A Gaming Diary
Archive for December, 2007
Singstar (PS3)
Dec 17th
Another game I played with my wife. It’s wonderful. The Singstore is great, letting us populate the song list with songs we love, not just what’s on the disc. And I seem to be getting better. You know, at singing. I’m actually learning to control my voice and I’m starting, just starting, to be able to get roughly in the right place without having to rely on the blue line. I’m still awful, though. X-Factor audition awful, even, but I am improving. It feels good.
Super Mario Galaxy (Wii)
Dec 17th
Played this for while with my wife. It’s getting very difficult now and I’m seeing the Game Over screen a lot more. (Shut up, deKay.) The Daredevil Comet in Deep Dark Galaxy took me about fifteen tries and when I died deep into a mission on the dreadnought I decided I’d had enough for the day. Not because I hate the game, but just because it requires so much concentration. It’s joyful and wondrous and easily the best game of this year – at least – but when it’s hard, it’s draining.
Assassin’s Creed (360)
Dec 17th
This is the game I spent most time on this weekend. At least five or six hours of it. It’s repetitive, yes, but that doesn’t matter at all, as the mechanics are so much fun. Run, jump, fight, run, jump, fight, run, jump… Repeat for hour after hour without getting bored. I’ve done six assassinations now and there’s been a big jump in difficulty. Not so much in combat, where I still feel very hard done by if I die, but in the “stealth” – which is less about not being seen and more about not being noticed.
Some people, I’m sure, must get very angry with the game when a lunatic pushes them into a guard during a stealth kills mission, ruining a few minutes of careful stalking and stabbing. I can understand that. To me, though, it always feels like it’s my fault. I need to allow for them, to stay away form guards when they’re around, make sure to stay back, work out where the guards are and how to get past. The stealth missions now tend to have time limits, but they’re not so tight that you need to power through and get lucky. You have time. Failure is caused by overconfidence, impatience and, yes, some luck.
Anyway, I’m loving it. I’m finding it more difficult to lose pursuers – and running away is the better option than fighting now, for the most part, as a heap of dead bodies left lying around near a mission starting point is a very good way to make things more difficult.
It takes a while to work out the rules of the game – and it is a game with simple rules rather than anything approaching reality – but once you do there’s a brilliant game in a brilliant world. Taking things slowly, refusing to “teleport”, doing everything you can, exploring and just running across rooftops for the sheer joy of it, it’s a wonderful world.
(Being pulled out of the game for lengthy cut scenes full of exposition still grates, though. I don’t care about the plot at all and would be quite happy without any.)
Passage (Mac)
Dec 12th
I’ve just played this and you should, too.
I’m not going to say any more, as you need to play it yourself, without knowing anything about it at all before you do.
It’s a small download, only lasts five minutes and is available for Windows, OSX and Linux.
Download here -
http://hcsoftware.sourceforge.net/passage/
Mario Kart DS (DS)
Dec 10th
This seems to be my default “I’m bored and I want to play something but I don’t really want to concentrate on anything” game.
Assassin’s Creed (360)
Dec 10th
I spent a long time playing this over the weekend and got two more assassinations done. One was slightly annoying in that it forced me to fight some minions in an arena-style setting before moving on the main target, but the second was much more fun. I didn’t get a stealth kill, but there’s something very satisfying about the way I managed to leap and run after the target as he fled through the streets before jumping on him with my hidden blade. I’ve now explored all of the south-west section of Acre, so when I next play I’ll be straight to the big castle in the south to kill William. I’ve not being much attention to the story, so I’m not entirely sure why I’ve got to kill him, but the reasons aren’t important as the execution.
SingStar (PS3)
Dec 7th
Played every song on the disc once last night (in Duet mode) and then downloaded seven (!) more from the SingStore, which we’ve not tried yet. I really wish I could actually sing. Or at least sing well enough for SingStar. Though I actually did okay on Feel Good Inc., No Surprises and Lovefool. And didn’t totally suck on Hey Ya, either. And I got to do the “give me some sugar, I am your neighbor” bit, which pleased me and disappointed the wife.
As for the question of how good it is, well, it’s SingStar again, so it’s great. I have no interest in uploading any performances, as public humiliation isn’t my thing, but the SingStore is going to be great.
Assassin’s Creed (360)
Dec 6th
Played this for quite a while last night and – apart from the last ten minutes or so – I didn’t set foot in one of the major cities. I roamed around the kingdom for quite a while, fighting Templars, collecting flags and climbing Eagle Points, found a few more flags in the starting village and then made my way to Jerusalem, where I found the Assassins Guild and saved.
I throughly enjoyed it all, too. The more I play this game the more I like it. I’m still expecting it to get too hard and/or annoying later, but I’ve played for hours now and only done two of the assassinations. I think I’m having a completely different experience to people – especially reviewers – who decided to go through it s quickly as possible. It’s a game that gets better the more you breathe and the more you just mess around, I think.
Psychonauts (360)
Dec 6th
Well, this finally downloaded and installed itself, but that wasn’t the end of the trouble. When I started it up it told me there was an update available which I should download. So I sat and watched the progress bar move across the screen, only to then be told that there was an error and the update couldn’t be installed. Then I got kicked back to the dashboard. Starting up the game after that worked fine, though, and after much stuttering on the intro movies the game’s worked fine, with only the most minor graphical problems since. (Mainly one-pixel-wide black lines appearing on the screen now and again.)
As for the game, it’s exactly what I remember from way back when. The script, voice acting and graphical design are very, very good, but the platforming is merely quite good. I’ve not yet got to any of the controller-smashingly frustrating sections, so we’ll see how far I get through the game this time.
Half-Life 2 (360)
Dec 5th
While waiting for Psychonauts to download I decided to play some Half-Life 2, as it was in the drive. Really was the best and worst of the game in one small sitting. Some excellent fights against the Combine, some fun head crab shooting and then some really annoying bits with stupid physics puzzles and annoying jumping. Also, everything involving ladders is horrible.
I tried to play some Sonic, too, but the kitten wouldn’t let me. She kept trying to claw the rings out of the screen, which wasn’t a good idea at all, so I had to stop.
And Psychonauts didn’t finish downloading until after I went to bed, anyway.
