A Gaming Diary
Archive for June, 2009
MySims Kingdom (Wii)
Jun 4th
My wife was playing this when I got home last night, so I went and had a lovely bath and read the Fortean Times. When I got out, she stopped playing and I had a go. It really is very good. I find collecting essences a little tedious at times, but that’s my only complaint. The rest is great. It looks gorgeous, it controls well, there’s enough scope for my own creativity even at this early stage and the writing is genuinely good.
Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City (Wii)
Jun 3rd
I caught a fire fly! And an eel! They both went to the museum. I also found the money rock, got all the money from it and bought everything in Nook’s. Now only a couple of hundred points away from silver membership.
Demon’s Souls (PS3)
Jun 3rd
I’ve played this for about thirteen hours now. I have completed levels 1-1 and 2-1. That’s it.
Last night I mostly played 4-1. I can get to the boss easily enough if I’m careful, but I keep getting over confident and getting myself killed. And when I do get to the boss I die within seconds. I’ve really not worked out how to avoid his attacks and haven’t had long enough to study him.
I ran out of healing items after a while, so I went back and did level 1-1 again. I died so much when I first played, but now it’s very easy indeed. I waded through the whole level with no problems at all, gathering healing items and enough souls to get myself up another level.
And then it was back to 4-1 and many more deaths. I’ll get that Adjudicator boss one day…
Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City (Wii)
Jun 2nd
Had barely any time to play this, so just logged on, talked to Chow, then left.
Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (360)
Jun 2nd
Spent half an hour trying to scan my face in. Failed. And why, every time I took a picture of me facing to the left, did it flip it round so I was facing right? Is it meant to do that? Help!
Anyway, after giving up I tried the first mission, which was all sorts of fun, but I died a lot. Not Demon’s Souls amounts of death, but more than I’d expect on what amounts to a tutorial level.
Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City (Wii)
Jun 1st
Went to Cheese, home to deKay. He only seemed to have cherries, so I left and came back loaded down with fruit, with I dropped in a huge pile.
It’s amazing how green that town is. I’d forgotten how much lovely grass there is in towns when they’re new, before it all gets trampled down to the brown dirt below.
MySims Kingdom (Wii)
Jun 1st
This arrived from Lovefilm at the weekend. My wife will be playing it to completion before we send it back, but I’d decided not to play it, what with having Demon’s Souls etc. However, after seeing her play it, I couldn’t help but give it a go. It’s charming, funny, looks great and feels a lot more technically solid that the original MySims game. I did the tutorial, then went to an island full fo cowboys… and a pizza chef. Hilarity ensued, along with gentle collecting and building fun. It’s an easy game to play, not just in terms of difficulty, but because it’s got a lovely atmosphere and is always giving you new toys to play with. It’s a generous game and genuinely funny, so it actually makes a perfect dessert after a main course of Demon’s Souls.
Demon’s Souls (PS3)
Jun 1st
Put somewhere in the region of ten hours into this over the weekend, maybe a little less. I didn’t get very far.
I started with world 3-1, thinking it was 2-1, and managed to make things very, very difficult for myself by opening all the cell doors I could find. That was a big mistake, because it let all the prisoners out. No “Congratulations! You freed the prisoners! You found a Big Sword + 2!” here. Instead the emaciated, once-human prisoners just shamble out of the cells and come up to me. They don’t attack (often), they just crowd around me, looking for something I can’t give them. A cure for their terrible state? Death? Well, I can give them that. It feels awful – it feels evil – but there’s nothing else I can do. The prison guards (horrible, octopus-faced monsters) are bad enough when I have room to maneuver, but if there are prisoners in my way then death is not just likely, but inevitable.
After trying that level for a while, I noticed that I’d missed level 2-1, so went back and tried that. It’s much more manageable. An old mine, where death comes quickly to the careless, but that has very few tough enemies inside it. Okay, it took me a good while to learn how best to tackle it and to open some shortcuts, but it never felt too hard. I even managed to kill the boss, thanks to some ingenuity on my part and a very helpful message someone had left on the ground.
I couldn’t face level 3-1 after that, so went to 4-1. The first enemy, a skeleton warrior of some sort, killed me dead the moment I entered. So I went back and got some hits in, back again and killed him. Now those blue skeletons aren’t a problem for me… unless I’m careless. I’ve lost tens of thousands of souls simply through being over-confident in the initial stages of the level. And tens of thousands more simply through carelessness. That’s the thing about Demon’s Souls, after a while enemies become much easier, not because you level up, but because you become better at dealing with them. But even then, if you lose concentration for a second, or take on more than you can handle, then you will die – and die quickly.
After many hours of careful exploration I found my way to the boss. There don’t seem to be any unlocked shortcuts to him, but I found out about an “unofficial” one. By rolling at the right time off a tower you can drop down to an area near the boss. It might be a glitch, but the drop is safe and seems to drop you into an area with no other purpose other than to be a drop zone, so I’m assuming it must be a secret, designed to be uncovered and shared. (I’d heard there was a shortcut on a forum post, but only found where it was exactly because of a message someone had left.
Anyway, I haven’t got past the boss yet. He seems really tough, in that I can’t find anywhere that’s safe from him and can’t work out how to avoid his attacks, but I’m sure once I’ve learned him, he’ll be easy enough. Possibly. I haven’t levelled up in hours – I keep on losing all my souls – but I reckon that being more powerful isn’t what I need to defeat him. I just need to be better.
