A Gaming Diary
Archive for December, 2005
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Dec 13th
That bastard Nook didn’t have any shovels in stock. I hate him and the hold he has over village life. Tortimer may be the mayor, but we know who holds the real power.
New neighbour today. Frobert has moved in. He’s into power drinks and exercise, it seems. He’s no Walt Jr., more a Bill. Anyway, he chucked me out of his house telling me it wasn’t ready. Well, it was full of cardboard boxes.
Had a quick chat with Patty – who still won’t shut up about bloody fossils – but Monique and Rasher seemed to be missing. They had notices on their doors saying they were out, but I couldn’t find either of them anywhere. Odd.
None of the animals in my town have replied to my letter, but Dotty in the town I visited last night sent me a nice letter. Well, sort of nice. She said I scared her, but that next time we met I’d see the real her… or something along those lines.
It is a very odd game.
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Dec 12th
Tested out the online stuff.
Caveman from ugvh came to visit and the game lagged out and disconnected without saving after about a minute.
Then I went to visit Dinsdale’s town (from rllmukforum.com) and everything was fine, even with a full four people there. I didn’t do much, but I talked to some of his townspeople and generally nosed around. Nook’s was shut, though, which was annoying. He might have had a shovel.
If I can get a decent friends list and Nintendo can someone sort out the crashing (not sure how possible that is – is it the service or the code on the cart?) then the online stuff could really open things out.
Animal Crossing: Wild World
Dec 12th
Well, I used to live in the town of Ikaruga on the Gamecube, now I live in Venture on the DS.
(I wanted to call the town Summerisle, but that’s too long. Grr.)
Tom Nook once again gave me a house and made me do some odd jobs for him. Nothing too taxing.
I’ve met my new neighbours, all three of them. Rasher, a pig who calls me a swine, Monique, a slightly snobby cat and Patty, a friendly, er, cow or something. I forget. Both Rasher and Patty want me to give them fossils, which is annoying, as any fossils I do find will be going to the museum before anywhere else and I haven’t even got a shovel yet, anyway. Nook only had a net and fishing rod in stock. I’ve done a lot of fishing, but they’ve all gone to the museum. I’ve paid 200b for a cup of coffee (must be fair trade stuff) and donated 1b to charity. I’ve designed a couple of constellations – ‘Fisherman’ and ‘Scorpion’. And I made a new design and then spammed it everywhere before deciding it was rubbish and putting my old floor and wallpaper back. I’m stilling wearing it, though.
Before leaving I wrote all my new friends letters and attached apples to them as presents. I mentioned to Rasher that pork and apple sauce is a very tasty meal and that now he had an apple he might like to make himself ready. I bet he’ll claim not to have understood my letter tomorrow.
I need wifi friends, I think.
Need For Speed: Most Wanted
Dec 11th
I can’t decide whether this is good but flawed, yet still fun or whether it’s utter rubbish, yet still fun.
Need For Speed: Most Wanted
Dec 11th
Hmm.
Hmm indeed.
See, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 was a fantastic game and people on forums and reviews have suggested that this was a return to form for the series. So I downloaded the demo and it seemed like great fun, except for having a horrific framerate. But on forums people said the full game didn’t suffer from the same issues and reviews didn’t mention it.
Which just goes to show that people are LIARS, because the framerate is rubbish. It doesn’t fluctuate too much, but it’s very low indeed. Well, if it’s not the framerate there’s something that makes the game look terribly bitty. It just doesn’t look smooth.
But I got used to that after an hour or so. Well, an hour and a half. I even almost got used to it.
The other odd thing is the colour scheme. It’s an autumnal look, giving everything a sepia tinge, which makes shortcuts and obstacles more difficult to spot than they should be. Very odd decision. I mean, it looks nice and fancy, but there’s something to be said for big bright colours, especially as it would help the actual driving.
So, is there anything good about the game at all?
Well, yes. The cut scenes are terrible, but amuse me greatly and are more entertaining than merely competent cut scenes would be. So that’s okay. And it’s structured nicely, with a certain amount of challenges to be done (in any order) before you can take on each boss. Excellently, you can either cruise round the city looking for the challenges or just bring up a quick menu and jump to any one you want. And there’s massive product placement for a brand that doesn’t even exist in this country, which is excellent.
Oh, yes, the driving/racing? It’s the very model of simple arcade handling. Pretty much spot on… except that, at least at this early stage, it lacks any sort of real character. It’s not like Project Gotham or OutRun 2, where the driving has some sort of soul to it, these cars just react like, well, old school video game cars, really. It’s not that the driving’s bad – it’s not – it’s just soulless. (Well, it is an EA game, I suppose.)
I mean it’s good, competent fun. But it hasn’t got my pulse racing yet and the graphical badness, in terms of smoothness and everything, take away some of fun. I’ll give it more time, but on first impressions, it’s looking like this isn’t anywhere near as good as Hot Pursuit 2.
Call Of Duty 2
Dec 11th
Well, I did that last level again and it still refused to believe I’d completed it. And it was still showing the Russian campaign as unplayed.
So I’ve deleted my save game and I’m going to have to start again. I think I can get away with doing the Russian cmapaign on Hardened difficulty, but everything else I’m going to have to do on Veteran.
I think the problem is that you can get to the main menus before you sign in to Live, so it got confused somehow. But it’s still very odd and not a little annoying. At least it’s good.
Call Of Duty 2
Dec 11th
GAH!
What the…?
I thought something was odd when I started playing today and it had reset the y-axis to univerted, but I played through to the end of The Battle of El Alamein. But it didn’t give me the achievement for completing it and then dumped me back to the start of the Russian campaign.
I turned off the console and turned it back on and my save game is completely knackered. It’s showing The Battle of El Alamein as uncompleted and apparently I’ve done none of the Russian campaign. The Russian campaign that took me many, many hours and which I have achievements for, to show I finished it on the hardest difficulty level.
Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid bloody game.
Xbox 360
Dec 11th
Well, played a bit more of Call of Duty 2. Another level done. Had one tricky part, but apart from that was the easiest since the first training mission.
Then I tried out Gauntlet, but it really isn’t much fun in single player. At all.
And finally I rounded the session off with a game of Joust. Didn’t do too badly, but didn’t get near my high score. Oh well.
Call Of Duty 2
Dec 10th
Hooray! Thanks to some good advice from a chap on the rllmuk (no idea, frankly) forum I manged to get past the sticking point and managed to complete the Russian campaign. I’m quite proud of myself, even if it was little more than dogged persistence that got me through.
Done the first level of the first mission in the Brit campaign. It’s always nice to play a game with the word ‘wanker’ in it.
Geometry Wars 2
Dec 10th
So, there I was watching a DVD of The Jacket, which finished, so I reached over, grabbed my controller and leapt straight from there into a game of Geometry Wars 2, which is a nice thing to be able to do.
Didn’t get a new high score, but I probably got my second best score ever, I think. The trouble is, after about 100,000 it just seems to get stupid and there’s no way to survive beyond blind instinct and subconscious control. It just gets too much for the conscious brain, but it’s not easy to just let go and let the dark parts of the mind take over.
The zone has to be somewhere you find yourself in, not somewhere you can go and search out.
Grasshopper.
