A Gaming Diary
360
Word Soup Demo (360)
Nov 22nd
A bit like Bookworm.
Seems all right.
Might spend 400 points on it, because I think the wife would get good value from it.
Weapon of Choice Demo (360)
Nov 22nd
A highly playable Contra-style shooter with what must be intentionally vile graphics. I mean, really. It looks like someone ate every side-scrolling platform shooter ever made and then vomited them up over some Jackson Pollock paintings. Assuming Jackson Pollock had painted in neon.
I’m tempted to punt 400 points on it, though, because it is good fun.
In The Pit Demo (360)
Nov 22nd
One of those rare games with no graphics. You play a blind monster that lives in the dark, so have to hunt by sound. A nice (if not original) idea, which works well. No way on earth I’m paying 400 points for it, though. Two hundred would be highly unlikely to make me buy it. A hundred points and I’d almost definitely give it a go, though.
A Kingdom for Keflings Demo (360)
Nov 22nd
Light, easy village building game. The sort of thing I’ll like and the wife will love. A definite pay day purchase for 800 points. Wouldn’t pay any more for it, I don’t think.
Fallout 3 (360)
Nov 17th
Had a huge session of this on Sunday. As soon as I finished playing I tried to work out how the hours had been filled and couldn’t.
Okay, so I obtained the Declaration of Independence. I went to Arlington Library and downloaded some information. And I… er… spent a long, long time wandering around Rivet City, talking to everybody. Oh, and I went back to home in Tenpenny Tower. And found a random cavern full of raiders, who I slaughtered.
That sort of thing.
I also broke the illusion of the game completely at one point. I wanted to open the medicine cabinet in the clinic in Rivet City. I tried to pickpocket the doctor, but he caught me, took his key back and then, um, acted as if nothing had happened. So I got out my shotgun and shot him in the back of the head. Blood everywhere. But he wasn’t dead, just unconscious, and I couldn’t search his body. Ten seconds later he got up, dusted himself down and acted as if nothing had happened, welcoming me to the clinic.
Oh. Oh well.
I thought maybe there’d be more consequences. And I’d love it if it used the Morrowind system for killing NPCs, rather than using Oblivion’s unkillable NPCs. (In Morrowind you could kill anyone – if you had the skills to do so. If you killed an NPC essential to the main quest a message would appear letting you know, so you could reload your last save game. Much better than immersion-breaking immortal characters, I reckon.)
Not that any of that hurts the game in any significant way, but I always thought Fallout was about choices and consequences – it does hurt a little to have some of those choices taken away.
Fallout 3 (360)
Nov 14th
A lengthy session last night. Although it felt like one amazing adventure at the time, in my memory it’s become somewhat disjointed.
Finally found Moira in a town of ghouls called Underworld and presented her with my mole rat findings. Got myself a a new companion, a ghoul named Charon. He’s very useful to have around and he seems to get on okay with Dogmeat. Had to lose some more karma to get him into my party, but, hey, after nuking an entire town everything else I do seems like kids stuff.
I’ve made the radio news now and even had some bounty hunters come after me. They were quickly dispatched and some decent kit on them. More, please!
Found some slavers, but a misunderstanding involving a land mine meant they attacked us and we killed them all before we got a chance to talk to them. Ah well. I may be evil, but I don’t think I’m evil enough to help out slavers.
I also wandered into a fight between some super mutants and Talon Company mercenaries. Both sides decided to try and kill us. Both sides died.
I’m getting to know how to find my way around DC now, sort of. I’ve walked down the tracks between Museum station and, er, the station that’s one stop down the tracks from there loads of times now. It’s atmospheric and, now I’ve cleaned it out, it’s safe, too.
(NOTE: I’m not using fast travel in this game yet. In Oblivion I found it to be something of a crutch and I think it diminished the atmosphere of the game. In Oblivion is was almost essential due to how many problems the game had with its streaming, but the engine’s a million times better in Fallout, so that’s not an issue.)
I’m level seven now, I believe. Been taking the small guns perk for the last few levels. I hope it’s useful.
Left 4 Dead Demo (360)
Nov 12th
Puts you in a zombie film. A modern zombie film with running zombies, but a zombie film nonetheless.
The single player mode doesn’t seem to be up to much, but it’s designed to be an online title. I had one go online with some random people. I was pretty rubbish at actually hitting anything I tried to shoot at, but I rescued a dead teammate and saved someone else. And we won in the end, which was nice.
Nobody shot the car.
It’s all very exciting, mainly because that while the maps stay static, the zombies are placed differently every time.
Fallout 3 (360)
Nov 12th
Spent last night completely lost in Washington DC. I got stuck on some very hard mutants trying to find my way into the middle of town, so went back and tried to find another way through. All the roads seem to be blocked by collapsed buildings so I’m now miles from where I need to be, with no obvious way to get to where I need to be going. I may have to trek back to the Tepid sewers and go the way I first intending to go.
Still, it’s always fun, even when lost.
Fallout 3 (360)
Nov 11th
Got myself a canine companion last night. It’s the only part of the game I’ve gone looking for spoilers about, after finding out about the dog from an unspoilered comment in a forum thread. (Mind you, it seems that the dog was a big part of the prerelease information the developers released, so I can see why its mention wasn’t deemed spoiler-worthy. Where do you draw the line?)
After getting the dog I headed back to DC to find the sewers I needed to go down to test out my stick of mole rat repellent. I got enough for the main objectives easily enough, but haven’t found enough to get the optional bonus. Annoyingly, I’ve found several mole rat corpses lying around in the sewers. I seem to have exited the sewers now and am in the subway system, which is populated by raiders. I hope there’s a place with more mole rats in down there, otherwise I’m going to have to return to the surface and wander the wastes around Megaton hoping that some will come and find me.
As for the dog, I’m not sure how useful he is. He won’t jump up or down, so some routes I could otherwise take through the city are blocked off to me. He’s good at showing me where bad guys are and does some damage to them, but I’m not sure whether or not he’s hindering my sneaking.
Far Cry 2 (360)
Nov 10th
There are games that have got better reviews while I was away on holiday, but none of them seemed like they’d fit me so well. Satisfying gunplay in an open world? Sounds very much like my kind of thing. And, luckily, I was right. Every gun fight is fun and the world is lovely. I’ve only done one story mission since the tutorial ended – everything else has been exploration, opening safe houses and doing a couple of missions for the gun seller.
The only really annoyance is that sometimes the game doesn’t seem to spawn the correct number of enemies by safe houses, meaning you can get to them, kill everyone, but still not unlock them.
And the lack of saving opportunities means that you can’t just have a quick blast – and sometimes dying means losing a lot of progress.
But, you know, it’s nice to have a game where dying has real consequences for once. Also, very little of the repetition you may have to do is annoying. The fights are always different and it’s only really redoing the danger-free diamond pickups that grates. An option to save after each of those would have been very welcome indeed.
