We mutate our weekly game of Oblivion Express in Starcraft 2 and stare heartbroken and gutted as we say goodbye to Ori once again.
Biohazard Cargo
Patch 3.3 arrived to our never-ending chain of Starcraft 2 co-op to see it become, umm… more never-ending? Never-endinger?
Whatever. Blizzard didn’t exactly strum the right strings with us locking the new co-op commander, the witty Zerg Abathur, behind a preposterous paywall. But there’s still a-lot-and-some to like about the latest content patch. Artanis and Swann tell us.
Welcome to the 'mutated' Oblivion Express. A blacked-out map and... Mechs versus Zombies.
Well. The blacked-out map is a true-to-heart dick move here. You can't see the train alerts and there's no trusting the announcer either. As one explodes into a horde of more zombies, we realise we missed one already.
More zombies disembarking from an exploding train here. Artanis "greets them in kind".
No matter what one does, a bunch of those limping bastards always gets through. The obscured map doesn't help things.
My factories puke Goliaths out straight onto the tracks. We can't afford to let more trains by.
The hard-difficulty trains prove a slight problem for the Goliaths' machine guns. The escorts aren't exactly comforting either...
... as in just a few seconds, I'm down to 3 Goliaths and my Protoss friend has to deploy Solar Storm to stop it.
We don't give up easily. Hierarch of the Daelaam gifts Photon Cannons to our defensive line...
... ungingerly leaving his ramp exposed to attack. I return the favour...
... only to find myself in doo-doo. The third mutator is spawning a bunch of Abominations every now and then...
... apart from the fact that it's not really 'every now and then'.
A third wave of Abominations in just a few seconds. The Protoss, almost miraculously, stand tall.
Swann's badass robots drop from the sky to aid the Protoss' desperate push - it was kindly announced that a train is coming.
A goose-bumpy moment of co-op. As my robots perish, the decimated Protoss refuse to give up. Amazingly, another train goes down with only two to go.
Phoenix raid party pops up over our base. I believe in you, Artanis!
An innocent-looking raid turns into a wave of destruction. The Protoss, no matter how brave, can't do this alone.
I recall my army from the northern railway to fend off the ever-nearing Armageddon.
Yep, thanks to the mutators - a combination of all three rather than one in particular - we lose Oblivion Express on Hard. GG AI but don't think for a second we won't be back! Patch 3.3 is awesome.
Over the Moon
Few video game goodbyes are as tear-jerkingly ecstatic yet movingly dire as Moon Studios’ immaculate platformer’s ending. I finished Ori and the Blind Forest last year and felt worldly enough to experience it again, with rather a critic’s non-indulgence.
Oh how mistaken have I been! The little white magical mouse-weasel-monkey-thing will hit you over the head with Epic Hammer of Emotion no matter how self-possessed you are. You have to play this game and if you have, you have to play it again.
Here’s the unedited (compressed), HUD-less, native 4K gallery following the second half of our Definitive Edition playthrough. Obviously, there be massive spoilers ahead!
We’ll be off a bunch of thousands of miles to (un)known urban pastures so there’s no real telling what alcohol-fuelled surprise lurks about the next WeekEndGame, but we’re already eyeing our long-parked HOTAS. Keep it locked.
