A Gaming Diary
iPhone
World Soccer Champs 2010 (iPhone)
Jun 30th
Wasn’t sure what to expect with this one. Top-down footie games normally try to be Sensible Soccer, but fail.
So it was with some trepidation that I paid my £1.19 and started up the game.
I made the mistake of starting to play without reading the instructions. Don’t do that. You see, the game’s got a lovely passing mechanic that you simply won’t discover until you read the instructions telling you how to do it. (Or maybe you will, if you’re not as stupid as me. I don’t know. Maybe you’re some sort of robot-headed football game genius. I’m not making any assumptions.)
So, I thought I liked the game, but wasn’t sure.
It's better than Striker on the Super Nintendo, at least.
After reading the instructions, I knew I liked the game. Oh, it’s a bit of a mess when I’m defending, but that’s always the case with me and footie games. Attacking is absolutely lovely, though – and I’ve even managed to score some goals. Hooray!
I think I’ve nearly played as many matches of this game as I have of the official FIFA World Cup game already, which is quite impressive.
It may or may not be to your taste, I really don’t know, but I’m throughly enjoying and think it’s well worth trying.
Farmville (iPhone)
Jun 30th
Baa.
There, look, I got my sheep. I can stop playing now.
Or can I?
Stayed tuned to find out!
The Oregon Trail (iPhone)
Jun 30th
It’s the iPhone version of an old Commodore 64 game. I don’t remember it from back then, but my wife does. Apparently the iPhone version is very different – especially graphically. That should be obvious from one look at the screenshots.
Anyway, The Oregon Trail is the story of a family struggling across North America to go and set up home in the west. The pace was slow and so is the game.
You spend a lot of time staring at the screen as your grumbling family plods across America.
You spend most of your time watching this screen.
Every now and again, though, something happens.
You might play a mini-game, such as floating down a river, hunting animals, picking berries or repairing your wagon.
Hit the nails to repair your wagon.
One of your family might get injured or ill, which doesn’t result in a mini-game, just a hard decision. Carry on with an injured child? Rest up while they heal? Spend much-needed cash on a doctor?
You even get to meet famous people from, you know, history. They give you little quests, most of which seem to involve talking to them again at a certain location further down the road.
I failed this quest - I'd already agreed to meet someone else on another route.
It’s a bit of a slog, but that’s really the point. If you’re anything like me, you’ll become attached to your family and want to see them through to the end. The mini-games are workmanlike, but it’s a pretty good attempt at generating the right atmosphere without being off-putting.
Farmville (iPhone)
Jun 29th
So, it wasn’t working very well last night. I spent hours staring at an unmoving progress bar on the loading screen, which looks generically, rubbishly cute at first, but which becomes creepier and creepier the longer the game takes to load.
Come play with us, Owen, play forever...
And then when I finally did get in, the game kept telling me I was out of sync with the server and reseting everything I’d done.
I saw this screen several hundred times last night. Or maybe about five. One of those.
I did finally manage to fertilise some crops for Peavy, though, so that was good.
I made the crops sparkle! No, idiots, not like vampires. Piss off.
I’m going to get up level seven and buy this damn animal – it’s a matter of pride now – then I’m going to delete the sorry fucking thing and never touch it again.
Possibly.
Depends how my cupcake crops are coming along.
Yes, cupcakes.
GET OUT OF THERE CUPCAKES, YOU’RE NOT EVEN CROPS.
Except, in the creepy world of Farmville, they are. It’s all so wrong. I feel like Pinhead is standing behind me smiling every time I play the bloody thing.
One more crop of strawberries and your soul is mine.
On the other hand, though, it’s just a cute little game where you have a little farm and can decorate with nice things and make it look nice. If you replace stamina and game-time management with real-time management and take away all the interesting interaction with villagers, it’s not really that far removed from Harvest Moon. And you don’t have to spam your friends if you don’t want to. Sure, it asks all the time, but you can keep saying no.
It’s probably not really evil, you know, just deeply fucking cynical. But then, most games are.
Super KO Boxing 2 (iPhone)
Jun 29th
Brilliant. And free. Until tomorrow. Go download now.
Don’t read the rest of this blog, it’s going to be either incredibly dull or just complete nonsense, so there’s no point. Go to iTunes and download this game while it’s free.
Still here? Why? Morbid curiosity or something?
Thanks for blocking your face just as I took a screenshot, dick.
Um, okay, right. Super KO Boxing 2 is a boxing game that’s apparently like Punch Out, or whatever it’s called. Not a game that ever made any great impression on me. Maybe it should have done, though, because this is great. Oh, it may get too hard soon – I’ve only done the fights in the first location – and it already seems to be taxing my reaction times beyond their limits. (I’ve noticed over the last few years that my reaction times have got much worse than they were when I was a bright young thing. Goodness knows how bad they’d be if I didn’t keep them trained with all these games.)
For now, though, this game is great fun and an absolute steal for free.
Superblox: Powers Unleashed (iPhone)
Jun 29th
It’s a tilt-controlled arcade game where you have to avoid enemies while collecting blocks to make faces.
It's a Frankenstein! (YES. I KNOW. THAT'S THE JOKE.)
It’s very simple when you play it – I didn’t see any instructions and don’t feel like I needed them – and it might be quite fun, but I’ve not played it enough to make a decision.
I’m only blogging about it today because I downloaded it for free and I don’t know when it’s going to start costing money. (For all I know, it might have gone up in price already.)
Also: the blocks – blox, whatever – look like spooky monster faces, so don’t get too scared!
FIFA World Cup (iPhone)
Jun 29th
I was playing as Brazil.
Once again, my iPhone predict-o-tron fails me, but at least it got the winners right for once.
That was my first game on Semi-Pro difficulty. I’m not sure if that’s why I conceded a goal or whether it was because Robinho got sent off about five minutes in. Putting the difficultly up hasn’t stopped the AI running around like a blind, suicidal chicken, which is a pity. I’d been assuming the idiotic runs my opponents sometimes made were due to the difficulty level of the game, rather than just poor AI. Mind you, I’m still only playing one level up from the bottom, so things might improve yet.
Farmville (iPhone/Web)
Jun 28th
Yes, you heard me.
Farmville.
The word that strikes fear into the heart of every gamer with a Facebook account.
Farmville.
The insidious, creeping evil that’s eaten the hearts and souls of the womenfolk and turned them all into ragged beggars, patrolling news feeds for eggs and bricks, working their very lives around their crop schedules.
So what was I doing playing it, especially as my wife broke her addiction a few months ago?
Curiosity. Plain, simple curiosity.
I mean, I wouldn’t get sucked into the stupid thing and then I could always stand aloft, safe in the knowledge that I was condemning something I’d tried. I would have faced the evil and lived to tell the tale and warn others.
My first plots.
Yeah… it hasn’t quite worked out like that.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, I haven’t given them real money yet. I’ve not posted a single message about it on Facebook. I’m not even sure if I’m going to carry on playing.
It’s just that, well, I’ve got some crops going and I’m level five and if I get to level seven I can buy a sheep and…
Oh dear.
Oh dear me.
I blame Peavy. I was all ready to give up and then she sent me a friend request and I accepted and sent her a gift and then she sent me one and then I went to fertilise her crops but I can’t seem to do that and I don’t know why.
My first neighbour.
I’ve even got some decorations on my farm. Three hay bales and hanging flowers.
My first decorations.
I even harvested some wheat on the web version of the game this morning. It seems a lot more complicated, though, with lots of buttons and an avatar and stuff. I think I’ll stick to iPhone version. After all, it means I can harvest my crops whenever I need to and not to be in front of a computer at certain times of day and…
…oh shit. Did I just say I was going to stick with the iPhone version? I did. I can see it there in black an white. Argh!
So, so, so what is the appeal? Why do millions play it? Why am I still playing it?
I’M STILL PLAYING BECAUSE I WANT A DAMN SHEEP.
AND A PIG.
AND IF I GET 50,000 COINS I CAN GET AN IPHONE EXCLUSIVE SNOW LEOPARD!
Help me someone, please…
Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 2 (iPhone)
Jun 28th
Ah, Tony Hawk, the skater even I’ve heard of. This was a great game on the Playstation back in the day, so how does it stand up on the iPhone?
It doesn’t. Stand up. It falls on its face and sprawls on the ground in a mess of what should, by rights, be broken bones.
No. Wait. That’s just me playing the game. I’m as rubbish as I ever was.
Just as rubbish. The same amount of rubbish.
And that, you see, is because – ta da! – it’s the same game! It runs perfectly, the controls are so good I could kiss them and it’s just exactly like playing the game on the Playstation, except now it’s on my phone.
Oh crap, oh crap, I am going to die.
HOORAY!
The two-minute time limits are perfect for handheld gaming, it looks pretty nice shrunk down and it’s much faster than the more realistic skaters we’ve been playing lately.
So, yes, excellent stuff. I just wish I was better at it. And that I could remember where the secret tapes were.
Juggle (iPhone)
Jun 28th
Retro-tinged, nicely-glowing “microgame” from Denki. You move left and right to keep “balls” (they’re square! retro lol!) from falling off the screen. More “balls” appear as time goes on, if you ever lose all of them, it’s game over. So, a bit Pong, a bit Breakout. You know the drill.
THIS IS WHAT THE GAME LOOKS LIKE.
It’s a simple game – BUT THAT ISN’T A BAD THING. Yes, that needed to be in caps. YOU NEED TELLING.
YOU.
Caps and italics. That told you! Ha!
Is it any good? Yes, it is. It’s simple, slick and has global leaderboards. And it’s 59p. Which is less than a can of Coke, unless you buy multipacks. Spar have stopped their “ten for three quid” offer, but they have a “twelve for four quid” offer, which is still pretty good.
