage control and posted this update message on STEAM:

For the past weeks, we have been working on a number of fixes and improvements. We are also working on a major content update that will introduce new maps...[There will be] UI and gamestate change for better performance...

Well, I hope the patch does work out the problems with this game as the basic concept - and the previous game - are good and I'd like to give it a second chance.

Anyway, long story short (too late) I'm still looking for that killer single player casual game. 😞

A 'New' Co-Op game for Team Beaty?

Meanwhile, I'm also searching for the next co-op type game for Stace and I. Our preference is something along the lines of the Left4Dead format of first person team survival shooter. BUT, maybe something with a little different theme from the zombie games we have completed recently (Zombie Army 4 and Back4Blood).

We did have a crack at Aliens Fireteam Elite but that just didn't seem to click with Stace. To be fair, it is pretty intense and does demand a lot of concentration so we could do our usual mucking around and chatting while playing! And worse there never seemed to be a break in the action for us to eat our snacks, which is a big part of our game nights!😆 

So we want something like L4D, that has action but then a lull then action again...

Looking back through my library of games I came across Warhammer: Vermintide 2...

It's an bit of an oldie that I played back in the days I was apart of the BIG gaming clan, but it somehow got forgotten about.

It is accepted to be Left4Dead but in a fantasy world setting, so we are going to give it a try on this Wednesday's game night! Fingers crossed!

Edit: Turns out I did a test play about 8 months ago...