deKay's Gaming Diary

That was ace.

By far the best of the series. Unless Episode 5 beats it, of course. Loved Superball again, mainly because he’s so deadpan. The mariachis were all sorts of amaze, and the Max/Ms Bosco “relationship” was fantastic. The baby making machine, and the various possible Bosco outcomes awesome too.

And, best of all, it relied upon proper, logical puzzles instead of try everything on everything puzzles. Yay!

Thankfully, this was much better than the previous episode. By several orders of magnitude. The puzzles were far better this time around, and Jurgen is amazing. He was just like you’d expect a gay emo Euro-vampire to be.

I’m starting to notice, however, that every task in every game seems to be made up of three mini-tasks. I’m not the only one to notice, either – even Max makes a comment about it!

Nice to see Superball back too. He was one of my favourite characters from the first “series”. Way better than the irritating Soda Poppers, who – thankfully – haven’t been spotted since Episode 1 of this series. Phew!

Made a start on Episode 4 after 3 too, and it’s been even better so far!

It’s been a while, but I went back to this today.

Unfortunately, I found it a bit of a slog. I know the puzzles on previous Sam & Max games have been more than a little, uh, obtuse, but I was finding this one even more illogical than before and it took ages to get through. It also wasn’t as funny as other episodes, and although I spent longer on it due to not knowing what to do, it was actually a lot shorter in terms of number of things that needed doing. If that makes sense.

Since I was so close to getting all the achievements in the game, I went back and, er, got all the achievements. Collecting all the feathers was the real time consumer, especially since I only had 30 or so of the 100, and after that I just had to wear my prize in all the game locations (easy) and perform a few fancy fighting moves for the remaining achievements.

And that’s it! I could go and get all the treasures now, but I get nothing for it (except money, which I have more than I could ever spend anyway), but I’ve done everything else!

Brotherhood needs to be bought now. And soon. I did buy it from the online Ubisoft store, but they cancelled my order, so I hate them now.

I don’t buy many XBLIGs (that’s Xbox Live Indie Games, in case you didnae know). However, this one called out to me. The main selling point? A review that stated that the entire game was DLC. “You can’t even move left, or jump, or have sound effects, until you’ve bought the DLC”.

Of course, the DLC is bought using in-game money, which you collect – platform game style – to progress. There’s some swording and (with the right DLC) some shooting, but the aim is basically to collect coins, buy expansion packs to let you progress to other areas of the map in a Metroid type way, in order to collect more coins. And so on.

It’s short, it’s easy (I don’t think you can die), and it’s very funny. The DLC in-jokes (it has horse armour) and general gaming trope mickey-taking (“Awardments”! Zombies!) are great.

Hurrah!

That’s probably the best game I’ve played in quite a long time. So good, in fact, I’m a bit disappointed it’s all over. Well, it isn’t quite, as I immediately went back in a mopped up some achievements, bagged the last few glyphs, and started the trawl for feathers.

Luckily, being behind the times with the series, I can now pick up the follow-up, Brotherhood, for peanuts as the game after that, Revelations, is out very soon. Excellent! Sometimes living a little in the past is good

The end of the game was brilliant, but the final boss fight was unexpectedly short and easy. Very, very easy, in fact. The guy at the end of the first game was really difficult, but this guy? If you hold block you can’t get hit. At all. Oh well. At least it wasn’t frustrating.

This was up on the 3DS VC this week. I wasn’t going to get it, as I had other things to be playing, but when I hopped on to the eShop to see what else was newly available, I suddenly got the urge to play it.

An hour and a half later, I’d finished it.

I actually really enjoyed it. Sure, it’s a bit simple. Yes, it’s pretty easy (especially the bosses – if you’ve got a dinosaur to ride when you get there, they’re defeated in seconds). Indeed, it is quite repetitive with each island having a similar looking set of levels to each previous one. But I liked it.

One of the major differences between the Adventure Island games and other platformers is that you have a very strict time limit, which you can delay by collecting fruit. You can’t explore much or you’ll run out of time, so I didn’t. However, I wish I had done some more exploring, as I found a secret warp on World 6 (of 8 ) and realised I’d probably missed loads of secrets. Tch.

DAH DAH DAH DAAAAAAH!

I’ve been playing this here and there since it came out. It’s OK, but not really a Zelda game. I mean, it has Link in it, and it has some Zelda-y puzzles, but it isn’t really Zelda. That said, I enjoyed it. Even more so once I realised I wasn’t stuck on a level because you can actually throw the other Link over the lava. Tch.

Anyway. Killed the end boss, got the credits and the minigame to collect many rupees, aaand done!

Many years ago, I played the original Assassin’s Creed. I mostly enjoyed it. It was very good. But, as I said back then:

The down points are the annoyingly repetitive fighting (especially later in the game when you have to block every attack and can’t just wade in) and the dodgy sensitivity of the wall running and ledge-grabbing when sometimes you can’t climb up even though you know you can – it just won’t let you, you have to climb down and back up the exact same bit to make it “work”. The way the save points work is irritating too, since it saves for you, but sometimes you still have to go back a fair way if you quit and reload.

Thankfully, the sequel fixes all that. There are more ways to prevent fights (better assassination moves), more moves within fights, fewer fights in general, and it’s easier to get away from them – partly because the wall running and ledge-grabbing is mostly fixed. There are more checkpoints too, so saving is less of an issue.

And it’s fun. More varied than the previous game. The cities seem bigger and better designed. Getting from one city to another is streamlined. And it looks even more impressive. Even the story is better. The Assassin’s Tomb raiding is fun. Looking for glyphs is fun. It’s all just brilliant. And fun – but I think I said that.

In terms of story, I’m part way through sequence 9 (of, I think, 14), and it’s taken easily 20 hours to get here. However, much of that time has been glyph, tomb, treasure and codex hunting. I have all the best armour and nearly all the weapons, and have upgraded the villa as far as I can, so I no longer need money, and can just get on with doing the missions for the most part. I’ve still a few codex pages and glyphs though, but nowhere to look for them just yet.

Only had two bugs so far – one where two guards on a boat didn’t appear (a pain since I was supposed to kill them), so I had to kill myself (the only time I’ve died so far!) to make them reappear. It’s a common bug, apparently. The other one was when I fell off a building, and landed under the floor. I stood up and my knees down were underneath the floor as I walked around. Once I’d climbed up something it was fine again though.

There was a demo for this a few months ago. It wasn’t very good. It was “classic” Sonic in a re-imagined Green Hill Zone, ruined by awful physics, jerky scrolling and not being able to see anything as the graphics were too “busy”. Oh, and Sonic was about one tenth the size he should have been in relation to all the other objects and baddies.

This demo improves on the previous one greatly, by fixing much was wrong with the physics (although they’re still not correct), and then makes it over fourteen billion times worse by not fixing anything else, and adding speaking Chaos who you can’t kill, feed into a mincer, or set on fire, and being quite frankly, insulting.

Then it added a “modern” Sonic Green Hill Zone level, which, like most “modern” Sonic games was a test of how long you could hold the same direction for whilst sometimes pressing a button to jump, duck, or activate the real-life Childhood Memory Eraser. The latter of which sadly doesn’t exist. Instead, grinding rails, having no control over Sonic for large portions of the level, and being unable to see what is coming in those sections where you do have some control, all combine to form the greatest Sonic gaming experience since, oooh, Sonic The Hedgehog: Stabby Eyeball Adventure.

Still. There’s always the 3DS version, right?

That’s right – to celebrate having completed the wonderful Catrap, I’ve visually tinkered with a shot of some of the game ending sequence. An exciting bit, I’ll sure you’ll agree. Yes.

Some of the final levels, especially the “??” level unlocked once the previous 99 were complete, were a right pain. Many were of the form of huge swathes of blocks and baddies, where removing them in the right order so others drop down in certain ways, which I find difficult as it’s hard to visualise how the level will look three, four, or 27 moves in the future. Levels where you generally just have to find a way of reaching a couple of baddies, or getting a block from A to B are far easier to plan.

But I managed it eventually, and verily, the game was won. My reward? I got to play the new Sonic Generations demo on the 360. And that is a story for another post.

So very close now!

After reaching level 80 (of 100), I went back and finished all the levels I’d missed previously, of which there were about 15. I then carried on past 80 finishing at 89 before getting stuck and deciding to play something else for a bit.

It really is a very lovely game.

And now I have completed the Basic Grand Prix set of events.

It was actually pretty easy, and when it did start getting a bit more difficult I bought a faster car with “dynamic” drift, which was easier to control than I expected it to be. It became essential for drifting round the less tight corners too, as it kicks in by itself at the right angle and really helps build up the nitrous bar.

Now I’m onto the Advanced Grand Prix, and have done a couple of events there. It’s more of the same really, only slightly faster with some Class-2 cars. Not really harder though.

LOOK AT IT. JUST. LOOK.

Now, explain to me why Nnooo hasn’t sold eleventybrazillian copies. Why? Because nobody knows how to access WiiWare stuff on the Wii. Or even that WiiWare stuff exists. Or that their Wii can even connect to the internet. Or even that their Wii can play games that are not Wii Sports and Mario Kart.

Which is a huge shame, because games like escapeVektor exist and are AWESOME, yet only seven people know about them. Of this I tell you: Go and connect your Wii up to the internet, open up the Wii Shop, and buy escapeVektor with just 500 Wii points. JUST 500. That’s what, £3.60 or something. You’ve probably lost more than that down the back of the sofa or swallowed it as a child.

And why should you do this thing? I already told you – because it is AWESOME.

I got it. And completed it. And it was (I think I may have mentioned) AWESOME. It plays a bit like Painter, only with switches and different sorts of baddies (ones that follow a set path, others that hunt you down). Filling in “cells” (rectangles where you’ve covered all the lines that make it up) gives you bombs that can wipe out baddies that comes close to you, and filling in lines gives you a speed boost. Simple controls, simple concept, excellently designed levels, and really, really good.

I’ve still a few levels left (there’s a set of bonus levels you can unlock for owning other Nnooo titles – I’ve got Pop), some of which were skipped as I found alternative routes through the “map”, so there’s a bit more for me to do yet.

AWESOME.

Well yeah y’see I actually completed this a while ago, and not today. Because today I played it to complete what I thought was the final game mode I’d unlocked, only to find that I’d not just played that mode already, but completed it as well.

So it was a somewhat short play session consisting of a quick load of each mode just to make sure I’d done them all, and I had. So, er, hurrah!

Then I played Kirby 64 for a bit instead. It’s not that good.

Once I realised this wasn’t the same game as the poorly remembered Kat Trap game I had for the Spectrum, I was much more interested in it. Turns out it’s a nice block-pushy platform puzzle game and not a nasty space, uh, thing.

And it’s hard. There are 99 levels (and a ?? level), and so far I’ve managed 33 of them. And I’ve skipped three, as you can. I have no idea how to do some of them. I dread to think what the later levels are like – I daren’t try them!

Complete bargain, yet bound to be overlooked as it’s a virtually unknown game (even when known by its other name – Pitman), at £2.60 on the 3DS eShop.

It took me a while to actually find the final remaining zone (Space Zone) as it was somewhat hidden via an exit from another level, but it was soon completed and Wario’s Castle infiltrated.

And Wario was defeated with ease. All the bosses were pretty easy, actually, and very few of the levels gave much of a challenge. Quite different to Super Mario Bros 3 or Super Mario World, which this is a sort of portable analogue of.

It was great though, despite the easiness and slowdown. Quite impressive for a Game Boy title.

That’s it! That’s the entire set of New Vegas stories completed. Sure, there are still some sidequests, and yeah, I have a few unvisited markers on my Mojave map, but that’s pretty much the game sewn up. Aces.

I was really close to the end of Lonesome Road, needing only to work through a few rooms and then meet up with the other courier. I think perhaps fighting him was on the cards, but I talked him round and now we’re friends. Or something. There was a big fight with a load of Marked Men instead, though, and then it was over.

Of course, I still have a few warheads to find and explode, but not as many as I was expecting to have left due to the huge number just lying around the “temple” at the end. And I’ve all the Gun Runners achievements (bar one) to mop up as well, so it’s not like I’m “done” yet.

It would appear my time in the Mojave Wasteland is coming to an end. Lonesome Road is the final story-based DLC for New Vegas, and the two other DLC packs (Courier’s Stash and Gun Runner’s Arsenal) don’t add a great deal. I’m also now a Level 48 character, with all bar Unarmed and Melee stats at max, and SPECIAL pretty much all 8/9/10, I’m almost done.

Having said that, I’ve still the Gun Runner’s achievements to do, and I’ve got to do a Hardcore Mode runthrough for a further achievement (I’ll be following gospvg’s guide for that one, I suspect), so maybe I’ve a while yet.

Anyhoo. Back to Lonesome Road.

The story follows your trip into the Divide, a massive crack in the world created by nuclear explosions. Explosions it would appear I had something to do with. The original Courier Six – the guy who refused to deliver the Platinum Chip that forms the plot point of the main game story – knows about my past, and I’m there to find him.

I’m almost there, too, having just reached his temple. Why he has a temple, I don’t yet know.

The route was pretty hard, considering my high level. Mainly due to an abundance of Deathclaws, and loads of a new foe – Tunnellers, which the other courier says can take down a Deathclaw. And they hunt in packs. And literally come out of the walls. Nice.

I think I’m going to need to do a fair bit of back-tracking though soon – I’ve missed loads of warheads I can explode, and there’s an achievement for them all!

The lovely people at Nintendo gave everyone with a DSi/XL/3DS a free copy of this updated version of the GBA Four Swords game, to tie in with the Legend of Zelda 25th Anniversary. How lovely!

The main difference between this and the GBA one is that they’ve added a single player mode. Well, it’s sort of single player two player co-op, with you controlling two Links at the same time. It’s pretty good too, although I’ve only played for an hour or so.

It’s not really a “proper” Zelda, because although it has Link, and the graphics and sounds are Zelda-y, there’s no proper exploration or dungeons or an overworld – just several timed self-enclosed stages where you smack things, solve a few puzzles, and can only swap weapons and “powers” by physically swapping your current one with another sat on a pillar.

Free though! And Zelda! In 2D! Rejoice!

It’s not a great game. And it’s certainly not as good (or as colourful) as my playfully fiddled with end sequence screenshot suggests. But somehow, I enjoyed it.

It’s like a cut-down version of the old MSX Metal Gear, only with no sneaking. Each level is a sort of maze with slight puzzle elements, different enemy types (with different movement and shooting patterns), the occasional miniboss, and finishes up with a larger (usually artillery) level boss.

You can also swap your character for a female character at will, and she offers you the “bonuses” of shooting slower and being unable to use any secondary weapons (grenades, rockets, flamethrower) at all. It seems. If your man dies, she takes over. Hmm.

I can’t really recommend it highly, but it entertained me enough to complete it, so I suppose it was doing something right.

I don’t really know why I’ve started playing this again in the last few days, but it’s actually a lot better than my memory seems to suggest. I mean, it’s not a bad game at all, but of the four games I got at or around the 3DS launch, I liked it least. Mainly because I’ve never really been a fan of Ridge Racer.

But I’m enjoying it now, and I’ve completed three more Grand Prix events in it as well. Seems very easy so far though – I assume it gets harder?

Although this is, in theory, supposed to be played before Old World Blues, I played it afterwards. The main reason being, lots of people have been saying it’s terrible, and the worst of all the New Vegas DLC. I wasn’t really looking forwards to it as a result.

But guess what? Everyone is wrong except me. It was excellent. Sure, it’s shorter than some other DLC (about 6 hours or so), but I can’t really fault it. The story was good, the return of some enemies I’d not seen for aaaages in the game (Yao Guai, giant mantises, giant venus flytraps), and there was a link to the fate of the inhabitants of Vault 22 which was nice.

If I had to find fault, it would be only that navigating the map, with the big canyons and hard to reach high places was a bit of a pain, and The Burned Man wasn’t really the psycho I was expecting him to be, but really – nothing important.

I’ve not posted in a while, aside from to mention Yakuza 3 and Old World Blues, but I have still been playing games. Here’s a round-up of what’s been going down over the last few weeks:

Professor Layton and the Lost Future (DS)

I actually completed this at the start of the year, but as I did with the previous two games once the story was done I left the remaining puzzles until near the release of the following game. So, with that due in November, I went back to Lost Future. I’ve already mopped up all the story puzzles, the sticker book, the parrot delivery puzzles, and the toy car, and have done most of the bonus extra puzzles too.

As usual, the puzzles I struggle with are the slide-a-block-through-other-blocks ones, one of which (having checked online afterwards to see how poorly I did) can be completed in just 9 moves. Took me almost 3500. Yes.

Urban Champion 3D (3DS)

It’s a weak title, sure. It’s certainly not a “NES classic”, but somehow, it’s addictive. I’ve made it up to (I think) Area Champion, but then died. You don’t seem to lose your rank when you die though – you just have to start from the first round again.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (3DS)

The only 2D Zelda game I’ve not completed. In fact, I’ve barely played it. But I put some time in and once you forget it’s a Zelda game and look at it as a Metroidvania game with an overworld and semi-random, realtime battles, it makes a lot more sense. It’s brutally hard though!

Metroid (3DS)

Another one of the NES games us 3DS “ambassadors” got for free. It’s hard. Like, really hard. And there’s no map. I sort of like it, but the difficulty is really putting me off.

Balloon Fight / Mario & Yoshi / NES Open / Wrecking Crew (3DS)

Other NES games that I’ve played for an hour or so each, but not really invested too much time in yet. Wrecking Crew is ace, and NES Open is still a pretty competent golf game.

Let’s Golf 3D (3DS)

Enjoying this. The 3D is pointless (as in, it barely has any effect at all), but it doesn’t really matter. I’m about 35% through Career Mode now, and am starting to get used to the courses. The arctic and aztec ones are particularly difficult! I like the different game modes too, like Closest To The Pin and such.

10 Second Run (3DS)

It’s actually DSiWare, but I don’t have a DSi so it falls under 3DS. So there. Loved it at first, with its super-quick runny-jumpiness, but sadly – just like other games of its ilk (N+, Super Meat Boy) – it became far too hard to be enjoyable. I’ve completed about 38 of the 50 levels, and although I know there are 5 or 6 more I could probably manage with perseverance, some just seem completely beyond me. Boo!

Bomberman Live! (360)

I was online this evening at the same time as some ugvm/BETEO people who were playing this, and I thought I’d join in hoping my useless “broadband” connection could take the pace. It held up for the first few rounds, but by the end of the first tournament the lag was causing me to blow myself up far too frequently, and by the end of the second tournament I was been told over the headset that I’d died before I actually noticed on-screen. Rubbish.

And I’d have beaten all-comers if it wasn’t for Sky! *shakes fist*

Kirby’s Fun Pak (Wii)

The SNES game on the Wii, to be more accurate. Mainly played because my daughter sometimes tells me to play Kirby games, and so this appeases her, but it is good anyway. Only one game mode left to complete, I think, though.

Is that everything I’ve played recently? Probably. Except for stuff I’ve played briefly. Like, but not limited to: Outrun Online Arcade (360), Sonic the Hedgehog (360), Super Mario All-Stars (Wii), Muscle March (Wii), and various iPad “room escape” games. And the usual Words With Friends, Hanging With Friends and Carcassonne matches too, of course.

What a fantastic return to the bombed out future of America this was!

I had a hankering for some more Fallout, perhaps spurred by news about the next DLC which is out soon, combined with the hype of the impending Skyrim release. I decided on this add-on rather than Honest Hearts as reviews have been more favourable for Old World Blues, and it also seemed less dreary and downbeat.

And it was AWESOME.

It’s hilarious, for a start. Dr Klein commenting on your anatomy. Other “scientists” with bizarre fetishes and neuroses. The silly feud between the two “factions”. The psychopathic toaster, jealous light switches, and other incredible inanimate objects. The dog-gun that barks. Everything is silly, humourous, and excellent. Loved it!