A Gaming Diary
360
Red Faction: Guerilla Demo (360)
Apr 16th
Had another quick go as my 360 was on. Just as fun as it was the last time I played. I do hope the full game doesn’t spend hours buggering about with simple tutorial missions before giving you access to all the toys in the demo. If it’s fifteen hours before you get those sticky bomb things and you’re always constantly running out of them, it just won’t be as fun.
OutRun Online Arcade (360)
Apr 16th
OutRun 2 is one of my very favourite games of all time. I utterly adore it. So I’ve been saving up my points for this release.
And it’s lovely. It’s only got the SP courses – the original courses better appear as DLC soon, as they’re just that little bit better – but that’s good enough for now. I haven’t done much so far, just played through the game five times to hit the five different goals, but it’s OutRun 2 and therefore lovely. I was sighing with happiness as I drifted through the stages. Lovely.
I haven’t tried any online races yet and the friends leaderboards need fixing, like, now, but 800 points for OutRun 2 SP sitting on my hard drive? Bargain!
Red Faction: Guerilla Demo (360)
Apr 12th
Got up, cleaned my teeth, fed the cat, sat down and played through this demo another few times. I really, really, really like this, you know. Things never seem to play out quite the same; it never quite becomes routine.
Awesome stuff.
Red Faction: Guerilla Demo (360)
Apr 11th
And to prove I was talking nonsense earlier, it’s a third-person game, not an FPS.
It’s really growing on me, by the way.
Red Faction: Guerilla Demo (360)
Apr 11th
Oh, oops, forget what I wrote just now.
I just started this up again and tried playing it as a standard shooter. Turns out, it’s better than I gave it credit for. There’s not enough ammo to do the whole demo level with a gun, I don’t think, but a nice cover system and a better aiming mode (that I missed first time round), makes for a good, solid (if unspectacular) shooter – though the enemy AI doesn’t seem to be up for much.
Then add in your destructive options and… BOOM!
Also, this time when I got to the bridge the truck I was on continued driving straight over it and I won the demo. Hooray!
According to the blurb you get when finishing the demo, this is an open world game, which sounds fun.
My interested levels have gone up for this. I’ll put it down as a probably buy. But I will check reviews and Internet impressions first.
Red Faction: Guerilla Demo (360)
Apr 11th
A mixed bag, really. It’s being sold on the destruction, which is awesome. If you, like me, just enjoy games that let you destroy buildings, then you’re going to be giggling with glee here. Bombs, giant hammers, great big walking mining machines – everything you need to smash stuff up.
It’s great.
On the downside, though, the guns feel rubbish, the enemies have no personality and I keep dying in exactly the same place in the mission and I’m not really sure why. I’m on the back of a truck, firing at enemies coming to me from behind. The truck slows to a stop just before a bridge, my body flies through the air and the mission is failed. It happens at exactly the same point every time. Very odd.
Still, walking through buildings in a giant walking machine as they fall apart around me… I’m not sure that’s ever going to get old. It’s just curiously lifeless when things aren’t falling into bits and, so far, if you strip the destruction away, I think you’d just have a standard FPS from the previous generation of consoles. It really feels like an average PS2 FPS when you’re not destroying stuff. Let’s hope they tweak it a bit before release or, alternatively, that the full game has you blowing up buildings without pause.
I’m interested in the full game now, but I’m not yet sold on it.
Left 4 Dead (360)
Apr 11th
Hooray and such! Last night I turned on my Xbox to play the new Red Faction demo, but as I logged in a friend invited me to play Left 4 Dead. And so I did. I joined in the last level of one the campaigns – not sure which one, hadn’t seen it before – and we tried to complete the level. Tried and failed. Repeatedly. Getting to the final house was easy enough, but the siege at the end was always a disaster. Too many zombies, not enough ammo, special infected coming from the worst places, it was massacre after massacre.
Still just about the best fun you can have with a joypad, though. I very much enjoyed myself.
And I got an achievement for letting my chum Myoptika out of a toilet.
Mr Driller Online (360)
Apr 10th
Not a community game! I noticed that my score in quest mode was terrible and that I was bottom of my friends list. So I played for ages and got… one place higher. And I’m meant to be quite good at this game. For some reason I kept dying at about 900m on the 1000m stage.
I also spent some time trying the 3000m stage in normal mode, but didn’t get close.
Groov (360)
Apr 10th
I completed the Original Mix this morning. Didn’t get first place on the high score table, though, so that’s the next goal.
You really should give this a go, you know. Yes, you. (Not you, though. You’ve already seen me play it and it’s so not your type of thing.)
Groov (360)
Apr 9th
I still love it, I still haven’t completed the Original Mix. (That’s the first level. After that you have a harder version, then a jam session, which I assume is the same again but with invincibility, or something.)
How much do I love it? Well, I got up a few minutes early and played it a couple of time before work. That’s the highest praise there is, I think.
