A Gaming Diary
360
Dante’s Inferno Demo (360)
Jan 11th
It’s been fifteen years or so since I last glanced at a copy of the book, but I don’t remember Dante having to fight off Death in a boss battle after being stabbed in the back during the Crusades. Nor do I remember Beatrice (and her impressive boobs) being spirited away to the underworld inside a collapsing church full of zombies. And did Dante have a huge cross sewn to his chest in original text? Well, I can’t say I remember the details, but it seems unlikely… Didn’t get to see Virgil, but if he’s played by Vinnie Jones in a gimp mask I wouldn’t be too surprised.
So, it’s nothing really to do with the book on which it’s meant to be based, bar some character names and the odd bit of throwaway script. It is, however, a jaw-droppingly blatant clone of God of War. I turned it off when Dante got stuck trying to walk up a step two pixels high and then fell to his death without warning.
Seems like it might end up being a fun budget buy at some point, but I’ll stick to Bayonetta for my hacking and slashing fix for now, I think. (If Bayonetta ever arrives, of course. No sign of it yet.)
Assassin’s Creed 2 (360)
Jan 11th
Played a lot of this over the weekend, but I don’t seem to be anywhere close to the end. I’ve made it to Venice, but a lot of the city is still locked. It’s all been excellent fun, except for a glyph that turned out not to be on the building the description seemed to be saying it was. That was a cause of great frustration. Oh, and there was a code wheel puzzle where I simply couldn’t see any clues at all. I used GameFAQs for both those things, but they’re the only times I’ve had to look something up online so far.
The general running, jumping, stabbing mayhem has still been perfectly fine. I’ve started to disarm opponents a lot now; seems to be the best way to kill many tougher enemies.
Assassin’s Creed 2 (360)
Jan 7th
Honestly, the demo of Bayonetta spoiled this a bit for me last night. After the fluid grace of the lady with the glasses, Ezio felt like a big lumbering fool of a man, constantly stumbling and falling over. I dunno, maybe he was drunk. Or maybe it’s just that I was dog tired last night.
I actually got a bit frustrated with the game, for the first time since the “Leonardo’s box falling through the scenery” incident. I have an assassination contract to do, which has to be done without any of my targets spotting me. Trouble is, throwing knives just seem to piss them off a bit and I can’t get close without them spotting me.
Oh, and it crashed once, too, just after finishing a different assassination mission – which I now have to do again. Grr.
Hopefully just an aberration.
Bayonetta Demo (360)
Jan 7th
Played this again last night, just to check I really liked it before spending my Christmas money from my grandmother-in-law on a pre-order. And I do like it. I like it a lot. I’m really rather rubbish at it – though remembering I can use healing items would make things a bit easier – and it’s a bit confusing right now – what does magic power do? – but it’s great fun. The best part is that I really feel like I’m actually playing it and not just hammering buttons and seeing random stuff happen.
I hope the full game doesn’t disappoint, because I wouldn’t normally buy a game for full launch price, even with “extra” money. I’m having it sent to the office, not home, so I don’t get it until next week, though, so I don’t play it until I’ve played a lot more Assassin’s Creed 2.
Assassin’s Creed 2 (360)
Jan 5th
Took a month off, for no real reason, but I’m back in Italy now. And I’m having a whale of a time. There’s a million things to do, all of them fun, and it’s just one of the very best games I’ve played in ages. It’s amazing how much better than the first game it is. I loved that one, but I’m sure that if I went back it would seem far too empty and simplistic.
Last night I played for about an hour and a half and in that time I managed to do one story mission, some side assassinations, kill a courier, find my way to some tricky feathers, buy a treasure map and go hunting, upgrade my town and villa, change my clothes, buy some new armour and weapons, name a horse Jeremy, climb new eagle points, hire some courtesans and mercenaries to distract guards, solve some puzzles revealed by glyphs, decode and rearrange codex pages, etc., etc.
Brilliant.
Ten Best Games of 2009
Jan 4th
Normal blogging will be resumed shortly, but to mark the new year, here are the best ten games of 2009… that I played. (So no Modern Warfare 2 or Uncharted 2, for example.) It was hard to whittle it down to a top ten, but I think I got there. Unfortunately, it means that 33rd Division, Scribblenauts, Angry Birds, Ridge Racer Accelerated, Doom Classic, Borderlands and even the mighty Demon’s Souls, Minigore and Orbital got left out.
Assassin’s Creed 2 (360)
I loved the first Assassin’s Creed game, but the sequel is on a completely different level. It’s tuned to perfection, with the developers having learnt the lessons of the first game and it’s absolutely packed with things to do. You can’t move more than three feet in town without encountering a side mission, treasure chest, shop, random chase, glyph or feather. Everything’s interesting, everything’s fun, there’s a decent script that’s not afraid to be funny now and again (“It’s me, Mario!”) and it’s absolutely beautiful. Best of all, I’m nowhere near done with it, so it’ll last me well into 2010.
Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS3)
If I had to choose one single Game of the Year, there’s no doubt that it would be Batman: Arkham Asylum. Influenced by the best comics and cartoons, it’s the first game that really, truly lets you be Batman. Batman’s not going to get hurt in a fight with a thug, but make him fight six at a time and he needs to be careful. And if those thugs have got guns, well, he’ll have to take them out without being seen. All the gameplay elements mesh together perfectly – with the exception of a few of the boss fights – and I’ll remember the setting and Mark Hamill’s Joker for a long, long time to come, even if I’ve already forgotten some of the details of the actual story. Brilliant.
Canabalt (iPhone)
If I were doing hardware awards, the iPhone would be running away with them. My scepticism of the device as a games machine disappeared within days of getting one. I even like virtual sticks and buttons now. But the first iPhone game to make this alphabetical list doesn’t need any of those. Instead, you just tap on the screen everytime you want to jump. It’s simple, yes, but only dimwits would see that as a bad thing. You run, you jump and you inevitably die. And then you come back for another go. The randomly-generated levels keep things tense and it looks and sounds incredible.
Flower (PS3)
Breathtaking. Flower sees you become a god or spirit and takes you on a incredible journey. It’s something of a miracle that the big brick of technology that is the Playstation 3 can make you feel such a part of nature. To describe the story would be an injustice – and I expect everyone has their own interpretation. The gentle glides, the swoops, the windmills and pylons and cities and grass and flowers… it’ll all stay with me a long, long time.
Fuel (360)
The game I’ve always wanted in my head now exists in real life. It’s a huge, sprawling mess of America, where driving for hours with no goal in mind is a simple joy. It’s a game you remember. Riding bikes down impossibly huge cliffs, picking your way round the shallows of a lake at night, watching the sun break over a burned forest… like most of the games in this list, this is an exceptional game not just for the pure rush of the gaming moment, but in the way the sights, sounds and feelings remain long after you’ve stopped playing. And, you know, it didn’t hurt that many of the races were brilliantly-designed, requiring knowledge of the environment and vehicles to succeed. A towering single-player achievement, it’s just a shame that the online didn’t quite live up to expectations.
Gran Turismo (PSP)
I only got this a few days before the end of the year, but after many hours of playing on the sofa and in bed, I knew it had to make this list. The driving model is exciting (though you’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise before playing with the settings) and there are a huge number of cars and tracks. What really makes it for me, though, is the structure. Instead of a career mode you’re just given some basic modes and can choose any of the tracks to race on. By racing you earn more money to buy new cars. There’s nothing forced on you, you can just buy the cars you think look interesting and take them round your favourite tracks. What to see how a 1954 2CV handles Laguna Seca? Well, off you go – and you’ll even get some money for it. Absolutely exceptional.
Killzone 2 (PS3)
You like shooting people in the face? Of course you do! Killzone 2 understands this. It gives you great guns and great enemies and makes amazing set pieces out of them. It takes a while to get into, but once you’ve wormed your way inside, you won’t want to get out. Perfectly paced and just as long as it needs to be, Killzone 2 is an absolute triumph of the simple joy of putting bullets into bad guys.
Noby Noby Boy (PS3)
Initially, it seems like it’ll probably be fun for ten minutes, but no more. There aren’t any real goals (beyond hunting for trophies, if you feel like it) there’s just a random level and the stretching, twisting, ever-hungry Boy. You move around, eat things, knock things over and just play for the simple joy of play. And it doesn’t seem to get old. You always expect it to, but every time you go back, it still grabs you and a quick five minutes turns into an hour and a half without you noticing – or caring. Criminally overlooked and incredibly cheap, Noby Noby Boy deserved much, much better.
Prinny: Can I Really Be The Hero? (PSP)
Hard as nails – you might well lose all your 1,000 lives before completing the game – but never malicious, Prinny is an odd game. It’s an old school platformer spin-off from a series of strategy games and shouldn’t really work. If you believe the reviewers who skated the surface without finding their way inside, it was a failure. But those reviewers are wrong. It’s a huge game, packed with humour and secrets and, crucially, death is always your own fault. Quite frankly, if you like running, jumping and pounding things with your bottom, there wasn’t a better game released this year.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
The online multiplayer hit of the year, I’ve played this every day for months now. Heavily based on Scrabble, Words With Friends doesn’t bother with any fluff, but just lets you play the game against other people with a minimum of fuss. Portable game of the year, without a shadow of a doubt.
PAC-MAN Championship Edition (iPhone/360)
Dec 10th
So, the glorious Pac-Man C.E. arrived on the iPhone at midnight last night. It’s one of the finest games on the Xbox 360, but has it survived the transition?
Yes. Not perfectly, but I’ve been finding it very, very hard to put down. It’s a great conversion, only slightly hampered by touch screen controls that aren’t quite there. Very close, but this is one case where having a physical stick can only be an advantage.
Not that the controls are bad. Using the dual d-pad set up I’m mostly fine, but sometimes my thumbs move off centre when I’m going very fast and I get killed before I can readjust. It’s not a problem with the controls themselves – they’re perfectly responsive if you hit them correctly – it’s just a case of it being hard to keep your thumbs in the right place in the heat of the moment. (It’s lot a easier to tap the d-pads, rather than drag your thumb around, by the way.)
Just to check the 360 version is actually better in this regard, I gave it a quick go this morning before work – and promptly got a new high score. Nice.
There’s also been a bit of controversy regarding Namco’s pricing model. Basically, you pay £1.79 for the game, which gets you a selection of levels in a couple of different modes. Then you can pay £2.39 to unlock another game mode and lots more levels in the existing modes. Seems very reasonable to me. The game gives you lots and lots to do for your initial £1.79 – I’ve mostly just been playing one level over and over again, trying to beat my high score – but there’s more there if you want it and the total price ends up being very reasonable.
The only real downer is the unforgivable lack of online high scores, but even that’s not a deal-breaker when the game’s this good.
All in all, it’s a hair away from perfection, due to the limitations of the hardware, but it’s more than good enough to be worth getting.
Bayonetta Demo (360)
Dec 4th
Stupidly OTT third-person gorefest, like the mad aunt nobody mentions in the Devil May Cry and Ninja Gaiden family. I surprised myself by actually managing to pull off sensible moves and dodges, despite everything being too busy for my conscious mind to process. One of those games where you really have to go with the flow. If you stop to think about what to do, it’s all over, but if you let your thumbs and fingers do the work, magical things can happen.
(I wasn’t that great at it, mind. I died a few times during the demo and ended up with Stone rank overall, despite getting some platinum medals along the way.)
It’s all very, very silly. You’ve got guns attached to your boots, you can turn you hair into stiletto heels and iron maidens and you can pick up angelic trumpets that act as shotguns. It’s videogaming filtered through a fever dream that’s been sped up to twice its normal speed – and probably quite brilliant, though it’s hard to tell.
Assassin’s Creed 2 (360)
Nov 30th
Yes! A non-iPhone game! I went out on Saturday morning and used up the credit on my Blockbuster account on a copy of Assassin’s Creed 2. In these heady App Store days, spending forty pounds – forty pounds! – on a game seems ludicrous, so however much I wanted this game I’d not have got it if I didn’t have the store credit sitting there waiting for me.
I bought AC2 over all the other recent releases (Modern Warfare 2, New Super Mario Bros, etc.) because I loved and adored the first game and had heard this one was the same, but bigger and better. I’d heard right. It’s Assassin’s Creed taken to a whole new level, with a better structure and lots, lots more to do. It’s simply glorious.
I’m tempted to list all the cool things I did over the weekend, but I don’t really want to take away the surprise from people who haven’t played it. I’ve mostly avoided reviews and forum chat, so was constantly being surprised by new gameplay elements. I’m not sure that the story’s really up to much – it seems to be a fairly confusing conspiracy tale, not unlike the first game – but individual lines and scenes are well-scripted, with a surprising amount of humour.
I played for five or six hours the weekend, I think, and I’m itching to get back for more.
Borderlands (360)
Oct 26th
It’s like someone made a game just for me. It’s like World of Warcraft, but without other people. And with a cartoonish, cel-shaded post apocalyptic vibe. And with proper shooting instead of MMO clicky clicky combat.
It’s brilliant. You get shoot things and hit things and there are billions of different guns and it’s all incredibly satisfying and fun and makes time fly by and I love it to bits.
I would write more, but my head is killing me and I still have to write about Pang and pay my water bill.
