A Gaming Diary
360
Geometry Wars 2
Jan 5th
Bah!
My high score is now the same one I had last year. My heroic score from a few days ago has disappeared completely.
Annoying.
Though it doesn’t actually change my position in the leaderboard based on my friends’ scores.
Perfect Dark Zero
Jan 2nd
Bizarre.
I’ve just completed the game on the easiest difficulty setting.
The story makes absolutely no sense and the levels start getting really good… and then there’s a laughably bad boss level and that’s the end.
Perfect Dark Zero
Jan 2nd
Well, I played a single player level. It’s really not very good. Not on the Agent difficulty level I’m playing on, anyway. It gives me so much health that it’s practically a god mode, but it doesn’t give a very good idea of how to meet each objective, so I tended to run around randomly until it told me I’d completed it. (And that’s with guide arrows on. They just disappeared for no reason now and again.) And then I failed the level because my AI buddy died for no reason. So I did the level again and this time he didn’t, so I got through.
So I jumped online. Mainly Onslaught mode, which is ace. Not the best group of people I’ve ever played with, but some good people in there. I didn’t do too badly either and only killed someone on my team once, when they ran between me and an enemy.
(Oh, and the Xbox Live scoreboards got reset again overnight, so my great new Geometry Wars score has been wiped again.)
Xbox 360
Jan 2nd
Well, Microsoft started 2006 the way they’ll probably go on by screwing us over. In this case, by resetting the Live scoreboards for all the games.
So I just played four of my Live Arcade games to at least get some sort of scores back on there and managed to get my best ever Geometry Wars 2 and Mutant Storm Reloaded scores. Result! (At least I think it’s my best Geometry Wars score, there’s no way to tell. But I’m pretty sure it was under 200,000, which I beat easily in my first game tonight.)
Got my second best ever Robotron score and couldn’t come close to my Joust score, though.
Unfortunately, none of my friends have played any of those games yet, so my friends rankings are bare.
Did a couple of races in NFS:MW while the box was on, too. Well, I won two and then came last in the next one I tried, so I turned it off. I’m petty like that sometimes.
Quake 4 Demo
Dec 30th
Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
Just downloaded this demo for the 360. Now, it seems like it might be a nice straight up blaster, but it’s difficult to tell.
The single player doesn’t seem to allow saving and doesn’t feature check points. Which means that every time you die you have to do back to the beginning of the game… and watch the lengthy, unskippable, deeeply boring cut scene again. I sat through it twice before I just couldn’t stand it any more.
So I tried multiplayer. Jumped straight into a game, which took a while to set up and seemed to be over in seconds, but which was fun enough for a first go. And then the demo refused to connect to any more games and came up with annoying error messages which, helpfully, said “There has been an error” without giving any details.
So I quit out and turned the 360 off. As I said, then, Quake 4 might be decent, but the demo’s bloody rubbish.
Condemned Demo
Dec 29th
Found out online that this was available to download, so I started up the 360 and downloaded it while I watched Cheers.
By the time it had finished, the demo was ready to play. Live Marketplace is great, it really is.
But is Condemned?
Well, it seems rather good, actually. Quite spooky, very dirty and nicely violent. My only concern is that I’m not sure how long it would stay spooky – the effect of strange noises and things moving in the shadows was starting to wear off by the end of the demo, even. Still, I was impressed.
Demo hasn’t persuaded me to spend fifty quid on it, but once it reaches twenty quid I may well pick it up.
Need For Speed: Most Wanted
Dec 28th
Another boss down.
Only got a paltry ten gamer points for defeating her.
Ah well, it’s the winning that counts, not the prize.
Xbox 360
Dec 28th
Well, I download the FIFA 360 demo earlier, so thought I’d give it a go. Very disappointing, in that it doesn’t seem to be as amusing crap as I’d expected. Didn’t give me enough time to work out how good it was before dumping me back to the menu, but it seemed to be somewhere between just about acceptable and sort of all right. Depends on whether it’s possible to get through the CPU defence, which I seemed to be unable to do.
Then I played a couple of games of Geometry Wars 2, but didn’t even get half-way towards my high score. Gah.
Then a couple of games of Mutant Storm Reloaded. The first game was a disaster, but my second game saw me increase my high score, but I died annoyingly close to getting a cool million points. Still, stretched my lead at the top of my Friends leaderboard, so I can’t complain. I am the Mutant Storm king!
Need For Speed: Most Wanted
Dec 27th
Okay.
It really does have a terrible framerate which actually makes it harder to play than it should be.
But despite that it really is a very good game indeed.
When you get into a proper police chase it’s bloody marvellous. Like a slightly more refined but less funny GTA, or something.
Robotron 2084
Dec 17th
This has now appeared on Xbox Live Arcade.
And I am currently the 358th best person in the world at it, which is a good 200 places above Gerplex. Ha!
It gets incredibly difficult after a few waves, more than my brain can handle. Still stunningly playable after all these years. Retro gaming doesn’t have to mean ruined memories and thirty seconds of boredom.
