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A Gaming Diary
Pokemon Diamond (DS)
May 30th
Well, everyone in my team is at least level fifty, so I’m going to try Victory Road when I next play. It’s underground, so I’m not going to bother trying at night when the encounter rate’s high.
Pokemon Diamond (DS)
May 29th
Ahhhhhh, and the Lucky Egg has been obtained.
I’m now levelling up my team before trying Victory Road. It’s taking a long time and isn’t any fun, which makes me wonder why I’m bothering. RPGs can be odd like that and I don’t understand.
Rainbow Six Vegas (360)
May 29th
Lots of multiplayer today. No single player at all.
Started off with a nice group of people playing deathmatch type games. Didn’t do too well, but got some experience points.
Followed that up with some co-op terrorist hunts with a really nice group of players, who welcomed me and let me play despite my newbieness. They even sent an invite when I crashed out at one point and came back online. I actually started being quite useful by the end of the session. Not top of the class, but not sitting in the corner with a pointy hat. We were playing on Realistic with no respawns so we died a lot, but we did win a couple of times, which got me a promotion to Private First Class and unlocked a nice helmet for me to wear.
It’s really, really, really good.
Rainbow Six Vegas (360)
May 28th
Started single player. A bit hard and I got annoyed when a team mate died in a mine shaft, so I quit.
Jumped into a game of Survival on Live, got told my character’s face was ugly and was then killed very dead, so I quit.
Rainbow Six Vegas (360)
May 28th
I haven’t actually played this yet, but I ddi just boot it up and map my face on to my character using the Xbox Live Vision camera. Took a few attempts and I’ve ended up with something reminiscient of me, but with a very orange face and huge, sad, black-ringed eyes. If I ever mate with a panda I’ll know what the children will look like, anyway.
It’s really quite spooky and I spent a while staring at this face before turning off the console.
Test Drive Unlimited (360)
May 28th
What just happened?
I was merrily driving along when a message popped up saying I had a $147,000 fine and that as I couldn’t pay it I had to go to jail. So after thirty seconds of staring at a jail I was dumped back in my house with no money.
Except, I’ve spent hours today playing and saving up about $300,000. It’s all gone. I feel like I’ve been kicked in the stomach.
How did I run up a $147,000 fine? Why did it suddenly stop me without me being caught by the police? And where did all my money go, anyway?
What am I going to do now?
MLB 07 The Show (PSP)
May 27th
Well, MLB 08 The Show should be fantastic.
This almost is – I’ve just started playing and the only reason I’ve stopped is that my PSP battery has run down – but it’s spoiled by some very rough edges. I’m playing The Road to the Show mode, where you create a played and play as that player alone. I’m a second baseman on the Braves and I hit when it’s my turn, control my baserunning and if the ball comes near me when I’m playing defense I’ll have to get the ball and throw it. The rest of the game isn’t shown – it just jumps to those moments where I’ve got something to do.
It’s almost great.
The first trouble is the load times. They are truly atrocious and quite possibly the worst I’ve seen yet on the PSP. You simply can’t just sit down and play this game. You need something on TV to watch while it loads, or a magazine, or some cake, or something.
The second problem is that there’s not a lot of feedback. If you go for a double play when you’re fielding then you’ll know if you got the first out, but not the second. Without pausing the game and waiting for a text display to scroll across the screen you won’t know whether the last pitch was a ball or a strike while you’re on base. (This may possibly be better with sound, but I’ve been playing with sound off and I think all handheld games that aren’t music-based should be designed with silent play in mind.)
The third problem is that sometimes rules don’t seem to be applied properly and now and again the post-game box score won’t agree with what’s displayed on your stats for that game. I’m sure I’ve had a run credited before that shouldn’t have counted and in my last game the box score said I had an RBI, but the summary screen after that said I hadn’t. Odd.
Still, despite all those problems, it is incredibly addictive. The PS3 version might fix a lot of these flaws and be a good buy and, as I said, MLB 08 should be great. They can’t keep those load times in the next version, they just can’t.
Pokemon Diamond (DS)
May 27th
Spent a lot of time trying to catch a Chancey holding a Lucky Egg. Failed dismally.
Also spent some time battling the old lady near the trophy garden place to get lots of money to buy new Pokeballs with.
Wen on a short fossil hunt; didn’t find any.
Not the most successful day ever.
Test Drive Unlimited (360)
May 27th
Only one Achievement today, for buying Chevrolets. It’s not really an achievement, though, more an addiction. I’m not progressing through the game, I’m just buying cars I like and driving them for miles to get to challenges with tiny rewards.
But given the amount of fun I’m having progress can go hang for now. Mind you, I really do want an Enzo after driving one in a car delivery challenge earlier.
