A Gaming Diary
PS2
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (PS2)
Jun 18th
Ten months since I last visited. I’ve just spent a good couple of hours doing bugger all. Mainly just cruising round the map listening to K-ROSE. Killed a few people and got wasted a few times, but that’s to be expected.
It really does look a bit a shit these days, but who really cares?
Chikyuu Boueigun 2
Feb 26th
Oh. It seems to have got difficut.
Loads of striders plus huge numbers of mirrored saucers = death.
My death.
A lot.
Whichever character I use.
Chikyuu Boueigun 2
Feb 20th
Played this for over two hours now.
It’s really, really great.
Slightly unpolished, sure, but the core gameplay is superb and the graphical design is excellent. There’s an excellent sense of scale and of actually helping to fend off an alien invasion.
Unlike Zombie Zone, which was great despite being fundamentally a little bit rubbish, this game is great because it’s fundamentally a great game.
Still not convinced?
Tarantulas the size of four elephants! Great striding war machines! Swarms of small UFOs! Great huge motherships! GODZILLA!
It’s got great enemies, yes. And you’ve got great weapons to kill them all. And the levels seems endless. And endlessly destructable.
There’s nowhere you can’t go and nothing you can’t blow up, as far as I can see.
It’s just superb.
Shame about the framerate, the Japanese language and the annoying “you’ve killed a big bad” camera, but they’re hardly worth worrying about in the general scheme of things.
Chikyuu Boueigun 2
Feb 20th
Yes, it’s Japanese. Hence the name. A Japanese budget game in which you have to kill hundreds of giant insects attacking cities including London.
It’s great fun.
I’d love an English language option so I could kit myself out better and, yes, the PS2 can’t really keep up. And it’s very grey. And the camera could be better.
But everything else is brilliant. Huge ants climbing over Big Ben! Getting in a tank on a bridge and managing to blow the bridge up, sending me into the Thames below! Giant ants climbing all over an office block? No problem, just blow it up! Flying a jetpack around a giant ants nest that’s appeared in the middle of a city!
Excellent!
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 15th
Final completion time 63:18.
And I know there was a whole sub-game I missed out.
Ending left one or two things dangling, but was nevertheless most excellent. A real, proper ending to the adventure.
Moments of frustration, yes. But in the end no boss actually took me more than two tries, as far as I remember. (I think looking for boss tips in the FAQ was a bad thing, given that I finished below the recommended level and without any of the uber-powerful items and weapons it said I should have with me.)
So apart from odd difficulty spikes and having one boss at the end of a long dungeon, it was all very well put together. Great stuff overall… as long as you’re willing to push on when it threatens to become overwhelmingly frustrating.
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 15th
I did it!
I only went and bleedin’ did it!
Thirty-nine minutes it took. All my skill, all my cunning. Items and abilities and spells and attacks. Omniheal! Kerplunk! Sage’s stone! Oomph! Kabuff!
I was magnificent.
Oh man, there’s not many feelings like seeing that bastard (who looked a lot like me, disturbingly) go down.
Ignore what I said earlier.
Best game ever!
Now to see the end! Well, I assume it’s time for the end after that…
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 15th
Six minutes. That’s how long he took to kill me.
I barely scratched the bastard.
I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it, either. His attacks are too powerful. If I play a purely defensive game without trying to hurt him I’d still die. He just throws more damage around than I can deal with.
So I guess that’s it. All this way and I’m not going to finish it. Sixty two hours or so and that’s it.
Really, what the fuck it the point of upping the difficulty so much at the end? It’s a long enough game as it is. It really, really doesn’t need to stretch itself out by getting you to level up for hours on end.
It’s Vagrant Story all over again. An object lesson in how to ruin a great game. Just make that last boss easier and I’d have had fond memories of a great game with the odd annoying bit in. Now I’m just going remember it with annoyance.
Okay, okay, because it’s been so long, I’ll try it one more time. Maybe the game will adjust the difficult or something now I’ve lost once…
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 15th
HEY! WARNING! I’VE NOT GONE INTO SPECIFICS, BUT IF YOU’RE PLAYING THE GAME YOU MIGHT NOT WANT TO READ THIS ENTRY, JUST IN CASE YOU THINK IT CONTAINS SPOILERS! OKAY?
You have been warned.
ARGH!!!!!!!!!
HOW MANY FUCKING BOSS FIGHTS ARE THERE AT THE END OF THIS GAME????????????
WHO THOUGHT THIS WOULD BE IN ANY FUCKING WAY ANY FUCKING FUN AT ALL????????????
ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Again, I say it!
ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Bloody hell, really. This is just stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid.
Okay, I’ve just checked a FAQ and I’m now at the final, real boss fight. Unfortunately, it’s apparently a much harder version of a battle I only just scraped through earlier. As I used items in that battle that I consequently no longer have, I’m not at all sure I actually sure I can win this battle, at least not without about many more hours levelling up. (I’ve been playing for about seven hours today and my main character has gone from level 38 to level 39. That’s how slowly levels come at this stage in the game.
After I got past the boss I was moaning about earlier the game got good again for a while. Why? Because it wasn’t just throwing stupidly powerful enemies at me to slow down my progress, that’s why.
Argh. Argh. Argh. Argh.
Right, okay, let’s try this boss…
If I can’t kill him after over sixty hours of playing this stupid bloody game I’m going to be even more bloody annoyed than I am now. Why? Why ruin a perfectly good game like this? It’s just difficulty for the sake of it. I don’t want to have to wander around places I’ve already been for twenty more hours building up experience and money. I don’t want to be at a complete disadvantage because I didn’t build my characters correctly right from the start, didn’t look up alchemy FAQs to get all the receipes for the best weapons, didn’t cheat the casino.
And, let’s face it, I’ve been doing fine. But why throw all these bosses at the end of the game? And that bloody test of how well you remember the story that came in the middle of them? Why? Why? Why?
Hmm, should probably go back to the top and add a spoiler warning.
Dragon Quest VIII
Feb 15th
Fifty-nine hours.
I’m really not enjoying it any more.
I’ve got to the last boss – well, so I assume – and I’ve not been able to kill him. I guess he’s got multiple forms, as these bosses generally do, but I hope he hasn’t because I’ve not been able to kill the first yet.
You know, I started today’s play with a boss fight. And if that had been the end of things then I’d have really enjoyed the game. But, no, the bastard developers decided to shove in an extra dungeon – a very long dungeon, which the boss is at the end of – and a difficulty spike.
I want to have fun and see what happens to everybody in the end. I don’t want some huge challenge, especially not at this point in the game. This should be the glorious finale, not a teeth-grinding annoyance that I’m only prepared to put up with because I’ve got this far.
Mind you, I left Vagrant Story at the last, impossibly difficult, boss, but I really, really want to finish this. I just don’t want to have to play this horrible fucking last bit in order to do so.
Gigawing Generations
Feb 15th
I don’t care what the big boys on the rllmuk forum say.
I just booted it up to make sure I wasn’t insane and, well, maybe I am, but I think it’s great fun.
Ugly as sin, yes, but great fun. And I got to the third level on one credit. Twice. Which means it must be easier than the majority of vertical shooters, which can only only be a good thing.
Anyway, I’d posted about it there, but it seems to be down. Again.
