InvertY.com
A Gaming Diary
Black
Feb 25th
I just did it again!
I blew up while the “minefield cleared” text was still on the screen!
The trouble is, everything’s brown. Completely brown. So although the mines are on the surface, most of the time they’re not actualy visible.
I know, I know, I should be more careful, but these new mines come at the end of a big, safe bit and as it’s telling me the minefield is cleared.
Mind you, second time was definitely more my fault than the game’s, it has to be said. I’ll try again some other day and this time I’ll remember.
Black
Feb 25th
You have to laugh.
On a level where you navigate through an area packed with enemies and reach a minefield. Avoid the mines while killing enemies, that sort of thing.
Anyway, first time I tried the level the mines killed me. Next two times I didn’t even reach it, thanks to things exploding next me. Time after that I made it to the minefield again and slowly, carefully made my way through it, using grenades to blow up the mines in my path, picking off enemies along the way. Lovely game.
Then I got to a point where it said the minefield objective was complete. Hooray! So I – I’m not making this up – took one step forward and the ground beneath me erupted. Oh. A mine. I thought I was meant to be through the minefield. Didn’t you just tell me that?
No checkpoint, so it asked me if I wanted to restart from the beginning of the level again. I didn’t. I turned the Xbox off.
It’s just… how can something with such great gameplay – and I really must make clear that it really is superb given how much I’m complaining – be surrounded by such oddness?
Black
Feb 25th
Oh for pity’s sake!
So much of this is great. I love the gameplay, but some of the interface decisions are incredibly stupid. Like the not being able to save checkpoint progress. That’s just absolutely insane. I’m baffled.
I was playing a level just now and for some reason all the guns except my own stopped making sounds. My ally’s gun wasn’t making any noise. My enemies’ guns weren’t making any noise. Which made things a bit tricky and a bit, well, shit. But I was two checkpoints through a mission and I couldn’t turn the console off without losing that progress. So I just had to do the final section several times in weird half-silence.
And why warn that you’ll lose all your progress when you restart a mission after not having made any progress? How difficult would it be to see if any checkpoints have been reached and miss out that screen if they haven’t?
So, we have what appears to be a brilliant game, based on the first three or four levels. (I forget.) I mean, truly exceptional. But there are bugs and an interface that might as well have been designed by Satan himself. No mid-level saving. No skipping cut-scenes until you’ve completed a mission. Odd uneccesary warnings. Stupid unskippable credits sequence when you first boot up and want to get playing.
It’s the exact same problem as Burnout 3. A great game wrapped in a hideous interface.
I am most perplexed. I just don’t see why things are as they are. It doesn’t make any sense.
Black
Feb 25th
Mission two done.
Criterion have done exactly what they set out to do, but probably not in the way they meant to. They said they were going to do for the FPS genre what Burnout did for racing games. And they’ve done it, in that they’ve managed to combine a fantastic game with one of the worst interfaces I’ve ever had the misfortune to use.
How on earth do they do it?
OutRun 2
Feb 25th
One run through Arcade mode.
Top of the score board and four seconds off my previous best time.
Ah, that’s better.
Now I can probably jump back into Black for a bit.
Black
Feb 25th
Picked this up in Game. Paid fifteen quid after using my reward points.
The core game is excellent, I reckon. Really nice feel to it, great fun. Bit tricky to pinpoint headshots, but then I’ve never been the most accurate of marksmen. Lots of flying bullets, weighty guns. Very nice.
However, however, however…
We’ve never needed the Blue Sky In Games campaign more. Apart from the green health bar I might as well be running this on a black and white TV. I had no idea they were going to take the game’s name quite so literally.
No checkpoints. Well, there probably are, given there’s an option for them on the menu you get when you die, but I’ve not seen one yet. The first mission didn’t have any. (I know because the last bloody enemy killed me the first time I tried it.) The second one might do, but they must be a long way in. Too far in. You have to trek through a forest to a border crossing and then fight your way through it. So I get to the border crossing and die. Trek through the forest again. Die in exactly the same place. Trek through the forest again…
You get the idea. Surely a checkpoint when you reach the border crossing wouldn’t be too much to ask? I’m only playing on Normal, too.
Also: Unskippable cut scenes. And not just unskippable the first time you watch them. Every time. That’s really idiotic and annoying. That and the checkpoint thing led me to switch the game off just now and play OutRun 2 instead.
Crystal Quest
Feb 25th
A quick game on the hardest difficulty setting. Nice and relaxing after Marble Blast.
And – hooray! – my gamer score just passed the 2,000 point mark. Just got 25 points for getting the Immortal Achievement, which is awarded for getting 1,000,000 points without losing a life.
Marble Blast Ultra
Feb 25th
Playing through Advanced Levels has led me to invent two laws.
Allaway’s First Law Of Gaming: At sufficiently advanced levels of challenge, skill becomes indistinguishable from luck.
Allaway’s Sceond Law Of Gaming: If it isn’t clear whether something’s luck or skill, then it’s either luck or cheating.
Day Of Defeat: Source
Feb 24th
I want this recorded.
I’ve had this game since it came out, what with buying Half-Life 2 over Steam, but I’d not got around to playing it.
Chose a server at random (more or less, filtered it down to Euro servers that had anti-cheat stuff enabled) and leapt in. Wasn’t sure what was going on at first, but I soon got into it after working out that Assault class characters fit my style of play best. I even recaptured one of our flag point things that the enemy had taken. I learned the best ways round the map for an Assault payer. (Assault players have short range attacks that do a lot of damage. Up-close fighters, suited to interiors. Nasty, brutish and short, basically.) When the map finished, I was about half-way down my team’s rankings. Fair enough.
Then we moved to a different map. I was a Nazi and started in a railway station. This map (dod_surrender?) has three of the flag points and each team starts with one each. The idea – as it is on all maps – is for one team to capture all three. My team kicked arse. We won and won and won and won and kept on winning. Not only were we winning, but I was the top player on my team. Yes, me. The one who’s rubbish at all games ever. I had more deaths than anyone else on my team, I think. I had a fairly low kill count, though it wasn’t embarassingly low. But the list is sorted by the number of flag captures and I was at the top.
Of course, being an Assault trooper I’d be expected to get more fag captures than a defensive player. It’s pretty much my job. But the point is, I was doing it. And not doing it badly. And I wasn’t the only player on my team who was on the offensive side of things.
I was competent.
I think my Counter Strike days are over. For one thing, you respawn when you die in Day of Defeat, so no watching your team run around after you’ve died at the beginning of a round. No worrying about money, either – you just choose your class, which you can change whenever you like.
Excellent.
