A Gaming Diary
That Rev Chap
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Homepage: http://www.inverty.com
Posts by That Rev Chap
Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Nov 13th
Hmm.
Hmm.
HMM.
I’m not sure about this. Maybe this is where there Castlevania meets diminishing returns. It seems to be half made up of changes I’m not sure I like (complicated glyph attack system, small level maps travelled to on a top-down, no-gameplay world map, more talking than normal) and the same old gameplay, but made a little bit harder by throwing a few too many enemies at you. (Including some highly annoying floating tentacled brain-suckers that don’t seem to have a name.)
That said, it’s Castlevania, so you can’t go very wrong. Maybe it’ll click at some point, maybe the level design will get more interesting – there have been far too many flat left-to-right trudges so far – and maybe the glyph system will seem less random.
Fingers crossed.
Peggle (iPod)
Nov 12th
Suffered from terrible “one-more-level” syndrome at lunchtime today, but finally managed to stop after I managed to lose a level.
Phew.
Left 4 Dead Demo (360)
Nov 12th
Puts you in a zombie film. A modern zombie film with running zombies, but a zombie film nonetheless.
The single player mode doesn’t seem to be up to much, but it’s designed to be an online title. I had one go online with some random people. I was pretty rubbish at actually hitting anything I tried to shoot at, but I rescued a dead teammate and saved someone else. And we won in the end, which was nice.
Nobody shot the car.
It’s all very exciting, mainly because that while the maps stay static, the zombies are placed differently every time.
Fallout 3 (360)
Nov 12th
Spent last night completely lost in Washington DC. I got stuck on some very hard mutants trying to find my way into the middle of town, so went back and tried to find another way through. All the roads seem to be blocked by collapsed buildings so I’m now miles from where I need to be, with no obvious way to get to where I need to be going. I may have to trek back to the Tepid sewers and go the way I first intending to go.
Still, it’s always fun, even when lost.
Fallout 3 (360)
Nov 11th
Got myself a canine companion last night. It’s the only part of the game I’ve gone looking for spoilers about, after finding out about the dog from an unspoilered comment in a forum thread. (Mind you, it seems that the dog was a big part of the prerelease information the developers released, so I can see why its mention wasn’t deemed spoiler-worthy. Where do you draw the line?)
After getting the dog I headed back to DC to find the sewers I needed to go down to test out my stick of mole rat repellent. I got enough for the main objectives easily enough, but haven’t found enough to get the optional bonus. Annoyingly, I’ve found several mole rat corpses lying around in the sewers. I seem to have exited the sewers now and am in the subway system, which is populated by raiders. I hope there’s a place with more mole rats in down there, otherwise I’m going to have to return to the surface and wander the wastes around Megaton hoping that some will come and find me.
As for the dog, I’m not sure how useful he is. He won’t jump up or down, so some routes I could otherwise take through the city are blocked off to me. He’s good at showing me where bad guys are and does some damage to them, but I’m not sure whether or not he’s hindering my sneaking.
Peggle (iPod)
Nov 10th
Just one quick level after playing Song Summoner. I’m very good.
Produced some great shots near the end of the level to win. Skill-based great shots, at that. It’s not all about luck, you know.
Song Summoner (iPod)
Nov 10th
It’s a Final Fantasy Tactics game. On an iPod. Where you use songs to create new units.
Amy Winehouse’s Back in Black produces a rubbish archer, Half Man Half Biscuit’s Tending the Wrong Grave for 23 Years produces a decent mage. Etc.
Not done much, yet. Initial cut scene and tutorial, the creation of sixteen troopers and the first battle proper. It’s a bit fiddly to control, simpler than the DS FFT game and has some annoying load times, but it’s on an iPod.
Far Cry 2 (360)
Nov 10th
There are games that have got better reviews while I was away on holiday, but none of them seemed like they’d fit me so well. Satisfying gunplay in an open world? Sounds very much like my kind of thing. And, luckily, I was right. Every gun fight is fun and the world is lovely. I’ve only done one story mission since the tutorial ended – everything else has been exploration, opening safe houses and doing a couple of missions for the gun seller.
The only really annoyance is that sometimes the game doesn’t seem to spawn the correct number of enemies by safe houses, meaning you can get to them, kill everyone, but still not unlock them.
And the lack of saving opportunities means that you can’t just have a quick blast – and sometimes dying means losing a lot of progress.
But, you know, it’s nice to have a game where dying has real consequences for once. Also, very little of the repetition you may have to do is annoying. The fights are always different and it’s only really redoing the danger-free diamond pickups that grates. An option to save after each of those would have been very welcome indeed.
Fallout 3 (360)
Nov 10th
You know, I don’t think this game has a stupid subtitle? A sequel without a colon? What’s going on with the world, eh?
Anyway, I didn’t get on with the original two Fallout games, but I loved Oblivion. This game is an effective synthesis of the two. It feels exactly like a post-apocalyptic Oblivion, but the levelling and skills systems seem (from what I can remember) to have been taken wholesale from the Fallout games.
I did a lot of stuff and enjoyed myself thoroughly, but got a bit fed up with some fire ants that kept killing me. That quest was an effort – I probably should have left it for a few levels. Maybe level four isn’t the right time to be tackling it. My only decent weapons skill is Small Guns and my trusty pistol did very little damage to the ants, so I had to improvise with scavenged ammo and new guns. And mines. The main problem, though, was a lack of healing items. I got 500 bottle caps (the game’s currency) for being very naughty indeed, though, so maybe I should find someone selling medical supplies and stock up.
