InvertY.com
A Gaming Diary
Modern Combat: Sandstorm (iPhone)
Sep 9th
Yes, yes, it’s very impressive. It’s basically Call of Duty 4 on the iPhone, I know. The Internet, generally speaking, seems to love it.
I just don’t think I like it very much.
People are praising the controls, saying they finally make virtual pads work. Well, I’ve been fine with a lot of virtual pads for a while now and I find the controls in Sandstorm slow and clumsy. Not horrible, but I do wish I could move faster. (It may be just that I need to up the sensitivity, which I’ll definitely be trying.)
I’m playing it on Easy, but I’m dying all the time. I bought it and played it a bit when it was released, but that was when I was having a lot of iPhone troubles, so I didn’t write a blog post about it. I restarted it again today and didn’t find it any easier. I just can’t seem to find the enemies before I get shot dead. I understand the use of cover, but enemies seem to rush out at you when you move into an open area and there’s no time to get to cover before you die.
Yeah, I know, I’m probably just rubbish. I’m just finding it more frustrating than fun, like I’m moving in slow-motion while the game runs full speed around me.
And why does my character look up in the air if I stop aiming for a bit? Why doesn’t he just continue aiming where I told him to look? And if it has to reset your view, why doesn’t it reset you facing forwards, instead of skywards? It’s probably the most annoying thing in the whole game for me.
Still, I’m going to play it some more, see if it grows on me, as I’ve got it. Right now, though, I do rather wish I hadn’t bought it.
Batman Arkham Asylum (PS3)
Sep 9th
Finished off the secrets last night, without having to resort to the Internet. I feel special.
Also got a few more trophies, some for getting secrets, one for gliding a long way and then the “World’s Greatest Detective” one. Excellent.
Had a quick go at the first challenge room and scraped a medal, but I’m bottom of my friends list by a long way – and I don’t even have many friends on the PS3. (Unlike the 360, where my friends list is completely full.)
Excellent, excellent game.
KenKen (iPhone)
Sep 8th
After saying I wouldn’t, I went and finished off the thirty or forty remaining Apprentice challenges this lunchtime. Most took about ten or twenty seconds.
I’m now on the Amateur challenges.
That’s the first one. Not very difficult, but a bit more interesting.
Animal Crossing: Let’s Go To The City (Wii)
Sep 8th
Nothing very interesting happened last night, but I didn’t play for long.
KenKen (iPhone)
Sep 8th
I decided to put this on my iPhone instead of Str8ts as, despite buying it in the 59p sale a while ago, I hadn’t actually started it, so no save game to lose.
I starts off absurdly simple. So simple it’s almost insulting and definitely not very interesting.
So I’ve been skipping ahead to the Academy and doing the challenges in there to get my rank up. I’ve done all but one level there, but the current 6×6 puzzles it’s giving me are really quite hard. I may go back and do some of the Free Play puzzles, which are the meat of the game, anyway. I just don’t think I’ll bother doing all the 3×3 ones.
Batman Arkham Asylum (PS3)
Sep 8th
Only played for an hour or so last night. Just wandered around the near-empty asylum clearing out the secrets I missed when I played through the story. Mainly concentrated on finishing off the Medical Centre, but I found quite a few in Arkham West, too.
There are a few in the tunnels linking bits of Arkham that have me completely stumped at the moment. Some I can see, but can’t get to, some are just question marks on the map. I wish the map was 3D, that would help an awful lot.
Words With Friends (iPhone)
Sep 8th
Still playing this.
I’m glad it stores games online, as I had to restore my phone and set it up as a new device last night, losing all my saved games. Golly.
My phone was crashing at least twice a day, normally within twenty seconds of being unlocked after some time on standby, and showing strange graphical glitches at other times. I’ve been suspecting a hardware fault, but since the reset it’s been behaving perfectly.
I only put six games back on when I set it up again. (Apple said to put no apps on it, but, really, what’s the point of an iPhone with no apps?) They were Mr Driller, KenKen, Run, Orbital, Deer Hunter 3D and Words With Friends. I also shoved on four apps I can’t live without – TweetDeck, Flickster, MLB At Bat and TV Guide.
Anyway, Words With Friends is going along as it always goes. I win some, I lose some.
Batman Arkham Asylum (PS3)
Sep 7th
I finally got the full game on Saturday morning. I couldn’t play until both the wife and I were ready – she wanted to watch me play so she could see the story – so ended up playing Saturday afternoon, then Saturday evening, for a total of four or five hours. Then on Sunday I waited until after the Eastenders omnibus, then played for a single seven-hour sitting and finished the story.
(I’ve still got 80-odd secrets to find and I’ve not really touched the challenge rooms.)
So, how was it?
Very, very, very good.
Combat works, stealth works, the jumping works, the puzzling works, the difficulty level on Normal is pitched absolutely perfectly for me… it just all fits together beautifully.
Most of all, though, above everything else, it’s Batman. It loves Batman, his world and his rogues gallery and it shows. Everything from the story to the setting, right down to the character biographies, it’s a game that loves this world and wants to finally do it justice.
It’s a very good game, but it’s a great Batman game.
I’m very much looking forward to finding the final secrets – there’s a question mark under an arch that’s been bugging me since yesterday, I just couldn’t see the dot – and trying out the challenge rooms.
I’m pretty sure this will be one of the relatively rare games that I keep forever and refuse to ever trade.
As a Batman fan – I have a Batman clock by the bed and framed Ty Templeton sketches on my wall – this has made me very, very happy.
Str8ts (iPhone)
Sep 7th
The cat woke me up early on Sunday morning, then we had a bit of a poo-related incident that it’s probably best not to go into detail about. Suffice to say, after wrestling a yowling cat and then getting out the carpet cleaner I was fully awake.
So I lay in bed for a while and played Str8ts. Turns out Sunday morning is a good time to play, because I was completing puzzles in no time.
