I Have A Good Feeling About This

I was overjoyed when Super Star Wars was released for the PS Vita before Christmas - perfect timing after the coming of The Force Awakens. As a Sega Mega Drive owner growing up it was one of the SNES games that filled me with envy, but at last now a few decades down the road I finally get to play Super Star Wars!

And it’s hard.

Real hard.

So hard it takes me back to days of 8-bit and 16-bit games that were relentlessly difficult. Yet fair. That’s an important thing with a hard game, as long as there are no glitches, poor collision detection or slow controls, a game can still be incredibly fun and addictive. I played it solidly over Christmas and felt really proud when I finished it in the New Year. I really felt like I had achieved something.

Super Star Wars is beautiful looking run and gun platformer that follows Episode 4 quite closely. Playing as Luke, Han or Chewie you fight your way through many stages – mostly taken from the first half of the film. There are some decent mode-7 3D sections too where you fly about like Soulstar on the Mega CD or something. The levels are tough and without a strong power-up progress is slow. Inside the Jawas’ Sandcrawler was the absolute most torturous level I played – why do the Jawas have so much lava inside their Sandcrawler - it’s a moving vehicle!!! (heh - well I guess maybe it was actually molten metal thinking about it).

This was a game was so well suited to PS Vita, and there are quite a few options to change the screen and save progress. It’s a great challenging game and I hope the Super Star Wars sequels on the way.

Brenneut (Norwegian Burnout)

I was visiting family in Norway recently and they have a battered old PlayStation 2 in their spare room with a few games. Some of the games work, some are broken. Anyway besides noting how dated the graphics to Tony Hawks 3 look (it still pays fine), I got into playing Burnout Dominator. I'm not a huge racing game fan, but I have played them from time to time. I think my favourite racing game is the Sega Ages Outrun port on the Sega Saturn or the original Sega Rally. Maybe Crazy Taxi outshines them both - but I don't think that truly classes as a "racing" game.

I've not played any of the other games in the Burnout serious but I was aware of some of the ideas behind the series. By driving recklessly you increase your boost meter - you can do this by driving into oncoming traffic, narrowly missing cars, skidding, etc. Once the meter is filled you can activate your Burnout, the Supercharge Boost where blue flames spark out of car. Using this increased speed you can perform more dangerous driving tricks at breakneck speeds, which can then trigger another Burnout, thus chaining them together. You can keep doing this and chain together crazy multipliers for points like Nights into Dreams. I really liked this side of it, and you really get a feeling of the crazy speeds when you activate the boosts.

Of course this being a sixth-generation console game all the loading times are quite testing, especially the clunky way the save system seemed to work. But on the whole it was fun and killed the time pretty well. The unlocking of cars and courses and the medal system kept my interest and made we want to see the next race. Going back to improve your silver to get gold was strangely compelling.

I guess it was like eating at Nandos or something. That kind of experience.

Back to Tomb Raider?

How did I start playing a Tomb Raider game again?

I swore many many years ago that I would never go back. Lara had betrayed me and she was never to be forgiven! The day Tomb Raider II was cancelled for the Sega Saturn was the cause of all this turmoil. That was a dark day for me. It was the first time I realised that the Saturn was dying...

Anyhow I felt somewhat vindicated over the years as I watched the endless new mediocre Tomb Raider games spew out one after the other in a manner that made latter day Sonic seem classy. So just how did this change? How did the Tomb Raider reboot win me over?

I was in my post-great game blues. I had just finished the Last of Us and needed something to fill the void. I had downloaded Tomb Raider for free from PlayStation Plus a while back, and it had been sitting there gathering digital dust on my hard drive. I heard positive rumblings about it. But then I also remember all the controversy from the ill-judged scenes that were supposed to build Lara's character.

I decided to stop umming and ahhing and go ahead and play the damn game, otherwise I'd end up in an all-consuming Tetris or Topspin vortex for a couple of months again.

It all started well enough. Everything looks pretty, even the creepy blood-splattered cannibal who chases after Lara. The oriental Bermuda Triangle-esque island setting was neat. The bow and arrow was quite fun and actually useful (for a change). I wouldn't say I was outright impressed at this stage, but it was winning me over.

Then it happened. I was jumping over the rooftops of crumbling shacks built into the side of a sheer cliff face when it hit me. I was actually enjoying this, even though it was seemed so familiar...

It is hard to pinpoint exactly what it was, but I was reminded of playing through The Last of Us. Although the stories are radically different there is a tone and feel to these games that make them feel similar. Lara's survival instinct reminds me of Joel's hearing mode, as did getting caught in a trap and having to shoot at enemies upside down or even just rummaging around to get salvage to upgrade your weapons. At no point did it ever distract me enough to stop enjoying the game, but the feelings remained.

Crystal Dynamics have overhauled Tomb Raider from an adventure/exploration game to more of a focused dynamic action game. And it works. Maybe that's why is succeeded where all the other Tomb Raider sequels failed, it avoided trying to just ape what made the first game successful and instead try to forge ahead with their own vision for the series.

It will be interesting to see where Crystal Dynamics take the series from here, although it might be a long time until I get to play it if this Xbox One timed exclusive business is true. I may not even play it at all, as I said earlier I don't play Tomb Raider sequels...