Archive for December, 2005

Xbox 360

Odd. PGR3 seems to have an inverse difficulty curve.

I did all the early championships on Easy, but switched to Medium about half-way through, when I realised I seemed to be hitting the Medium targets anyway. So this evening I got to the end of the solo career mode and decided to go back and do the early stuff on Medium. I’m even having trouble with the first few events. I’m not strugling too badly, but I’m definitely having to work hard.

While writing this entry I went to Gotham TV, where you can watch races going online. Well, that’s the idea. What I’m watching seems to be a blooper reel of all the terrible glitches that occured during development. Cars stuttering along half-way inside the track, cars suddenly disappearing and reappearing a hundred yards away, that kind of thing.

Xbox 360

PGR3.

I just missed out by 0.3 of a second on a seven and a half minute Hot Lap event.

What was my reaction?

Well, quite pleased to have a good excuse to do it again, actually.

Nurburgring + F50 = Excellent

Xbox 360

King Kong kompleted!

Ending’s a bit of a downer.

I’m in a quandry now, though. The idea was to play through it and then trade it in at Game. However, getting through the game has unlocked a score attack mode. Which wouldn’t be enough on its own, but combine that with the fact that it’s an absolutely fantastic experience…

I know I’ll want to play through it again. The question, though, is whether I’ll actually get round to it. If so, I should keep it. If not, I should swap it for something I will play. Obvious, really, but trying to decide is difficult.

Hmm, well. I don’t have to decide yet.

Oh, and I got a total of 1,000 gamer points for playing through that, so now my gamer is huge. Hooray for Kong!

Xbox 360

More Kong.

Am now 82% of the way through and bleary-eyed.

Bed time.

Xbox 360

Well, despite not thinking I was going to, I went back to Kong and got back where I was and further still. Some of the visuals are incredibly beautiful and it’s got loads of set pieces, some of which are just some of the best ever. The one from the demo you might have seen is a standout, but there are more, lots more. As I think it’s obligatory to say here, now this a real interactive movie!

Anyway, I got to hard bit, so I decided to play Perfect Dark Zero. (I’ve also been to the toilet, phoned my girlfriend, made a sandwich, browsed the web and watched a bit of TV between posts. I’ve not spent my entire day playing on the 360. Just most of it.) Anyway, I’d played with the controls a bit, so I thought I better test them out in single player before jumping online. Did one level, which was all right. Not the best fun ever, but not bad. Definitely underwhelming. So I jumped online and found a good bunch to play some Dark Ops with. Playing Infection (of course), Onslaught and Sabotage. Onslaught I’ve not played before, but is ace. Sabotage was confusing, because none of us had ever played it. The other team beat us 100-11. Oops. Infection was predictably brilliant. I had a great time being the last human alive and back away as a swarm of skeletons ran towards me. Didn’t last long, but it was a great gaming moment. I’m having a lot of them lately.

Kong, Gotham, Perfect Dark, Mario Kart, Shadow of the Colossus… it’s a good time for gaming right now.

Xbox 360

King Kong today. It’s very good – if just another Xbox game tarted up for the 360 – but I just forgot to save and so have lost a huge chunk of progress.

Everything should autosave. And autosave often.

Good thing it’s fun, otherwise I’d have been even more annoyed with myself.

Still, I think I’ll leave it for a while now.

Xbox 360

One setting the 360 needs but doesn’t have is a “don’t boot game automatically” setting.

I quite often turn on the box wanting to go straight to the dashboard, but it spins up the disc and starts playing. Okay, so it’s not like the old days when you had to get up and eject the disc, you can now just use the guide button, so it’s progress, but it’s not quite there yet.

(Unless there is a way I’ve just not found yet.)