The neglect, oh dear lord the neglect.

Play it again, Samael...

It’s been a long time, and it’s been so because of the relative dearth of pretty much anything interesting enough to write about as far as gaming is concerned.

“But what about Destiny?” I hear you ask.

Destiny. A bajillion dollar combination of multiplayer FPS, Diablo and marketing blitz that has, unsurprisingly, not lived up to the hype. No thanks. If you love it, then that’s totally okay and I won’t look down upon you for it. But it’s not for me. I’ve been turned off multiplayer shooting for years now, and I’ve never been taken in by loot grabbing dungeon crawlers.

That said, whilst I wasn’t blogging, I did spend sixty-odd hours inside Dark Souls, which you might point out, is a loot grabbing dungeon crawler. And I’d be wrong to disagree with you. But it’s often so much more than that, and that’s what makes it so compelling. Most importantly for me, it’s not a ‘click on the monsters until they disappear’ dungeon crawler in the vein of Diablo.  The superb combat system, combined with the immense challenge, generally forlorn atmosphere and the fact that it’s often  genuinely beautiful means it all adds up to something so much greater than the sum of its parts. And that was what surprised me about it. I gave it a try because it was incredibly cheap and wound up finding one of my new favourite games.

So, I’ve still being gaming, but for the most part I’ve been delving into the collection rather than buying new games, and if I’ve not been gaming I’ve been spending hours with Rocksmith, and I don’t think it’s worth blogging about how bad at guitar I am.

The Year of Zelda is still a thing. I managed to finish Spirit Tracks, even though it was so endearing I didn’t want it to end. The best part about the whole game was being able to blow the whistle on the train any time I wanted. I know that’s a really juvenile thing to say, but every time I pulled on that rope in the corner of the screen, my inner seven year old did a tiny muppet flail. What struck me about the DS Zelda games was that they are Proper Zelda Games, that haven’t been dumbed down just because they’re on a portable with a generally young userbase. The same level of love and attention has gone into them as a full sized console title. Case in point, in Spirit Tracks, the overworld music is tied to the beat of the train. So the faster you go, the quicker the beat of the song. Attention to a tiny detail like that can really anchor you to a game’s world. Other devs take note…

I went straight from Spirit Tracks to my newly returned copy of Minish Cap. There was a certain amount of surprise when I found that not only did my old GBA SP still work, but that my Minish Cap save was still there from the first time I attempted to finish it. I’d expected one or the other to be dead. I was a bit shocked to find that you need to use an adapter to use headphones with an SP though, which kind of put a dampener on things. Still, Minish Cap turned out to be excellent, with an old-school world map that looped and twisted upon itself, while gradually revealing its secrets with continued play. It put me in the mind of a top down Metroid. Add that to classic Zelda gameplay and some stunning 2D art and you have a game that is more than worthy of both your time and the Zelda name.

Ocarina of Time, the big kahuna, was supposed to be next. But I discovered that there is such a thing as too much of a good thing and found myself all Zelda-ed out. So, to tide me over til the release of Trials Fusion, I moved on to Jak and Daxter, generously given to me by a friend. We all know how good a game it is, so I won’t gush too much about it here, but I will say with the exception of a sometimes dodgy camera, Jak and Daxter has aged beautifully and I don’t understand why I’d never played it sooner.

Trials Fusion loomed on the horizon just as events in Jak and Daxter came to an end, and I downloaded it as soon as funds allowed. If you know me, you will know I’m an absolute sucker for anything with the Trials name attached to it. Sadly, Fusion turned out to be a little disappointing. More Trials is undeniably a Good Thing, and Fusion is a very good game, but it doesn’t reach the heights of Trials HD and Trials Evolution. And the reason for that is that basically, it’s just too easy. The barrier to entry has been lowered, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. And if it means that more people will experience one of the most satisfying games out there then I’m all for that. The problem is the difficulty curve has been massaged to such an extent that it doesn’t offer any challenge to players with experience from the other games in the series.  It took me months to get all golds in Trials Evolution. I’d achieved the same in Fusion within two weeks, with the odd platinum thrown in for good measure. I won’t say that Ubi buying Redlynx has ruined the series, because it hasn’t, but the lowering of the difficulty has pretty much stymied its replay value.  I haven’t been back to Trials Fusion anywhere near as often as I have to Evolution. Bit of a shame really.

At a loss for what to play, I stood back and looked at the collection, going down and down until I found something that jumped out. Eventually my eyes fell upon Discworld Noir. A game that I have blogged about in the past about finding, and one that for some reason had never started. Still, no time like the present, right?  After digging out an RGB scart cable and hooking up my PS2, I found myself looking for the non-existent PS button on the controller to fire it up, which was a bit embarrassing. Still, once I’d worked out how to switch the thing on, I was greeted with what, despite its great age, might be one of the best written, and thanks mostly to the immense talents of Rob Brydon, best voiced games I’ve ever played. Sure, the game itself looks endearingly rubbish, is buggy and i so low-res that you could count the pixels, but it feels like playing a lost Discworld Novel. I loved every moment of it, and if you’re a Discworld Fan, you owe it to yourself to play Discworld Noir. I really can’t recommend it highly enough.

A stint with the utterly sublime Sly Cooper followed while I tried for some reason to put off going back to Zelda. The vintage Warner Brothers cartoon does Ocean’s Eleven styling still looks great and the game itself provided ample distraction from the fact that I should have really been playing Ocarina of Time. Thankfully, during that time, I finally got my GameCube back from my sister and with it, my proper copies of Wind Waker and Twilight Princess, none of that HD remake or waggly Wii port nonsense for me. With that, there was no excuse. I had to start Ocarina of time. I hooked up the N64 using my GameCube composite lead (yes I know I should have an RGB conversion, but anything is better than a co-ax cable) and dived in.

Now I’m dreading going to the Water Temple, but loving every minute of the time I’m spending in Hyrule. Yes, the save system is Mesolithic, but while I’m surrounded by chunky 90’s polygons, muddy N64 textures and sound so lo-fi its almost cute and I find myself thinking that sometimes, this is all I need. So what if new games aren’t interesting at the moment. I have a massive back catalogue that’s full of good stuff. I don’t need a new gen console yet, and as it turns out, there are plenty of interesting games. They’re just not new ones.