InvertY.com
A Gaming Diary
Football Manager Handheld 2009 (PSP)
Nov 18th
So, I sorted out my team and played some games. So far, I’ve won them all. That’s three friendlies and four league matches, all wins. Mainly thanks to the players I brought in over the summer. As the transfer market has always been the think I’m worst at in the Football Manager series I’m very happy about this.
I may have to leave the club at the end of the season, though, when all the loan players I got go home.
Fallout 3 (360)
Nov 17th
Had a huge session of this on Sunday. As soon as I finished playing I tried to work out how the hours had been filled and couldn’t.
Okay, so I obtained the Declaration of Independence. I went to Arlington Library and downloaded some information. And I… er… spent a long, long time wandering around Rivet City, talking to everybody. Oh, and I went back to home in Tenpenny Tower. And found a random cavern full of raiders, who I slaughtered.
That sort of thing.
I also broke the illusion of the game completely at one point. I wanted to open the medicine cabinet in the clinic in Rivet City. I tried to pickpocket the doctor, but he caught me, took his key back and then, um, acted as if nothing had happened. So I got out my shotgun and shot him in the back of the head. Blood everywhere. But he wasn’t dead, just unconscious, and I couldn’t search his body. Ten seconds later he got up, dusted himself down and acted as if nothing had happened, welcoming me to the clinic.
Oh. Oh well.
I thought maybe there’d be more consequences. And I’d love it if it used the Morrowind system for killing NPCs, rather than using Oblivion’s unkillable NPCs. (In Morrowind you could kill anyone – if you had the skills to do so. If you killed an NPC essential to the main quest a message would appear letting you know, so you could reload your last save game. Much better than immersion-breaking immortal characters, I reckon.)
Not that any of that hurts the game in any significant way, but I always thought Fallout was about choices and consequences – it does hurt a little to have some of those choices taken away.
Football Manager Handheld 2009 (PSP)
Nov 17th
I had this sat ready to start a new game all weekend, but I didn’t dare actually click the “Start Game” button.
You see, Football Manager scares me. For two reasons. The first is that I worry my life will be over once I start a game. That my head will be full of worries about the holes in my squad to the exclusion of everything else, that instead of working I’ll be pondering tactical changes that could improve my results, etc. The second reason is that I worry the first thing won’t happen, that I’ll start the game, do a couple of friendlies and find that the suspension of disbelief necessary for the game will be unobtainable this time round.
Finally, last night, in bed, I used a random number generator (my wife) to pick my team and started a game as Oxford United. The first thing I noticed was that the board expected me to reach the playoffs. That’s never good. The next thing I noticed was that there was no depth to the squad. Only two strikers and a severe lack of players able to play on the left of defence and the right of midfield. (Or the other way round, I forget.) Luckily for me, Oxford had space in their wage budget, so I bought some players from clubs, signed a few clubless players and got some more in on loan. I now have six strikers, which might be overkill, actually.
Next up, I’m going to have to work out who to put in my first team and then, maybe, play some actual games of football. But that will probably come much, much later.
Star Trigon (iPod)
Nov 17th
Wonderful stuff, but it’s got very hard. Not only does it require very precise timing, but I’m now at the stage where I need to actually plan how to tackle a stage, rather than just wing it.
A far better game than the reviews on iTunes would suggest.
Trackmania DS (DS)
Nov 17th
Harumph, I say. Harumph!
My DS is broken. Again. It’s going to have to be repaired for about the, ooh, fourth time now? (Not to mention the times I’ve had to have other DS Lites repaired.)
The broken part is the right trigger, which only responds about fifty percent of the time when you press it on the top of the trigger and almost never when you click the edge where my finger naturally rests.
The new Castlevania uses the right trigger a lot, so I couldn’t play that, but Trackmania only uses it in menus – and then not very often. So I played a lot of Trackmania over the weekend.
The good news is that it’s very fun, the bad news is that it’s not as perfect as I thought it was. On several occasions I’ve fallen through the track at the join between track pieces and the framerate, while mostly excellent, isn’t as perfect as I first thought.
I was doing a fairly hard race last night. The first time I was going to win, I fell off the track just before the finish line. The second time I met the target time exactly, to the hundredth of the second. The time shown at the top of the screen was in blue (which means you’ve won), but I wasn’t awarded the medal. The third time I was due to win, I did.
Not massively rubbish, but a bit annoying.
Peggle (iPod)
Nov 14th
Turned this on for one level, ended up playing three. Not too bad, then.
The music is good and seems to be different for each level, but it’s not nearly as joyful as the Star Trigion music.
(Yes, I know it includes the actual honest-to-goodness Ode to Joy, but that’s used as a sound effect, not part of the musical soundtrack – and, quite frankly, Beethoven could learn a few things from Namco about how to write properly joyful music.)
Star Trigon (iPod)
Nov 14th
I didn’t play my own music on my iPod today, instead I decided to listen to the in-game music for the games I played.
And Star Trigon as well as being a very good game has some excellent, excellent music. Happy, bouncy tunes that make me smile. But, remember, this is coming from a man who bought a Mr Driller double soundtrack CD.
In fact, the presentation of the game is very Mr Driller indeed. Same style of graphics, same style of music, even shared characters.
Fallout 3 (360)
Nov 14th
A lengthy session last night. Although it felt like one amazing adventure at the time, in my memory it’s become somewhat disjointed.
Finally found Moira in a town of ghouls called Underworld and presented her with my mole rat findings. Got myself a a new companion, a ghoul named Charon. He’s very useful to have around and he seems to get on okay with Dogmeat. Had to lose some more karma to get him into my party, but, hey, after nuking an entire town everything else I do seems like kids stuff.
I’ve made the radio news now and even had some bounty hunters come after me. They were quickly dispatched and some decent kit on them. More, please!
Found some slavers, but a misunderstanding involving a land mine meant they attacked us and we killed them all before we got a chance to talk to them. Ah well. I may be evil, but I don’t think I’m evil enough to help out slavers.
I also wandered into a fight between some super mutants and Talon Company mercenaries. Both sides decided to try and kill us. Both sides died.
I’m getting to know how to find my way around DC now, sort of. I’ve walked down the tracks between Museum station and, er, the station that’s one stop down the tracks from there loads of times now. It’s atmospheric and, now I’ve cleaned it out, it’s safe, too.
(NOTE: I’m not using fast travel in this game yet. In Oblivion I found it to be something of a crutch and I think it diminished the atmosphere of the game. In Oblivion is was almost essential due to how many problems the game had with its streaming, but the engine’s a million times better in Fallout, so that’s not an issue.)
I’m level seven now, I believe. Been taking the small guns perk for the last few levels. I hope it’s useful.
Trackmania DS (DS)
Nov 14th
After months of nothing much I get two – two! – very much anticipated DS games in the same week. Castlevania is, based on the first couple of hours, a bit of a disappointment, but Trackmania?
Well, based on a quick go, it’s exactly what I wanted. I’ve only done straight races (actually time trials, really) so far, but I can say that the controls and game engine are spot on. The framerate is perfect (so far) and the car controls as it should in a Trackmania game. I’ve got gold medals on the ten races in the Stadium and Desert environments at Practice level. They weren’t very difficult, but they took enough retries to make me wonder if I’m not going to have a problem with the game’s difficulty at higher levels.
Fingers crossed that it won’t get too hard. Right now that’s the only potential problem I’m seeing with the game.
Star Trigon (iPod)
Nov 13th
One button arcade/puzzle game where you draw triangles in space. Done the beginner stages, seems fun. Quicker than I was expecting, so harder than I was expecting, so better than I was expecting.
Incredibly important information: It has Susumu from Mr. Driller in it.
