A Gaming Diary
Archive for November, 2008
Football Manager Handheld 2009 (PSP)
Nov 25th
Still fifth, but York in sixth have a game in hand and a massively better goal difference than me. Only five games left in the season so, er, gulp.
We’re in the final of the Setanta Shield after a glorious hammering of Cambridge in the semi-final.
And my Nigerian striker who has been wanting to leave all year has now signed a new contract for less than he was asking for and is now happy to stay at the club. On the one hand, that’s excellent. He’s really good. On the hand, oh dear, that doesn’t help the wage situation.
Football Manager Handheld 2009 (PSP)
Nov 25th
We’re now fifth in the table and still in some cup for rubbish teams. I forget the name.
Pretty good, right?
Yes, as far as it goes, but I’ve got a problem. My wage bill is too high. Oh sure, it’s currently showing as being £1,000 below the limit, but as soon as the new contracts kick in it’s going to be far too high. Which is why I tried to sell some players during the transfer window. Unfortunately, I failed. I got a couple of offers. Someone bid £0 for one of my strikers, Millwall bid £30,000 for my Nigerian striker, who’s worth almost twice that. I tried to negotiate, but as soon as I asked for more money the other clubs ran away.
So I’ve got a huge squad who are costing me a lot of money. I’m not quite sure what to do. I have applied for the West Ham job, but I’m not sure I want it and I don’t expect I’m going to get it. And I don’t really want to leave Oxford, I just want to stay within financial targets.
Maybe I shouldn’t have signed quite so many players, eh?
Football Manager Handheld 2009 (PSP)
Nov 24th
There’s a curse on Oxford United. Anyone who plays on the left of midfield gets injured. Except, so far, my Belgian signing Van Damme. But he’s only played two games, so we’ll see.
Anyway, with people coming back from injury we’ve started getting some more wins. We crashed out of the FA Cup, losing 3-1 to Rochdale in a replay, but the fewer games the better, if you ask me. In the league we’re to sixth from seventh and are once more looking towards the play off spots.
Things are beginning to look up again… fingers crossed.
Football Manager Handheld 2009 (PSP)
Nov 24th
My winning run continued for another two or three games yesterday. I won manager of the month for the BSP and the papers ran stories on how well we were doing.
And then my best striker got called up to the Nigerian squad, which meant a couple of games were rearranged while he was away. This left me with a couple of weeks without a game, during which time half of my midfield got injured in training. Then the Nigerian striker came back and another club offered £60,000 for him, which I refused. Which meant he got really, really annoyed with me. And then my goalie got injured in training.
The games following all this were a disaster. My Nigerian striker didn’t perform, my other goalie took several games to settle in and my midfield woes continued, with more injuries as I had to play tired players. At one point I had to move from 4-4-2 to 4-3-3 just because of the lack of players. I lost game after game.
And then my star midfielder, a kid named Wilshire I had on loan from Arsenal, went home.
Now we’re winning the odd game, drawing a few and losing more. I’ve had to bring players who didn’t have a club in from abroad to fill gaps. (It’s only this morning, thinking about all this that I remembered I had a reserve team I could have checked. D’oh, d’oh, d’oh!) But the wins are keeping me going, we’re still sixth in the table and the board like me again, after a period of disappointment. But that striker of mine is still unhappy. I think we’ll have to let him go in January.
It’s all a lot more interesting now than it was when every game was an easy victory. Let’s hope I get a chance to play at lunchtime, because I’m itching for more.
Incidentally, the 2D engine in this game is really quite rubbish. Between a third and half of all the “highlights” it shows consist of the ball suddenly shooting up into the air and going up and up and up and up until the map flicks off and I have to check the scoreboard to see if anybody scored. Doesn’t ruin the game at all, but I think the 2D engine was only included because the 3D engine was introduced to the computer version this year.
Lego Indiana Jones (360)
Nov 22nd
This is thoroughly enjoyable stuff with a co-op partner. Even when the game glitches and you have to restart a level.
Today my wife and I did the first couple of levels of the Temple of Doom. It was all as enjoyably bashy as the Lego games are meant to be.
Fallout 3 (360)
Nov 22nd
Today I finished Moira’s book. Annoyingly, I didn’t have the correct skills to do the optional part of the final mission. I’d done all the optional stuff up to that point, so it was a bit annoying. Still, Achievement unlocked! And stuff.
That was about it, really, apart from dropping off a book at the library and shooting somebody in the face after they tried to rob me.
Banjo-Kazooie: Nuts & Bolts Demo (360)
Nov 22nd
I… it… I… um… it…
…what?
I have no idea what I just played. It’s a third-person running, jumping and driving game where you go around completely random environments while characters spout nonsensical “instructions” at you and every now and again you find something that actually resembles some sort of actual game. Okay, maybe the “game” part will only involve driving your cart into a ball so it rolls down a hill and you win, but at least it’s something with rules (that aren’t explained, mind) and actual objectives (that aren’t properly explained, either).
And then add in some interface that lets you build vehicles from bits you find. Which fall apart as soon as you leave the garage.
And then there are millions of pauses to load stuff. And a robotic skull witch. And something with Pong for a face. And clockwork birds. And things that look a bit like mice and a bit like foxes, but not much like either. And lots of different things to collect, though I’ve no idea why I was collecting them. (I’m sure it was explained, but it was explained using words that in turn required an explanation that never came.)
Completely baffling and, given the seeming reliance on fairly poor mini games, probably not very good. But I really can’t tell for sure.
Left 4 Dead Demo (360)
Nov 22nd
The cardinal rule is ALWAYS STICK TOGETHER.
How comes one person on the team never seems to know that?
Still, that’s one of the things that makes it fun.
And it is fun. Oh yes.
A little laggy this evening, but still good fun.
Word Soup Demo (360)
Nov 22nd
A bit like Bookworm.
Seems all right.
Might spend 400 points on it, because I think the wife would get good value from it.
Weapon of Choice Demo (360)
Nov 22nd
A highly playable Contra-style shooter with what must be intentionally vile graphics. I mean, really. It looks like someone ate every side-scrolling platform shooter ever made and then vomited them up over some Jackson Pollock paintings. Assuming Jackson Pollock had painted in neon.
I’m tempted to punt 400 points on it, though, because it is good fun.
