A Gaming Diary
Archive for June, 2009
Fuel (360)
Jun 5th
First impressions, based on a couple of hours of play. May well be long and rambling, will probably not make much sense, either. Apologies.
Fuel, from what I’ve seen, is, at its most basic, a game of resource management. You’ve got two resources to worry about, both represented my meters at the bottom right of the screen. These resources are SPEED and DAMAGE. The trick is to keep SPEED high, while keeping DAMAGE low. Pretty obvious, right? Well, yes, but I’ve not played an arcade racer – and Fuel is no danger of being mistaken for a simulation, three cheers for that – where conserving speed is so very, very important. There are an awful lot of points where gradients get steep and the terrain gets rough, making acceleration impossible and momentum very necessary. You can’t just mess up and then expect to be able to accelerate back up to full speed, or even any speed, in time to catch the pack or beat the timer.
As for damage, Fuel uses an odd system that, on paper, sounds awful. (And, it seems, is in practice for a lot of people.) It worried me greatly before I played. Your damage isn’t represented by anything more than a small needle moving around a dial. (And, sometimes, a bit of smoke. Ooh, posh.) If the dial moves over the top, a black screen with the Fuel logo appears and a couple of seconds later you appear back on the road, magically healed. You don’t see yourself crash. You see a tree, you see the tree get very, very close to your vehicle, then you see the Fuel logo. Sounds like pretty much the worst thing ever, right? It’s not. Somehow, it works. I’m trying to work out why. I think it might be because Fuel’s way of doing things keeps the focus on the driving. It’s a game about driving, not about crashing and burning. I understand that doesn’t sound convincing and I know people online hate the system, but I thought I’d hate it and I find it perfectly acceptable. Sometimes, though, I’d love to see my ride roll down a hillside and explode at the bottom. You know.
So you’ve got these two resources to manage. It’s different, it’s simple without being simplistic and it makes driving very, very interesting. For me. You may disagree. Plenty of people do and will.
And then, of course, you’ve got the world. It’s as big as you’ve heard. Graphically it’s very similar to Oblivion, in that it looks gorgeous up close, but awfully ropey the further away you look. Driving down a hillside towards open ground is the best way to make the game look bad. Speeding through a heavily-wooded area at sunrise the best way to make it look great. Speeding, though. Hmm. The sense of speed, at least in the early vehicles, isn’t there in either of the behind-vehicle views, but it’s pretty decent in the “in-car” (more accurately “no-car”) view. I normally use that view when I’m on a motorbike in the woods, for that 3D Deathchase/Return of the Jedi thing, but the further of the two behind-vehicle views the rest of the time. It’s not about the speed, it’s about driving through the world. Even the races and challenges are just things to do in the world.
If you were to simply go through the game via the menus then you’d be doing it wrong. Very, very wrong. Not only would you have to sit through a million loading screens in short succession, but you’d missing out on the all-important context. I’ve been driving from challenge to vista point to new livery, sometimes just picking a direction and driving randomly. Leaping over streams, screaming through the woods at night, watching the sun set over a lake, speeding through a still-burning forest fire… that’s what it’s about. Seeing a building off the distance, racing to it, then driving slowly around looking for any left-over fuel barrels.
It’s… I’m not sure. It’s not slow, but it’s relaxing. It’s not pointless, but there’s not pressure or hurry to get anywhere. It’s just what I wanted. I wanted just to be able to drive, bouncing my way through America. It’s what I got.
It’s the Assassin’s Creed of racing games. Some people saw the world of Assassin’s Creed, then looked for the point of it. Others saw the world and thought that it was the point, in and of itself. And some people saw Assassin’s Creed’s simple missions and simple rules and felt it didn’t fit a world that looked so realistic on the surface. There was a break there that some people couldn’t get past. And some people, like me, didn’t care. Some people were happy with a simple set of game rules, with a few clearly defined variables, in a gorgeous world. And that describes both Assassin’s Creed and Fuel.
For many people, Assassin’s Creed was a crushing disappointment, others loved it. Fuel will get the get the same reaction – is getting the same reaction. But I loved Assassin’s Creed and I think I might love Fuel, too.
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Beta (PS3)
Jun 5th
Played a couple of games of this after a lovely, wonderful person gave me a beta key. It’s certainly very accessible – I only ever played the demo of Uncharted, but was killing people in no time. Both games I played were the Plunder game type, which is basically a Capture The Flag thing.
The first game I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I helped my team out by killing enemies who were trying to get the gold. I killed four of them – including a very satisfying “grab from behind and leave them dead on the floor” move – and got $400, which seems just to mean the same thing as 400 experience points.
The next game I decided to go after the gold myself. I did really well, getting the gold from the spawning point, bringing it back to base and then… well, that’s the sticking point. The place you need to put the gold is on the first storey (second story, if you’re American and reading this), so you need to throw the gold up to someone waiting there for it. Which was fine, teammates were always there, ready to pick up the gold and put it in the right place. Great teamwork all round. Except, because I didn’t put the gold actually in the target position or kill any enemies, I got no points and no experience. So I’d have been better off just running around killing people or standing safely upstairs waiting to receive gold. That annoyed me quite a lot. I’m either missing something here, or the system is broken. What’s the point of my team winning the game if everyone else gets the benefits and I get nothing? Harumph.
OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast (PSP)
Jun 5th
One quick go at OutRun 2, easiest route. That should have been simple, but I barely scraped over the finish line before my time ran out. I guess I got myself used to 360 handling… or maybe I was just rubbish last night.
Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City (Wii)
Jun 5th
Made it my mission last night to talk to all the animals and ignore the business side of things. Somehow managed to miss out talking to Chester, though. Gala seems to want to move out. She’s nice enough, but I won’t stand in her way.
Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City (Wii)
Jun 4th
I hardly talk to the animals these days, I’m all about buying and selling. I’m all about Nook’s reward points at the moment. Last night I got up Silver membership and unlocked the 4,000 point prize, which I won’t spoil.
Also, Redd finally sold me a real Famous Painting. Hooray!
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (360)
Jun 4th
The face mapping worked! I asked my wife and she said the result looks reasonably like me. Shame it appears to have made me bald – my hairline isn’t that far back! And my right eye appears to be completely out of focus, but I’m wearing a visor over them now. It’s certainly a much better result than the one I got from the original Vegas game, where I looked like a cross between a panda and an Oompa Loompa.
The game, though? Well, it’s marvellous, it really is. The enemy placement is clever, the levels allow for different approaches to encounters and the shooting works properly. Your AI teammates aren’t the cleverest of chaps, but can be very helpful. Essential, even.
And I love, love, love the way you’re constantly getting experiencing points in different categories. Seeing bonus points pop up for good kills makes everything feel more rewarding, even when you’re redoing the same section of the game for the fourth time. I very much approve.
Pocoro Demo (360)
Jun 4th
And the third community game of the night. A nice little puzzle game, but I got annoyed with it when it started getting hard. My problem, not the game’s. Well worth a look.
Dock’em Demo (360)
Jun 4th
A simple little game, but well worth a look. Ships enter the screen from all directions and you have to draw paths to their correct ports, without having any collide. It’s all good… except for the alert noise, which is the worst noise in any videogame ever. It annoys me and got to my wife so much that she had to go upstairs. It’s horrible – and I stopped playing myself soon enough because I feared I was going to get a headache.