A quandary

Which should I buy?

Please post which you think is better, and why!

'Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning' Demo

For a good few many years, I've had a concept of what my best game would be.

It would be a combat-orientated (read: hack & slash) role-play game, with lots and lots of customisation. The end result that you could pour your attention into your own character, rather than the game maker's world, and then enjoy tearing your way through in satisfying and epic battles.

Kingdom of Amalur: Reckoning might just be along those lines, and with more besides. The presentation is glossy, with something sparkling or glowing or exploding every couple of minutes. The combat, a player-pandering array of flashy moves and screen-filling spectacle, also has just what you need for challenging game play. Blocking, dodging, combination moves and weakness exploits are all in there to task the player with utilising them to their benefit. There's a reasonable amount of customisation when you first make your character, but a truly expansive potential when you start making choices over equipment and skills.

Some dog trainers are harsher than others. Lovely day for it though?

For your weapons you have a primary and secondary weapon slot. However the only real difference between the two slots is which button they use (X and Y on the Xbox360, respectively) as you inevitable use them together in combat to create combos. A simple example being, you knock an opponent backwards or skywards with a sword and then plug them with arrows from your bow. The types of weapons available are massive hammers, swords both one and two handed, pairs of daggers, pairs of 'faeblades' (think double bladed curved swords), bows, spell casting sceptres and staves, chakrams (bladed rings that are thrown like boomerangs) and finally shields both physical and sorcerous . It's a healthy list, and importantly each weapon is used differently. That means individual animations, move lists, and tactics.

Yes, even this concussive-force artiste has his place in the world of tactics.

Further more there is a massive selection of unlockable abilities, based on three classes of might, finesse and sorcery, which asides from new spells and combos include other weapons like harpoons and magic-based landmines. The end result is that by perusing a play style you like, you further unlock more ways to experiment with it. There's only so far you can get in the demo but one imagines it allows for new elements to enter gameplay throughout.

The demo itself is very pleasing, with an introductory level giving back-story and basics of game play, then 45 minutes of game time in a very large slice of the game map.  It's well worth a look, and will probably be sat on my Xbox 360's hard drive for a long time to come! More information can be found on the game's very informative website.

A little more on Mari0

For those of you who read my last post (if not you can catch up here) I was not all that complimentary towards the indie fan game 'Mari0'.

I may have spoken too soon.

What I did not realise is that there is much more than just the Super Mario Bros levels on offer. There is actually a whole bunch of Portal-styled levels AND a level editor! Further inspection shows that both of these utilise both Mario and Portal mechanics to great effect and are actually a lot of fun. I now have more reason to encourage you to check it out for yourselves, and hope you enjoy it too!

As for myself, Mari0 will get a bit more playtime in between Minecraft and Skyrim sessions which have taken up most of my gaming time. Those who actually read this blog will remember I said I was planning a big writing piece for this blog: it's still in the works and it will be about either Minecraft or Skyrim.

Or both.

Or something else.

Tatty-bye for now!

What 'The Expendables' and 'Mari0' have in common.

I had two options: either watch 'The Expendables' or play 'Mari0': a free-to-play game combining the wonder of Super Mario Bros. and Portal.

I won't lie, my attention was split. The Expendables is by far one of the most gratuitous alpha-male-pleasing pugilism-porn films I have ever seen. Watching Stallone chop off someone's hand with a bowie knife is just something you can't ignore. However Mari0 was just too intriguing for me not to give my full attention, so I waited for a gap in the wafer-thin plot to give it a go.

Manly men, ready to do manly things, like killing and dealing with emotions poorly.

For those who don't know, Mari0 is a creation from Stabyourself.net: a two man independent games company. Had it not been for a chance find, I wouldn't know about them at all. This game though instantly grabbed my attention. Mario with a portal gun? It is just one of those geeky concepts that was designed to excite the fandom masses, very much like The Expendables for that matter.

I think we can all appreciate why this will be funny.

The controls are a comfortable WASD affair, but with the addition of the mouse for the portal gun. There isn't really any other way it could of been done. However as soon as I started playing I started to wonder IF it should have been done. There's a sprint button, like in the original Super Mario Bros, but you never seem to use it because you have the means to teleport. Considering that Mario is pretty much the great great grandfather of platforming games, the portal gun does some what take away from his fame with it's shiny new generation thinking.

Exhibit A. Notice how this situation does not require portals.

Naturally I felt allegiance to both of these elements, and wanted to see them used in unison. The problem is that for every problem that can be solved with portals, a brand new problem can also be made with them! Goombas flying through the air, koopa shells appearing right where you don't want them, and simple jumps made infinitely harder because you decided to line up a tour-de-force of geometry and physics. Mario never needed portals to get the job done, and it was one of the greatest selling games of all time when Mario's only special kit was a trusty pair of brown shoes and a resourceful utilisation of mycology.


So, what does this game have in common with Stallone's kill-fest? Both of them are too much of good things. I love action films, but watching The Expendables felt like watching little boys incessantly shoot each other with sticks with the added horror of them then blowing up. It doesn't matter who's the goodies or the baddies, and violence is entirely mitigated by how determined that kid is to keep on inflicting it. As for video games I adore platformers, but Mari0 does seem to encourage you to just dick about rather than really enjoy the finesse of either games that it's based on. It's too much of what you want and not enough reason to question it.

I can't really say whether it's good or not yet, as I have faith that the more I play it,the more I'll get into it. It can be downloaded for free here. For the mean time though I'm very tempted to just play Super Mario or Portal, rather than both. Or maybe I'll just watch Rocky.