Mad Max, Bedlam and other things

I completed the main story in Mad Max and I was very pleasantly surprised. I won't spoil it, but I'll just say that I was expecting something a little cheesy but got a classic Mad Max conclusion. Also, in true open world game style, after the story has been finished you get to continue exploring and finish any outstanding things.

The car customisation is very well done in Mad Max. I know I mentioned it before, but I just had to say it again. It has a very pleasing simplicity to it; you can't just slap everything on that's bigger and better, nearly all the components have a time and place on different types of ride.

I strongly recommend Mad Max to any driving enthusiasts who like blood and guts action games as well.

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Since last Thursday I've been playing Skyshine's Bedlam, on and off. My thoughts have been up and down about the game. To be honest I think I had thought it was going to be more of an FTL clone. They share many aspects; they are both designed to have each play through played as a single session of about an hour (2 at most), and both games use dialogue choice style encounters, but that's where the similarities end.

After playing about 10 hours on Bedlam I've decided it's not a good idea to compare it to FTL. Bedlam's art style, setting and sound is fantastic and engrossing. The combat uses an interesting 2 action point, turn-based system, which has a very arcade-like style, with voices overs like announcing headshots and brutal kills. This is really the central aspect to the game, it took me a little while to get my head round it.

The travelling part of the game is less about survival and more about collecting weapons and new crew. What confused me for a while was that there's really nothing to weigh up when considering options during the encounters, the worst that'll happen is another battle. The vast majority of times you either acquire something or nothing. I often found myself saying to myself, "why wouldn't I take this?!", or, "what's the point of not going inside?!", because really, nothing bad ever happened.

Anyway, I works in it's way and when you accept that it's a fast paced, arcade style, post-apocalyptic battle against Lord Viscera, then you can really get engrossed in the challenge.

I'm yet to win. I've come so close a couple of times now! Each time I've felt a little gutted, but equally, I've felt like I learnt something and feel a compulsion to have another go.

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Other things I've been up to:

• I've set my guitar up in my new place. Plan to get some practice in again and maybe start writing some new stuff to play with my mate from my old band.
• I got a painting station all put together. Still haven't really got a proper space to paint at, but soon I should have finally cleared my gaming area and have a semi-permanent space to have it setup in.
• The beer is almost ready to be tried. I'm quite excited, but I need to start working on getting some recipes together for our next batch, as that will be brewed properly and not some pre-made, just-add-water, kit brew.

I know it's been a long post, but I wanted to bring up some topics that I hope to expand on more in the future. I'm hoping to make this blog a bit more diverse. However, it will no doubt still centre around gaming as it's pretty much my main hobby.