Archive for January, 2008

Call of Juarez (360)

There’s quite a lot wrong with this game, based on ninety minutes or so. The font’s way too small on loading screens. The in-game instructions are pretty useless. The volume balance between gunfire and voices is way off. Far too often you’re looking around trying to spot a three-pixel high bad guy the same colour as the building he’s standing on.

However, you get to be a preacher in the Old West, gunning people down with revolvers and shotguns and setting fire to saloons. So it’s good.

Omega Five (360)

I broke the million barrier today. Excellent.

I’m starting to think about maybe using Continues. It’s against my principles, but it would be nice to get through the game to unlock the levels in Challenge Mode.

Tron Demo (360)

This week’s other Xbox Live Arcade game.

After a minute or so of trying to play it I switched off the 360, turned to my wife and said, “Let us never talk of this again.”

Omega Five (360)

This is great. Had a few goes before unlocking it, because I wasn’t sure about it, but I finally took the plunge and I’m glad I did. It’s fantastic stuff, now I understand exactly whaut the buttons and attacks actually do. (At least for the first character, Ruby. Couldn’t work out how the other guy worked in the brief go I had with him.)

I was worried from screenshots that your character would just be too large and make the game impossible to play, but that’s not the case.

My one complaint is that you can’t turn off the continues. I never use them and I’d like to get rid of the ten seconds of waiting at the end of a game.

Oh, and I don’t really like the way that there are attacks that are only avoidable by luck or fore-knowledge. Every now and again a huge enemy appears on the screen and if you happen to be in the wrong place you lose health with no chance to get out of the way. It’s not a major problems, given that shooters like this are very much about learning the levels, but it seems slightly unfair the first time you get somewhere and get hit without a chance to react.

Metal Slug 3 Demo (360)

Metal Slug 3, only with a horrible filter effect and annoying controls that are far too twitchy. I wasn’t going to buy it, having a perfectly good version on the PSP, but I was surprised by the 360 version.

I didn’t think the filter would bother me at all and was sitting around thinking “Tch! Those Internet nerds are way too fussy!”, but changed my mind when playing the game. It does look really quite awful.

The analogue stick seemed pretty awful for the game, too, constantly sending me stepping in directions I didn’t want to go – and there was no way I was going to try using the d-pad.

Overall: fail.