Weekend Whammy: F1 2019, Sunken City & EA Are Morons

Hello there weekend, how are you doing this fine…er, weekend? Yes, the weekend is here yet again and that means it’s time to ramble about the games I’ve been playing, the games I’ll be reviewing and Nerf guns!

Alright, so this week I reviewed Mordhau. It’s flawed yet still massively fun. I’m still consistently playing a match or two every day, and despite dealing with the toxicity of the online community I’m having a blast smashing people with my giant maul. I’m still struggling with the combat, though. I just can’t get the hang of it, so instead I’ve taken to ambushing people with my maul or just shooting them from afar with a crossbow before setting people on fire with a fire-bomb. Is it honourable? Hell no! But it gets results. And by results I usually mean several toasted team-mates.

The brand new F1 game came in through the post the other day. Due to the embargo I can’t offer any opinions yet, so you’ll just have to wait for the full review, I’m afraid. What I can say is that this year’s F1 game has one of the bigger changes the series has seen: the inclusion of the F2 cars. While Codemaster’s have consistently delivered solid F1 games, the very nature of the series has meant each year’s release wasn’t exactly exciting. The inclusion of the F2 cars make’s this year’s game a genuinely exciting prospect.

On to another game I can’t talk about! YAY! The Sunken City is another Lovecraftian adventure chock-full of insanity and strange creatures. Frogware Interactive are the developers for this one, the same people who made the Sherlock Holmes games. They’ve taken a lot of the puzzle elements from their Holmes series and bolted them onto a third-person adventure game with a smattering of gunplay. There’s going to be a lot to chat about in the review for this one.

Finally, I will be reviewing My Friend Pedro. I’ve not had a chance to fire it up yet but from what I’ve seen it looks pretty interesting. Essentially it’s a side-scrolling shooter with the emphasis on looking cool and feeling cool. I can dig that.

Normally I’d save discussing this for Patch Notes, but I just have to talk about EA. This week representatives from EA and Epic faced down parliament in a meeting about loot boxes. There’s a lot worth dissecting, including the fact that parliament were clearly out of their depth. They had done barely any research into the topic, as evidenced when they asked, “so, how do you make a game?” But anyway, during the conversation EA claimed that they don’t call them loot boxes, instead they are “surprise mechanics” and even attempted to liken them to Kinder Eggs. It was a baffling defence, even childish in its way. It’s like EA tried to get away with it by calling loot boxes by a different name.

The truly stupid thing is that EA have referred to them as loot boxes numerous times, even quite recently.

I suggest watching this video by YongYea breaking down everything that happened.

I’ve rediscovered the simple joys of shooting actual real people in the face using Nerf guns this weekend! Both nieces were round, so the older one wanted a good old Nerf war, and I was only happy to oblige. The five-year old wanted to play, so I had to test her by shooting her once. She couldn’t handle it, so there were some tears before she accepted the role of impartial executioner. In other words, she was allowed to shoot me and her sister, but we couldn’t shoot her. Seems fair. She used this to sidle up to me and shoot me in the ribs before executing me with a well-placed headshot. I’m not sure if I’m proud of her, or want to strangle her.

There’s not much else to say this week. Maybe that’s because I’m asleep on my feet, so if you don’t mind I’m going to go and crash in my bed. As always my friends I wish you all the best and would love to know what you’ve been playing this week.

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