deKay's Gaming Diary

Well, it’s whole week really, not just a weekend. I have recently played these:

Guitar Hero World Tour (360)
Meh. It’s very Meh now. And Meh isn’t good. Some of the tracks are OK, but very few are excellent. And what’s with all the country and western? Pah.

Street Fighter IV (360)
I’m rubbish. Really rubbish. Even on Easy I’m having difficulty beating Seth. And El Fuerte is the most ridiculous to control character ever, Ever!

Scribblenauts (DS)
Still excellent and hilarious. Funny for mainly the wrong reasons when things don’t happen as expected. On World 8 now, I think.

And the return of my (well, someone else’s, it seems) repaired Wii meant a splurge and the purchase of three downloadable games:

Pilotwings (Wii)
It’s not actually great. In fact, it’s a bit pants. What a shame.

Solomon’s Key (Wii)
Fun platformy-puzzle thing. It’s getting very hard very quickly, though.

“Aha! I Got It!” Escape Game (Wii)
HARDEST POINT AND CLICK GAME EVER. FRUSTRATE.

After I dropped off my broken Wii at the post office yesterday, I went next door to Blockbuster and accidentally bought Guitar Hero World Tour and Street Fighter IV in a two for £30 deal.

And? Well, it’s Guitar Hero. Only with a pants setlist. Also, I know that it’s now a full-band title so some tracks will be better for guitar than others, but tracks like No Sleep Til Brooklyn actually allow the guitar player to sleep through.

It’s not that the songs are bad, they’re just not a lot of fun to play. Well, not many of them are, anyway.

Whoever put the Mario and Zelda tracks in the GHTunes store though – genius!

Well, hand cramp or no, I completed it this afternoon. It had to be done in three sittings as it hurt so much, but eventually I managed it.

So, yeah. Not a bad game, just not really suited for the DS. And the track list is, aside from a few songs, somewhat worse than other Guitar Hero games. But I only paid £12 for it, so I’m not going to complain too much.

It’s Guitar Hero! On the DS! With added hand cramp!

That’s right – hand cramp. It’s pretty much all the DS version brings to the game, actually. No matter which way I hold it, I get cramp on my little finger and wrist. Not that my little finger is of much use, as I can barely reach the blue button with it, meaning I have no hope at all with the harder difficulty levels.

But I persevered with it, and it is really just more of the same. Actually, the way you strum (with a pick-stylus) is probably better than in the “grown up” console versions, but that doesn’t really make up for the hand cramps… Oh, and the track list isn’t all that great.

Anyway, I made it to half-way through the third “level”, which, if the menu screens are anything to go by, is half-way through the game.

Just a few tracks on this to kill a bit of time before New Year actually happens. Improved my scores on two Medium tracks, and did a new track for the first time.

A friend of mine played too, on Easy. He was crap.

“Lou” was totally impossible yesterday. I couldn’t even come close to beating him. And yet, for some reason, I managed it on my first try today without realising I was almost there. Amazing.

You have to “finish him” after that (which is basically just finishing the song), and then it was credits time – complete with another track to play over (or, more literally, under) them. With that all done, I went and bought all the rest of the bonus tracks, and played a few, then went back and played the few tracks I’d missed in Career Mode.

Finally, I played a few tracks on Easy, and then tried to play randoms on Xbox Live Ranked Mode, but the game crashed every time it said “Joining Game…”. Pff.

So I beat Slash and made it up as far as Satan. Sorry, Lou, not Satan. Pff. And he’s impossible as the notes are completely random and move far too fast for mere humans. Which is probably why he wins, what with not being human and all.

It’s a shame, because I’d managed to 4 or 5 star every track leading up to him without too much difficulty. I even mastered hammer-ons and pull-offs, but only for one track, but couldn’t defeat Lou.

So I bought a couple more tracks (Ruby and She Bangs the Drums) which are both better than half the main set of tracks (although I did unearth a few more decent ones), and then set about THRASHING SomethingWitty on Xbox Live. HA! I’M WINNER!

Rock! Again!

This arrived yesterday, but I was out all evening so didn’t give it a play until this evening. I’m not really sure what to say, actually. It’s just more of the same. Sort of.

Of course, there’s the new track listing, but I’m finding it somewhat lacking at the moment. There haven’t been many great songs (yet) – no Bowie, nothing like Bark at the Moon or Surrender, and lots of those available I’ve never even heard of (which wasn’t the case with the previous two games).

I’m playing through on Medium, and haven’t failed a track yet. Well, I say that – I did fail at defeating Slash on the “end of level boss” section (new to this version). I don’t like those bits, and stopped playing after that.

Four game demos tested today. Three were new on the downloads and the other has been there a while but I haven’t played it until now. Anyway – the games!

Battlestar Galactica:
Crap. It’s basically the same game as Wing Commander Arena, which was also crap (and by the same people) with slightly different graphics. Rubbish.

Guitar Hero III:
AMAZING. But then, that was obvious, yes?

Exit:
Would be great if it ran at least three times faster than it does. What idiot thought that making a puzzle (or rather, “pazzle”, as the dashboard describes it) game which is against the clock run at a snail’s pace would be a good idea? Stupid.

Virtua Fighter 5:
Ooooh! Looks fantastic, plays well, just… I don’t know. I’ve not really played a 3D fighter I’ve really enjoyed since Soul Calibur 2, and although this seems excellent, I’m not sure I want to bother with it.

OH. MY. LORD. Not only did I manage to complete a track on Hard mode, but I then went on to complete FOUR more afterwards! To you rock gods, this is like walking and talking, but to me it’s like flying and shooting lasers from my eyes. Amazing!

And I also completed a couple more bought tracks on Medium, finding them alarmingly easy in the process.

“Jordan” on Expert is impossible. I would just like to make that known.

I mean, everything on Hard is impossible (for me) anyway, but I though I’d just have a try of Jordan on Expert as it nets you an achievement if you beat it. 3% complete. 4%. 5%. Then 3% again. Not a chance in hell.

So I tried practising it. On the slowest setting. And still I couldn’t really progress without nine out of ten notes being somewhat bum. Then, the solo near the end just made me cry. As I wrote elsewhere:

Even on the slowest practice setting, it weren’t doing. Especially the bit near the end, where you seem to have to press three buttons at once, but randomly change which three every one thousandth of a second.

That’s a no, then.

Then I decided to play on Easy for a bit. Having Perfected two songs in a row, I’d managed a note streak of 315 or so, then 460. I was going to get myself the 1000-note streak achievement, wasn’t I?

No, I wasn’t. Halfway into the next song, “Achievement Unlocked!” appeared. ACES! I thought. And paused the game to check. Only to find it actually said “Buckskin is Online”. Unpausing, and I lost it. HATE.

I will be removing everyone from my friends list so that this will never happen again.

Played through a few more tracks today, mainly on easy but also unlocked Jordan and had a go at that on Medium, which wasn’t too hard. I managed a couple more achievements too.

It seems I gained another achievement today, for buying all the guitar finishes. Again, I haven’t actually bought them all, but I got the achievement anyway.

Also tried a few of the “bought” bonus tracks, including Trogdor (which was a bit bloody hard). Played through some of the existing tracks as well, to bump my stars and scores up a little. Psychobilly Freakout is still impossible, however.

With all the tracks on Medium now done, it was time to start going for 5 Star rankings on them all, and bump myself up the leaderboards a little. In fact, there’s not much bumping up the leaderboards I can do, on my friends list at least – I’m first, second or third for almost every track, and am second overall for the career. Aces!

Anyway. I have at least the first 24 (of 48) tracks now 5 Star ranked, and bumped a few 3s to 4s. Psychobilly Freakout is plainly impossible, though.

Finished up the rest of the “missed” tracks from Medium today, and then started on Easy. Well, actually, I tried one on Hard and it made me cry, so I gave up on that mode.

Managed to get the 500 note streak achievement for perfecting three songs in a row, and then did one song “lefty flip”, which was bloody difficult, even on Easy – my brain just refused to accept the new orientation of notes.

In that, I’ve reached the end of Medium. Overall, it seems waaaaay easier than the first game, as I didn’t fail a single track. A few at the end (Psychobilly Freakout for one) are bloody difficult, but I have at least 3 stars on every track.

I then realised I hadn’t done the training, so did that to learn how to do hammer-ons and pull-offs – I can’t quite get the hang of them, but I think I’ll get there. Mastering them is the key to better scores and accuracy, it seems. Especially for fast songs. Practised a few tracks to try the “bass guitar” mode, and to have a go with these new-to-me techniques.

After that, I started working my way though Easy, and got my first perfect (and achievement to match!). Hard mode scares me.

RAWK TEH HELL ON!

Today, I bought Guitar Hero II. I already have the original game for the PS2, complete with guitar controller, so it made perfect sense to buy the 360 version and another controller for twice the cost it would have been for a fully usable PS2 copy. This was mainly due to the new guitar being ACES, but also because of the promised Xbox Live downloadable content (that’s XBL DLC, abbreviation fans!) and online leaderboards.

So this afternoon, I rocked out for almost three hours solid. My legs hurt from standing up for so long. My left wrist hurts from excess frettage. My left little finger hurts from over stretching for the blue fret button (I was playing on Medium). But! I’ve done 33 songs, getting mostly 5 Stars and a few 4 Stars. Winnar!

ROCK ON!

Two player SUPER ROCK OUT this evening, as my friend Chris and I twin-axed through some tracks.

That makes it sound about a million times better than it actually was, but in reality it was crap because I lost every single one. Rubbish.

I was going to have a go at completing a few songs on hard, but decided against it and and went straight in to Quick Play instead. Improved on my Easy and Medium scores on about 5 tracks, and set scores for the first time on another 5 or so. I even managed Ziggy Stardust on Medium missing just one note (which I don’t think, technically, I missed – it just failed to register). Bah!

DOUBLE PLAYER ROCK ACTION!

Me and my friend Chris played with two guitars on this today. We “won” about as many songs as each other, and it was aces. Slightly confusing due to the way it “splits” the notes up between the two players, as sometimes you play alternate sections, other times you play together, and sometimes you play alternating notes.

But yes, we RAWKED.

I also managed another track (solo) on my Hard Career.

Hurrah! Many more attempts at “Bark at the Moon” later, and I’d finally done it. The trick, in the end, was to save my Star Power for a difficult section and use it then, so that missed notes matter less and hit notes count double. Aces.

I then went back and did the few tracks I hadn’t needed to do, and so Medium is now complete.

After that, I made a start on Hard. And oh my, is it hard. I’d only just got used to using my little finger on the blue fret, but now the orange one exists and I’ve run out of fingers…

Well, I’ve managed to get past Pro and now I’m a Guitar Hero. Of course, I still have five more tracks to go, all of which seem completely impossible.

I’d read that “Bark at the Moon” was really somewhat difficult – not surprising since it’s the last song on the list, but I hadn’t realised how hard. Around ten attempts later, and I was still only 22% through the song. Impossible.

Luckily, I managed to get the other four tracks – eventually. I then went over to Quick Play mode and played a few tracks on Easy instead.

Started Career Mode this evening, with the intention of unlocking some more tracks, but ended up wading through all the “levels” playing for real. I’m up to “Pro” level now, and the tracks have got really hard. It doesn’t help that I’m playing on Medium, and it keeps throwing in a load of blue frets to make things harder and hurt my fingers ever more.

“Ziggy Stardust” for the win, though.

RAWK ON!

Hurrah! Look what I got for Christmas! Didn’t get chance to play on it for long, however, just a few tracks on Quick Play on Easy mode. It’s ACES, but bloody hard, even on easy.

Went round a friend’s today as it was his birthday yesterday. One of his presents was Guitar Hero, so I had a go. And I RAWKED, of course. Or not.

It’s a bit bloody hard has you have to strum and press frets and waggle the wah-wah thing all together. But it is ACE.