A Gaming Diary
Archive for October, 2007
The Orange Box (360)
Oct 19th
Best value game disc ever? Well, that probably depends on how good Team Fortress is. I’ve not tried it yet. The only thing I’ve played so far is Portal, which I started and finished last night. It’s short, but one of the sweetest gaming treats I’ve ever had. It’s full of great puzzles, it introduces you so gently that you never get overwhelmed and it’s got one of the best scripts ever. As my wife said, “I didn’t expect a stupid boy game to be so funny.”
It may be short, but it’s probably worth the price of the disc on its own. We will all remember the first time we played Portal and those of us who have just played through it have had one of the defining gaming experiences of our lives.
It’s not too early to call it a classic.
Oh! And the possibilities…
Rendition (Movie)
Oct 18th
There’s a good movie here. It’s probably about seventy-five minutes long. Unfortunately, this cut is two hours long and moves a pace that would have a snail beeping its horn and trying to overtake in frustration.
Shots go on for centuries, scenes seem endless. It’s well-shot and it’s about an important subject, but it just goes on and on and on and…
There are good things – there’s a nice little wrinkle near the end and Alan Arkin’s good value – but everything just takes so long.
I’m not sure what the reason is for the languid pace. Maybe the filmamkers involved thought that slow equals atmospheric, which it really doesn’t. Maybe it’s meant to reflect the fact that this isn’t a one-off urgent special event, but a matter of daily routine. Maybe the studio just demanded a two hour film. Whatever the reason, it breaks the movie. It’s a real shame, because there’s a decent film about an important subject in there somewhere.
I’m glad I went to a free preview screening, though, because at least I can now use my knowledge wisely and warn as many people as possible off the film.
Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground (PSP)
Oct 18th
Well, I need to upgrade my magical skills. There are enemies on level two of my dungeon that can’t be harmed by my axe. They don’t turn up every day, but if I run out of magic before I meet them I’ve got a problem. Not much of a problem, as I can happily out run them, but leaving anything alive makes me feel like I’ve failed.
I’m itching to play this at lunchtime. I put a treasure room in the dungeon yesterday and want to see if it’s attracted anything. And I just bought an Altar to put in a room, so I’ll set that up when I get down there again.
Speedball Demo (360)
Oct 18th
I’m coming to this fresh. I think I did play it once or twice on a friend’s Amiga, way back in the midsts of time, but I don’t remember it at all clearly.
Anyway, it’s a very fast future sport and I can’t seem to score any points in the demo. It did start to make a bit more sense after a couple of games, I think, but not enough to tempt me to spend 800 points.
Every Extend Extra Extreme (360)
Oct 18th
I really enjoyed what little I played of this last night. Unlike everybody else on the Internet I’m not finding impossible to die, as I keep running out of time. I’ve not played a game lasting more than ten minutes or quarter of an hour yet.
I also enjoy watching the big chains go off, though I can see that it might get boring after an hour or two.
I tried importing by own music, but it didn’t work very well. I think Sweet Home Alabama is just abit slow – I wasn’t getting enough enemies to form massive chains.
Also, I didn’t get any Achievements from it last night. Not even a nice easy five-pointer to make me feel better.
Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground (PSP)
Oct 17th
I didn’t intend to play this. I thought I’d pulled the Sega Rally UMD out of the case, but Dungeon Maker booted up instead. I had been waiting until Jeanne D’Arc was finished before playing it, but as it was there I thought I’d have a quick go.
A “quick go” which ended up eating my entire evening.
It’s all very simple. If you want a soundbite, think Viva Pinata with monsters. (Thanks to my wife for that comparision.) If you want a slightly more detailed description, it’s a simple dungeon hack, where instead of the levels being pre-determined or randomly-generated they’re user-created.
A day goes like this. You wake up at home in town and then go into your dungeon. You run around killing the monsters your dungeon has attracted overnight while refining and extending it. Run to a dead end? Then bring up the building menu and add some rooms or corridors from your supplies. Running through boring corridors? Why not bring up the building menu and give them some wood panelling, if you’ve got some in stock. In a boring room? Add a fountain or some beds. Everything you do improves your dungeon and changes which monsters you’ll attract. Some need water, hence the fountain. Some are only attracted by certain types of room, such as the self-explanatory Goblin Room. Once you’ve explored and expanded your dungeon, it’s back to town. Sell any loot you don’t need, buy supplies, cook yourself an evening meal, go to sleep ready for the next day.
Combat’s pretty simple. Two attacks (fast and slow, basically) and a magic menu which lets you teleport or drop rocks on enemies, or, well, I’ve not got any new magic yet. So far my dungeon is just a single level and money’s tight. I’m spending most of my cash on new building parts. Only about half my dungeon is decorated, so I need more wood panelling. There’s lots of space and the bigger your dungeon is the more and better monsters you get, so I need to buy more corridors and rooms.
My current main goal is to attract a boss creature. Once the dungeon’s good enough he should turn up and defeating him will let me add a second floor to my dungeon. I also get the odd side-quest, which all seem to be “find object X”. At the moment I only have one, which is to get a Kobold Ring for the weird chap who runs the museum in town. I’ve killed plenty of kobolds, but not one has dropped a ring yet.
It’s all quite simple after some initial confusion, but that’s not a bad thing in a handheld game. At least, it’s not in short term. It remains to be seen if this game has legs, but I’ve had a good couple hours of fun so far.
Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)
Oct 16th
I have to say that, despite its faults, this game is excellent fun in short bursts. I set up some Instant Action using Random settings and played a couple of quick rounds during Dragons’ Den last night and had a great time. I earned a couple of medals (Achievements in all but name), manned the gun of an AT-AT, rode a Kybuck and killed Admiral Ackbar. Excellent.
The clunkiness of the controls is an issue and always will be, but I think the solution they’ve come up with is the best possible on the PSP. It’s just a shame the PSP doesn’t have a couple of pop-out analogue sticks or something.
Track and Field (360)
Oct 16th
Holding the controller on its side, I had some good fun with this, until I got to the Hammer Throw event. I just couldn’t get the timing right and didn’t get a single throw that counted. Game Over. I did improve my scores in the earlier events, though, and now I’m only bottom of my Friends Leaderboard in the 100m. I’m near the bottom in the rest, but there are some people below me, thank goodness.
I really love the announcer in this game. I get so nostalgic for my childhood every time I hear her synthesized voice. Back in the day I could only hear that sort of thing in the arcade. The ZX Spectrum, lovely though it was, wasn’t great for producing speech.
My favourite bit of eighties speech ever? “Here goes nothing!” on the Return of the Jedi arcade machine. I kept dying about two seconds after hearing that, but kept pumping money in, so it just hooked itself into my brain on a loop and has never completely gone away, even twenty years later.
Carcassonne (360)
Oct 16th
I started this up for the first time in ages while the wife was having a shower and thought I might buy the expansion packs they’ve released for it. However, it turns out that they’re three hundred points each. That’s over two pounds. Each. For, what? A few more tiles and a couple of rule changes? I could almost buy Every Extend Extra Extreme for that kind of cash.
A hundred points each and I’d have been curious enough to use some of my points, but three hundred is just too much for me, I’m afraid. I could see those prices being good enough for addicts who really want some twists to their favourite game, but I just don’t play this enough.
Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction Demo (PS3)
Oct 15th
Well, it looks nice and it’s all very solid. However, it’s also quite dull. I’m not sure if I missing something, but there didn’t seem to be anything much to this. Run down the linear path provided, jump over gaps, shoot and/or melee enemies. Which, um, could describe a lot of games, good and bad. It’s just that underneath the gloss this seemed to lack any life. Maybe it’s that it was so incredibly easy. I did die once, due to a mistimed jump, but that was it. The rest of the time the enemies barely seemed to touch me and when they did, there seemed to be an almost unlimited supply of health packs around.
Oh, and the fact that you can’t invert the y-axis in the demo is absolutely unforgiveable.
It’s possible, I guess, that I’m being overly harsh because I don’t want any more games on my Want List, but that didn’t stop Bladestorm from taking me by surprise and winning me over.
