A Gaming Diary
360
Call of Duty 4 Beta (360)
Sep 13th
After some more Free-For-All, I decided to try some Team Deathmatch. I was comfortably the worst person in my team in all the rounds I played, but I wasn’t way down below the next-worst person, which… is… some… comfort.
Gnng.
Colin McRae DiRT (360)
Sep 12th
You know how sometimes you get game series that do one thing very well, then add in other stuff which is rubbish? Like when the Rogue Squadron games added on-foot sections?
Well, that’s DiRT for you. Rally stages, hill climbs, great. Pick-up truck circuit racing? Not so much. No unbearably bad, not at all, but they’re not as fun as the core racing and suffer from some terribly offputting framerate issues.
I’m thinking a part-exchange for Sega Rally Revo may be in this game’s future.
Call of Duty 4 Beta (360)
Sep 12th
I just tried out some games of Free-For-All to get used to the controls and had a good time. Got promoted a few times. Created a class and added a grenade launcher to my AK-47, but couldn’t work out how to fire it.
And then I quit out, which seemed to end the game, because I was the host. I hadn’t realised that. Oops. I feel bad now.
Sonic The Hedgehog (360)
Sep 12th
I played this while the CoD4 Beta was downloading, but couldn’t get off the Green Hill Zone. First time I died before getting to the boss, in my second game the boss killed me.
How rubbish am I? I mean, really.
Halo 2 (360)
Sep 10th
I’ve discovered something. Using the Needler and the shotgun is the way to go on Easy. Oh, and that sword thing, whatever it’s called. It starts to feel more Quake-like and is a lot of fun.
Halo 2 (360)
Sep 8th
With Halo 3 just around the corner, I thought it might be a good time to finally see the end of Halo 2′s single-player campaign. This means starting from the beginning again, unfortunately, so I’ve stuck it on Easy so I can blast through as quickly as possible.
On Easy it’s quite good fun, but nothing very special in raw gameplay terms. I’m not having to use any tactics, and instead I’m just running around blasting anyone who needs to be killed and running past anyone who doesn’t. I’m not quite invincible and have died carelessy a couple of times, but it’s one of those games where Easy really, really means easy.
Of course, all the great incidental stuff is the same on Easy as the other levels. The Convenant design, the character dialogue, the action-movie-cool set pieces, all present and correct.
Bioshock (360)
Sep 6th
Well, holding LB and RB on startup to delete the cache let me continue playing and, in a three-hour session, I managed to finish the game.
Overall, it was brilliant, but there were enough little niggles at the end to knock it down from 10 to a 9. Chief among these was the final boss encounter. The first time I played it, another enemy killed me when I was just finishing him off. The second time, the game glitched and the button I had to use to defeat the boss wouldn’t work. The third time I defeated him, only for the final cut scene to flash up, followed by the game over screen. The fourth time, I won and the game didn’t kill me afterwards. Phew.
Still, I’m a fan. I’m a fan of the world. I’m a fan of the posters up around Rapture. I’m a fan of the Big Daddies and Little Sisters. I’m a fan of the plasmids. I’m a fan of the crossbow. And the shotgun. And the machine gun. I’m a fan of the music. I’m a fan of the ghosts.
Bioshock (360)
Sep 5th
Hmpf.
I was happily playing this, until after an hour or so it started freezing up for a couple of seconds every ten seconds or so.
Not the only one seeing the problem this evening and there was a patch when I started up, so I guess something’s been broken. Way to go! Patches that break perfectly good games!
Three Demos (360)
Sep 1st
I really haven’t got anything to say about these, so I’ll not split them up into separate entries.
Puzzle Fighter HD – I really thought I’d be buying this with the points I’ve got sitting in my account, but it failed to grab me.
Streets of Rage 2 – Found it very tiresome, but played until the end of the demo level.
Timeshift – Got a couple of checkpoints in, couldn’t tell what was going on, got annoyed, turned it off.
Conclusion: This afternoon, I am not in the mood for games.
Bioshock (360)
Aug 28th
Lots of BIG! IMPORTANT! plot tonight. Was a struggle to turn off, actually.
Oh, and I casually decided to use a fruit machine when I was walking past and got the jackpot-getting achievement, which was nice.
