A Gaming Diary
360
Carneyvale Showtime Demo (360)
Apr 9th
Remind me of Star Trigon more than any other game, which is no bad thing. But instead of using Mr Driller characters to draw triangles, you have to chuck a clown around a level and get him to the exit. Actually seems quite fun – and the lack of boring tutorial is a definite plus – but I was pretty terrible at it. I’m just not good enough at timing my button presses.
Also, the nagging “BUY ME!” messages between levels put me right off.
I’d be very surprised if I didn’t play it again sometime, though.
Blow Demo (360)
Apr 9th
The hard time limit really doesn’t help Blow, for example. It seems like it might well be a very nice, relaxing, slow-paced puzzle game. You place fans to blow bubbles around a level until you’ve hit all the flowers and unlocked the exit, but the tutorial uses up all the time of the trial, near enough. When I finally got given a level to do myself, I was looking forward to trying it, but then the trial period ended. I could start it up again, yes, but the “No saving in trial” messages that kept popping up make me think that I’d have to do the tutorial all over again.
I’ll have another go and see, though, I think.
Colosseum Demo (360)
Apr 9th
A community game. Yes, another one. This one looks nice, with some stylish (if slightly unclear) cel-shaded graphics, but the trial just said, “I’m a fairly dull third-person brawler that you probably wouldn’t give the time of day to on Live Arcade itself.” It’s pretty, it seems to work and I was a little bit annoyed when the trial ended, but I didn’t feel much like trying it again.
Honestly, it might be more interesting than it seems. The time limit on community games is a real problem, I think. You just don’t get long enough to make up your mind about a game, especially if there’s a long tutorial at the beginning.
Groov (360)
Apr 8th
And talking of little works of genius, we come to Groov, my second ever community games purchase after Easy Golf. You need to buy this one, too. Sorry, but that two together only come to six hundred points. That’s, like, less than an issue of PC Gamer, or something.
Anyway, Groov. It’s basically another Geometry Wars rip off. It’s got the same type of graphics, but they’re not as nice. It’s got the same controls, but they don’t feel quite as smooth. And unlike Geometry Wars 2′s abundance of modes, Groov only has three levels. And from what I’ve read, none of them last very long. (I keep dying on the first level.)
Not sounding good, is it? But – aha! – sound is what makes it so good. See what I did there? You know how in Rez, exploding enemies become sound effects and add to the music and the music builds as you go through different waves and all that? No? Oh. Well, now you do. And Groov is very similar. Every enemy releases a different sound. (And not only that, but your shots themselves help make the music.) As you reach certain scores, the music builds and it all comes together and you realise that you’re playing something special. You’re making music by shooting stuff! If only all music was made that way…
Short, yes. A tiny, weeny bit clunky, maybe. But excellent all the same. I urge you to try out the demo. And then I urge you to buy it. Two hundred points is really cheap and serves as a thank you to the developer, if nothing else. (Although buying it does unlock two of three levels, so there is something else. Er, yeah. Moving on.) Maybe he can send thank you cards to Bizarre Creations and that bloke you made Rez, or something.
Easy Golf: Course Architect (360)
Apr 8th
I played the demo of this a while back. But it timed out before I could try designing a course and, until I got a helpful comment on the post I made about it, I didn’t realise you could restart community game demos.
Anyway, it’s taken until now for me to try it again. Since then, the demo appears to last much longer and the price has gone to 400 points.
Frankly, it’s now a complete no brainer. The controls and physics are utilitarian, without anything special, but they work. The game may not have a graphical wow factor, but it certainly looks nice.
So why buy it? And why claim it’s a no brainer? It’s the course designer. It’s easy to use without being too simple and I knocked up a hole in no time and then had one of those moments of tiny awe as I leapt in and actually played a hole I’d designed. And then I made another. And played that, too. It didn’t work too well (I’d gone crazy on the hills), so I altered it a little, making the initial hill after the tees a little less unforgiving, but putting a nasty bunker in the middle of the fairway at the bottom. Oh, that bunker! It seems almost magnetic. (It’s a shame that you need to leave so much room between different surfaces, but that’s a very minor nitpick.)
It’s a little work of genius, that course designer and all in a community game selling for a mere 400 points. I urge you to buy it. Maybe once I’ve finished a full eighteen holes I’ll share my course with you over Live. (And maybe I’ll even rename it before I do, so you don’t have the word “Poop” in your course list. What can I say? I’m a twelve-year-old in a thirty-five-year-old body.) A golf game is a perfect thing to have sitting on the hard drive and one where you can design your own courses and play as a robot wearing a cowboy hat? That’s even more perfect.
On Saturday mornings I quite often get up before my wife. Big games of killing seem like too much effort, so I often just watch repeats of Time Team on More 4. I think from now on I’ll play Easy Golf instead. It’s like the Time Team of games.
That’s a compliment.
Artoon Demo (360)
Apr 8th
Remember Bounder? Well, this isn’t much like it, but you do control a bouncing ball. I’m sure there’s a better comparison, but I can’t think of it right now. Anyway, you bounce around changing the colour of tiles until the exit opens, then you bounce on over there.
There’s a good multiplier system and, most excellently, every level has a completely different visual style (the middle level on the second tier, after the tutorial has an especially clever hook)… but, but, but I didn’t like the controls as much I felt I should. The ball weighs more than I’m comfortable with, or something. It just didn’t feel quite right to me. Maybe that would come in time, but right now it feels like I’d pay 200 points for it, but not the 400 points being asked. (Though, given the amount of love that’s obviously gone into the game, 400 points is completely fair – it’s just a bit too much for me.
Supercow Demo (360)
Apr 8th
Incredibly colourful, finely-detailed graphics. The graphics are so finally-detailed, in fact, that it’s actually quite hard to see what’s going. I think that may be intentional, though, with enemies placed in amongst the undergrowth, requiring more quick visual processing than controller reflexes. Underneath it all, it seems to be a standard 2D platformer that harks back to the 16-bit days, where all but about three games were exactly the same as this.
There doesn’t seem to be a guide to the controls anywhere in the game, so if you can use any super powers (apart from jumping on enemies to kill them, which admittedly is pretty super for a cow) I couldn’t find them.
I doubt I’ll ever buy it, but it’s worth a look.
Weapon of Choice Demo (360)
Apr 8th
Last night was community games night for me on the 360. Weapon of Choice I’ve played before, I remember it fun but amazingly ugly. I don’t know if it’s because I was expecting it, but it looked less ugly last night, but is just as fun as I remember. Like Contra, but not stupidly hard and therefore, for me at least, better. Lots of nice touches, especially the way the game slows down when you’re close to being hit, allowing you to get out of the way… most of the time.
A possible purchase somewhere down the line, for sure.
Wartech: Senko no Ronde (360)
Apr 6th
I completed Story mode with the second character and then tried the third character. She gets a completely different final boss to the other two characters I’ve tried and it’s much, much harder. I finally managed to work out how to do its first form (though not without taking a lot of damage every time), but the second form seems to spam out attacks that are completely unavoidable. I can reflect some of them, but don’t have enough power to shield myself for very long and soon die. I gave up in the end. There must be a way to do it, probably by just using the shield for the shortest possible amount of time, but it felt a bit too hard to me last night.
Wartech: Senko no Ronde (360)
Apr 5th
I’ve been intrigued by this game for a while, it being a collision between bullet hell shooters and fighting games. It’s a one-on-one fighter, viewed from above and you spend most time firing missiles and glowing bullets at the enemy than attacking them from close quarters. Oh, and you can transform into a giant shooter boss during the fight.
Anyway, it cost me 98p and is a definite bargain for that price. I’ve not spent much time with it, but I went through Story mode with the default character and then played some Score Attack. All thoroughly enjoyable.
Nobody was online to play against, though.
