A Gaming Diary
Archive for February, 2007
Various Demos (PSP)
Feb 11th
It was a bit of a pain to get them, but I downloaded some demos from the European Playstation site.
MotoGP – Really didn’t get on with this. It looked nice enough and didn’t have any obvious problems, but it just didn’t grab me. No motorcycle game has since Super Hang On, though, so that might just be me. Or it might really be a slightly sludgy, rather dull experience.
Mercury Meltdown – I must never buy this game. It’s good and the demo has a generous selection of levels, but I can see myself being reduced to a boiling puddle of fury by the full game. One level in the demo annoyed me so much I had to skip it, which is never a good sign. It’s got something, though, and I could see myself picking it up in a moment of weakness.
Killzone Liberation – A very, very short demonstration level. Looks nice, plays okay, but has slightly clunky controls, annoyingly powerful enemies, some very dangerous checkpointing and hints that the full game might get very, very difficult. If I saw it for a tenner I might have to buy it, but no more than that. Oh, and whoever decided you should press Start to remove tutorial messages needs to go back to interface design school.
Medal of Honor Heroes – Not what I was expecting at all. Okay, it’s an FPS and, despite having Jump on the Select button, it controls pretty well with the sensitivity ramped up, but I thought it would be a standard single-player Nazi-killing trip through a French village, or something. But, no, it was just a three minute deathmatch against bots. No story or anything at all. Perfectly playable – I’ve played three matches so far and will probably keep the demo on my Memory Stick – but nothing special.
World Tour Soccer 2 – A big surprise. I wasn’t expecting anything and nearly didn’t download the demo. But this is an ace arcade footie game, with a twist. You gain and lose points for everything you do in the game and the idea is to reach points targets, rather than simply win matches. Sometimes that’s all, but in other events there are twists. In one of the demo events all eleven of your players have to have had possession before you can score. In another you have to score within ten seconds of gaining possession. It’s not a sim, but it’s great fun. I really want a full copy of the game now.
Toca Race Driver 3 Challenge – Bloody hell. I wasn’t expecting much, I must admit, but this is brilliant. There are three different challenges. The first is a cone challenge. Within seconds of starting I’d fallen in love. The handling felt perfect, even through the PSP’s infamously dodgy analogue nub. I played it until I got a gold medal, which didn’t take too long, then moved on. The next event, a duel against another car, wasn’t so much fun, mainly because the course layout was a pain. An s-bend and two incredibly tight hairpins, that was all. Once I got a silver I went on to the last event, a No Damage race. To get gold you have to win the race without damaging your car. Hence the name. Great fun and plugged away until I got a gold, which took a very long time. (I’m not very good.) And then I went back and got a gold on the Duel, which seemed a little bit more fun but it’s definitely the runt of the litter. This has now gone from being completely off my radar to being a must-buy. Also: it has instant restarts from the pause menu. Thank you, whoever made that happen.
Def Jam Icon Demo (360)
Feb 10th
Publishers and developers, here’s a tip for you.
When making a demo version of a game include some instructions on how to play. A full tutorial, a guide to the controls, something.
Otherwise you may just find people trying to play your game getting very annoyed.
Still, I do like the bouncing buildings in the background. Boing!
The Wicker Man: Director’s Cut (2006) (DVD)
Feb 9th
The remake of The Wicker Man is as bad as the original is good. The original is one of my favourite films, maybe my very favourite. So, no, I didn’t go into the remake with a very open mind. But I simply didn’t expect it to be as bad as it was. As a remake it was all wrong, with the themes and style of the original film completely destroyed.
However, more than that, just taken by itself as a modern horror/thriller movie it’s awful. It doesn’t make sense. Characters come and go with no reason or explanation. Nicolas Cage spends the entire movie looking as if he’s trying to work out whether or not he’s just soiled himself. Events just… happen, seemingly at random. Scenes just… occur. It’s a complete mess. Something went horribly, horribly wrong here.
It’s genuinely one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen. It’s up there with Romance, Boxing Helena and Batman & Robin.
And it’s probably put people off seeing the original, which just completely criminal.
OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)
Feb 9th
So, I went and spent a huge amount of money on an OutRun class Enzo.
I don’t like it. It doesn’t accelerate and it steers like a cow. Its top speed is meant to be a lot more than the Testarossa I’ve been driving, but I haven’t noticed that.
I still haven’t finished the 15-stage continuous run through either the OutRun 2 or OutRun 2 SP stages.
OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)
Feb 6th
Phew. I spent ages tonight trying to fill in a space on the OutRun 2 scoreboard. I’d not got a high score for the hardest route and the default ‘SEGA 500000′ was annoying me deeply. Somehow, I managed to finish about eight times with scores under 500,000 before finally cracking it. No idea what was going on there.
Also, I managed to break the game at one point by crashing at an odd angle, which resulted in the game showing me several frames of my car jumping to seemingly random points on the track before it reset me a little further on from where I’d crashed.
I didn’t explain that very well, did I?
Viva Pinata (360)
Feb 5th
I’ve just found out about wild cards.
Given that I’ve never seen one they must be really rare, because my wife and I have played the game an awful lot.
Joytech Control Centre 540C
Feb 5th
I got one of these for Christmas and set it up this weekend. It looks nice and it’s lovely to have a remote-controlled switchbox, but it degrades the 360 image quality and won’t pass a stable 480p signal from the Wii. Not good.
Gran Turismo 4 (PS2)
Feb 4th
I’m not sure what possessed me to play this after all these years, but it may have had something to do with the double bill of Cars and Talladega Nights that I watched last night. I decided to clear some Beginner Events, as I’d not played in a long time, so ended up spending all 180,000 credits I’d built up to buy and tune three new cars – a Volvo S60, a Ford F-150 and a Lotus Esprit.
The tuned Volvo – which I bought because it’s the nearest thing to my real car, an S40 – ate up the FF championship without a problem.
The F-150 – which I bought because Ford marketing infected my brain when I was living in Houston – didn’t much like going round corners, but was still fun to drive and won every race I put it in. All three of them. I can’t find any more yet.
The Lotus – which I bought because it was the best MR car in the used car showroom – isn’t so good. It’s not as fast as some of the cars it’s competing against and I can’t afford to tune it any more. Oops.
OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)
Feb 4th
No, I’m not doing any better in the OutRun class car. It’s a lot faster and the game can’t keep up with it. At high speeds the framerate really drops and when things get hairy it’s possible to cross the entire width of the road between frames.
How the game remains so much fun despite this fairly major problem I don’t know.
OutRun 2006 Coast 2 Coast (PSP)
Feb 4th
I may not be able to ride a bike in real life, but I can drive a car. (As long as it’s an automatic – yes, in many ways I am utterly pathetic.) OutRun 2006 isn’t much like driving a real car. That surge of joy, freedom and control you get for about twelve seconds in the average three hour drive through Britain is present a lot more often in OutRun. It’s not there all the time – especially in the PSP version, which is slightly hampered by the analogue nub and a dodgy framerate – but it’s still great, great fun and when the drifting is going right and you make a few turns in a row there’s not a driving game in the world that can touch it.
I’ve still not been able to finish the OutRun 2 15-stage continuous mode, but I’ve done some Heart Attack mode and unlocked an OutRun class car now, so I might be able to do it soon. Maybe.
