A Gaming Diary
360
Watchmen: The End Is Nigh Demo (360)
Mar 6th
The problem is not that’s it’s wrong – though having Rorschach diary entries telling me about combos and throws is very, very wrong – but that it’s rubbish. Wrong I can deal with, even enjoy. Rubbish I can’t. It’s a repetitive, dull beat-em-up with no real redeeming features. You get half an hour to play in the demo; I lasted ten minutes before switching it off. Nice lighting, though.
And I must say, if rubbish licensed games have to exist, having them as relatively cheap download games is a lot better than charging full price for them on disc.
Mirror’s Edge (360)
Mar 5th
I think I’m going to send this back to Lovefilm uncompleted. I spent about fifteen minutes last night on one section. I had to do routine stuff (including disarming/killing/avoiding a couple of enemies) to get to a tricky jump which I was finding impossible to get right. I don’t know if I have the patience to continue with it, what with all the other games fighting for me time right now.
Mirror’s Edge (360)
Feb 18th
Almost managed to get through two chapters, but Battlestar Galactica interrupted me. When it’s good, Mirror’s Edge is very, very good indeed, but every now and again I get stuck, the free-flowing gameplay grinds to a halt and I get very frustrated indeed – often assuming an impossible jump is one I have to make.
Street Fighter II’ Hyper Fighting (360)
Feb 17th
In preparation for Street Fighter IV, I’ve just been practicing Ryu’s standard moves in Street Fighter II’ Hyper Fighting using the 360′s normal pad. The d-pad is useless, so I’ve been trying the analogue stick. When facing right, I can do the hurricane kick, fireball and dragon punch pretty much all the time. But when I’m on the left I can do the fireball almost every time, the hurricane kick about half the time and the dragon punch only comes out about one time in five. Strange. And not really good enough, unless Street Fighter IV is somehow coded better for the standard pad.
I’d love to have a Street Fighter game to practice with on the PS3, to see if that pad’s any better, but I haven’t got one. D’oh.
Mirror’s Edge (360)
Feb 16th
Rental arrived from Lovefilm. Spent an hour or so with it and pretty much fell in love. I did the training, the prologue, then played through Chapter One a couple of times, then did the first time trial. (I didn’t do very well.)
It looks lovely and feels solid and correct. When you get it right and are running and jumping without pause, it’s exhilarating. When you fail, you want to try again.
If it doesn’t get too hard later on, this could be special.
Far Cry 2 (360)
Feb 8th
With Call of Duty 4 down, I picked this up again and spent half an hour or so getting used to the game again. Found some diamonds, unlocked a couple of safe houses, did a mission for the guy in the gun shop.
Not without irritations – saving anywhere and fast travel options would be lovely – but the gun play is excellent, which is the important thing, I feel.
Call of Duty 4 (360)
Feb 8th
Completed!
Spent two or three hours this morning polishing off the single player campaign. Good stuff, when you remember that you’ve got to keep pushing ahead.
I’m not sure I’ll ever want to play it again, though, and I never play online any more, so this may be trade fodder now.
Assassin’s Creed (360)
Feb 8th
Completed! Yeah!
Very good game indeed, spoiled somewhat by a terrible last hour or two. Really, it’s awful. Forced fight after forced fight, with no opportunity to do any of the cool stuff you’ve spent the whole game learning.
And the story doesn’t actually end. Or, indeed, stop. You’re just left hanging.
Good game, terrible ending.
Halo Wars Demo (360)
Feb 8th
I think I like this quite a lot. I’m not entirely sure, though. There don’t seem to be many different units and there’s no way to manually make mixed groups of units that you can easily access. (When playing Dawn of War yesterday I was struck by how much I group units with Ctrl+1, Ctrl+2, etc.)
Still, it works well with the controller, the campaign seems interesting and I had a fun Skirmish against Normal (i.e. hopelessly easy) AI and it’s just plain fun.
A possible pay day purchase. More likely than Killzone 2 right now, anyway.
Assassin’s Creed (360)
Feb 1st
I decided it was time to go back and finish games I nearly finished, but then stopped playing. First up, Assassin’s Creed. I was throughly enjoying it… then stopped playing for no reason. Took me a while to get used to the controls again – and I think I messed up one or more Achievements by doing an assassination too early, before I’d done all six of the pre-assassin missions – but I’m very much enjoying it. Got a couple of Achievements in Damascus, then went on to Acre. I’ve got to do an assassination there, then I think I’ve only got the last mission left after that. Should finish the game in the next few days if I keep playing.
