deKay's Gaming Diary

Haven’t had an update post in a while, and I’ve been trying out lots of different games over the last couple of weeks and not made mention of them here, so here’s a roundup:

Say What You See (iOS)
A series of pictures with hidden clues to game titles, films, etc. Like a cross between Where’s Wally? and a cryptic crossword. There are number of “canvases”, and I’ve been playing the Arcade Games one. Completed it, but some of them were a complete pig. Like, which arcade game is denoted by a picture of a goat’s head on a piece of paper? No idea? Exactly.

Super Mario All-Stars (Wii)
I got this for my birthday. Yeah, it’s a bit cheeky being nothing more than the SNES Mario All-Stars cartridge on a Wii disc, but it is a collection of some of the best platformers ever. So there.

Little Big Planet (PS3)
One of the free “Sorry our security was crap, everyone – here, have some old games for free ‘cos everyone has stopped buying them now anyway” games from Sony. It took three thousand years to download, and I’ve played the tutorial level and a couple of other levels. Thoughts: it looks nice, but controls horribly. The into and out-of the screen moving (especially when jumping up) is rubbish. Sackboy’s physics feel wrong. The pop-up menu to access stickers and stuff is annoying, particularly when the camera zooms into your face meaning you can’t see where on the playfield you’re putting your stickers. I might get used to it all, but, y’know, I still have the woeful PS3 controller to contend with.

James Pond 2: Robocod (PS1 on PS3)
Free for the duration of my free month’s worth of PS+. And an utterly horrible, bastardised version of one of my favourite platformers ever – it’s even worse than the DS version. I never want to play it again.

Street Gangs (NES on Wii)
It’s like playing a retro version of Scott Pilgrim! Lovely game. Not far in though.

Muscle March (Wii)
Why didn’t I get this not-gay, manly game for manly men a long time ago? It’s like Hole in the Wall, only less camp! Amazing.

Lasercat (360)
The ugvm people recommended this Indie game as a sort of Jet Set Willy-alike. I can see what they mean, but the sparseness of the rooms (many of which are completely devoid of, well, anything) and the lack of things to collect (only 20 keys), in addition to the silly trivia questions, put me off a bit. I think I’d have enjoyed it more if JSW hadn’t been mentioned. It’s not bad, but not what I wanted.

Contra (360)
This XBLA game was on offer at 200 Microsoft Moon Points a few weeks ago, so I bought it. Never really was a fan of Contra (or “Probotector”, as I always knew it), but it’s fun, if totally impossible. Managed to get to the boss of level 3 before I ran out of credits.

It’s more Lego!

First, the bad stuff. It has crashed on me already – my console froze just 10 minutes in. However, it did the same on Lego Harry Potter last week, so it might be my 360. Then, on the first boss fight, it bugged out meaning Barbosa just stood there, indestructible, and I couldn’t progress. Finally, it seems so small!

You see, Harry Potter was huge. The levels were big, but more than that – 4 books with 6 levels in each, lessons, story events, and one small (Diagon Alley) and one immense (Hogwarts) hub. I mean, there were 200 Gold Bricks in total to collect!

In Pirates, that number is down to 85. The levels seem the same size or smaller, there’s only 5 per film, and the hub is tiny – just three small areas and a couple of rooms off those. Of course, I may unlock more later on (I’ve only done the first film and two levels of the second), but still – it feels small.

The good stuff: it’s shiny. OH SO SHINY. And, being Lego, it’s OCD-terrific. So lovely. It’s also easier to “get”, for me at least, than Harry Potter because I know the films. Well, some of them. It also helps that 95% of the characters don’t look so goddamn the same. Jack’s treasure hunting stuff is pretty good too, and new to the series.

Overall, the game feels like Lego Indiana Jones 3. Yes, I know it’s pierats and not spelunking, but the types of character, weapon, and environment you get are more like Indy than Harry. Not a bad thing, of course, just an observation.

Oh! And minikits are back! \o/

100%ed! That means everything done, collected, found, and achieved, with 1000/1000 gamer score and everything. Yay!

Now I have to give it a verdict. I said at the start that I wasn’t a fan of Harry Potter. I’m still not, but somehow I now hate the series less. The game, despite the painful not-knowing-which-house issues, was excellent. And huge. MASSIVELY huge. Aside from the Star Wars Complete Saga “two-games-in-one” title, this is by far the biggest Lego game I’ve played. Finding everything took ages. In fact, finding the last Gold Brick took almost two hours by itself!

In the end, Lego won out over Harry Potter, and I really enjoyed it. And guess what turned up in the post for me today from my wife? Lego Pirates of the Caribbean! Yay!

Completed, but just 48% done.

Well, actually 72% done now, but 48% when I completed it. But that’s normal for Lego games – the bulk is done after you complete the game. And what have I done? I’ve been scouring the levels and hub for a character who can do Dark Magic (turns out someone called Lucius can) and then going everywhere in Hogwarts to open up and access things I couldn’t before I got a dark magic character or the ability to zap metal items.

Did the same in Diagon Alley too (which I realised was “Diagonally” – facepalm.jpg – see also: Knock Turn Alley), and then went and completed all of the remaining bonus levels. I’ve got 145-ish gold bricks (out of 200), 16 red bricks (20) and just ONE house crest (out of 24). I also have about 30 more characters to unlock as well!

I hate Harry Potter.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying again. I’m not a fan at all. It doesn’t appeal, I don’t like how it steals ideas from so many other things then claims them as its own, and I can’t stand J K Rowling’s stupid smug face.

I love Lego games.

I’ve said this before, but it’s worth saying again. They’re simple, sure, but they’re huge, funny and tick all the OCD boxes that make me go a bit gooey and warm. And, just 6 months after release, they’re incredibly cheap.

So there you have it: unstoppable force/immovable object. Fight?

This game is, as the title suggests, based on the first four books of the series. Like Lego games before, each of these is then split into 6 levels, making 24 levels in total. Then, also like other Lego games, there’s a “hub world” of sorts in the form of Hogwarts – which is way bigger than any previous Lego game hub. In addition, there are also some minor story sections (which don’t count to the level total), and quite a few magic lessons too, as well as the usual bonus levels, making the game probably the biggest Lego title of all, bar perhaps the really-two-games Lego Star Wars: The Complete Saga.

Mind you, the levels in Harry Potter are often massive, and seemingly more so than previous Lego titles, so it feels even longer.

This evening, I completed the first level of Year 4, meaning I have 5 of 24 levels left. Of course, that’s barely half the game – there’s still all the OCD red and gold brick collecting, the saving all the “students in peril”, the finding the school crests, doing the bonus levels (I’ve only done 5, for reasons I’ll mention in a minute) and unlocking everything. Which may take some time.

So far, so Lego. What upsets things somewhat is the Harry Potterness of it all. OK, so I don’t know enough about the Harry Potter universe for it to completely sicken me, but this also causes problems. In Lego Star Wars, at no point did it matter that I’d not seen the first three films, here I can’t complete certain bonus levels or do certain things in the hub simply because I don’t know which colour corresponds to which house, or (worse) which characters are in each house. Or even who anyone is.

I was stuck for an hour on a 3 minute bonus level because I needed to wave my arms in front of a green and white flag for a door to open. I guessed it wanted a character from a particular house, but I didn’t know which was green and white, so tried every single one of my 43 unlocked characters (you have to traverse the entire level to change to the next character, then walk to the flag, then back, each time) on the door only to find it didn’t open for anyone at all. Rubbish.

In summary: it’s a great game but better without the wizards.

Yes. That is the image for Final Fight: Double Impact right there. There’s a reason for that! Final Fight: Double Impact is actually two games – Final Fight and Magic Sword. I assume the arcade machines use the same hardware or something, as there’s no other way these are connected.

Whereas Final Fight was great compared to Burning Fight, I suppose Magic Sword is similar, but better than, Magician Lord. I mean, the names even rhyme. Magic Sword is still pretty pants though, sadly.

All the better then that it was completed quickly and now I don’t have to play it any more!

Since I’m on a smacking-things-in-the-face spree at the moment, and this was on offer on XBLA recently, I played it and completed it today.

My word, is it a billion times better than Burning Fight. It’s so much smoother. So much, I don’t know – less old and creaky and more responsive and just better.

Played it from start to finish with Cody, missing out on the achievement for completing it using 18 or fewer credits, by using 19 credits. The last of which was on the final boss. When he had a mere sliver of health left. Bah.

A week or so ago, or maybe longer – I can’t remember – both this and Crazy Taxi were on sale on XBLA. X-Men, a release of the 6-player scrolling beat-em-up from yesteryear was reduced to an Almost Free cost of just 200 Microsoft Moon Dollars, something like £1.70. Hell, I’d probably have put more than that into the original arcade machine.

I played it today, and, what with it being rather short, completed it. Six times. Once with each character.

Things that I liked included the brainless punching and kicking, and things that I disliked included the length (30 minutes or so to complete) and the lack of baddie variety: there are 5. And some bosses, but they then have a SuckySuck(TM) bit at the end so that positive is negated. Oh, and some of the achievements are broken. Example: I should have the “kill Magneto with each character” one, but haven’t.

Overall: sort of fun, worth £1.70, probably won’t play again.

This was on offer a little while back on XBLA, for 400 points. I decided, even though it’s a poor port and doesn’t have any Offspring music (TEEEEEN TWEEENNNTY TEEEEN!!!) I’d take a punt anyway for that price.

And it’s actually pretty good. Sure, it’s rough looking, and yeah, I miss the music. Worst of all, I keep getting stuck inside things – trees, signs, walls… but it is still fun. So far I’ve C-Ranked Arcade Mode, A-Ranked Original Mode, and completed 1-1, 1-2 and 1-3 of Crazy Box. 1-S is, of course, impossible.

It’s also a pain that there are achievements for getting Rank S, A, B and C, but getting a higher rank doesn’t unlock the lower ones too. This means, in order to get the B and C rank achievements for Original Mode, I have to purposefully play badly, which is utterly stupid.

I don’t know. I really don’t. Do I like this? Do I hate it? Probably not hate it, no. It’s repetitive, annoying, and having no ammo half the time makes it hard. You can’t step off your horse for more than 3 seconds or you die, and having all the towns constantly get over-run with the undead again is a right pain in the posterior.

But, there’s enough there to make me want to carry on. I think I’m about to travel to Mexico, but I hope there isn’t much of the game left now. I’d rather it be over and done with so it can stop confusing me.

My eyes! My beautiful, burning eyes! The neon! So bright and hurty!

I’ve been a little addicted to this for the last few days. So much so, that I’ve managed to both complete each and every one of the 100+ game modes, come top of my friend’s leaderboard (by quite some way) and get ranked in the top 1.5% of all players in the world. And got all the achievements. Completed!

All this came at a cost, though. My eyes. Burning like fire. Everything is so fast and reckless and glowy and constantly changing. And I love it.

I bought this DLC pack over Christmas when it was on offer. Some time before actually buying the main game, in fact – so interested in playing it I was.

And now I’ve played it for a couple of hours or so. Sadly, I’m not really enjoying it all that much. I don’t know why – the story is funny and it’s still RDR – but it’s just not all there. Maybe it’s the headshot-to-kill issue (if you don’t shoot them in the head, then, as we all know, zombies just rise again), or the frequently rubbish controls making zombie swarm control impossible. The gunplay controls were poor in the main game, but gunplay is more in-your-face now, with no hiding behind rocks and crates like before.

Instead, I’m relying more on the run-away-from-the-pack then pick-off-the-stragglers with a torch-in-the-eye takedown method. It works well, but is slow and frustrating.

I’m also not liking my current mission, which is picking daisies (or sage or summat). Fine in the main game, but here? The millisecond you’re off your horse, the Horde decends and eats your brainz. Not frustrating at all.

Maybe I’ll like it more further in. Or not. We’ll see!

I wasn’t going to go for the 100% Completed achievement on this, and although that statement still stands, I found myself playing the game a lot more over the last few days to get closer.

I ticked off a pile of achievements, such as Expert Headshot, clearing out all the hideouts, and bagging 18 bears. I finished all the Stranger missions, earned myself $10,000, bought some rare weapons, visited every place on the map, and maxed out my Fame meter. I also notched the Ambient Challenges up a bit, but I can’t see myself finishing them – the Survival one in particular isn’t really fun, and I think I’ve killed enough bears now for the Hunting one. Also, killing cougars with just a knife? Er, no.

So I’m done with it now, at around 40 hours, I think. Very enjoyable it was, and (as expected) my control niggles were just that by the end – niggles. Undead Nightmare next? Yeah, I think so.

Well. That was a twist.

Sort of. I suppose if I’d read the signs I’d have realised the game couldn’t really end any other way. Dutch pretty much tells you what’s going to happen anyway.

But it was more the stuff after that which I’d not expected at all. Yes, this is very vague if you’ve not completed it. Let me just say that the dialogue logic for all the stranger and random encounters must have been one hell of a headache for the developers.

If you want to know why, I’ll spoiler it for you:

With the story done, I’m now off to mop up some loose ends. I’ve a stranger mission or two to finish (one to find too, actually), and I want to get my Fame up to the maximum, which will involve more hunting and some random encounters.

I did some hunting last night for beavers (needed for a stranger mission), only to keep getting mauled by bears. Tch.

Had a bit of a marathon session of this over the last few days – not least 6 hours straight on Friday. Not done that sort of gaming run in years! Ended up having real-world RDR encounters (saw some flowers that looked like wild fever-few – fought the urge to pick them, saw crows – wanted to shoot them) like I used to with Tony Hawk games.

I think I’m nearing the end now. I’ve reached Blackwater, found where the guy I’m after is, and completed a few missions around the area. There can’t be too much more now, surely? I’m about 28 hours in, I think!

OK, so I’m actually posting this in May, but for some reason, I didn’t record that I completed this, but I did. So here’s the post saying so.

It was harder than Detana!! TwinBee, and less pretty, but still lovely.

Er, so Henry Hatsworth got too hard. The Captain Boss and his nurse are impossible. I’ve put it to one side (code for “probably never play again”) and started something new. Or old, but new to me.

Now, I hate westerns. And I hate cowboys. And I even hated Sunset Riders which lots of people think is ace. But I love (at least, I do now – didn’t like it at first) GTA IV and this is, pretty much, a cowboy GTA game. Apparently. And it won Game of the Year or something, so it might be good.

And is it? Yes. Yes it is.

But first the complaints. The controls, particularly combat controls, are broken. Just like they were in GTA IV. Just like they were in GTA: San Andreas. And Vice City. And GTA III. And Manhunt. And every other game I’ve played built on a GTA game engine. Targeting baddies just doesn’t work half the time, and shooting on horseback? Rubbish, just like GTA drive-bys.

Also, the world of RDR is a big place. Everywhere is a long ride from everywhere else. OK, so there are stagecoaches that act like the GTA taxis (but aren’t nearly as frequently found), and you can save everywhere (except you can’t – lots of places seem exempt from “everywhere”) with your campsite kit and fast travel, but still – getting from A to B can be tiresome. Even more so when you’re “accompanying” someone, which basically means you hold the A button and fall asleep until someone starts shooting at you.

Thankfully, it’s all so, so glorious. Graphically, it is probably the most impressive game I’ve seen on the 360, with a draw-distance to rival Oblivion. It seems to play a lot like Oblivion too, actually – perhaps it’s the picking flowers, bizarre quests, and horse riding. No horse armour yet, though.

As with other Rockstar games, a lot of the fun of the game comes from two things: the “do things that aren’t scripted” (my perennial GTA favourite is the “take a bike where a bike can’t go” game – replace bike with horse for RDR) stuff, and the characters and their stories. Everyone is so well acted, so fleshed out, that they’re more than just game characters – they have their own agendas, secrets, and backstories, and finding these out is excellent.

There’s bound to be a twist at some point. There always is. And I’m guessing that it’s one of the Armadillo sheriff’s deputies turns out to be a bad’un. We’ll see. I’m only 6 or so hours in (past the barn fire, done a few Seth quests), but it’s great so far.

Yeah, so I bought a Game Room game. I said I wouldn’t because it would mean that, due to the games costing 240 points each, I’d end up with a number of Microsoft Points that wasn’t a multiple of 100. Which, due to OCD, makes me uncomfortable. But I did need Detana!! TwinBee. So I had to buy 5 games at 240 points each to “fix” the points. Aha, yes, I’m mentally ill.

First off, I played in Ranked Mode, which is excellent. Your friends and leaderboard neighbours appear on the screen with their scores as you play, and you rank up in real-time – like you do with Pinball FX2 and Geometry Wars 2. And it adds a fantastic dimension to the game that you just don’t get with high-score tables. I’m now ranked 1770th in the world, which is pretty good. Or would be if more than 2000 people actually played it.

Then I played Classic Mode, and completed it using about 20 credits. About 12 of those were on the last level. It was hard. But then I completed it again, this time using only 5 credits (3 on the final level), so clearly I’d improved.

900/1000 points GET! That’s just one achievement left now – 100% the game. I’m at just under 90%, and to 100% it I need to do at least two things:

1) Replay every level in Super Story Mode, completing each chapter in under an hour.

2) Replay every level in Challenge Mode, where I have to collect all of the blue minikits, which are hidden, in under 10 minutes per level.

So, being positive and assuming I do all that in half of the time limits without having to try again (unlikely – I’m expecting some tight finishes!) that’s at least another 6 hours of play. And I’m already at 31. Time for a break from this for a while, I think!

Bit of a slog this, innit?

Not that I mind, as I’m enjoying it, but there’s a lot of OCD game here. I’m up to about 75% complete, but still have most of the levels still to do at least twice more, and all of them to do at least once more, as well as a few bonus levels and other stuff.

Another 15+ hours to go – easy.

My first Lego game was the original Lego Star Wars. I played it to completion, but never got OCD about it and didn’t even come close to doing everything do-able in the game (getting True Jedi, all the minikits, characters, etc.) but I did enjoy it.

Then I got, played, completed and 100%ed Lego Indiana Jones. And Lego Batman. And Lego Indiana Jones 2. I wanted to go back to Lego Star Wars but some of the achievements are utterly ridiculous – you have to complete every single level without dying! Also, there’s The Complete Saga anyway, which is the first game plus the second game (which was based on the second trilogy), so I decided to get that instead.

Problem was, it was never cheap. I only saw it for under £20 once, and I was too slow to buy it. Then I found it at Play Asia and, since I had a load of credit there and it had just come down in price, I managed to buy it for just 61p!

It arrived a couple of weeks ago, and, 12 hours of play later, I finished it. As in, I completed all the levels in story mode. The in-game counter only said I’d done about 33% though, as I’ve all them pesky minikits and gold bricks and red bricks and True Jedi things and everything left to do. And all the bonus levels. Lots.

After a few more hours redoing levels and completing some bonus levels, I’ve now reached 45% done. This is going to take a little while, I think!

You know what? I actually really rather enjoyed that.

I mean, it’s short, and the camera is a work of wonk, and the bit with the stone water snake in the ruins near the end was just stupid (mainly because of the camera) and the end boss was a pain because Sonic would glitch through him rather than homing attack him (so I’d die) but it didn’t really seem to matter. I had fun, and for all of its faults and stuff, its still eleventybillion times better than pretty much any other Sonic game of recent years. And I’ve just realised – Sonic Adventure is TWELVE years old. Good grief.

Did I go back and play as the other characters? No. Because they’re all dead to me.

I’ve completed it $hlmun times. I still think it’s the second best 3D Sonic game. I bought it last week when it was on offer, and have been playing through as Sonic.

At first, I thought, what? This is utter rubbish. I don’t remember it being this rubbish! I fell through the floor in the same place on the first level on my first go and lost all my lives. WHAT? RUBBISH!

But then, despite Tails’ appearance and the (let’s be truthful now) awful between-stages running around only vaguely knowing where to go, it still somehow works. The levels, although a bit glitchy, are mostly wonderful (especially Twinkle Park so far), and although it looks old and graphically isn’t amazing (draw distance in particular is nasty – but that’s mainly due to it being a port of the PC version not the DC or GC one), it’s still a lot of fun.

Oh, and the voice acting? Aside from Eggman, it’s awful.

It’s more of the first game, only with minor irritations removed, the way you build things made clearer (it’s now more obvious which factory you get specific items from), less to-ing and fro-ing (you get helpers that can carry building parts, and even build buildings, for you), and three different kingdoms to help out.

So, really, it’s the same as the first game but nicer to play. Which is all you want from it! Lovely and relaxing, genuinely funny, and a high Columbo Factor to keep you playing. I still have one achievement to get, but I’m not far off that.

Also! First day of 2011 and first completed game of 2011! Total play time, just under 6 hours.

Now you see, I wasn’t going to buy the first lot of DLC for New Vegas for two reasons. One, I thought I’d give another game a chance, and two, if Oblivion and Fallout 3 are anything to go by then it’ll come down in price in a few months. Of course, since when has saying I’m not going to buy something ever meant anything? Of course I bought it the day it was available.

And today I completed it.

First, a comparison with the DLC for Fallout 3. Like Fallout 3 expansions “Into The Pitt”, “Operation Anchorage” and “Mothership Zeta”, Dead Money is essentially stand-alone – as in, once you started them you were taken out of the main game until you completed it, and all your items were confiscated for the duration. Also, each of those expansions were around 4-5 hours long, but somehow (I may have been slow) Dead Money took a good 10 hours for me to finish.

Somehow, Dead Money manages to very much change the way Fallout works. You still have VATS and weapons that degrade and stuff, but several game mechanics are essentially removed. All your caps? Gone. It’s scrounged Sierra Madre (the casino in the story) chips that you buy things from vending machines with. Hoarding everything to sell? Pretty much pointless, although some previously useless items (and some new ones) can be crafted into new items and weapons. An even bigger change is with the main enemies – the Ghost People. When they die, they ain’t dead, and reanimate in a short time to hound you again. Unless you hack them to bits when they’re down, or manage to decapitate them in combat, of course.

There are environmental complications too. The whole of the area is bathed in a strange red mist, which has two major effects: firstly, you can’t sleep anywhere even vaguely exposed to the cloud (meaning healing up is either a long trip to a safe zone, or done with the scarce rations and stimpaks), and secondly there are dense pockets of the fog around Sierra Madre that you can enter, but they’ll poison you on contact, draining your health. And no protective suits, rebreathers and goggles – ze do nothing!

Then there’s the bomb collar you wear. To ensure compliance with the guy running the show in Sierra Madre, you and your companions wear Running Man style exploding neckwear. Kill your “friends”, and it explodes. Don’t do as you’re told? It explodes. And, worst of all, stand near a still active pre-war radio or PA system for too long? Bang! As a result of the latter of these, some of the game becomes an almost Doctor Who level of running down corridors, looking for the source of the radio signal or noise, and then either destroy it or turn it off before you and your head part company. Frantic!

But then, another new game mechanic does the opposite to you! The casino and environs are protected in part by an old hologram security system. Hologram guards patrol areas, and if they see you, you’re toast – they can’t be killed. You can, sometimes, use terminals to turn them off (or on – which may be useful) or destroy their signal emitter (if you can find it – many are very well hidden). These parts of the game become stealth sneak-em-ups, which it has to be said, aren’t my favourite sort of thing.

At some points in the game, the chaos of running blind and the order of hide and seek collide, and that’s when things get tricky. The final area of the episode in particular was privy to some choice language, as my previous 100+ hours on New Vegas without a single death gave way to hundreds in a short section.

I’ve purposefully avoided mentioning the plot to prevent spoilers, but the basic premise is that you and three others have been lured to the mysterious Sierra Madre casino by a man who appears in dialogue in the main New Vegas game. He orders you to work together to pull off a grand heist of the riches of the casino. Naturally, he’s not telling the whole truth, and you can be sure of backstabbiness (either by or on you) along the way.

Overall, aside from the nasty final Hour of Countless Deaths, I really enjoyed Dead Money. It didn’t really play like New Vegas proper, but that isn’t a complaint. I’m always one for story, and the backstories of your co-workers, the man in charge, and the history of the casino and why it was built were interesting and enjoyable. I was pleased when I figured out who the Ghost People are, and it’s also interesting how some of the conversations, and the ending in particular, revealed what the next DLC is going to be. And possibly the DLC after that! Exciting!