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A Gaming Diary
GT Racing: Motor Academy (iPhone)
Feb 8th
First impressions of Gameloft’s new “serious” racer.
I got this for Laguna Seca, which thankfully is unlocked for quick racing from the start. (In fact, there are a good amount of cars and tracks unlocked in that mode at the beginning. I’m not sure if it’s all of them, but it’s a good selection.) I need Laguna Seca with me at all times, so I’ve been waiting for this game with baited breath.
First off, it’s a bit of a mess technically. It’s all a little “bitty” and sometimes hard to read at distance, not helped by some amazing (in a bad way) pop up. Opponents often seem to be floating above the track a bit. The framerate ducks and dives like a featherweight boxer, too. And either Laguna Seca is hillier in this version than in other games, or there’s some oddness with the view point, because you can definitely see less of the track ahead of you. (Possibly done on purpose to minimise the pop up?)
Yes, it has replays. I assume from the icon you can upload them to YouTube.
There’s all sorts of settings and driving aids. I turned stability management down to half and braking assist off entirely, stuck with the tilt controls and found a surprisingly good driving model. It’s not as simulation-based as I expected, but it’s no Ridge Racer and it’s really rather exciting and satisfying.
I didn’t get a good look at any opponent AI that may or may not exist, but there doesn’t seem to be any damage model at all.
After a few races of Laguna Seca in a couple of different cars I went into Career mode. If the game wasn’t an obvious rip-off of Gran Turismo before, it certainly is here.
I've rarely seen anything more blatant.
You have to pass tests to get your licence, then buy a car, all that malarky. I’ve only got by C licence and had a look at the available cars so far.
Based on half an hour or so, then, this is a horrible rip-off, fairly ugly and a technical mess, but seems to be saved by the amount of licensed content and a genuinely decent driving model. It’s definitely more than good enough for what I want – which, to remind you, is Laguna Seca in my pocket – but playing it when I’ve actually got my PSP with me would be idiocy.
One Button Bob (Web)
Feb 8th
I read Rock, Paper, Shotgun, despite not having a gaming PC. (I do have a PC, but its last upgrade was about four years ago now and it won’t play most modern games.) I read it because it’s written well enough to be interesting about games I don’t have much interest in, they often talk about games I can play on my consoles and because it links to interesting web-based games.
Which is where One Button Bob comes in.
I like its chunky looks.
It’s a nice, short platform game that you control using the left mouse button. What that button bodes changes depending on the screen. Sometimes it makes you walk, sometimes it makes you stop, sometimes it makes you jump, etc.
It’s a good little lunchtime distraction and I got to the end in somewhere between three hundred and four hundred clicks. I wish I’d remembered exactly how many, so you could have competed against me.
Terminator Salvation (iPhone)
Feb 8th
Excellent shooter. I’d played the demo a lot, then bought the game ages ago for 59p in a sale, but hadn’t got around to playing it.
Look! It's a real Terminator! Not Generic Enemy Robot #63.
Started it up yesterday afternoon, didn’t stop until I’d finished the game. So, yes, it’s short. I’m not sure how short, but at a guess it took three or four family guys to get to through. Maybe five. Over an hour, I reckon, but less than two. (These Family Guys were on the BBC, so no commercials.)
It’s got a nice cover mechanic, the licence helps the atmosphere enormously and there are even some decent vehicle levels. It’s very easy on Normal, yes, but I didn’t feel like that was a bad thing.
You get to ride a Terminator motorcycle over the Golden Gate bridge. Awesome.
The only bad point I can think of is the reliance on laser beams that turn on and off to slow things down. It’s a bit of a lame way to try and make the game a bit longer.
Still, I enjoyed my run through the game enormously and consider it to be 59p well spent.
I have to wonder why Gameloft took the “tilt to aim” option out of their more recent shooters. It’s definitely the best way to play and lack of that option in Modern Combat really hurts the game. Strange.
Doodle Jump (iPhone)
Feb 8th
I didn’t think I liked Doodle Jump, but I played it for hours over the weekend. Hours.
I'm going to die. I know it.
It started with a tweet. One of my friends posted their high score, so I responded with my high(er) score. They then beat that score and we went back and forth for a while until I got a 32K monster score that’s going to take some beating.
(Not that 32K is huge in the general scheme of things, but it’s a lot bigger than the scores we’d been getting before.)
I still don’t like tapping the screen to shoot, but you can mostly get away without doing that and playing for a long time has helped me realise how well-designed the random level generation actually is. It must take some skill to gradually make things harder without ever making it impossible.
I’m a convert.
Bejeweled 2 (iPhone)
Feb 8th
Only Blitz mode, obviously. There’s not really much point in the other modes existing any more. Blitz is quick, exciting – and often annoying. There is skill involved in pattern-matching and choosing which gems to swap, but often you’re stuck in a game with few potential moves and you’re left searching the screen for something, anything to do before hitting in the Hint button in frustration. I’ve taken to restarting a lot now – unless you come out of the gates at full speed and stay there, there’s not a lot of point in carrying on.
Lots of lovely moves on this board.
My aim for this game was to beat a score set my friend April. (She was one of only two Facebook friends to set a score this week. The other person, who I shall not name, set a frankly pathetic score that wasn’t even worthy of my attention.) It took me a while, but I beat it and crowed about it on Twitter. Soon enough, I saw this:
@thatrevchap woke up. Saw this. Played. Beat score. Back to bed.
I tried to beat her new score, but failed. Stupid game.
Orbital (iPhone)
Feb 8th
It really is very pretty.
Played an awful lot of Orbital over the weekend. My goal was to get more than a hundred points on Supernova mode, which I managed after a little while. I also played the other modes, but it was Supernova that took most of my time – I mainly played Pure and Gravity when I was feeling too lazy to aim for myself.
Bird Strike (iPhone)
Feb 5th
I’m king of the world! Well, I finished level nine. That’s almost the same thing. Also I have a Yellowstone baseball and a crocheted Peter Davison on my desk.
The Fifth Doctor and a Yellowstone baseball. Proof.
I’m pretty special. Yeah.
Yes, I am awesome. Thank you.
Anyway, after level nine I went to level ten… oh, wait… no I didn’t. Looks like there’s only nine levels, which was a bit of shock. (And a secret one, according to the achievement list. I assume that’s for getting golds on all levels, or something, which is never going to happen.)
Worth 59p, though, despite the brevity and frustration. It’s a good little game. I wouldn’t have stuck with it if it wasn’t.
Bird Strike (iPhone)
Feb 5th
Wasn’t all aliens and predators last night, I also found some time play level nine of Bird Strike.
Yes, level nine.
And only level nine.
Bird Strike, level nine.
Because… I… just… can’t… beat… it.
It made me say, “Gnnnnnnnnnngh.” And other things of that nature.
I’m sure I’ll get there – eventually.
Aliens Vs Predator Demo (360)
Feb 5th
It’s a multiplayer demo of the much-anticipated new AvP FPS and, yes, I think it’s very good, but, yes, I’m in a match within a minute or so when I try to play, unlike the poor buggers trying to play on the PC or PS3.
I’ve not played as the Predator yet, but I’ve played two matches each as alien and marine.
Alien: Hugely confusing spatially, but fun as hell. I’ve hardly ever managed to sneak up behind someone to do the epic kill attack, but it’s very satisfying when I have done it. I also love using focus to leap at unsuspecting people from the ceiling. A lot of people don’t seem to know about blocking yet, which helped my scores. It really feels different from the usual stuff you play these days.
Marine: Much more familiar than the alien and a completely different experience. It’s scary as anything – yes, I have panicked and fired wildly at pipes in the ceiling. Several times. The motion tracker helps a lot both with playing the game and enhancing the atmosphere and when I see an alien tail or the Predator shimmer all thoughts of “short, controlled bursts” go right out of my head and I just hold the trigger down and hope I kill something before the clip runs out. Brilliant stuff.
Now, I’m not very good at these things, but here I was holding my own and coming half-way down the table as both the alien and the marine. I’m very much looking forward to getting the full game and playing something that’s not straight deathmatch, as I don’t think it’s going to be one of the game’s best modes.
I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get this, certainly not at launch, but I hope I’ll be able to buy a copy before the only people left playing are the hardcore players.
Zombie Dash (iPhone)
Feb 4th
I liked Zombie Dash when I first played it, but it was far too easy. I got up to day 50 or thereabouts, I think, before deleting the game from my iPhone. There have been a few updates since then, though, so I went back today and had a look.
The most obvious change is the addition of Crystal, a score/achievement tracking thing similar to OpenFeint, Plus+ and the rest. One day, hopefully, Apple will step in and make one of them a standard – I like OpenFeint, personally; it’s the most-used and has come on leaps and bounds since its rough early days – but until then we’re stuck will all these different systems competing against one another.
After registering with Crystal I started a new game. At first, there were no obvious difference, but I soon noticed that the tombs were much more random than before and the game difficulty seems to increase more quickly. Good changes, both of them.
The really big thing, though, is that now you can spend $100 on a checkpoint at the end of any day, which means you can start from that day again after you die. You got so much money in the first version of the game that it was almost meaningless – you could keep all your supplies topped up at their maximum level without even thinking about it. Now, though, you’ve got to make a real choice. It’s all very well spending your cash on burgers and antidote, but then you won’t have any left for a checkpoint.
He's going to be a bugger to sneak past, that one.
This one change has made a world of difference. For starters, I only intended to play up until day ten, but ended up playing until day fifteen, because I was saving up for a checkpoint. I was dashing through the days with less than maximum health, too, because I was saving up, making the game a little more tense.
Of course, this may turn out to be meaningless if it’s as hard to die as it used to be, but I’m hopeful that I’ll get to the stage where I’m struggling to afford a new checkpoint while fighting for my life. What was once a high score game (where the score was the die you died on) ruined by a low level of difficulty will now turn into an ongoing quest, where I’m constantly trying to push a little further.
At least, I hope that’s what’s going to happen. Looking at the leaderboards, though, I’m a bit worried. The top score is 4,447, which I assume is the number of days lasted. If so, it suggests that the difficulty may max out at some point and it’ll become another exercise in persistence, rather than skill.
Still, I need to investigate further, and what’s certain is that this release is an improvement on the game I played a few months ago. There’s more variety, the achievements (sorry, trophies) look interesting, there are Crystal challenges that I need to investigate and the checkpoint system is a very welcome change.
It’s really just personal preference that means I’d rather each game was much shorter.
