InvertY.com
A Gaming Diary
Devil May Cry 4 Demo (PS3)
Jan 25th
Downloaded this on the PS3 rather than the 360 due to 360 users complaining about the controls. It’s okay to have to use R1 a lot on the PS3 pad, but having RB on the 360 pad as a main button sounds awful. It’s not often that the PS3 wins out in terms of controls, but here’s a rare case.
Anyway, there are two modes. The first is a big chunk of a level, which gives you ten minutes to run around killing things and solving basic puzzles. Actually, that’s a bit too kind. It’s less puzzle solving and more just pressing X when you reach a dead end. The combat, however, is great. You’ve got three different attack buttons and everything you do just looks and feels very cool indeed. (Except when you idiotically try to use melee attacks on enemies several yards away, as I was doing far too often.) Top stuff, even with the millions of tiny cut scenes taking control away from you before and after every encounter.
The second mode gives you a boss fight… apparently. I didn’t manage to make it past some underlings before I even got that far. They kept freezing me and doing far more damage than the pathetic enemies in other part of the demo. I’ll probably try again. Boss difficulty will make the difference between “budget buy” and “avoid forever” on this one.
PixelJunk Monsters Demo (PS3)
Jan 25th
This is a Tower Defense clone, with a difference. The difference being that you control a charater who has to run around avoiding monsters, collecting dropped money and gems and building and upgrading towers. It’s all set to a soundtrack that’s charming for about five minutes, when it suddenly flicks a switch in the brain and becomes the single most annoying piece of game music I’ve heard in years. Still, there are options for that sort of thing and the game itself seems great, with a difficulty level set somewhere between moderate and hard.
As it’s only £3.49 (possibly for a limited time) and Sony already have my money I might actually buy this at some point.
Pocket Physics (DS)
Jan 22nd
Not a game, just a little homebrew app that lets you draw 2D shapes on the screen, which then obey the laws of physics – or gravity, at least. It’s fun to play about with, but slightly hampered by a small drawing area and big crayonish lines. (At least, if you’re as hamfisted as me it is. The screnshots and videos online show an accuracy that’s beyond me.)
Still, if you can use this sort of thing, I heartily recommend giving it a download.
Burnout 3 (360)
Jan 20th
This game really, really is a lot better when it’s not played under a crushing weight of disappointment.
I tried to force myself to do some racing today, but caught up in Crash mode again. I’m trying to get Golds on all of them and it’s great fun, even with the multipliers. Far more of a puzzle game than Burnout 2′s Crash mode. I’d love the best of both worlds, some game with hundreds of Crash junctions, high score tables in the right place and a mix of multiplier and multiplier-free levels.
Singstar (PS3)
Jan 19th
Got four new songs today, none of which I can sing. No surprises there. As well as those, my wife and I took it turns to choose songs to duet from our existing library and it was great until my voice cracked and died. Cough cough, like.
Burnout 3 (360)
Jan 19th
The worst great game of all time, definitely. It’s got the worst interface of all time and I still can’t figure out how they got it so wrong. The difficulty curve is strange and burning lap events are much harder than anything else in the game. However, the actual game part of the game is great. The graphics have dated a little, but the fun hasn’t. It’s also a lot more palatable now than it was on release simply because all the flaws are known and don’t keep coming as horrible surprises. Well worth a download.
Doom (360)
Jan 19th
Decided to see if I could get the Nightmare achievement, which you get for completing any level on Nightmare difficulty. This Ultimate Doom, which added a shortcut on the very first level, so it wasn’t very difficult.
Boogie Bunnies Demo (360)
Jan 19th
It’s a colour-matching game, but the red and orange bunnies look too similar to each other.
Apart from that, it seems fun enough and a definite 400-point buy and a definite 800-point miss.
Turok Demo (360)
Jan 15th
Not awful. Well, okay, it starts off utterly awful, when you’re in the caves, but once outside it improves significantly, from “destroy with hammers” to “play if it was free” – which means it’s about a billion times better than the last Turok game.
