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A Gaming Diary
Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground (PSP)
Oct 17th
I didn’t intend to play this. I thought I’d pulled the Sega Rally UMD out of the case, but Dungeon Maker booted up instead. I had been waiting until Jeanne D’Arc was finished before playing it, but as it was there I thought I’d have a quick go.
A “quick go” which ended up eating my entire evening.
It’s all very simple. If you want a soundbite, think Viva Pinata with monsters. (Thanks to my wife for that comparision.) If you want a slightly more detailed description, it’s a simple dungeon hack, where instead of the levels being pre-determined or randomly-generated they’re user-created.
A day goes like this. You wake up at home in town and then go into your dungeon. You run around killing the monsters your dungeon has attracted overnight while refining and extending it. Run to a dead end? Then bring up the building menu and add some rooms or corridors from your supplies. Running through boring corridors? Why not bring up the building menu and give them some wood panelling, if you’ve got some in stock. In a boring room? Add a fountain or some beds. Everything you do improves your dungeon and changes which monsters you’ll attract. Some need water, hence the fountain. Some are only attracted by certain types of room, such as the self-explanatory Goblin Room. Once you’ve explored and expanded your dungeon, it’s back to town. Sell any loot you don’t need, buy supplies, cook yourself an evening meal, go to sleep ready for the next day.
Combat’s pretty simple. Two attacks (fast and slow, basically) and a magic menu which lets you teleport or drop rocks on enemies, or, well, I’ve not got any new magic yet. So far my dungeon is just a single level and money’s tight. I’m spending most of my cash on new building parts. Only about half my dungeon is decorated, so I need more wood panelling. There’s lots of space and the bigger your dungeon is the more and better monsters you get, so I need to buy more corridors and rooms.
My current main goal is to attract a boss creature. Once the dungeon’s good enough he should turn up and defeating him will let me add a second floor to my dungeon. I also get the odd side-quest, which all seem to be “find object X”. At the moment I only have one, which is to get a Kobold Ring for the weird chap who runs the museum in town. I’ve killed plenty of kobolds, but not one has dropped a ring yet.
It’s all quite simple after some initial confusion, but that’s not a bad thing in a handheld game. At least, it’s not in short term. It remains to be seen if this game has legs, but I’ve had a good couple hours of fun so far.
Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)
Oct 16th
I have to say that, despite its faults, this game is excellent fun in short bursts. I set up some Instant Action using Random settings and played a couple of quick rounds during Dragons’ Den last night and had a great time. I earned a couple of medals (Achievements in all but name), manned the gun of an AT-AT, rode a Kybuck and killed Admiral Ackbar. Excellent.
The clunkiness of the controls is an issue and always will be, but I think the solution they’ve come up with is the best possible on the PSP. It’s just a shame the PSP doesn’t have a couple of pop-out analogue sticks or something.
Track and Field (360)
Oct 16th
Holding the controller on its side, I had some good fun with this, until I got to the Hammer Throw event. I just couldn’t get the timing right and didn’t get a single throw that counted. Game Over. I did improve my scores in the earlier events, though, and now I’m only bottom of my Friends Leaderboard in the 100m. I’m near the bottom in the rest, but there are some people below me, thank goodness.
I really love the announcer in this game. I get so nostalgic for my childhood every time I hear her synthesized voice. Back in the day I could only hear that sort of thing in the arcade. The ZX Spectrum, lovely though it was, wasn’t great for producing speech.
My favourite bit of eighties speech ever? “Here goes nothing!” on the Return of the Jedi arcade machine. I kept dying about two seconds after hearing that, but kept pumping money in, so it just hooked itself into my brain on a loop and has never completely gone away, even twenty years later.
Carcassonne (360)
Oct 16th
I started this up for the first time in ages while the wife was having a shower and thought I might buy the expansion packs they’ve released for it. However, it turns out that they’re three hundred points each. That’s over two pounds. Each. For, what? A few more tiles and a couple of rule changes? I could almost buy Every Extend Extra Extreme for that kind of cash.
A hundred points each and I’d have been curious enough to use some of my points, but three hundred is just too much for me, I’m afraid. I could see those prices being good enough for addicts who really want some twists to their favourite game, but I just don’t play this enough.
Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction Demo (PS3)
Oct 15th
Well, it looks nice and it’s all very solid. However, it’s also quite dull. I’m not sure if I missing something, but there didn’t seem to be anything much to this. Run down the linear path provided, jump over gaps, shoot and/or melee enemies. Which, um, could describe a lot of games, good and bad. It’s just that underneath the gloss this seemed to lack any life. Maybe it’s that it was so incredibly easy. I did die once, due to a mistimed jump, but that was it. The rest of the time the enemies barely seemed to touch me and when they did, there seemed to be an almost unlimited supply of health packs around.
Oh, and the fact that you can’t invert the y-axis in the demo is absolutely unforgiveable.
It’s possible, I guess, that I’m being overly harsh because I don’t want any more games on my Want List, but that didn’t stop Bladestorm from taking me by surprise and winning me over.
Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)
Oct 12th
I just tried this online. Oof.
The interface is easy enough to use, but finding anyone online in the EU is hard. (Plenty of US types playing, but the pings are bad.) I fought two matches against bots before finding a server with people playing. That was like playing against bots, except it was horribly laggy (teleporting stormtroopers, no thanks) and unfair. Unfair, because I got stuck on a team consisting of myself and seven bots against a team of four people and four bots. As the bots are utterly useless, that meant my opponents had a massive advantage.
Still, I played for over half an hour, so it can’t have been utterly awful, I suppose.
And then I went to the stats page… but I didn’t seem to have any. Maybe you need to play matches full of people and no bots, or something. That could prove tricky, unless things pick up a bit. I mean, maybe people are out on the town, as it’s Friday night, instead of staying home watching Emmylou Harris Night on BBC4.
Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)
Oct 12th
What are lunchtimes at work for, if not for playing a quick couple of levels of a video game?
In this respect, Renegade Squadron is a perfect handheld game. I started it up, choose “Single Player”, then “Instant Action”, chose Endor as the map and Conquest as the game type and off I went. (Conquest is the only game type without flags. The idea is to control spawn points on the map. If your team can keep all of them under control for a full minute, you win.)
It’s a fun way to rewrite history. I’m not sure what triggered it, but in the first round I suddenly got the option to play as Han Solo. I accepted. A few seconds after I’d taken control, Darth Vader appeared. Proving that hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster, I ran around and shot him to bits. Don’t know why Luke had such trouble with the guy, really.
In the next round I played as an Imperial and – again, seemingly at random – got the option to play as Darth Vader. In the language of the Internet, I pwned all. I was an unstoppable force and turned the tide of the battle single-handedly. (Or so I like to think.) Pity I only realised I had a Force Choke move after all the rebel scum were dead.
There’s no denying that it’s clunky, but it is fun. Whether it’ll still be fun when the novelty wears off, I don’t yet know. Oh, how I wish the PSP was equipped with two good-quality analogue conrollers. Then we’d really be talking.
Star Wars Battlefront: Renegade Squadron (PSP)
Oct 12th
Seems to have divided opinion, this one. I can see why, based on an hour or so of play last night. It’s a bit clunky and easy until suddenly death comes out of nowhere. Not that death matters that much, you just respawn and get stuck back in again.
First up, I did the first couple of campaign missions. On the ground you lock on to people, run around them and hammer the fire button. In the air, you lock on to people, hit the autopilot button and hammer the fire button. That’s about it.
Then did a couple of skirmishes with brain-dead bots. Won the first one – a straight game of Capture The Flag with a single flag. The second game was something called Hero Capture The Flag, or something, which meant Kit Fisto and Jango Fett were carrying flags around. I didn’t quite work out quite what was going on and my side lost the match.
Really, it seems easy and fun to play without excelling at anything – other than being Star Wars, which it’s bloody good at. That’s probably the important bit. If you’re the type of person who, like me, gets a giddy thrill at going to the customisation menu for the first time and seeing you can play as a dreadlocked wookie then you’re going to be a lot more receptive than someone who would have trouble picking Admiral Ackbar out of an identity parade.
Sometime this weekend I hope to test the online play. I expect to die. A lot.
Jeanne D’Arc (PSP)
Oct 11th
I went back and tried the battle I’d lost by a single arrow again. This time my plan was to run to the target by the most direct route and slash his face in. Wasn’t a very good plan, as it turned out. Due to differing movement allowances, my force got split in two, with the stragglers being caught by knights coming from behind. They were slaughtered. Then my fast troops met resistance before the target and were having trouble seeing them off, while the knights who’d killed my other troopers were closing from the rear. When the caught up the end was messy, but was mercifully quick. Turn seven saw my final unit fall.
So I tried again. This time I took up a defensive position and slaughtered the first group of knights. Due to my own idiocy is not noticing how badly he was hurt, Jean fell early, which was a blow. But with five units remaining and the knights, the enemy healer and the enemy archer all dead, I moved on. The ensuing battle was tough and I lost three more units before the target finally fell, with two turns to spare.
But with that level completed, chapter two was over. I’m not my way to Riems with the Dauphin in tow… or will be once I’ve levelled up a bit in the new Free Stage I’ve just unlocked.
Various 360 Demos (360)
Oct 9th
Bladestorm
I had far too many games on my “must buy” list before downloading the (two gigabyte!) demo from Live Markeplace. However, the game seems to be completely ace and now I need it badly. Charging in on horses, leaping back to control some archers to finish off stragglers, running in with swords waving, it’s all good. Damn your eyes, Koei!
The Simpsons
A licenced game. A demo consisting of, urgh, a boss fight. A rubbish camera. Should have been very painful indeed, yet ended up being great fun and I couldn’t stop until I’d destroyed Lard Lad, which took a whole fourteen minutes. Doubt I’ll buy it for more than a tenner, but it was better than I expected. Looks really lovely, too, when the camera’s showing something useful.
Conan
“Ha ha ha! I chopped that guy’s arms off! And that guy’s! And that guy’s! Oh, now I’m being blocked by three big bastards and am dead. Oh, I’m dead again. I can’t be bothered to play this any more. Goodbye.” Maybe for a fiver, but no more than that.
