Games that I like part two

Oh yes ladies and gentlemen, it’s time for more rambling about games that I have partaken of and enjoyed. Sit down and let me regale you about...

Portal



If you don’t know what Portal is, shame on you. Put that copy of ‘Gunslap Shooty McGubbins’ down and hang your head, because you are the enemy of awesome and exciting gameplay.

For the 1% who don’t know, Portal concerns itself with the adventures of Chell, a woman who wakes up in an abandoned scientific facility and is put through a series of increasingly dangerous and bizarre tasks by an AI machine called GLaDOS. Your only weapon is a Portal gun, a gun that creates two connected wormholes on any flat surface, creating some of the most fun and creative platforming puzzles you’ve ever seen.

The best thing though, is the pitch black humour throughout the whole game. Its laugh out loud funny, and when’s the last time you could actually laugh at a game? Well...

Ratchet and Clank series



Ratchet and Clank are brought to us by Insomniac Studios, who made the Spyro the Dragon series that I was addicted to as a kid. When the first game was announced I was ridiculously excited, as Spyro had been sold off to Traveller’s Tales who had basically castrated the franchise and ruined it forever.

I was not disappointed. Ratchet and Clank is funny, addictive and deceptively deep once you get past it’s ‘Find the end of the level and hoover up as much money (bolts, in this case) as you can’ gameplay. You can see Spyro’s influence all over the series, but Insomniac improved on it tenfold. Ridiculous amounts of fun.

Bioshock



How did I forget Bioshock off my first list last week? I LOVE BIOSHOCK. INDECENTLY. Bioshock is a game that may as well have been made just for me. I have strange obsessions with Art Deco architecture, abandoned buildings and horror (yes, I am well aware I am wrong in the head) so this game may as well be labelled, ‘Here Voni, go nuts.’

I love any game that’s heavily story driven, so of course I was all over Bioshock. What’s amazing about it is that you are made aware of the plight of characters that were long gone long before you ever entered the city of Rapture. Clues are left all over the city about the people that lived there, clues that aren’t relevant to the main plight of the main character, Jack, but added to the brilliant detail that made Rapture such a believable universe.

Incidentally, I can’t harvest the Little Sisters. I just can’t. They may well be a collection of ones and zeros but I just. Can’t. Do it!

Katamari series



Everyone knows what the Katamari series is about by now, don’t they? A tiny prince goes around rolling a ‘Katamari’, which is basically an enormous sticky ball that’ll suck up anything in its path that’s smaller than itself. You roll it around, usually trying to get it to a certain size before your time runs out on that level, and that’s it. That’s the gameplay in a nutshell.

Put like that, it sounds dreary and dull, but it’s anything but. It has an insistently cheery J Pop soundtrack and insanely colourful visuals, but the main draw is that it’s just so satisfying, somehow. The first time you go from only being able to roll up drawing pins to rolling up entire skyscrapers, you’ll know what I mean.

Thanks Japan. Without you all current gen games would only be brown and grey and only concern themselves with burly men shooting other burly men. Thank God for Katamari.