A Gaming Diary
360
Marble Blast Ultra
Feb 16th
Ah.
Hmm.
I set myself a challenge of getting below-par times on all the Intermediate levels before next Wednesday. I thought it’d be easy enough. I only had three levels left to do. And I’ve now done two of them.
Problem?
The problem is Whirl. It is a bastard. An utter, utter bastard. It demands complete perfection over an incredibly long and difficult course. In what way this is Intermediate rather than advanced I really don’t know. The par time is 2:20. My best time is 15:21. And that’s after about ninety minutes of playing it.
Oh my.
Xbox 360
Feb 10th
Hooray!
Thanks to Connect360 my 360 can now see my iMac and stream music and photos from it. I had to register to get more than 100 of each, but it was only ten bucks, which seems very reasonable.
I’m currently listening to Franz Ferdinand (wish it was someone cooler for the purposes of impressing y’all, but that’s shuffle for you) and it’s showing a slideshow of my pictures of my girlfriend.
Now it’s Modest Mouse. Are they cool? I have no idea any more.
Can’t play anything I’ve bought from the iTunes Music Store, which is annoying but not a deal breaker.
Hmm. The slideshow wasn’t on repeat.
Now it’s Dangerdoom. That’s probably cool. Bloody great, too.
Anyway, this isn’t a music blog, but I thought it was a useful piece of software. Spreading the word and all that.
Xbox 360
Feb 8th
Today was meant to be the day that I played Dead or Alive 4 for the first time. Didn’t work out like that.
After I finished fruit picking in Animal Crossing I turned on my 360. Thought I’d just download the demo of Crystal Quest before trying DoA4. Incredibly, it’s yet another shooter using the same old Robotron control scheme. Which makes it, what, the fifth Live Arcade in that vein? Not that I mind, it’s a control scheme I love and I reckon all the games that use it are different enough to be worthwhile. Crystal Quest seemed underwhelming from the eight level demo, but I unlocked it anyway. (When I got my 360 I shove tons of points on there so I wouldn’t have to worry about adding more for a year or so. Except it just made things too easy to buy. They’re going down rapidly.) The game actually turns out to be pretty good… but only after ten or fifteen minutes. However, that’s just on the default skill level. Whack the difficulty level up to 10 and it becomes very hard, very quickly. (Mainly due to one type of enemy that leaves a trail of mines. Not sure what to do about them. I hope they’re not game-breaking.)
Then I played Marble Blast Ultra. Just for a quick go… which turned into over two hours… on one level. I was determined to get an under-par time on Sledding, which meant not using any checkpoints, which meant restarting every time I fell off the level. Which was a lot. Each go lasted about fifteen seconds… so you work out how many times I must have tried it. I did it though, oh yes. It’s a real pity the Friends leaderboards are broken.
Anyway, I realised while playing Marble Blast that I hadn’t downloaded all the Robotron style games from Live Arcade. I’d missed out Smash TV. So I’ve just downloaded it to complete the set. A quick blast and then bed, I think.
Xbox 360
Feb 5th
I uninstalled Final Fantasy XI. I was never going to play it again.
Watched Aeon Flux and Mission Impossible 3 trailers, just because they were in hi-def. D’oh.
Played the Full Auto and FIFA demos again. I’d be really tempted to take a look at the full version of Full Auto if I could be sure they’d sorted out the slow down issues.
Geometry Wars 2
Feb 5th
Hooray!
I was aiming to finally get over 250,000 and I did – three times. Best score was 293,655. Good.
Two things are taking the edge off my happiness, though. Firstly, I managed to get 231,000 in one life during a game and if I’d just held on a little longer I’d have got the “survived 250,000″ achievement as well as the “score 250,000″ one. The another annoying thing is that my arch rival Zomoniac has a score of 356,000, still well above anything I’ve got. Ah well.
Geometry Wars 2
Feb 2nd
Put it on for a quick go… which lasted an hour and a half.
Best score: 194,240.
I need to reach 250,000. Soon.
Full Auto Demo
Jan 26th
It’s a new downloadable demo for the 360. It’s ace… for an unfinished product… and for four minutes of fun.
If they can get the slowdown sorted out prior to release – and they damn well should – then it could be really good fun. It’s a racing game with games and explosions and lots of stuff on and off the track to blow the crap out of. So I played through it three times and had a blast. But will it be fun doing that over and over again in the full game? Burnout managed it for a couple of games, so maybe Full Auto will be able to sustain itself for at least one. I guess this is where reviews come in handy.
There’s a good chance it’ll go on my ‘under twenty quid’ list, along with Condemned and Amped 3.
Marble Blast Ultra
Jan 26th
It’s a new download on Xbox Live Arcade. You roll a marble around and pick up gems and then head to the exit. It’s a bit Monkey Ballish, yes.
I went through the levels in the demo, then unlocked the full game without a second thought, did all twenty beginner levels under par and then leapt into a quick online game, where I rolled around badly until I lost my connection.
