September Progress Picks: Project Cars, Horizon Zero Dawn and too much Rocket League

It was always going to be difficult to match August’s progress but it feels quite disappointing in comparison. It’s easy to pinpoint the issue, Rocket League! I’d forgot how addictive it is with 5 minute matches that provide an illusion of time control… there’s always another match that must be played as you did so well previously and need to keep it up, or you lost and you can’t finish on a downer, and look it’s bed time and I haven’t done any backlog assassinating. To shift the blame I was surprised to receive a really kind gift that allowed me to get the Rocket Pass which rewards levelling up with new items, so I guess it’s their fault! :P Anyway I’ll try to get the balance much better in October, I did manage to finish all three of my Play or Pay challenges which is the priority as well as making a start on Horizon Zero Dawn so that’s something!

Play or Pay - chosen by Verd

• Homefront
  

  14 hours playtime

  32 of 47 achievements

• Project CARS
  

  29 hours playtime

  34 of 45 achievements

• World to the West
  

  22 hours playtime

  36 of 36 achievements

Homefront - To say something I used to say quite often, I haven’t played many [genre: military shooter] games so I don’t have much to compare the single player campaign with. The only Call of Duty game I played was World at War ages ago and even then I just stuck with multiplayer. I recently bought the Modern Warfare trilogy as these are meant to be well designed and I enjoyed this enough to want something the next level up, and I have Spec Ops The Line in my backlog I’ve been keen to play for a while too despite its most memorable section being spoiled for me. So I thought Homefront was fine, the final mission on the Golden Gate bridge was cool, the collectables were actually worth finding as they were newspapers of past news stories relating to the North Korean threat in addition to the fictional events that enabled them to occupy the United States by 2027, it was quite interesting to read about, if nothing else the game’s intro is worth watching lol, here’s a link. The AI was clever enough with its attempts to flank you and used cover properly, it didn’t seem unfair unless you were playing on the hardest difficulty (yes this may in fact have been perfect preparation for Dark Souls, for anyone else who played it I wish the church and supermarket section never existed), there’s a bit of variation in the 9 missions with a stealth section if you can call it that where you just need to follow someones instructions for 10 minutes, a few sniping segments, and one where you control a helicopter and need to protect a convoy. I probably wouldn’t recommend buying it, I own it from the first bundle I ever bought back in 2012, but it’s worth playing if it’s in your backlog.

Project Cars - I found this to be much more enjoyable than I expected. My experience in the racing genre only really comes from the Dirt series, Rally was fantastic and it’s great to see a sequel announced, so actual track racing with pit stops was something different for me. The career mode is great, you choose from 8 different tiers, I thought it made sense to start at lowest and work my way up, and in each tier you drive different types of cars from Karts to Formula 1. There are also extra challenge events you unlock in your calender each season by winning races, these offer a break from using your current car all the time with a wide variety from the Ariel Atom to a Ford Focus. In terms of locations I also have to give the game a lot of praise, it takes you all across the globe, although I can’t say I’m familiar with any of these real tracks it must be cool for actual fans of motor sports. There’s changable weather too, this is probably a standard feature but I liked how foggy mornings would clear up as the day went on, or what were perfect conditions turn into a nightmare when it decides to bucket it down right near the end and everyone’s got the wrong tyres to deal with it! I read some reviews complaining about the realism of the driving but I quickly got used to it and didn’t have any issues after a few laps with each car, admittedly it took me a while to get used to the idea of the most powerful vehicles needing to be at quickest speeds in order to have any kind of grip when you’re turning, so it’s not a good idea to go full throttle after just coming out of a corner. Forza Horizon is way too expensive for me at the moment but I would like to play more racing games in the future.

World to the West - This is an adventure game that gives you control of four different characters a few chapters in to get around the world and do some treasure hunting. The major downside is you can only control one of these characters at once, you can only change character at the totems dotted around the map (which can be a pain to find again), and each character must activate the totem in order to use it for fast travel, so it means a lot of the game is taking the same path four times with some slight variation that requires you to use each of their unique skills in order to get to the next screen. The combat really isn’t great but can thankfully be ignored most of the time by running past enemies and there’s no XP system only money drops that can be gained from treasure chests instead, the currency’s only use is for battery locations that need to be found for the achievements and health boosters that give one of your characters another bar of health. There are boss fights however these are a cakewalk and only one required a second attempt. Yeah this doesn’t sound like that much of a positive review… but I did like the art style, the music was nice in places, and it reminded me of the LEGO games which I love with that discovery and reason to explore with each character to access new areas. So overall I did find it fun and I’d recommend it but I felt a bit disappointed at the same time, I may have preferred if it was less open world and more level focused like the beginning of the game where you’re forced down certain paths only using one or two characters instead of four, that’s how the LEGO games work, and then when you want to explore you’ve got freeplay and an easy way to just switch characters around with a press of a button, instead of finding the totems that aren’t marked on your map even after finding them.

Next month - chosen by Traqie

• DARK SOULS™: Prepare To Die Edition
  

  2 minutes playtime

  0 of 41 achievements

• Headlander
  

  3 hours playtime

  0 of 31 achievements

• Remember Me
  

  3 hours playtime

  0 of 50 achievements

It’s an exciting time when the month ends to see what new challenge my picker has in store for me, however my heart may have sank a bit seeing Dark Souls appear next to my name! I know it’s meant to be a must play but honestly I’ve always been worried I may not have the skill or patience to finish it, which is thankfully something that doesn’t happen often as I hate abandoning things part the way through, I can only really think of Furi and Hotline Miami 2 and I mean to give them both a second shot when I’m feeling brave enough. So being challenged was likely the only way I was ever going to click play, and still those two minutes gametime were from opening it up, seeing the menu and thinking no not today. I’m sure the difficulty is exaggerated!!! Delighted with the others, Remember Me is something I’ve been eager to play for a while, I’ve been listening to the soundtrack for it since it came out, and Headlander looks fun too, I saw a positive review for it on here recently.