28th June
Hello and welcome back to our regular feature where we write a little bit about some of the games we’ve been playing. This week, Bertie delves deep into his uncle’s enigmatic mansion; Donlan gets into a fight in a tunnel; and Tom O has the kind of gripping football match Liverpool and Milan would be proud of.
What have you been playing?
Catch up with the older editions of this column in our What We’ve Been Playing archive.
Blue Prince, PS5
A bounced off Blue Prince a bit at launch but now I’m fully in. Or rather, we’re fully in, because I’m playing it with my partner. We started it as a kind of ‘you take a turn, I’ll take a turn’ thing, but it’s since become her driving and me playing passenger, so she roams around and I suggest things, which she mostly listens to but sometimes does not. It has not gone unnoticed.
But I love this. I love games that are passenger-able. Supermassive’s Dark Pictures games are a perfect example of it, games you can join in on even if you’re not the one controlling them. Playing them reminds me of being younger and at my friend’s house, who lived down the road; he’d usually drive and I’d watch on, consulting, like a specialist called in to help, or so I liked to think.
I even remember doing similar at Eurogamer founder Rupert Loman’s house, watching over his shoulder, forever imploring him to “hide” while he ran around the online wilds of Ultima Online. It became such a thing that “hide hide hide” stuck as a kind of motto for a while.
Playing passenger feels natural to me. It always has. I wonder sometimes if it’s to do with how I think and how I sometimes struggle to stick with a game early on. My mind is a bouncy place; it can take a while to be accepted there. Having someone with a stickier temperament works in a brilliantly complimentary way. We are the basil to each other’s tomato, or something.
Better yet, we now have Blue Prince evenings, and… It’s about time for the next one now.
-Bertie
Fortnite, Switch 2
The Switch 2 has dropped me right back into Fortnite. The game just about worked on Switch, but on the new console it’s an absolute treat, and I think that Fortnite’s going through one of its better periods, too.
By which I mean I personally like the island. There’s lots of greenery, which I always seem to need in Fortnite, and the areas aren’t too cluttered with detailing and busy-ness. It feels like Fortnite with a bit of open space again.
And although I gather I’m probably largely playing against bots, I still have some memorable moments. I was wandering through a deep mountain tunnel last night (in the game), and I heard someone behind me. I turned just in time for them to open fire, and as I dived for cover, I heard some approaching from the other side of the tunnel too! In all, four people convened on my location from various parts of that tunnel. It was a set-piece, and a brilliant one, but it emerged purely from the systems and a few players. Or bots. Whatever. I’m back!
-Donlan
Rematch, PS5 Pro
I might stop playing and talking about this at some point, but that point isn’t now. I’m still pretty much loving Rematch, Sloclap’s competitive 3/4/5-a-side football game, despite my issues with people not wanting to pass the ball.
It’s the kind of game that has moments. Just last night I was thrown into a 3v3 match. We didn’t play well, and it was 4-1 with a good chunk of the game to go. Things were so doomed that one of the players on my team dropped out (as people do when they feel like there’s no hope), leaving me and another player to battle on. And battle on we did!
The opposition, clearly thinking they had this in the bag, pushed forward and left their goal exposed. We hit them with a quick two goals, almost directly from kick-off each time. They panicked. Surely they couldn’t lose to a team of two.
With 30 seconds to go, I made a diving save and then instantly smashed the ball forward, my teammate taking the ball on the volley directly from the air and striking it into the top corner. Bam! 4-4.
Now, I’d love to say that we clinched a win in the dying seconds, perhaps with the final kick, but alas, we did not. No, they made a neat save and broke, all three of them ahead of our one defender, and there were no mistakes this time. A shot off the back wall followed up by a volley. We lost. But in our hearts we won.
-Tom O
