Gaming During Lockdown

  The Xbox Live Arcade was full to the brim with high quality independent titles that were made on a miniscule budget. Some of my personal favourites were State of Decay, Far Cry: Blood Dragon and Plants vs Zombies, games that perhaps lacked polish but had a satisfying core gameplay loop and some originality. One of the more famous XBLA games though was Castle Crashers, a hack and slash made by The Behemoth developers previously known for their work on Newgrounds. Now I played the demo of Castle Crashers a lot back in the day but never actually got round to purchasing the game myself, only briefly playing a few chapters whilst round at a cousin’s house. So when notified that a remastered version was available on the PlayStation store, I decided to pick the game up along with two friends and finally complete a game I last played over a decade ago. Castle Crashers is a game best experienced with at least one buddy. Playing through the game in singleplayer is fine but the game thrives...

Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic is a classic and considered by many to be one of the greatest RPGs of all time and even though I have only completed one playthrough of the game I completely understand why. The story and characters are brilliant and I recommend giving the game a chance if you've never played it. The sequel however comes up very little and my research into it suggests that a rushed development left the game feeling unchanged. There are those though who seem to revere the sequel quite highly, focusing on the more morally grey tone and improvements to combat. Knowing little about the sequel then I decided to purchase a copy from Ebay and give the game a shot. Full disclosure, I’m playing KOTOR II on my Xbox One using an OG Xbox copy for convenience sake. I know it's the inferior version and is frankly unfinished but I wanted to have the experience be as compatible as possible to how I played the first game which I also played on Xbox.  KOTOR 2’s story picks ...