A Gaming Diary
360
Geometry Wars 2
Mar 2nd
First time in ages.
First game, 219,000. Not bad, not bad at all.
Then 95,000. Oh.
Then 216,000. Okay.
Then 115,000. Rubbish, again.
Ridge Racer 6
Mar 2nd
God, there’s a lot to it.
Had a good hour or more of fun, fun, fun and then checked how much was left of the basic route… I’ve hardly scratched the service.
Far be it from me to complain about a game having too much content, but it is a little dispiriting at times.
Crystal Quest
Mar 1st
Oh dear.
Decided that as I hadn’t played anything but Crossin’ all day (and I was a perfect gentleman to that kitten, by the way) that I’d have a quick go of Crystal Quest. And I mean quick. My average game lasts around thirty seconds. However, I just had far too many quick goes. Bother.
Still, new high score of 7,215,000, which makes me the 2,949th best player in the world. Out of, um… well, I don’t know.
Zuma
Feb 27th
Thought I’d have a quick go before playing Ridge. Quick go lasted 53 minutes. And I’m still bottom of my friends leaderboard. Gah.
Xbox 360
Feb 26th
Played more Ridge Racer – I didn’t bugger it up as much as earlier – and then went to download some stuff on Live.
Downloaded all the eighteen unlock keys for extra cars in Ridger Racer 6. Very odd. The cars are on the disc already, but you have to go online and unlock them one by one by one by one. It’s quite a long process and the only point seems to be to annoy people who aren’t online. Mind you, anyone who’s bought a 360 and doesn’t have it online needs their head looking at.
Then I downloaded the Xtreme difficulty level for Crystal Quest. I shouldn’t have done. It cost 100 points. It’ll only encourage more developers to cut bits out of their games to charge for later. Anyway, it transforms the game. It… well, it makes it really hard. Obviously. Hence the name. Basicaly it cuts out all the boring stuff and turbo charges it. I’ve ony got off level one once so far, but that gave me my best score ever by about a million points.
Ridge Racer 6
Feb 26th
Finally tried it out. Jumped into World Xplorer mode.
Did eight races.
Four took me one try, three two tries and one five tries.
And everyone else on the Internet seems to be saying they won every race first time without any hint of trouble.
Oh dear.
It’s great, though. In fact, because I’m actually having to try to win, I’m probably enjoying it more than most other people do.
Marble Blast Ultra
Feb 26th
I thought Marble Blast would be a good game to play for a few minutes before going out.
I was wrong.
I had to leave a level uncompleted, which is going to annoy me all day.
Crystal Quest
Feb 25th
A quick game on the hardest difficulty setting. Nice and relaxing after Marble Blast.
And – hooray! – my gamer score just passed the 2,000 point mark. Just got 25 points for getting the Immortal Achievement, which is awarded for getting 1,000,000 points without losing a life.
Marble Blast Ultra
Feb 25th
Playing through Advanced Levels has led me to invent two laws.
Allaway’s First Law Of Gaming: At sufficiently advanced levels of challenge, skill becomes indistinguishable from luck.
Allaway’s Sceond Law Of Gaming: If it isn’t clear whether something’s luck or skill, then it’s either luck or cheating.
Joust
Feb 24th
A couple of days ago I said – “the in-game scoreboard says I got 35,800, but the Live leaderboard says 37,750″ – when I meant the Live leaderboard says “35,750″. Otherwise my claim of a 50 point difference doesn’t make much sense.
I just switched it on to make sure. I had a couple of games and got a brand new personal best. Hoo-rah! Same odd problem, though. According to the in-game score board I got 39,050. According to the Xbox Live leaderboard I got a nice round 39,000.
Odd. Very odd.
