A Gaming Diary
iPhone
Bombardiers Guild (iPhone)
Dec 21st
So, you’re a big gun at the bottom of the screen, you have to fire missiles to hit the enemy gun at the top of the screen. Between you are planets, whose gravity effects your missiles. So you have to make allowances for the changes in trajectory of your missiles – and try to slingshot round planets to power up your attacks.
It’s all rather simple, but, well, I’m not very good at it. I can’t really plan attacks, I just have to use trial and error until something works. It’s very polished, strangely beautiful and possibly, I think, rather good… but I’m not enjoying it all that much yet. I’m hoping that it’ll click at some point and I’ll suddenly start being able to see what I should be doing, rather than just guessing.
I’ve only done the first set of levels so far, so these are very much first impressions. Stay tuned.
Angry Birds (iPhone)
Dec 21st
Still going back to this, trying to get three stars on all the levels. I’ve only got a few left now and I’m choosing one at random and giving it a few tries before moving on. I initially tried going through each level in sequence, but that’s a far too frustrating way of doing things.
Excellent, excellent game. You’d be pretty silly to miss this one – it’s definitely in with a shot of being in my next iPhone top ten.
RIDGE RACER ACCELERATED (iPhone)
Dec 17th
This is so appallingly broken that I hate myself for liking it so much, but I do. It’s really hard, with a spin or a crash never more than a breath away, but that makes for an incredibly tense, exciting drive – and when you nail a series of drifts perfectly there’s no feeling like it.
If a patch comes out that actually means it runs full speed all the time it’ll be absolutely heavenly. Until then, well, I’ll just have to think of it as a preview of the real game, I guess.
Minigore (iPhone)
Dec 17th
I’ve got over 75,000 kills now, so the end is in sight. Not that I particularly want it to end, I’m still thoroughly enjoying myself.
Also, I seemed to be much better at the game last night that I’ve ever been before. I kept beating my high score and now the top three scores in my high score list are all from last night.
I wish they could sort out the hackers, though, so I could tell which scores are real and how I actually stack up. There are some stupid scores on the leaderboard, which are obviously fake, but how many of the scores near the top of the list are real and how many are people cheating in a less obvious way?
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Dec 17th
I got rid of all seven of my letters in one go again. Of course, it helped that two of them were blanks.
RIDGE RACER ACCELERATED (iPhone)
Dec 16th
This is either the best terrible game or the worst brilliant game I’ve ever played.
The list of things wrong with it is long.
1 – It costs £1.79, but to get more than two tracks you need to pay extra. (Though more are coming free in 2010, so they say.)
2 – You can’t seem to turn the music off.
3 – There’s no game structure at all. You just pick a race type, track and car and go for a drive.
4 – The auto-accelerate option – a Ridge killer if ever there was one – is on my default.
5 – The killer. Even Namco say it doesn’t really work on anything older than a 3GS, but even on my 3GS it runs like an absolute dog, with shocking framerate issues and horrible slowdown.
So, yes, it’s rubbish. But… but… the actual driving model is brilliant. When I slide round a corner sideways before hitting the boost just as a straighten up and scream down a hill into the sunset it’s just about the greatest thing in the world.
You see, my head knows this is a shocking travesty of a game, a promising beta released too soon just to get it out for Christmas, but when I’m actually playing it my heart and my gut love it like nothing else.
It’s absolutely brilliant… but dear god, it’s awful.
Angry Birds (iPhone)
Dec 16th
Finished all the levels yesterday; now I’m trying to get the full three stars on all of them. It’s slow going, with some levels (2-7, I’m looking at you) taking dozens of goes to complete properly.
But, really, this is an excellent game. It loads quickly, you can retry instantly, there aren’t any control issues, it looks great – it’s a hugely polished, brilliant implementation of (someone else’s) great idea.
SONG SUMMONER: The Unsung Heroes – Encore (iPhone)
Dec 16th
Still haven’t actually, you know, played any more of this, but I have been listening to songs I’ve created troopers from and getting points from doing so. Today, I actually managed to level up one of my troopers for the first time.
Yes, the Hip Hop Monk (created from Sweet Caroline, strangely) is now level two. Hooray!
I should probably actually play the game again at some point, but powering up my characters without actually playing the game is proving strangely addictive.
Minigore (iPhone)
Dec 16th
Played a little bit last night. Only up to 66,003 kills at the moment, but I still reckon I can make 100,000 before Christmas.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Dec 16th
Games like the one above are a slog, with every move reduced to putting down a letter here or a letter there – or, in the case above, not being able to see anywhere to put down any letter at all. Now to just hope my opponent has some really costly letters in his hand, though my V won’t help me at all.
