April Progress Picks: Dead in Bermuda, Dirt Rally and Finding Paradise

• Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag
  

  2 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Dead In Bermuda
  

  29 hours playtime

  34 of 36 achievements

• DiRT Rally
  

  27 hours playtime

  83 of 170 achievements

• Finding Paradise
  

  11 hours playtime

  1 of 1 achievements

Another short update. Despite trying several strategies to engage with my backlog, I’ve still not found something that works to help decide what to play next. My latest attempt has been to create a “genre mix” showcasing the range of games in my library, just so I can remind myself not every game is an open world RPG.

Assassin’s Creed IV Black Flag - I may have been influenced by a recent trip to London to continue through the Assassin’s Creed series to reach Syndicate which I’m massively excited to play but feel like I can’t skip anything. I remember when Watch Dogs 2 came out there were stories of people living in San Francisco praising the game for how they managed to accurately reproduce the area, obviously Victorian England will look a bit different to present day London but it would still be so cool to find all these landmarks in a place I’ve actually been. I haven’t played much of Black Flag yet but I’m looking forward to some sailing having enjoyed the introduction to ship combat in III. So far so good, I’ve yet to 100% one of these as there is usually way too much side content, definitely a case where I’m glad Ubisoft avoid achievements, but I imagine this will be the big game I finish in May.

Dead in Bermuda - I really enjoyed this when I first tried it out but found it much too difficult and ended up repeating a lot of the story and dialogue on future attempts that made the game less fun. Later on there was a blaeo post I read mentioning there is in fact a difficulty option hidden away which doesn’t make things too easy yet doesn’t punish you just when you start to feel comfortable! You control the survivors of a plane crash on a remote tropical island, looking for a way to get help and leave, while stumbling across the mysterious inhabitants that have other ideas. Each survivor comes with their own traits and existing skill knowledge, which improve as you get them doing certain activities, like scavenging, fishing, cooking, and building. At the end of each day the characters gather around a campfire and you must decide who you’re sharing the food with, and in my opinion the highlight of the game, they engage in conversation that tells you more about these people, and these relationships that form, positive and negative, depending on how morale and their health is, leads to new dialogue and character progression. It’s a great game and it was a pleasant surprise to see the developers have created a sequel, Dead In Vinland.

Dirt Rally - So what genre haven’t I played for a while? Oh there’s that rally game. Perfect. I bought Dirt 3 on a whim having never played a racing game before not long after its release in 2011. Back in the days when I could look over my shoulder and see my entire library of games neatly stacked on a shelf behind me, it naturally got a lot of playtime, even if I don’t think I was ever that good at it. Well Dirt Rally quickly made me realise how much I relied on assists in that game as there are next to zero available in this! The shorter “sprints” last about 3-4 minutes, while the longer tracks are more 6-8 minutes, imagine how nice it was in Dirt 3 if you mess up right towards the end you can do a little rewind and pretend that crash never happened… well no such time travel exists in this! So much restarts! So much frustration! Yet so much better!! It’s far more rewarding flawlessly navigating a race when you’ve learnt through painful memories those tight bends you really should slow down for. The Championships take you to Greece, Finland, Germany, Sweden, Monaco, and Wales… each having with their own personality that you need to account for, like the terrain and surfaces, or speaking from experience, don’t drive off that mountain, that keep things interesting.

Finding Paradise - I was motivated to play a SG win with the announcement of a new group, Playing Matters, that aims to encourage just that. Just like To the Moon, it tells an emotional story, with some beautiful music, great writing, humour at the right times, and that annoying RPG-maker gameplay that I wish never existed. It is however absolutely worth the time of anyone after some good story telling if you can put up with that, I can’t say much without spoiling anything but the twist was convincing and made me really feel for that character.