In a change to previous Let’s Play Friday posts, today’s game isn’t a Spectrum one. Nor is it a retro game in the truest sense. It’s not even right here on this page to play. No – instead, it’s Ed Fries’ Atari 2600 port of Halo. That you can play in your browser here. It’s amazing. Probably.
“The highly classified bio-augmentation procedure is a Spartan candidate’s final and most difficult ordeal before joining the ranks of the legendary soldiers. The dramatic interpretation of Carter’s rebirth as a Spartan embodies the themes of courage, sacrifice and honor in “Halo: Reach” and gives viewers a unique look into the origins of a central character in the upcoming blockbuster game. ”
For four years now, I’ve kept a diary detailing the games I play. Part of the reason was to see how many games I buy (and to reduce this number), and how many I complete (and to increase this number). 2008 saw a drop in completed games – 33 compared to 61 in 2007. I don’t think this is bad, when you look at the games I’ve been completing. In 2007, there were quite a few shorter games, including 5 …
I’ve played it before. And didn’t like it. And I tried again on the PC. And didn’t like it. I’ve always found it dull, dark, slow and boring. So, having bought it at a car boot sale yesterday for the princely sum of £1.50, I thought I’d play it again. Not least because I got the sequel at the same time (for the same price), and I have a mostly unplayed Halo 3 for the 360 sat on a shelf. …
Phew, eh? That’s a lot of games. Overall, I’ve completed 61 this year, and played around 200 (if you include demos).¬¨‚Ć So what was best?¬¨‚Ć What was unexpected? Biggest Surprise Almost certainly Halo 3. I didn’t like the campaign mode (which I played a fair bit of in co-op – I actually completed it too, although didn’t play every chapter). The surprise was enjoying online multiplayer as much as I did. Team Fortress 2 is better, in my opinion (especially …
September The beginning of The Big Game Crunch of 2007.¬¨‚Ć Basically, every game in the world arrived in the post and I had to play them all. Most played in September (once RE4 was out of the way) was probably Super Paper Mario.¬¨‚Ć A fantastic game, by all accounts, and coupled with RE4, Mercury Meltdown Revolution and MySims proved that the Wii certainly was a fantastic console. Sonic the Hedgehog made himself known this month too, with Sonic 2 on …
Now, you see, I bought The Orange Box for Portal. And nothing else. Although I did think that perhaps I’d like Team Fortress 2 a bit, as although not my usual sort of game, the unseriousness of it appealed. And so It Was Done, and The Game of Orange was Purchased, and Lo, Portal was Divine and Team Fortress 2 was Lovely. There was much rejoicing. And today, I was going to play TF2 a bit more, for I thought, …
Well, the ugvm boys were supposedly going to play this tonight. But they didn’t turn up until I’d been hanging around for an hour so I left. Pff. I’d played a few match-making games while waiting, and didn’t lose any (although I didn’t do especially well), but it just isn’t fun when you don’t know the people you’re playing with (unlike Team Fortress 2 which is ace regardless).
Ssh! Don’t tell anyone, but I played this for over an hour and a half this evening. And not all of it was rubbish! Of course, I was playing with lots of people from ugvm, and all on multiplayer modes that weren’t co-op campaign, so it was all pretty good. Well, I wasn’t. I held my own for a few games when there were only four or five of us, but then more people turned up and I was demoted …
I’m not really a big fan of multiplayer vs shooters, and team based ones even less so, but Halo 3 put me in the mood for some and since I have what many consider the best of the genre in the form of Team Fortress 2, I gave it a go. And? I was pleasantly surprised. It’s all cartoony, which is a plus for me, and the variety in the characters you can play as is great too. I didn’t …
Those of you even with a vague passing interest in video games can’t have failed to notice that Halo 3 came out recently for the Xbox 360. Apparently there were queues at midnight for it and everything. Even my friends list on Xbox Live was full of Halo 3 players for the first few days. But, if you read my Gaming Diary, you’ll have noticed I’ve not played it. “But you own every game ever! Surely you bought Halo 3!” …
No, I’m not impressed. Halo and Halo 2 both left me cold, and after several days of Crackdown this just feels slow, clunky and, well, dull. FPS games aren’t really my thing at the best of times, and deathmatch type things even less so. Unless the full game has an outstanding single player mode (and to do this, it’ll have to be different to the previous two games), I don’t think I’ll bother. As for how I got on with …
This may sound like a very minor update, and indeed when you play it there’s very little different from last time. Even the version number has only jumped 0.01. However, in the code, there have been some big changes. I’ve scrapped all of the old warp tile detecting routine, and replaced it with something that is more accurate and could be used to detect other things. I’ve created a class for the warp tiles, (which contains things like their ID, …
