Author: GumballsPlaysGames

I wish I liked Mario Strikers: Battle League

Posted on by GumballsPlaysGames

Mario Strikers: Battle League is an incredibly stylish game. Everything from the menus to the special shot animations are oozing with style. Having not played any previous Mario soccer game I imagined I’d be in for a hectic Mario Kart style take on soccer, so I bought the game without giving it much though. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a whole lot of fun with the game since its launch, and I’m not so sure I’ll spend a lot more time with it.

I was disappointed to find that there’s not a whole lot of single player content. You can play quick matches or enter into cup battles, but there’s no story mode, and no progression (besides unlocking a few pieces of equipment that change a character’s stats).

The gameplay itself feels solid. You’ll pass and shoot around the pitch, while avoiding enemy tackles and power ups while strategically deploying your own. You’re rewarded for well timed passes and shots allowing you to score a combos which increase your chance of scoring. If you collect a glowing orb that occasionally appears you’ll have an opportunity to execute a powerful shot that if timed correctly becomes unblockable and counts for two points.

A perfectly timed shot is unblockable

The hyper strike shots are easy enough to pull off against the AI, but I’ve found them almost impossible to pull off online. They can be interrupted by a tackle, so you really need to be wide open to pull one off. This makes sense, otherwise it could make the game too easy if you could consistently get these shots off, and it makes it extra rewarding when you do pull one off (beyond the extra point).

That said, in general my online experience has been miserable. When playing solo I’ve been matched against teams of players who have a huge advantage over my AI controlled teammates. They’ll often constantly tackle everyone repeatedly (you can tackle players whether or not they have the ball) and there have been some matches where I feel like I’ve barely crossed mid field. In general when I’ve played online I either lose in an 8-0 embarrassment or I get the feeling I’m playing against a child who can’t quite grasp the controls and I win without breaking a sweat. There hasn’t been any middle ground, and I haven’t wanted to play online at all anymore.

Without an enjoyable online experience, I’m left with the hollow single player experience which definitely isn’t worth the $60 asking price. Maybe I’m just terrible at the game (seems likely), but I pictured myself having more fun with the game.

I might give the game another shot with some local multiplayer, but otherwise I don’t think I’ll be launching the game again.

It’s been awhile

Posted on by GumballsPlaysGames

Hi, I haven’t done this in quite a long time. I had let my domain lapse for awhile but finally renewed and figured I should write more often. We’ll see how that goes.

It’s been a busy couple of years. I’ve finished school since the last time I’ve checked in here and have been working as a tax accountant. I’ve passed two of the four CPA exams and am working to finish up by the end of the summer (probably another reason I should’ve just let the blog die).

In video gaming news, I was fortunate enough to secure an Xbox Series X shortly after launch and have enjoyed it quite a bit since then. Game Pass continues to be an amazing service that keeps getting better. Honestly, one of my favorite games I’ve played in the last two years is Microsoft Flight Simulator on the Series X. It’s such a beautiful game, and it never gets old flying around gawking at the scenery.

I’ve gotten back into collecting and listening to vinyl records which has been a lot of fun as well. It’s nice to put a record on and listen from start to finish. While I love the access that streaming music allows, I’ve often found that I tend to only listen to a few songs and have gone years without listening to some songs on albums I like. Here are just a few of my favorites from the last year:

I made it out to Pennsylvania to visit family after a year of mostly isolation. My wife and I explored Philadelphia, and I finally attended a Penn State game.

With that, I need to get to sleep. Thank you for stopping by, and I hope to pop in more often.

Battletoads PC Game Pass Xbox One controller fix

Posted on by GumballsPlaysGames

When I tried launching Battletoads on PC game pass it would only let me control it with mouse and keyboard. I tried connecting my Xbox One controller via a wireless adapter, and via USB, but neither would work. However, when I got to the character select screen I found that pressing start on the Xbox controller would add a second player that I could control via the controller.

I figured out the cause of the problem, and wanted to share it here. Apparently the game doesn’t like it if you have a flight stick plugged in (as many probably do if they’ve been playing Flight Simulator 2020). As soon as I unplugged it and launched Battletoads again it recognized the controller input for player one without any issues.

Hope this helps you if you’ve been frustrated like me.

Don’t bother with Truck Driver on consoles

Posted on by GumballsPlaysGames

As someone who loves the Truck Simulator games by SCS (mostly American Truck Simulator) I’ve been curious about Truck Driver on consoles. The game was released last Fall on the Xbox One and PS4 (Switch and Steam releases are coming this year) developed and published by SOEDESCO. I rented it via GameFly just to see what it would be like, and I’m glad I didn’t get suckered into buying it (it goes for $39.99 on Xbox).

Right off the bat the game looks and feels like a budget game. The interface isn’t great, and the menus give the impression that it’s a mobile game. The intro to the game was even worse. You’re greeted with a slow moving text conversation that’s meant to be a tutorial. This all would have been easy to look past if the driving turned out to be good. Spoiler alert, it’s terrible. There’s no weight to the driving at all. It feels very slippery and loose, almost like you’re controlling a camera floating above the road rather than a truck. In American Truck Simulator you can feel the weight of the trucks, and it takes time to get up to speed while hauling a trailer. In Truck Driver hauling a trailer feels no different than driving without one.

One of the things I like about the SCS games is observing the scenery while driving. While the games aren’t one to one representations of the real world, they feel close enough, especially as someone who lives in the Pacific Northwest.

The driving felt so bad right off the bat that I couldn’t bear to drive like I would in real life. I quickly found out there are no penalties for speeding (though I’m not even sure I saw a speed limit sign), driving on the wrong side of the road, or even barreling into other cars (though your truck can sustain damage).

I only managed to play for about twenty minutes before I couldn’t bear it any longer. It’s possible that my impressions of this game are tainted with the countless hours I’ve spent in the SCS games, but I can’t imagine that this game would feel great even as someone’s first truck simulator game. Heck, I’d bet if you’ve played any driving game in the last ten years you’d instantly be put off by how bad the driving feels in this game.

I’ve included a video of my first twenty minutes with Truck Simulator if you want to get an idea of what the experience is like. You’ll notice I drive poorly, but to be honest the game felt so bad I didn’t care to even try to play it as a simulation.

I had to cut the audio out of this, I was listening to a radio station while I streamed and YouTube hit me with about 15 content ID claims and blocked my video. I added a royalty free song from YouTube, but it only covers the first thirty minutes or so. Also the quality isn’t great, it’s very compressed from streaming to Facebook. I’ll try to get a better quality video up shortly.

For reference I’ve included video of me playing American Truck Simulator, a much more enjoyable game. If you only have consoles, then you really don’t have any other choices for a truck driving game, but for $40 I wouldn’t recommend this game even if you were desperate. I probably wouldn’t touch it even if it were under $10, it’s just a bad game. Do yourself a favor and stay far away from it!

Recently watched: “You Should Have Left”

Posted on by GumballsPlaysGames

Last weekend, my wife and I watched the psychological thriller, You Should Have Left. I hadn’t heard about the film at all until I happened across a trailer last week, but it looked interesting and we decided to give it a shot.

The film features Kevin Bacon as a middle-aged man (Theo) with a dark past who is married to a younger Amanda Seyfreid (Susanna). The couple plans a vacation to get away for awhile, and most of the film takes place in a remote vacation rental in Wales. While there the characters are bothered by nightmares as their relationship is tested, and more about Theo’s past is revealed.

While parts of the film are a bit creepy, I wouldn’t classify it as a horror movie. I enjoyed the setting and the story, and I think Bacon, Seyfried, and Avery Essex (who plays the couple’s daughter) all play their characters well. I also found the lighting and photography to be excellent.

Ultimately, my wife and I were left feeling somewhat underwhelmed by the end of the film. It has some great ideas, but something about it felt a little generic, or maybe rushed by the end. I thought the focus on the couple’s relationship was interesting, but explanation for why things are happening felt a little forced.

I think it was worth seeing, however I’d wait for the rental price to drop before giving it a shot. It’s a movie that I wouldn’t normally see in theaters, but felt the $20 rental was worth it just for something new to watch.

Check out The Washington Post’s in-depth look at Animal Crossing’s economy

Posted on by GumballsPlaysGames

The Washington Post recently published an in depth look at Animal Crossing New Horizon’s economy that I wanted to share.

Love the presentation of the article in the Washington Post app

It’s crazy to read about the “get rich quick” schemes and intense trading players are doing to bring in massive amounts of bells. Here I am, forgetting every week to even buy turnips (I don’t want to time travel), and struggling to pay for my second house upgrade. I’ve fallen off from playing regularly pretty quickly, unfortunately. It’s relaxing to jump in every now and then, but I’ve never been any sort of power player. It’s been about a week and a half since I’ve last checked in, and despite setting a reminder to buy turnips this past Sunday I still missed my chance. It’s probably for the best, because even had I bought them I’d forget to sell them before they rot.

Anyway check out the linked article, it’s a good read, even if you’re not a power player. It’s a window into another world.

Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics Review

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When I first heard about Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics for the Nintendo Switch, a forgotten memory flashed into my mind. I recalled browsing the cheap PC games at Wal-Mart or Circuit City and coming home with a disc that featured ‘hundreds’ of games on it. You’d pop in the disc and browse through a directory of games, fooling around with most of them for mere seconds, before finding maybe two or three on the disc that were actually entertaining. In fact, most of them would be shareware, demos of full games that you were encouraged to pay more for.

Without knowing too much about Clubhouse Games upfront, I kind of assumed that there might be only a handful of games worth playing. After spending some time with the game, however, I found that assumption to be wrong. Sure, there are a lot of games that aren’t my cup of tea. I don’t like the ‘toy’ games, such as curling, baseball, and boxing, but the board games make up for the minigames that feel shoveled in.

Clubhouse Games does a really good job of introducing you to the rules and strategies of games you might not be familiar with. I had always thought that backgammon seemed unapproachable, but my wife and I played a game and caught on really quickly. We’ve developed a bit of a rivalry through some of the games, and it’s incredibly easy to switch from game to game for an evening of light fun.

That said, it’s incredibly clear from the promotional material which games support local multiplayer. Luckily the breakdown in EGM’s review makes it easy to see which games support same screen multiplayer.

Here’s a list of the games included in the collection

The menus and overall presentation of the collection are clean and straightforward, which is appreciated. There’s not much going on outside of the games, but there’s just enough to give the collection personality. There are some cheesy intros to the games which offer some background for the games which can get annoying, however they’re easy enough to skip that it never became bothersome.

For $40 Clubhouse Games offers a variety of family fun that’s easy to jump right into. I think it’s a great game to have in the bag for entertaining yourself during a flight (once that becomes a thing again), but it also makes for some great light entertainment while camping. For that reason I’d say that Clubhouse Games is a great addition to just about any Switch library, however it is likely best suited for those looking for easy to pick up family entertainment. I certainly wish I would have had a game like this for long family road trips in the minivan as a kid. Instead, I had:

TIL: You can rent UHD Blu-rays from GameFly

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Did you know you can rent UHD Blu-rays from GameFly now? I didn’t. I recently re-upped my GameFly subscription after a hiatus and was surprised to see the 4K Blu-ray discs available.

UHD Blu-rays are still rather expensive, usually $25-30 each, so it’s nice to have the option to rent one on occasion. The last one I purchased was 1917, which was great, but I’m not huge on rewatching movies, and if I do it’ll probably be via the digital code that came with the disc. I’d much rather rent a Blu-ray to watch a movie in its highest quality rather than buy one. I’ve rented 4K movies through a variety of streaming services and on a variety of services, but the experience has never compared to the crisp, clean picture and high quality sound that the discs offer.

I’m on the $22.95 2-disc plan right now, getting ready to start The Last of Us Part II thanks to GameFly. I usually use one of my two slots to play a game I really want to play, and the other to take a chance on something I definitely wouldn’t buy otherwise (that’s Truck Driver for the Xbox One at the moment). So it might be worth it for me to occasionally use my “I might not like this” rental slot to watch a movie now and then.

GameFly has one disc plans for $15.95 a month, and they eventually allow you to upgrade beyond two disc plans once you’ve been a member for at least two consecutive months. In comparison, Netflix’s DVD.com plans only offer non-4K Blu-rays for $9.99 and $14.99 a month for one and two disc plans respectively. GameFly is of course focused on video games, explaining the higher pricing, but the movie rentals are a nice bonus.

In the process of writing this post I also discovered that RedBox offers some UHD Blu-ray rentals for $2.50 per night, but the availability seems scarce, at least at locations near me.

Finally finished The Last of Us

Posted on by GumballsPlaysGames

I started playing The Last of Us back on the PS3 but it never really hooked me. The Last of Us Remastered was one of the first purchases I made when I first picked up a PS4 Pro, however I again played for an hour or so and fell off. With all of the hype (and controversy) surrounding the release of The Last of Us 2, I decided to dive back in, and I’m glad I did!

Even when I played it on the PS3 I thought the game looked great, but on a PS4 Pro it’s one of the better looking games I’ve played. The environments are incredible, and littered with small things that can spark conversation between the characters. I would wander into a room to find Ellie playing darts which made her character feel more like a real person, and not just a tag a long character. These moments and the detailed environments also improve the pacing of the game. There are many intense moments that will increase your heart rate, so it’s nice to have moments to calm down despite the darkness of the world. The bright lighting and signs of normalcy interspersed throughout the world really distinguish The Last of Us from other post apocalyptic game worlds. Ellie asking Joel about life before the outbreak humanize the experience, it’s not all violence and darkness (though there’s plenty of each for sure).

The variety of environments and encounters make the world of The Last of Us feel more real. It’s not filled with the same textures, which makes the game feel like an actual world rather than an assortment of levels that make for good combat zones. That said, the areas in which combat take place allow for a variety of ways to make it through them. You can try to sneak by without engaging anyone, you can sneak around and shiv people silently, or you can go in guns blazing. Each approach feels great, though at times ammo can be scarce. I played on easy, so the guns blazing approach worked well for me, but there were still times I found myself needing to scrounge around for ammo, and toward the end of the game I found myself worried I might run out. Luckily, I never did which kept the game from getting frustrating.

The story of The Last of Us kept me engaged throughout. I always wanted to see what would happen next, though sometimes I had to force myself to step away to gather my thoughts. There’s a lot to take in, and it can weigh on you emotionally, which is something not a lot of games can do successfully. I feel like the weight of the story is similar to the Life is Strange series, as those are probably the only other games that made me want to step away from the game to unpack my emotions.

In the end, I think I’m going to take a bit of a breather before working through the Left Behind DLC, and ultimately firing up The Last of Us 2. If you haven’t had a chance to play The Last of Us, I highly recommend it, even if you play on easy it’s worth having the experience.

Photos from camping last weekend

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We ventured out to the same area to camp last weekend, however it was much busier so we had to drive a few miles past our preferred camping spots. We were starting to get anxious that we wouldn’t be able to find any at all when we stumbled across this location. It wasn’t perfect, it was pretty close to the road, but I think it worked out okay. There was a nice spot where we set up chairs on the river bank which was incredibly relaxing.

  • Our corgi, Artie