A Gaming Diary
360
Call of Juarez (360)
Jan 27th
I’m on the fence with this right now. I’m really not if I like it or not. Shooting people if fun – when you can see the enemies. Sneaking is fun – when you don’t get seen seemingly at random. Moving around is acceptable – except when you fall down a tiny gap and die. It looks kind of okay – except that everything’s too dark and it’s all the same colour. (There’s a brightness setting, but that just washes everything out.)
I don’t know. When it’s good, it’s good, but far, far, far too much of my time is spent moving the crosshair around the screen waiting for it to go red, simply so I can find out where the enemies are. They’re too small and blend in far too much the surrounding scenery. It’s very, very annoying indeed and I think it’s going to kill the game for me. It may have already, actually – I’m not at all sure that I’ll ever go back to this game.
It’s such a shame, as I love the setting and I’ve been really trying to like it. I guess it’s just a half-decent PC game that’s been thoughtlessly ported across to 360. (The unreadably small text at the start of levels is more evidence of this.)
Burnout 3 (360)
Jan 27th
Compact Grand Prix done, I’ve worked my way through Muscle class and now I’m in the Coupé class. And then a few Crash events to polish off the session. Dessert, I guess. I’ve said it before, but it needs saying again – this game is so much better when you know what you’re getting beforehand. The racing is tight and exciting, takedowns are always satisfying and Crash mode is compulsive, despite being slightly more science than art.
The Club Demo (360)
Jan 27th
Tried the mode I didn’t try when I first played the demo. I can’t remember what it was called, but you’ve got to do laps of a course, trying to earn as many points as possible along the way. Interesting idea and well-executed. Certainly raised my interest in the game another notch. I’m definitely interested now, if I ever see it cheap enough.
Turning Point: Fall of Liberty Demo (360)
Jan 27th
An FPS based in an alternate 1953, where the Nazis are still around and have just launched an attack on America. Nice chunky graphics, lots of things wooshing by, slightly dodgy controls and, of course, Nazis to shoot in the face. I rather liked it, though I seem to be the only person on the Internet not to hate it.
I’m very tolerant of games where you can actually see what you’re doing.
Undertow (360)
Jan 27th
I can’t imagine why anyone would pay for this; I’m not really satisfied with it and I got it free.
It isn’t as bad as I thought it was when I played the demo, I’ll give it that, and maybe the fun lies in the multi-player mode, but in single player it’s repetitive and seemingly random.
Burnout 3 (360)
Jan 20th
This game really, really is a lot better when it’s not played under a crushing weight of disappointment.
I tried to force myself to do some racing today, but caught up in Crash mode again. I’m trying to get Golds on all of them and it’s great fun, even with the multipliers. Far more of a puzzle game than Burnout 2′s Crash mode. I’d love the best of both worlds, some game with hundreds of Crash junctions, high score tables in the right place and a mix of multiplier and multiplier-free levels.
Burnout 3 (360)
Jan 19th
The worst great game of all time, definitely. It’s got the worst interface of all time and I still can’t figure out how they got it so wrong. The difficulty curve is strange and burning lap events are much harder than anything else in the game. However, the actual game part of the game is great. The graphics have dated a little, but the fun hasn’t. It’s also a lot more palatable now than it was on release simply because all the flaws are known and don’t keep coming as horrible surprises. Well worth a download.
Doom (360)
Jan 19th
Decided to see if I could get the Nightmare achievement, which you get for completing any level on Nightmare difficulty. This Ultimate Doom, which added a shortcut on the very first level, so it wasn’t very difficult.
Boogie Bunnies Demo (360)
Jan 19th
It’s a colour-matching game, but the red and orange bunnies look too similar to each other.
Apart from that, it seems fun enough and a definite 400-point buy and a definite 800-point miss.
Turok Demo (360)
Jan 15th
Not awful. Well, okay, it starts off utterly awful, when you’re in the caves, but once outside it improves significantly, from “destroy with hammers” to “play if it was free” – which means it’s about a billion times better than the last Turok game.
