A Gaming Diary
Archive for October, 2009
Racer (iPhone)
Oct 19th
Racer got a big update over weekend. Two new game modes and unlockable cars.
To be fair, mind, the two new game modes are pretty much the same. Career mode has you collecting stars while avoiding traffic. Get enough stars and you move on to the next level, sometimes unlocking a new car. Slalom mode has you collecting stars, but isn’t split into levels. Like the existing modes, it simply gradually gets harder the longer you play.
There are some complaints from people about the starting car being made less responsive to make the unlockable cars more appealing, but I can’t say I noticed any difference. (It’s been quite a while since I last played the game.)
It’s still sweet little gaming treat – it sits happily in a coveted position on my first page of games – and I like the extra modes.
(Especially as the scoreboards got reset when the game got updated, so I managed a fairly respectable position on one of them.)
Soosiz (iPhone)
Oct 19th
If you can remember back to last week – an age when it comes to iPhone gaming – you might remember that I was very worried about the second boss level. You see, the first boss level was a fairly long and dangerous level, with the boss at the end and no checkpointing.
Well, I’m pleased to announce that the second boss level is only that – a level with a boss fight. No preamble, no long trek to get to the boss, no need for checkpoints. This would make multiple retries a lot easier to bear, but the boss was actually so easy I killed him first time. That might be disappointing for some, but it was a giant relief for me.
And so from the mushroom-filled second world I headed off to world three.
It’s in space. I have a space helmet and everything.
This game is glorious.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Oct 19th
Yep, I got BURRITOed. Excellently, though, I then managed to make WIZ on a triple word square for many lovely points.
Other than that, it was a pretty unsuccessful weekend, the nadir of which came when I swapped six vowels and got six back. I said, “Oh bother!” or words to that effect.
Wheelman (360)
Oct 19th
I suspect that in the office of the developers of Wheelman there was a whiteboard. And on this whiteboard, written in big red letters were the words: “MAKE MOVIE-STYLE CAR CHASES!!!” I’m guessing about the number of exclamation marks. And I suspect that MOVIE-STYLE was underlined several times.
I’ve only spent half an hour or so with the game (thanks to The X-Factor, Harper’s Island, Eastenders and season one of Dollhouse eating my weekend), but that half hour was a gigantic feast of car chase excellence, with handbrake turns around sharp corners, huge leaps from road to train tracks, jumping from car to car, ramming cops off the road and pedestrians leaping out of the way at the last second.
You know, pretty much everything that makes car chases so thrilling. If it’s the game’s aim to make you feel part of an amazing action movie, it does the job admirably. How this will translate into several hours of gaming remains to be seen, but the core chase mechanics are definitely present and correct.
Cocoto Kart Online (iPhone)
Oct 16th
The law states that anyone in possession of a gaming console must own at least one cart racing game for that console. I’ve had my iPhone for a few months now, so was worrying that I might get a nasty fine from the authorities if I didn’t buy one soon.
I settled on Cocoto Kart online, because it’s the cheapest cart racer out there – 59p! – and because the kids over on the Touch Arcade forums seem to like it.
Played several races last night and I’m not sold on it yet, but I’m not yet ready to delete it.
Good Things
It’s fast. No starting out at walking pace and gradually working your way up to reasonable speeds. It’s no Wipeout or anything, but it’s good and speedy.
The tracks seem to have some nice shortcuts and I’ve seen more than I can work out how to get to.
The online works fine. I tried out a quick race over the Internet and didn’t have any issues, though I was soundly beaten.
Bad Things
It’s far too hard in single player. Even the first “easy” races are completely unforgiving and coming in anything other than last is an achievement worthy of a post on Twitter, at least.
There doesn’t seem to be any in-game help or advice, as far as I can see. I may be blind, but I did go looking. You boot the game up, it asks you to choose a character without telling you what the differences between them are. You have to work out the power-ups and the controls for yourself. Of course, it’s mostly pretty obvious, but some guidance would be lovely.
Most importantly, I’m not sold on any of the control schemes yet. The tilt controls seem like they work, until I find myself unable to get round corners. The d-pad controls I tried for half a race but liked even less. I think the controls might actually be fine, but just require a lot more skill than I’ve got right now. More breaking, turning into corners at the right time, that sort of thing. I just can’t really tell right now.
Some help pages and an easier single player would help a lot. Right now, you’re left with what seems to be a very hardcore cart racer. That may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it feels like a game for and by people who have played Mario Kart far too much and want a stiffer challenge.
The reception many people have given it suggest that there’s not a bad game in there, but it’s going to take some more digging to find it.
Orbital (iPhone)
Oct 16th
Went back to Orbital after some time away last night and tried to get a new high score in Pure mode. I upped my high score on the new phone, but it’s pathetic next to the score I had on my old phone. Anyway, the game’s great fun and is well worth buying.
Do you see what I did there?
Shoot me now.
Actually, the most interesting thing about Orbital is probably the rhythm of it. You can’t control the cannon at the bottom of the screen, so you need to wait for it to be pointing in the right direction. All the waiting should make the game feel relaxing, but the knowledge that a single badly-placed shot can end your game makes the game feel… oh, I don’t know. Sometimes I get impatient and wish I could aim the cannon myself. Sometimes I get unsure of myself and find myself unable to shoot. Sometimes I get tired of waiting and shoot the ball of in whatever direction the cannon happens to be facing. There’s really no coherent feeling to the game. Sometimes it grabs me by the balls and squeezes, sometimes it feels like I’m standing at a counter waiting for an especially slow fast food order – often both in the course of a single game.
And yet it never loses the “one more go” factor, because you always, always, always know that you messed up, either through incompetence or impatience. The game is very harsh, but it never feels like it wants you to fail. Some games have a relationship, even a rapport, with the player. Orbital is just there, cold as outer space and completely unconcerned with whether you live or die.
Canabalt (iPhone)
Oct 16th
A gaming diary is a stupid idea. It sounds like a decent concept. By writing about every game you play each day you can end up with long-term reviews. A game might be the best thing ever, but disappear after a couple of entries, meaning it burned itself out quickly. You might see something that seemed unspectacular on first playing become part of your staple gaming diet.
The trouble is, there’s not much to say about a lot of games.
Canabalt, for example. All you need to do it click the label below this post or do a search in my shiny new search box at the top of the screen to find everything you need to know about the game, which isn’t much.
I keep playing it, but there’s nothing else left to write about. If I had a sparkling wit and could lead words in a fantastic dance then that might not be a problem. I don’t and I can’t, however, so you’re just left with stodgy entries that don’t say anything. And even my blog posts that do say something tend to fall into a pattern.
1) “I bought/went back to this game yesterday.”
2) Description of game mechanics and/or the level I’m currently I’m playing.
3) If it’s a high score game, mention whether or not I got a high score.
4) End with “It’s not/quite/great fun not/possibly/well worth buying.”
There. By following that simple guide you too can write your own InvertY.com blog posts. Let’s try it now with Canabalt:
I went back to this game yesterday. Despite being out of practice, I eventually got back into the rhythm of the thing, though I died far too often on the drills that drop down. I didn’t get a high score, though I wasn’t doing too badly by the end of the evening. As I’ve said before, it’s great fun and well worth buying.
Perfect! Another blog entry completed! Now to add an image of the start of the game and press the Publish Post button.
I don’t want to be boring, but I can’t seem to help it.
Cash Cow (iPhone)
Oct 15th
Imagine Big Top Ten, but far more relaxed and based on American farms and not Edwardian circuses.
Basically.
Instead of making chains of numbers that add up to ten, you’re dealing with US coinage. You can make five 1c coins into a nickel, two nickels into a dime, two dimes and nickel into a quarter, four quarters into a dollar. (Or any combination of ten coins or less that adds up to another coin or a dollar.) Once you make a dollar, the coins are removed from play and added to your total. Don’t worry, it’s easier to play than to explain.
Between the main levels are fun little interludes.
Sometimes you get tilt-controlled bonus levels.
After every level you get to spend the money you earned on improvements to your farm.
It’s all jolly good-natured, with a jaunty hoedown soundtrack and a forgiving difficulty level. It’s worth the current asking price of 59p, I reckon, though it’s thoroughly unspectacular and not a patch on the furious intensity of Big Top Ten.
Blades of Fury FREE (iPhone)
Oct 15th
Gameloft’s take on Soul Calibur is now available in demo form, letting you choose one of two characters and have a fight against the other. One’s a big, slow brute, the other a quick, nimble lady.
Seems pretty good, based on a few rounds, if a little slow. The female character is rather more fun, but she’s not the kind of whirlwind fighter you might expect from a game of this type. Once you get used to the somewhat sedate pace, though, you can appreciate what appears to be a well-designed little fighter.
It also looks very nice and gave me the first “this is running on my phone!” moment that I’ve had in ages.
Soosiz (iPhone)
Oct 15th
Remember how yesterday I was saying I was stuck on a blue coin level? Well, I completed it within seconds of writing that post. Well, minutes. Might have been a couple of hours later. I’m not sure when I posted and when I next played the game. Point is, I finished the level easily.
I then proceeded to get hopelessly stuck on a completely different blue coin level. This one doesn’t rotate when you go under platforms, nor does it scroll. Instead you’ve just got a fixed-view, flick screen level. It’s basically a glimpse of what Soosiz could have been, had it gone horribly wrong at some point in development. It’s still fun, though, just very, very hard. I’ve still not got all the blue coins, but I’ve settled for silver medal and have moved on.
Now I’m finding a regular level quite tricky but, again, not in a bad way. The game boots up so quickly that you don’t feel committed to playing for ages when you start it up. I tend to have three or four attempts, then shut it down and check the Internet, then come back a little later. Keeps it fresh and helps keep the frustration demons at bay.
I really want to get to the last level of the second world so I can see how annoying the boss is. I have a feeling it’s going to make or break the game for me. Mind you, even if I do give up at that point, I’ll still be very pleased I bought the game, given how much I’ve enjoyed what I’ve played.
