InvertY.com
A Gaming Diary
Sega Genesis Collection (PSP)
Aug 25th
On the face of it, twenty-odd Sega classics for ten quid sounds like a remarkable deal. However…
Alex Kidd – Bad graphics, horrible one hit deaths. Quite fun for five minutes.
Columns – Seems to get too fast too quickly. Quite fun for ten minutes.
Comix Zone – Incredible graphics, basic but reasonable beat-em-up fun. Quite fun for five minutes.
Flicky – Can’t work out how to shoot. I’m sure I used to be able to play this, but right now this not fun for two minutes.
Gain Ground – Too hard for my twenty-first century, molly-coddled gaming brain. Quite fun, though, for about a minute and a half, until level two appears and kicks you in the crotch.
Kid Chameleon – Annoying graphical glitch means backgrounds become a slightly different colour when scrolling. Still, kept my attention for an entire game and was quite fun for ten or fifteen minutes I played.
Ristar – Looks lovely, feels a little clunky. Quite fun for ten minutes.
Shinobi III – Most enemies no challenge, then a boss comes along which is impossble. A small about of fun, followed by frustration.
Sonic The Hedehog 2 – It’s Sonic 2, which means I still can’t do the Casino Zone boss. I’m rubbish like that. Good fun up until that point, though.
VectorMan – Looks lovely, but is too hard. Quite fun for five minutes.
Okay, there are a lot more games on there, but it’s not been too great so far. Nothing’s grabbed my attention.
Bioshock (360)
Aug 24th
I’ve put a good few hours into this now. I find that two hours or so is my limit for a single session. I don’t get bored, as such, I just seem to start to finding it very difficult to keep track of things and to kill enemies. A break of half an hour sorts that out, then I’m ready to jump back in.
It really is excellent. The setting is wonderfully atmospheric, but the main focus is the combat, which I think is superb. You really have to think fast, to choose which plasmids and weapons to use on a split-second basis. I’m dying a lot and I think some enemies have a touch too much health, but that’s about the only criticism I have right now.
skate Demo (360)
Aug 22nd
Either something’s up with my controller or it’s incredibly difficult to do some of the first flip tricks it shows you. A right something-or-other was done first time, but the left took about ten minutes to finally get. I’m not sure why.
Rest of the tutorial went okay, but I can’t manual to save my life.
Track & Field (360)
Aug 22nd
I failed on the hammer throw today. I then checked the leaderboards for the events I have completed. I’m not very good, but I’m only bottom of my friends list in one event.
Hexic 2 Demo (360)
Aug 22nd
I tried Battle Mode. When it ended I wasn’t sure if I’d won or lost. 800 points remained unspent.
Street Trace:NYC Demo (360)
Aug 22nd
So bad it felt like deleting the demo wasn’t enough. I wanted to somehow cleanse my 360, to try to rewind to a time before this abomination had been downloaded.
Space Giraffe (360)
Aug 22nd
Demented farming sim that pretends to be shooter. Utterly baffling if you’ve not spent two hours reading about the scoring system online, excellent once everything’s been figured out.
I like.
Quake (PC)
Aug 21st
I played Quake yesterday for the first time in many years and seems to be a better single player now than it was at the time. I remember thinking it was a bit dull at the time, but now I’m seeing a lovely quick arcade blast, with some ingenious level design and great set pieces. I think at the time I wanted something epic and huge, but now I’m just happy being able to zoom around at a hundred miles an hour shooting things in the face.
But most of all, maybe, is that now I’m so used to the keyboard and mouse interface I can play it as id intended all along. There’s no interface now, if you know what I mean, and it feels a lot like Doom to me. Surprisingly so.
It’s actually really good fun.
But, yes, it really is as brown as I remember. Maybe browner.
Track & Field (360)
Aug 19th
Okay, I used to hate this type of game in the eighties. Turns out that with the 360 controller held on its side that it’s actually good fun. Probably still wouldn’t have bought it if I didn’t have the points sitting there waiting, but I did, so I did.
