InvertY.com
A Gaming Diary
Str8ts (iPhone)
Aug 7th
Sometimes I’m an idiot.
Take a look at the red numbers I’ve listed as possibles in that almost-completed puzzle and see where I went wrong!
One of the problems I sorted out as soon as I took the picture, but another one I didn’t notice until I’d got myself completely tangled up.
Batman Arkham Asylum Demo (PS3)
Aug 7th
“I’m Batman.”
No, really, I am. This game, you see, lets me be The Batman in a way no other game ever has. And not just any Batman, but a Kevin Conroy-voiced Batman going up against a Mark Hamill-voiced Joker and Arleen Sorkin-voiced Harley Quinn. Which is to say, that if you were ever a fan of Batman: The Animated Series, then you’ll be emitting little of squeals of fanboy/fangirl glee as soon as the characters open their mouths. And if you’ve never seen the cartoon these voices come from, then you’re still in for a treat, because these actors know their characters, have lots of experience in voicing them and just sound right.
The graphics look good. Okay, everyone might be a little too Gears of War-bulky, but we can ignore that. In every other way, this looks great – especially detective mode, which lets you see through walls and highlights things of interest, such as baddies and gargoyles.
How does the game play, though?
Well, it starts off as a tutorial. You punch and kick some bad guys. You throw a Batarang. You sneak up behind people and incapacitate them. It’s all good fun, though would be unexceptional if you weren’t, you know, being the goddamn Batman.
The final bit of the demo, though, just gives you a room and four bad guys with guns. (Well, the room has five goons in it, but one starts with his back to you right by the entrance, so he’s a freebie and doesn’t really count.) Guns are bad for your health, so you really need to take the bad guys one by one, unseen. It’s a mutli-level room, with ladders, gantries, gargoyles and ducts. That sort of thing.
Sometimes it all goes wrong and you desperately swing away from machine gun fire, while feeling less like The Batman and more like Del Boy in that hilarious episode at the funeral.
Sometimes, though, it all goes right. And when it does… oh boy. I’m sitting here smiling just thinking about it. Popping out from a grating under the floor and taking someone out from behind. Swooping down, kicking them, disappearing back into the shadows. Throwing a line down and leaving them hanging upside-down while their heart-rate monitor reads “Terrified”. It’s, well, it’s pretty much the perfect Batman game.
I’m now as excited by the the thought of all the challenge rooms as I am by the main game. This is a real Batman game. It’s Batman from the ground-up. It’s Batman done right.
If the full game can live up to the promise of the final room of the demo – which, yes, remains to be seen – Fuel may well have to surrender its “game of the year” title.
Of course, I’m a massive Batman fanboy. For pity’s sake, before I had a super cool gaming blog I ran a nerdy Batman fan fiction site. (No, really, you can find it on the menu on the right of this page.) So if a game’s good I’m going to love it more than it deserves and, conversely, hate it more that it deserves if it’s bad. So “game of the year” might be a bit strong if you’re not thrilled by the idea of finally, really being Batman. But, really, if you’re not thrilled by that, we have nothing to discuss. Move along.
Spy Bot Chronicles (iPhone)
Aug 7th
People complain that this blog costs them money. Apparently, I’m so persuasive that after reading about games on here they have to rush out and buy them. Well, okay, sorry about that. Let’s try and save you some cash now, shall we?
Spy Bot Chronicles, then. It was released yesterday and jumped on by members of the Touch Arcade forums and lavished with praise. It’s on a 59p introductory offer, but the price is expected to rise a fair bit before long.
Praise plus special offer equaled purchase.
So, what it is? It’s a 2D platformer that, apart from the odd nice bit of physics, is completely unremarkable. It’s, you know, fine, but that’s about it. The controls don’t work for me, either. Now, if you’ve been reading this, you’ll know that it took me about a week of iPhone ownership to go from “Virtual pads will never work! Burn them!” to “Actually, sometimes virtual pads work fine.”
Spy Bot Chronicles should be fine. It’s only got three buttons – left, right, jump – and they’re quite large. So how comes I keep missing them? How comes I run right when I want to go left and manage to hit the jump button, but then miss it half a second later when I want to double jump? I don’t know. Whatever the reason, I die more from missing the controls than anything else.
So you should obviously save your 59p and not buy this then.
Right?
Right?
Well, there’s two things stopping me from coming right out and telling you not to buy this game.
The first is that the buttons are so large, that I can’t help but feel that it must be my fault that I’m missing them. (Though I suspect that having them right up against the edge of the screen isn’t helping.)
The second reason is that, well, all the other iPhone games I’ve blogged about this morning are ones I played yesterday lunchtime. Apart from a few turns of Words With Friends, this is the only iPhone game I played all yesterday evening. I kept getting annoyed with it, planning new ways of cursing it… then going back to check it really was awful and playing another level. I’m well into the second world of four now.
So, yeah, there’s that. I’m very conflicted. I hate it. I loathe it. It frustrates me and makes me want to smash things… but I keep going back.
I’ll leave the final decision up to you, I think.
The Secret of Monkey Island Special Edition (iPhone)
Aug 7th
It’s a classic.
It’s a classic I’ve only played for five minutes many years ago – I never even left the Scumm Bar.
I loved Sam & Max Hit The Road. I rather like Day of the Tentacle, but I think I got stuck and never finished it. (This was in the days before GameFAQs.)
I played this enough to get out of the Scumm Bar, into town and to get used to the controls. (More or less – how quickly do you have to double tap for it to register? Really?)
It raised smiles. I think it even raised a couple of chuckles. I have no issue with the quality of the game. I can even work with the controls. That’s all fine.
It’s just that I really couldn’t be bothered to wander around talking to people and checking out locations to try and find out what to do next. I know that that’s the whole point of the game. I don’t know if I just can’t be bothered with adventure games any more or, as I think and hope is more likely, I just wasn’t in the mood yesterday. We’ll see.
Blue Skies 3GS (iPhone)
Aug 7th
This is a version of a well-received helicopter shooter that will only run on the 3GS, because it uses pixel shaders, or something.
It’s 59p.
I’ve not played it much, but I like the controls and it seems like it could be fun.
Really, though, you know the iPhone has arrived as a proper gaming platform when you start up a new game and the first thing you think is, “Ooh, the water looks nice.”
I hope to have something more constructive to say later, when I’ve played some levels that don’t just teach me the controls by giving me static targets to take out.
Regent Style vs Trombone (iPhone)
Aug 7th
Right, um, okay.
The trombone wants water. You have to use your hair to stop the trombone from getting the water. A click sends your hair up the screen. When it reaches the top it comes back down. If the trombone hits it, you get points. If you’re timing is off and the trombone gets to the water droplet, you lose.
I have no idea if this is as random as it appears or whether it’s a reference to something I have no knowledge of. (A forum in-joke somewhere? A reference to a popular beat combo I don’t know about?) I’m not sure it matters, frankly.
As a game it’s very simple, but playable – and it’s free. But I’m not sure whether the game’s the point.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Aug 7th
What can I say that hasn’t been said?
Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, I always keep playing.
Str8ts (iPhone)
Aug 7th
I love it when a plan comes together.
I’ve played quite a few more levels now with no problem. Mind you, that may be because people hardly ever phone me.
This really is a great puzzle – and it’s been put on the iphone with enough care to become a great puzzle game. Also, the developer has informed me that the puzzle is his own invention, it’s not based on any existing puzzle, Japanese or otherwise.
I don’t know why it’s grabbed me when other grid/number puzzles haven’t, but I’m not complaining.
The Bigs 2 Demo (360)
Aug 6th
Played a proper, real console for the first time in ages and choose The Bigs 2 demo as the game to welcome me home. Arcade baseball, with bizarre little QTEs and what may or may not be mini games scattered around. I didn’t really fully understand it and it took me several innings to even begin to get the timing down, but I started to get into it after a while. As the full game’s a budget title I’m quite interested. Shame I can’t get screen shots off the 360, but at least that means I can post this from my iPhone, even if I’m not actually writing about it for once.
