So far, 2020 has been incredibly slow on the computer game front. In fact, I've not really been all that motivated to play, or even try, many games since Scoob and I went through Dying Light back in 2018.

With the current worldwide situation, it looks like I'm going to be having some time off over the next few months. I imagine most of it will be spent sorting out more tabletop goodness, but I do at least want to have a damn good bash at getting some games of the digital variety ticked off the list also.

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I've found some time over the last fortnight or so to start playing Horizon Zero Dawn. This game's been out a few years now and is widely regarded to be one of the best PS4 games ever made. The game is set in the far future, many years after the collapse of civilisation as we know it, and humanity has again become tribal and superstitious.
You play as Aloy, a woman who has been cast out of her tribe, who then finds her life taking an interesting turn when she stumbles upon some ancient technology in some ruins.

Wow, I really want to like this, but there are two enormous problems that are keeping me from really getting into it. The first one, is how I've got to use a controller in a shooter game. This is a problem I've always had, and it's never going to change. I just hate controllers for these types of games. I've gotten away with it in other games like Ghostbusters, but in this, the combat is so fast paced, and the machines give my aging brain and spaghetti thumbs so little time to aim, that it really spoils my enjoyment.

Of course, I foresaw this issue, so decided to buy something called a KX adapter. This little gadget lets you plug in a keyboard and mouse and make the console think you are using a controller. There's no way to rebind the keys, which was a stumbling block, but I got around that somewhat using the PS4's own button allocations. However, I've still had to go back to using the controller, as using the mouse to emulate the right stick turned out to be unplayable. It wasn't as bad as when I tried something similar in Dirge Of Cerberus, but it was still pretty bad.
Oh well.

The other problem is all the stealth. Pretty much every fight, other than the ones against more simple enemies, is set up to be a big stealth set piece.

Other than that, I like what the game has to offer. I like its story so far, and the characters are pretty cool. I also like the world, and there's a shit ton of things to do beyond the main story.

The other cool thing I like is the photo mode. I'm always thinking about screenshots when I'm playing games, so it was nice to find this little bit of kit to help me out, and I've managed to grab a few pics to use as backdrops for the forseeable future.

It's up in the air whether I'll come back to this. I just hate having to use a controller to aim with so much.

Not that I'm really thinking about HZD much right now, when this beast is currently installing...

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Pretty much all last year I've had several games installed on my PC just waiting for me to get around to playing them. First and foremost is Resident Evil 4, which even after the recent remakes of 2 and 3 still seems to be considered by many to be the best in the series. However, my attempts to play through Horizon have pretty much convinced me that I would not like to play it, as once again I'd be forced into using a controller in a shooting game.
But who knows, I may get around to at least trying it.

Of the half-a-dozen or so other games I've got installed, the only one I've played is Bioshock, which I played for a couple of hours back in Feb, and really need to get back to.

So as you can tell, even if I end up with weeks and weeks off work, I've got plenty of things to push on with in the computer gaming department.

I'm still not sure how or why, but just recently my brain remembered very hazy details about a text adventure game I played with one of my class mates when we were at junior school, all the way back in the late 1980s. This was played on what was probably the school's only computer at that time, and was probably six or seven years before my family even owned any kind of PC.

After some hunting around on the internet, I rediscovered the name of this game, which was L: A Mathemagical Adventure. As far as I can remember, I really enjoyed playing it and figuring out its puzzles, but it's more likely that my enjoyment was fueled by the fact I was occasionally let out of lessons in order to tackle it.

Thinking back, this was probably the first game I ever really got stuck into writing about, as I put together a file of maps and solutions as I went through the game. I'd probably still have that paperwork, or at least scans of it, if it hadn't been for one of my friends throwing it all away on one of the very rare days I was sick and off school, which just happened to be the day that the teacher had told everyone to tidy their desk drawers. I was absolutely gutted when I found out all my hard work had been in vain, and it could very well be one of the reasons why I've always been so protective and possessive about my shit as an adult.

To my initial delight I found that not only was this game available on an emulator, but that it was also playable online in a browser on the bbcmicro website. Seeing a chance to revisit my youth and recreate my maps I quickly grabbed some note paper, pressed play and got stuck in.

Like pretty much every game I revisit many years later, this one quickly proved itself to be a chore, being awkward, clunky and full of filler and puzzles that just aren't necessary to experience in order to finish the game. Also, the game is meant to help kids learn about mathematics, but as far as I can tell there is only one truly mathematics-based puzzle in the whole game. All the others are about patterns or observation that can mostly be brute-forced with trial and error. There are also some word-based puzzles, as well as a healthy sprinkling of moon logic that would seem right at home in your average 90s point-and-click.

I started off pretty sure that I had completed the game back in the 80s, but as I was going through it, there were huge chunks of the game that did not seem familiar at all, so I started to think I was mistaken. Yet, I could fairly clearly remember tackling the "spider puzzle", and could still remember the principle of it. As it turns out, that puzzle is literally the last one in the game, so my initial assumption must have been correct.

However, there was no way I finished this game without some form of help. Even as an adult, this thing had me scratching my head. For most of the game I didn't actually search for any of the answers directly, but I did have to look for some clues as to what certain puzzles were about, as well as looking for aid concerning the strange quirks of the game.

However, the aforementioned spider puzzle defeated me. First, I started doodling attempts to solve it on some paper. Then I started to use photoshop so I didn't have to keep erasing. Then I spent the better part of a free Sunday writing some Javascript code. I limited the script to a few hundred loops of stepping forward and back through the path of the puzzle, thinking that would be plenty, and ran the script. But a bunch of attempts later and even that didn't get further than about three quarters of the way through.

By this time I gave up, deleted my script, and went looking for the answer. When I found it, I discovered there are 48 correct paths through the puzzle, which seemed like a lot until I also read there are more than 8 million incorrect paths! No wonder a few hundred loops through the script didn't get near to an answer. It now makes me wonder if my script would have eventually solved it if I had allowed it several thousand loops or more. But there's no way I'm writing all of that again to find out.

My original intention had been to create a really nice new set of maps and solutions to replace the ones I lost years ago. But by the end of it I just couldn't be bothered, especially as the end of the game was such a let down.

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Managed a spare few minutes recently to have another little go on Sensible Soccer. In one of the games I smashed 12 goals passed the Annoying Gits team, but still couldn't keep a clean sheet as Robbie Williams had to go and poke one home.

The game is so cheesy and goofy, but it's one of the rare old games I seem happy to play on quite often.

Hot on the heels of a Marvel 3rd person action game comes another Marvel 3rd person action game. This time it was the Deadpool PS3 game's time to take the spotlight, but could I get the same kind of enjoyment out it that I did from the Spider-Man PS4 game?
Well, no. Not really.

I picked this up on my recent ebay console game shopping spree, and in the process contradicted my original assumption that The Last Of Us would be the final PS3 game I'd ever buy. Part of me wishes I'd left the whole game well alone, as I found there were more things wrong with it than right. But even with its flaws, it was not bad enough to stop me playing through it, so I guess that's something, right?

The main problem here was the gameplay itself, which kind of sucks for what is essentially a 3rd person brawler. The characters, the Marvel universe, the humour and the bat-shit crazy fourth wall breaking things that go on were all enjoyable. But when the fighting itself proves to be the annoying part, then the game has a problem.

True, some of these issues I think were down to the console itself. The frame rate, which at its highest and most stable was only 30fps, kept tanking at many points, especially when lots of enemies were on screen. This made the already sluggish combat seem even more so. It didn't help that the only melee weapons in the game which seemed to do any decent damage were the hammers, which were the slowest weapons to swing and made the fighting seem even more dull and boring.

There was also an issue with the counter attack mechanic. This is because both counter and dodge were bound to the same button, so many times I'd be attempting to dodge away but Deadpool would instead counter attack a villain that was about to attack him. Well fair enough, you might think, but when this refusal to dodge out of the way leaves the character open to an attack from another villain nearby then it starts to get annoying. And it's even worse than that as the counter attack animation is in slow motion, making the combat seem even slower and less responsive.
It annoyed me. Let's put it that way.

Another frustrating thing about the combat, which to be fair was a problem I also had with Spider-Man, was that the game seemed to think it knew where you wanted the camera to point. As soon as a fight would break out, the camera would start rotating all around like it was under the control of some tiny director living inside the console, trying to get the right angle for his next action movie. Well, it's not exactly easy to keep control of the camera when the thumb needed to operate the right stick is trying to press the action buttons.

The X-Men Legends PS2 games were also included in my shopping spree, after Scoob informed me he no longer owns them. When I borrowed them from him back in the day, I finished the first one but never went all the way through the second. My original plan was to continue the Marvel console love and plough into that sequel, but that can definitely wait for now. When I look back at the games I've finished this year, all but one have been games I've played with a controller. And the other one was a simple point-and-click. I think I just want to get away from that input device for a while. It's really starting to grate on me.

So just got done swinging, punching and zipping my way through my first ever PS4 game, in the shape of Spider-Man. I was pretty sure I was going to get at least some enjoyment from this game, considering how much inspiration it takes from the Batman Arkham series, and how much I liked the first two of those games.

For the most part, this turned out to be true, though my early tactics spoiled the game for me a little bit and I found my attention waining towards the end. See, my initial intention was to 100% the game, and do every little thing all over the map. So every time I saw something new on the map I would go and do it before moving on with the story. This quickly became old, and I got fed up with hunting for bags, or doing research challenges and the like.
So I then changed tactics and decided to only do things on the map if they were on the way to my next story mission. This was ok for a time, but at one point in the story, just like in Arkham Origins, a load of people populate the map with guns and sniper rifles, all waiting to shoot your ass out of the sky as you swing by. This pissed me off back then, and pissed me off this time.
So in the end, I ignored the many, many things on the map that I hadn't done yet, and just straight lined the campaign, and I've got to say, this was the way to go. I just wish I'd done that from the start.

As mentioned before, the combat is definitely influenced by the Arkham games, but with some big differences that took me a little while to get used to. For starters, I kept pressing triangle to counter like in the Batman games, whereas in this one you have to press circle to dodge instead. My muscle memory, even these years later, just kept kicking in. Took me a while to shake that behaviour for some reason.
Also, the timing of the dodges was key. At first, I would try and dodge as soon as I got the warning, but I quickly found out that dodging too early just gives the attacker time to change the direction of their attack and they end up smacking you anyway. To get the best out of the combat in this game, dodging at the last second is required. Once I got used to it, and opened up a few more skills, I really quite enjoyed dropping into a big group of goons and beating the snot out of them.

Some things that annoyed me about the Arkham games also popped up here, like stealth missions, silly little puzzles, and missions where Spidey has been poisoned and you have to trudge through hallucinations. Thankfully, these elements were greatly reduced in this game, and took a lot less time to get through.

The story was pretty good, but there was nothing ground-breaking here, especially if you know anything about Spider-Man and his rogues' gallery. There was just one thing that happened at the end that I was a little surprised by.

Overall, well worth the play through, though I wish I'd not spent so much time swinging around the city trying to do all the pointless little stuff before just getting on with it.