I've only played one actual game of FIFA 13 outside of work; the rest of my time with the game has been spent playing the skill games. These challenges are the best tutorials I've played in a long time, but I'm almost convinced some of them are nigh-on impossible. I'm talking specifically about the final skill game in each of the eight disciplines, such as the lob pass tennis. It's bloody hard!
Having spent most of my free time in the evenings this week failing to lob a ball back and forth I gave the passing drill a go, and boy is that hard too! It's like those games you used to play in football training at school, with one side trying to keep the ball while a few defenders try to gain possession - all within a tight square. The only difference here is that you have to do it for ages to get anywhere, and the defenders are world class, not John and Andy from Year 6 Class B.
They're all dead. My housemates. My best friends. Me. Hell, they even killed Black Hulk Hogan: the car he was hiding behind caught fire, then he panicked and refused to run away. He actually survived when the car exploded, but then he slowly bled to death in the street. RIP.
I can't say I'm particularly surprised, given that I started my first XCOM campaign on Classic difficulty, and with Iron Man enabled. In a way, I got exactly what I wanted – this is XCOM after all, it's supposed to be hard. Still, I think I'll play on Normal for my next attempt. And to be honest, I might not rename my troops after my friends, as it's oddly upsetting when they die. Although I did laugh when Black Hulk Hogan checked out. RIP!
Now that I'm a cool independent guy who exists separately from the brainwashed hive mind of the masses (I have an Android now, also I miss my old iPhone) I have been playing Android games.
Android games are also available on iOS, but let's just pretend for a second that I've stumbled upon a whole new playground of magical new adventures. One of those is Where's My Perry?, which is essentially Where's My Water? all over again.
But that's fine, because that game is fine. And Where's My Perry? is also fine. It's based upon a cartoon or something that I haven't watched because I'm an old man who doesn't watch children's TV anymore, mainly because he's playing games on mobile phones.
So, yeah, video games. By the time this is published I'll also have played a spot of League of Legends this weekend.
Are we still in 2012?
The most terrifying thing about Resident Evil 6 isn't its monsters, but Capcom's overwhelming desire to create a game that everybody likes. The developer seems to have fumbled its way through a check-list of everything that feels vaguely contemporary within gaming, shoehorning in Call of Duty-like hand-in-front-of-face first-person sequences, non-stop explosions, and knee-high walls. Every HD-era gamer loves guns, explosions, zombies and QTEs, right? Right?
It's ironic then, that Resi 6 feels like an antique. Its mechanics are clumsy, its design is stuck in the past and the game's odd mix of 'old meets new' never quite marries up, a bit like when Anna Nicole Smith shacked up with James Howard Marshal II. I guess Capcom only did it for the money, too.
But I like that. As odd as it may sound, Capcom's reluctance to let go of Resident Evil's quirks and foibles - as many as there are and as off-putting as they can initially be - is oddly endearing. The sum of its parts is weak, largely due to the game's new square pegs not fitting into the series' old round holes, yet I've found myself eager to go back. A little more direction and focus, and a little less 'Eliminate All Enemies' could have worked wonders - as could splicing all three stories into one singular campaign. But, if it can continue to hold my interest in the way it has done so far, Resident Evil might just have some life left in it after all.
