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A Gaming Diary
Test Drive Unlimited (PSP)
Jun 11th
I remembered I enjoyed this and it’s the closest thing to Fuel I’ve got for the PSP, so I copied this to my memory stick and started it up. And then didn’t stop playing until bed time. Took me a few minutes to remember how it all worked, but soon enough I was driving around in my Aston Martin, doing challenges and having a grand old time. Didn’t do amazingly well, but I’m sure I’ll improve. I think I’m doing well enough not to bother wiping my save and starting all over again, at least.
Sega Genesis Collection (PSP)
Jun 11th
Didn’t want to play more OutRun, so I went to the games shelf to pick some UMDs I’ve not used in a while. Saw this and realised I’d bought it ages ago, then spent almost no time with it. Went through the list of games several times looking for something I’d want to play, didn’t see anything that grabbed me, so defaulted to Sonic the Hedgehog. I’m sure it used to be easier than this. It took me three goes to even get past the Green Hill Zone – and then Marble Zone, or whatever it’s called, killed me dead.
Decided it would be much better playing from the memory stick, so spent most of the rest of the evening copying UMDs to my hard drive, then back to my PSP, which means I didn’t actually play much.
OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast (PSP)
Jun 11th
Last night I used the “Just Drive” setting a few times, jumping into to random mode with a random car. It’s good for when you’re not quite sure what you want to do, but I ended up driving cars I didn’t much like and not doing very well at all. Ah well.
Fuel (360)
Jun 10th
Played for literally five minutes before work. (Yes, despite the huge world, it’s worth just jumping in for five minutes.)
About ten seconds after setting off on my bike I’d got another Achievement, this one for performing 200 tricks. (There’s no manual trick stuff, thankfully, but if you’re on a motorbike or quad bike and jump far enough your rider will perform a little trick animation.) Then I found a Doppler truck and was about to turn off when I noticed my mileage was on 899.6, so I had to drive another 0.4 miles to get it up to a nice round 900 before I stopped playing.
Fuel (360)
Jun 9th
Went into another new area, even though I hadn’t completely finished the last one. Yeah, I’m breaking that habit. I’m going to be doing races and anything else I come across along the way, because I want to see every zone before too long and if I try to do everything in a zone before moving on it’ll take forever. I’m a rebel… and I play by my own rules.
Anyway, this evening was grand. I did a couple of career races – an excellent bike race and a reasonable monster trucks race – and then did an Endurance challenge, a race of over twenty miles. The first time I tried I lost by about 150 yards. That was an… interesting feeling. But Fuel is one of those games where I never mind losing too much, because I don’t mind trying again. So, indeed, I tried again and won by about four miles.
And then I fell into a lake a lot.
Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City (Wii)
Jun 9th
I talked to Alli about interior decoration, then there weren’t any scallops.
Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City (Wii)
Jun 8th
Mott now greets me with a cheery cry of, “Hello sailor!”
Fuel (360)
Jun 8th
I absolutely adore this game now. And I loved it from the beginning. I love the balance I’ve found between exploring and racing and it’s full of great gaming moments – picking my way through the shallows at a lake edge at night, hitting a bump and flying into the air and sailing between a gap between two trees barely wider than my bike, driving through the night without knowing where I was going and as sun rises seeing the whole world spread out below me, jumping into first place in a race with a perfectly timed jump off a mountain side and a slide on the dirt path below, buying a new bike that turns out to be much, much faster than anything I’ve driven before – and then having to take it at full speed down a winding road full of wrecked cars and vans… etc.
And that’s just in a fairly brief session this evening.
Also, I got even more Achievements today. It’s throwing them at me.
Fuel (360)
Jun 8th
Fourteen hours player. Seven hundred miles driven. Three zones explored, with a short detour into a locked zone to pick up a Vista Point I’d seen from the border.
I love it. Online’s a bit rubbish, I’ve heard, but I’ve not tried it myself. People are complaining about running out of Fuel to buy new cars, but I’ve got 80,000 in the bank right now. I’ve seen the odd disappearing truck, but haven’t encountered any real bugs at all. Even the Achievements seem to work properly so far.
It won’t be for everyone, I know, but it works for me. For a while now I’ve had an idea in my head. A huge expanse of hills and trees, having a target in the distance and finding my own way there, barreling down hills, splashing through streams, just driving. And it turns out that Fuel matches this ideal perfectly. It’s just exactly what I’ve been wanting.
(And I’m very pleased that the 360 supports streaming from iPods for custom soundtracks. Wouldn’t have been the same without my country songs playing as I drove.)
OutRun 2006: Coast 2 Coast (PSP)
Jun 8th
Just been playing the old OutRun 2 tracks, no SP tracks for me this weekend. Didn’t get any new high scores, but after the first couple of races I seemed to get back up to my old skill level, or thereabouts.
