Video games I’ve enjoyed over the years: Part 8
Hello and welcome to another edition in this series of Video Games I’ve Enjoyed over the years. For those who haven’t seen this before, this is NOT a comprehensive review of the best games of all time or anything like that. More like this is just games I’ve played and liked in my 30 something years of playing video games. Until the last couple of editions it’s been a look back with what I thought of the games then vs now but because we’re getting into the very modern era now it’s just what I think now vs now essentially. Don’t worry I’ll make it work.. Lets get in to the list and see what’s next.
29. FORZA MOTORSPORT 6
Supposedly the biggest Forza to date. This game came just in time for the Forza series. Horizon had run it’s course and Forza 5 was according to the community the worst Forza in the series. But when the trailer for Forza 6 was released the community did sit up and take notice.
So 450 cars ON LAUNCH which is the key phrase here because more would be added on various DLC add ons over the next year or so and there was still at this time the association with top gear which is how we got the Top Gear test track in Forza 4, 5 and 6 and that top gear bowling event where you drive a given car round the track and knock down skittles that have been placed along the route.
A huge improvement was the online multiplayer. Because there was an improvement in the game engine and what it was capable of handling the multiplayer lobbies could handle anything upto 24 cars for any kind of class you can imagine. Whether it be little city cars or the awesome hypercars or racing cars or even historic sports and single seaters and everything in between (No I don’t work for Turn 10 studios but if they have a job going.. call me)
Other improvements included the obvious improved graphics and as you can see from the photo mode shots above and below we were finally getting a taste of what the new system was capable of.
The biggest changes however was the addition of 2 major Forza firsts.
The first was wet weather. This to me is no coincidence given that project cars had not long come out and had wowed gamers with the idea of rain affecting a race. Here however the weather was not dynamic and you only had a few tracks that could be run in the wet and once you mastered where the puddles were and yes there were puddles and yes they did make a difference. Once you mastered where they were you could easily navigate your way around safely. But one thing I have to say about this. The way Forza did have Project Cars beaten on this was the rain didn’t make your game lag and send your car into the tarmac and bury itself into the ground 25 minutes into a 30 minute race when you are in a hard fought 2nd place. But I digress.
The other one is the addition of night time driving which given Forza has Le Mans, Abu Dhabi, Sebring and Daytona (road and oval tracks) night time racing had to come into it eventually. Oh and not to mention Project Cars had dynamic lighting and time of day as well. I’m not saying that Forza needed to make these changes but they do feel like they were needed to make the series progress. This game felt great at the time but now the more I look back on it (and it wasn’t that long ago) the more it feels like an experiment with what was to come.
Another thing Forza finally got the hang of by Forza 6 that was well implemented was the dynamic barrier.. OK I need to explain this better.
If you look at the screenshot above you’ll see a NASCAR race in Forza 6 at Watkins Glen raceway. Look behind the 22 car however and you see tyres being scattered everywhere. This is because said car in the picture has hit the tyre wall and sent tyres flying everywhere. So the barrier has reacted with the car hitting it rather than becoming something the car simply bounces off. This has always been an annoying thing about Forza that they couldn’t do what Race Driver Grid did back in 2007. Forza 6 started to improve things with tyre walls that came apart. Again i’m aware that this seems like a minor thing but it’s still an important thing in getting the experience right. Interestingly Project Cars didn’t have this
So Forza 6. Good at the time but looking back it really feels now like a giant experiment readying themselves to go proper 4K and next gen in a couple of years time (more on that effort another time.
30 LAYERS OF FEAR
So here is something completely different. Poland’s number one horror game.
It’s tricky to talk about this game without giving away too many spoilers but I’m going to try this one anyway.
I never really thought of myself as a horror game or even a horror movie fan. So why the heck am I playing this? and why did I even enjoy it so much and not even sarcastically so. Well besides being the most terrifying thing I’ve ever played where there is literally a scare at pretty much every turn, Layers Of Fear also tells a fascinating and thought provoking story of an artist being slowly driven insane by a wife that wants to kill him from (we think) beyond the grave. This sounds like my future now I think of it.
What you see above is 10 random scary moments from the game. But to be honest as good as they are and the kids bedroom sequence is one of the best in the game as it’s so well done. I don’t think of these as the scariest moments in the game. These are moments when you expect something scary to happen. It’s the other scares and jumpy moments in the game that really get you in this. I can’t deny how well done these are but it’s moments like doors exploding open and paintings flying off walls that really make this game so edgy. I’ve seen a few games like this since where these moments are very over sold and where jump scares aren’t necessarily a thing. But Layers Of Fear uses little jump scare moments like with the doors exploding open and things flying off walls so well that you are genuinely left on edge throughout the whole game.
From this I’m making it sound like almost the perfect game here. But it isn’t. It’s easy to miss pieces of story if you don’t search literally every single cabinet for that letter or piece of paper that tells you a little bit more about the story. I was very thorough when playing the game. I looked in literally every cabinet and drawer only too often seeing the same things over and over again. To the point where it took me 12 hours total game play time to finish. A game like this shouldn’t ideally be like that but this one was. But as thorough as I was I still know I missed some small items and drawings watching things back on YouTube. But I did find the Immaculately preserved photograph of his late wife which is very tricky to find.
And then there’s the gameplay itself. The movements are very clunky, the mechanism and controls to open doors and drawers is very tricky with a controller which tells me that the game was designed for a mouse and keyboard. The demo version did give too much away in the game and when the game continued after the point at which the demo ended there were still some segments that we had seen before in the demo still to be done which suggests the ordering of events couldn’t even be agreed upon by the developers. There’s a few graphic glitches in there too which given the game was made on the Unity engine (groan) I would actually expect and the fact it has a 5.1 surround sound effect is actually a pleasant surprise.
For all it’s faults however it’s still a good game and if you can then I urge you to play through it.. Just do it in the style of a true gamer and look in and at literally everything.
So that’s got us up to number 30 and that’s a good place to call time on this edition. Only a couple more to go now. Still ahead are games that I’m still playing. We revisit an old favourite a game that made me cry and the story of my avatar picture.
All that and a bit more coming next but for now thank you for reading (only a short one this time) there will be more from me very soon.