Our Week in Games – Week 65

Our Week in Games – Week 65

After a few weeks of special editions, we return to normal service with the 65th edition of Our Week in Games. We come to this week’s edition following news that the PlayStation 4 was the UK’s biggest selling console last year according to this report. Quite an achievement considering the limited time it has been on sale. Once you’ve digested that little fact, why not check out what our past week in games has been about.

Chris

Six of those trophies are mine...how long until the Champions League?
Six of those trophies are mine…how long until the Champions League?

My week away from games has been dominated by watching Sherlock, having never seen any episodes of the show before, I was keen to quickly catch up and blasted through Seasons One and Two before catching up with the new episodes. Along with a lot of work in the flat last weekend, I haven’t had much time for gaming. I did get to boot up Out of the Park Baseball 14 before quickly running away scared at the different concepts of baseball. If there was an NFL management game on the PC I might just find myself interested. If I pluck up the courage, I might just return to OOTPB 14, but for now Football Manager 2014 is doing a splendid job of keeping me entertained. I plan to write something a bit more in-depth about the game soon, along with words on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive which I briefly jumped back into after watching Sherlock one evening this past week. It seems better than ever, certainly there have been some changes here and there since my Verdict in August 2012. Again, that is another game I am looking to write some more about soon.

I did make some time on Sunday to play a little bit more of LEGO: Marvel Superheroes and it is definitely proving to be an enjoyable romp. I just wish I knew the Marvel lore a bit more, I don’t want to ask my girlfriend who certain characters are every level…

Nick

Max_Payne_3

This week, I’ve apparently been slowly turning into Bruce Willis.

After starting Max Payne 3 with a full head of hair and suit, a sudden onset of Willis-itis (McClane’s Syndrome) has resulted in Max swiftly losing his hair and undressing down to  a vest. Doctors’ advice seems to indicate it’s a recoverable condition, but if Max starts shouting ‘yippee kayee’ I need to get him to a hospital quickly before an unexpected hostage situation emerges.

By now I’m probably one of the last people to finish Max Payne 3. Since starting it several months ago, I’ve been playing it in short, episodic chunks of around twenty minutes at a time – As a result, I’ve completely forgotten who everybody is, why I’m supposed to care about them, and more importantly just why I’m turning into Bruce Willis.

The second problem holding me back from completing the game is one I apparently picked up from the original Max Payne – a complete unwillingness to use any automatic firearm. I’m sure the game would be a lot easier if I scooped up one of the dozens of full-auto death-dealers littered around the levels, but if I did that, I wouldn’t be, you know, quite as cool.

For me, the Max Payne series has always been less about killing people, and more about killing people in the right way. It’s not enough to push through a room by the skin of my teeth, it needs to be done right. Shots must be precise, deliberate, and if I can drop a bus on the heads of several enemies with a single well placed bullet, well then that’s just what I have to do.

At times this approach has made the series massively frustrating, with rooms packed with machine-gun wielding enemies providing at times seemingly un-passable barriers. I’ve reloaded some checkpoints dozens of times before finally pushing through, but when I succeed, it’s with as few bullets as possible, and most of them in skulls instead of the wood-work.

 

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