Like a properly thrown boomerang, I have returned. At least for today. I wanted to attempt to start posting some new blogs called, "About Last Night" in which I share some thoughts on the game(s) I played the night before.
Ready?
Begin.
Yooka-Laylee
I was at my brother-in-law's house last night, and I got my hands on Banjo-Kazooie 4: Yooka-Laylee. It's worth noting that I've never played any of the Banjo games (yet) as I thought Donkey Kong 64 was a GARBAGE BAG FULL OF VOMIT and was convinced for many years that I wouldn't want to play 3D platformers that weren't Super Mario 64. It's also worth noting that I'm not a picky gamer. Since... let's say.... 2005-NO-2007 (let's just go with a decade because that makes more sense) I can really only think of TWO games I gave up on and did not finish because I just didn't like them. The first one was Metroid: Other M (for reasons I will not go into because I would have too much to say) and Assassin's Creed 3 because that freakin' game took FOREVER to get started. HOLY NUTS. I felt like I played that game for 20 hours and THEN I started training to be an assassin, which I had already done in the previous game AND had already been assassinating earlier in the game.
...I've really gotten derailed here. Let's get back to the subject at hand. I was at my brother-in-law's house last night, and I got my hands on Banjo-Kazooie 4: Yooka-Laylee. Who was in charge of deciding what the sound effects and voices would sound like in that game?! It's G R A T I N G. I live in a house with a two year old and a five year old, and they can be pretty annoying at times, but they ain't got NOTHIN' on the characters in what I will refer to as Laylee from here on. IF I end up buying this game, I will be sure to turn the voices down to zero, if possible. And some stuff seems unskippable? At the very least, I can't seem to skip through it fast enough. Anyways, you also can't do A LOT of stuff when you first start playing Yooka (I mean Laylee, sorry). What do they think this is, Metroid? ....... On that note, it might be better than Metroid: Other M - I'll give them that. But yeah, you have to buy your powers, so there are all kinds of things you come across in the game and if you didn't know any better, you'd start doing the science to figure out what you're supposed to do. Guessin' and checkin' and guessin' and checkin'... only to find that you can't seem to do it. Fortunately that brother-in-law I mentioned gave me the 411 (that's pre-2000s talk for "information" for those of you who may not know) and I managed to save myself some time and frustration, but just frustration in relation to that. And then there are these pages to collect to expand the world. So you make your way up a hill and reach a dead-end or you come to a bridge with nothing on the other side and eventually discover that much of the world is currently missing. Maybe that's a Banjo thing and I should know this already? I don't know.
Lastly, it took me awhile to figure out my first boss encounter. I don't typically mind that, but the thing I didn't know was irritating to me and I had to figure it out on my own - my handy dandy brother-in-law didn't know and hadn't gotten past this thing himself. So there's this rolling move you do with the right trigger. You hold it down to roll and you jump with X (PS4). There had been some hills I had to roll up in the game that had a gap in the middle and I was able to jump the gap and keep going. Well, in this boss fight... rolling and jumping doesn't work. Like, seriously... it NEVER works. I'm willing to accept the theory that I'm a complete idiot and just wasn't doing it right, but I'll say this - I wasn't doing anything differently than I was in the other scenarios in the game. There are these logs rolling down a hill, and they are not even tall logs. But every time I attempted to jump them as I was moving up, I would hit the log and slide back down the hill. That's it. GAME OVER, right? Wrong, because I FINALLY discovered that your character is sticky(?) and is able to stop on the hill and not slide backwards as long as you are holding down the roll button. So the key was to stop and jump, stop and jump, stop and jump, until you reached the top. And I beat the crap out of that boss. J U S T... beat him SENSELESS for the stupidity of his obstacle course. It was ugly.
Lastly lastly, I talked to Shovel Knight in Laylee and he healed my broken spirit. All is well and I just might play more of that game sometime.
Injustice 2
I got Injustice 2 last night! ...Aquaman sounded better in the previous game (is it still Phil LaMarr? I can't tell...) But he looks better in this game. Maybe it's just that the line delivery isn't quite as good. And I miss those billowy laughs... Other than that... Injustice 2 seems better in almost every way.
Thanks for reading. Maybe you'll hear from me again soon.