Welcome to Dominik’s Little Old Purple Column the 12th of its kind coming to you once again from the shores of Atlantic Canada where men are men and old jokes aren’t worth repeating.
GAMES NEWS
Very interesting article in the Washington Post this week about the new PS Plus service. In terms of whether it is value for money . Now this is of particular interest to me as someone who is trying to catch up with all the great games of the last 10 years, I missed because of my slavish addiction to rising up leagues in FIFA. I want access to as many games as possible for as little money as possible.
On the one hand it IS great value – you need to pay $60 a year (approximately 40 uk pounds) just to play online multiplayer with the PlayStation for PS Plus essential, From there it is another $60 to get access to an extra 700 games in PS Plus Premium. So, access to 700 games for the price of one game.
But this guy Mike Hume argues that while it is value for money in terms of money? Do you have the time to get that value of money?
And that’s the point. First two games game I played with my new PS Plus Premium were God of War and Horizon Zero Dawn. I played the first level or so of God Of War and loved it but went onto Horizon Zero Dawn and was utterly hooked so invested about 50 hours in that. That is about 2 weeks of solid gaming. I didn’t have time to play anything else. Assuming I can spend that much time gaming – i.e., 3-4 hours a day? That means I will get to play 26 games a year.
Still worth it? Yes. But factor in I pay the same money for the same service on Xbox with the same challenges and it is literally HALF the value.
And that only works as long as I have 3-4 hours a day to play. In the last two weeks I have played games for 3 hours because I have started a new job and am moving house. And the horrible irony is that the better I try to make this column, especially the audio version with all the sound effects and whatnot – the more time it takes to describe my games playing and the less time I have to actually play games. And that is before I even factor in trying to play new Indie games on steam.
Hashtag first world white Dad new radio show moving house problems.
(PIC: A sad Scottish Dad with not enough time to play videogames in his hotel room. Yesterday.)
But let me know what you think in the comments – do you actually have the TIME to play all the games on Xbox Ultimate and/or Game Pass. With all the stress and time hoovers of our adult life, job, and kids – do we actually have time to play the games we want to – and what do we do about it?
Oh. Sorry. This is the point in the free version where I tell you that you can only access the comments section if you are a PAID SUBSCRIBER. My apologies. But the irony or ironies is that I can only afford to spend the time playing these games and generating this fairly unique content if I get more paid subscribers. That’s the horrible reality of capitalist life. So if you can give me a few coins from the back of the sofa ONCE A MONTH then it helps me keep going with this.
Get your money out via the magic box below if thou wish
OI DOMINIK WHAT YOU PLAYING AT?
Last week I said I wanted to highlight small games by indie developers in this podcast column, because we had a nationwide internet and cellphone outage in Canada recently that brought the country to a standstill, and it was the result of too much power being in the hands of one company – Rogers, and I want to help the little guy now.
So, before you could say “holy shit that is serendipitous” I got a message from Si Pittman. You know, Si Pittman, the messaging guy.
“Here is a code for a beta test of a game called Arcade Paradise – packed with 90s vibes and nostalgia, with a bonkers storyline. Your father has left you with a laundrette with instructions on how to earn a living, but it sounds too much like hard work, so you go about building up an arcade empire in the back of it instead.”
(PIC: Standard game pic. Nothing else to see. Move along)
So, I managed to squeak in there for an hour before the BETA ran out. Or at least that was my plan.
But we’ll get to that.
It starts with a quite brilliant, animated opening. Like a grunge metal western manga style, you are travelling on a bus through a not very nice part of town, and you are dropped off at King Wish Launderette. Your father, a bit of a business empire type, has told you that you are in charge of it.
(PIC: A moody start. Very Scorcese. I like it!)
Initially all you are doing it picking garbage up, cleaning gum off chairs and plunging a toilet. But the mechanics of this are fun, you have to rotate the plunger until you find the sweet spot and then plunge. Trust me. That is a pretty accurate simulation of what you have to do in real life.
(PIC: If this was GamesMaster Series 7 this would be called Oi, bloke? Plunge me!)
Eventually you get a key to the back office, which happens to have a few oldschool style videogames in there. And that’s when things change. Once you open the room you realise people are more interested in playing the videogames than they are doing their laundry, so you decide to turn this launderette into a luxury arcade, without letting your Dad know. So, it’s really clever. You have to do people’s laundry, clean the toilets, tidy up the place AND build a secret arcade out the back. But it’s even more clever. One way you make the arcade games more popular, so they make more money? Is by achieving goals on them yourself.
(PIC: The back room…)
So, you are literally – filling the machines with washing – sprinting to the back room , playing a bit of a PacMan style game, then sprinting back to put clothes in the dryer (because you get more money the more efficiently you do folks laundry – and it is surprisingly satisfying the first time you get a perfect rating on laundry), then sprinting to the back room to play a Dig Dug variant. It’s all pretty gloriously done.
So yeah, I was going to give it an hour, but I gave it three. Solid. And I never thought I’d be in a race against time for the deadline of an open beta of an indie game on Steam about trying to turn a laundrette into an arcade while plunging toilets. But here we are.
(PIC. How I spent three glorious hours last Sunday.)
Now I don’t know if it will get tedious after a while, but I got to say if the beta wasn’t closed? It would be the first game I’d fire up after work. It’s original, it’s got that elusive comedy wit and cool thing I was talking about by the bucketload. So well done Nosebleed Interactive and Wired Productions cos I think you are onto something here and thank you thank you thank you Si Pittman for bringing this to my attention.
This is DEFINITELY the way I want to go with this column podcast, so if you ARE an indie developer? Or you KNOW an indie developer? OR you just have a new indie game on steam or mobile or whatever that you think is interesting – doesn’t even have to be a brilliant game, just something of interest? Let me know. And spread the word.
Ok that’s it for the free version. Another load of content TWICE AS LONG AS THIS in the paid version. Especially in the audio podcast version. Please subscribe to that if you can to support what I’m trying to do here. It is literally the price of buying me a shitty fast food coffee every week.
Oh - or at the very least share it with people who somehow still manage to have spare money in this crazy world using THIS button:
Until next week I am Dominik Diamond saying keep it little, keep it old keep it purple.
Dominik's Little Old Purple Column #12 FREE