deKay's Gaming Diary

BWAAAAAAAAAH!

Today I went through the few remaining levels, picking up the final huge XL item – an entire actual plane. Which didn’t really fit properly in the sewers. And then there was the last cow-stealing level, and it was back to the rubbish pile and off to the moooooooooon!

I really enjoyed Rabbids Go Home. Even though it kept crashing. The levels are varied enough to stay interesting, even if some are graphically repeats of previous levels, and the only real complaint I have is that it’s a bit easy.  I suppose the challenge is in getting all 400 items on every stage, but that’s not going to happen for me as searching every nook and cranny on every level would get tedious – especially if you miss any, as most levels don’t let you go back through the level, so you’d have to start again.

Blimey. What a lot of Wii games I’ve completed this year.

With just one level left, I soon finished this off. The final level was FULL of mutants. Really – every turn, every door, threw another 6 or more at me. I’m glad I’d swapped away from the Magnum and only the SMG, as although it reduces your accuracy and power, it at least allows you to fend off large numbers of mutants without having to reload before you’ve even dazed them.

Still, was pretty hard and I grabbed virtually none of the golden BRANES as it was just so frantic.

The final boss was pretty easy, if a bit time consuming. And disgusting. And what happens after you beat… it?…even more so. Blurgh.

Before – and after – the credits, it clearly shows a sequel is planned. Sadly, since (like The Conduit and MadWorld) HOTD:O only sold three copies, I can’t see it happening, which is a big shame. It’s hilarious, and more is needed!

With Ghost Squad finally out of the way, it was time to turn to working through Sega’s other meatier, lightgun shooter.

It’s hilarious. Really. Not just Isaac’s constant swearing, but the dialogue, the cutscenes, and the fact you steal an ice cream van. Oh yes.

I’m up to what would appear, from the level select screen, to be the final level now.

Finally! I’ve played this over and over and over (it’s very short) since getting it, but haven’t once managed to successfully complete all three missions in the same sitting. It was usually Mission 2’s “single headshot” finale which scuppered me, but today, I was victorious!

Firstly, I should come clean and say that I completed Mega Man 10 on it’s first-for-a-Mega Man-game Easy Mode. It adds barriers to stop you falling down some holes and removes some of the enemies.

Not that it was a walk in the park. There were still a few difficult bosses, tricky sections with spikes to avoid, and some pixel-perfect jumps to manage, but still – it was waaaay easier than Mega Man 9, which I never did complete.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Mega Man 10 was released on Wii Ware yesterday, and having loved the new-retro MM9, I leapt on it. Unsurprisingly, it’s more of the same stuff Mega Man 1 to 9 gave us, but that matters not. It’s great old fashioned platforming, the sort you don’t get any more. Er, except for 9, of course. And Castlevania Rebirth. Um.

After completing it, I went and tried some of the challenges (complete special stages with certain weapons, or with limitations on your abilities), then started the game again as the slightly gimped Proto Man.

I started this a month or so ago, and although it was great, it seemed to crash a lot via the USB Loader I was using. And Mass Effect and Batman came along. And other stuff.

Went back to it this week. It’s a surprisingly long game, actually. Although each level is pretty short (some are longer than others, however), there are LOADS of them. I’ve done about 20 so far, and I’m not even half way to the moon yet.

I’m a little disappointed they’ve started reusing the same level themes (hospital, shopping mall, office, etc.), but thankfully things are pretty varied in terms of how each plays.

Some have said this game is rubbish. They are wrong.

It’s not fantastic, and it has its faults, but it’s a perfectly competent, technically proficient (for the Wii), excellent to control FPS. And I enjoyed it from start to (somewhat sooner than expected) finish, unlike say… Halo, which I hated.

It’s a little short, suffers a bit from room repetition (nowhere near as badlyas Halo though), and the final level feels like there’s a boss fight missing, but the ASE scanning, organic door locks and hidden secrets add enough to the game to bring it above the usual SciFi FPS mire.

I played it online the other day, and although it was fun, some guy called DMX had an invincibility cheat one, which ruined it a bit. Oh well.

3/5 overall, I think!

This is how I want new additions to old 8 and 16-bit game serieses to be made. As if they’re for 8 and 8-bit consoles. Like Megaman 9 was.

Rebirth is a remake (or rather, complete rewrite borrowing nothing but the plot) of The Castlevania Adventure for the Game Boy. A game I played, and completed, almost exactly three years ago. It was rubbish. Rebirth, is not.

It looks like a SNES game, only with more detailed sprites. It plays like a NES Castlevania, only with more responsive, less fiddly controls. And it’s BRILLIANT.

So much so, I started and completed it today. I had it on pause for several hours, as there’s no save, save-state, password, or continue system (except I found later – there is: hold right on the menu screen) so it’s all-in-one-go or nothing. Just like 16-bit games!

More games like this please. Oh, if only Sonic 4 was taking this approach. Cry!

So I’ve completed this seven thousand times now. Or something like that. This time with Knuckles.

But it’s ACE, so that’s OK!

And that’s the 5-part series over and done. Sam & Max Season 2 can’t come soon enough!

Although the final part was great (as always) in terms of story, it was horribly broken in terms of graphics. Many people have commented that the Wii ports of Monkey Island have all been affected by bugs, stuttering, poor sound, and so on, but aside from a bit of judder on Chapter 1 when changing scene, I’d not noticed. In this one, however, it was awful. The first time I went through the rift (as a zombie) onto LeChuck’s ship, I was entirely invisible – aside from my hook. The second time, as a full human, I was visible, but my hook was visible along with the hand it was supposed to be replacing! And the jerking! Stuttering! Pausing! Gah!

Thankfully, it was only cosmetic and didn’t really spoil my enjoyment. An excellent series, overall. More, please!

Finally, after months of waiting (well, two months) Nintendo actually decided to make this available on Wii Ware. Why there was such a huge gap between 4 and 5 when previous chapters were so much closer together, I have no idea.

I’ve played for about an hour and a half so far. I’m dead, following the previous episode, and am trying to get my way out of the afterlife. I’ve just managed to obtain the voodoo spell necessary to achieve this, but I think I need to capture the mini pyrite parrots from the treasure hunt area, and I can’t. They just keep flying away!

I’m not adverse to a bit of swearing in games. GTA IV, for example, is full of it and it doesn’t bother me. It’s within context and fits the story. In Prey, however, the swearing seems shoehorned in, just to make the game more “adult”, and I took offence to it.

House of the Dead: Overkill is neither of these two. It has more swearing per square inch than Malcolm from In The Thick Of It. It’s not even necessary. Unlike Prey, though, the over-the-top swearing is perfectly allowable. Why? Because it’s effing hilarious.

Imagine Samuel L Jackson with tourettes. That’s the sort of level – and tone – the swearing takes on. One of the two main characters (who even looks and sounds like “L”) spews forth a constant barrage of after-the-watershed language, and all it makes me do is giggle.

Previous House of the Dead games were funny. They weren’t supposed to be, but the terrible voice acting made them so. This game differs by having decent voice acting but is intentionally funny. And it works!

So far I’ve only completed the first level, but if having a mutated Stephen Hawking as an end of level boss is anything to go by, I think I’ve figured out the “level” the game is going for…

Oh, and having another game to play using the Wii Zapper is always a good thing!

Yes, I bought the same Sonic game AGAIN.

I KNOW.

I’ve completed it a billion times already on every format known to man or beast. But somehow, I felt compelled to buy it again. Perhaps I’m subconsciously trying to tell Sega that more 16-Bit style Sonic games is what I want? Which it is. And which Sonic 4 is shaping up not to be (no shocks there, then).  Anyway.

I’ve completed up to Sandopolis so far. Hurrah!

I haven’t bought a Wii Ware game in a while, but something about Excitebike appealed to me – even though I never really liked the original NES game. I suspect I never really understood how to play it properly.

Seems I was right, since the tutorial in the Wii version revealed that you had an accelerator as well as a turbo, something I genuinely didn’t know – I’d obviously always played with just turbo, assuming the other button was brake. Explains a lot.

Now I know that, I might go back to the original after I’ve finished enjoying this remake. I’ve so far S-ranked all the Bronze tracks, and mostly S-ranked the Silver tracks. I also played online a bit (and was useless), and created a virtually impossibe track with the level editor.

Turns out I only had a few levels left before the end boss, and they weren’t all that difficult. Neither was the end boss actually, as I defeated him without dying. I was surprised he only took one hit, but never mind.

Of course, it then turns out that he wasn’t the end boss. There were more levels. And a sad thing happens with Blob. Then! An AWESOME thing happens with Blob, and you get to “lay the smack down” (as the common yoof is want to say) on the black blobs. So I did!

And then it was the real end boss. He was a little harder (taking three hits, not one), but he was probably the easiest boss in the whole game.

After that, it was the end sequence. Which, tying in with the rest of the game, was stunningly beautiful. What an excellent game. Lets hope we don’t have to wait another 15 years for another sequel, yes?

I will have to admit, I looked up the numerals I needed on Mr Tinternet. It was either that or start the entire game again – simply because of what I assume is a bug. Which I wasn’t going to do.

After that puzzle (which was a pain anyway, even knowing the numerals you needed), there wasn’t much game left – a quick train ride to Scotland and a pretty simple set of puzzles upon arriving, and it was Game Over!

I last played this, albeit in its GBA guise, almost 5 years ago. Which is long enough ago for me to not remember everything about it, but at the same time it’s a bit familiar. The Wii version is slightly different, what with the FMV bits, the voice acting (especially Nico’s hilarious there-it-is, now-it’s-not French accent) and the Wii Remote activated puzzles. The latter of these seemed to crop up a lot at the start of the game, then there were very few, and no – at 90% complete – there are a load of them again.

One of which I’m actually very badly stuck on. I have a wheel within a wheel, and each wheel has roman numerals on them. According to the instructions, my diary has made a note of the order of the numerals, so I can complete the puzzle. Only it hasn’t.

I know where the numerals came up in the game (in the tomb in the church in Paris), but my dairy didn’t record them for me. And, since I can’t leave Spain (where I am currently) until I’ve passed this puzzle, I can’t go back and check them. So I’m totally stumped. How annoying that I’m almost at the end (and nearly 10 hours in – it’s pretty much the only game I’ve played in a week) and can’t progress. Rubbish.

I started this last week, but for some reason Professor Layton took over and I didn’t play it for a few days. I was pretty sure I was nearing the end, but it seems that there’s at least one more set of levels after Blobolonia…

But I’m a bit ahead of myself. As a fan of the original game, I pre-ordered the DS remake of the game the moment it was announced. Which was in 2004 or something. But it never came out. I was surprised, then, when a different remake (or rather, reimagining) of the game was announced for the Wii a while ago. Even more surprised was I when it actually came out!

It’s better than the original in so many ways. Firstly, it’s less frustratingly difficult, with unlimited lives, frequent checkpoints, autosave, unlimited jellybeans, and better controls. But the soul of the game is the same, and the aim also remains unchanged: feed Blob jellybeans, each flavour giving him a different ability, and use it to navigate the puzzle-filled levels.

It’s also a beautiful game. Nothing short of a Ghibli production, in fact, with smooth animation and cute, detailed-but-simple characters and enemies. The puzzles are clever, and although there can be a little too much hand-holding (lots of signs showing which abilities to use – and where), it’s a well crafted, fun game.

It’s the first game I’ve played of the year, and Its also the first game I’ve completed this year.

Admittedly, I’ve only completed it on 50CC so far (although will be returning to do the rest), but I did come first in every race.

I think this is the best console Mario Kart since the SNES version too. It’s not that I didn’t like the N64 and GC versions, it’s just the N64 tracks seemed big and empty, and the two character mechanic of the GC Mario Kart was a bit superfluous. This one, however, has great tracks and the new “stunt gimmick” is actually pretty good.

Of course, I’ve merely defeated the end of game boss. And I even accidentally found a warp from World 5 to World 8, so haven’t even done 6 and 7 yet. Or got all the gold coins so far. Or rescued all the Toads. But I do have 42 lives and haven’t seen the Super Guide or the Game Over screen yet, so that’s all good, yes?

And, of course, I will go back. In fact, I’m going back now to finish World 5

Just three years and 9 days after buying it, I finally completed Downhill Jam!

Turns out I was just being rubbish last time, as today I sailed through the final Tier will no problems at all.

And breathe! That has to be one of the longest game titles ever!

It was new on WiiWare last night, so I downloaded it. Played it a little then, but mostly today – and completed it. I was the shortest of the chapters so far, taking me just two and a half hours to complete. All the other chapters have taken between 5 and 6. However, this was the first one I’d not got stuck on at any point.

I can’t really say much about the story, as it would be full of spoilers, but I can say it was at least as enjoyable as the previous episodes. And Stan is ace.

It seems that there’s another Tier after Tier 9. Yeah, Tier 10. Who knew?

And it’s very hard. In fact, I can only do the first event, and even that was a bronze (and I only just scraped through with that!). This must be the final Tier now though, I’m sure, as I no longer have a countdown to how many points I need before ranking up.

For reasons not entirely well known, I started playing this today. Well, started again. You see, I bought it with my launch Wii, but having only recently – at the time – hammered the “proper” Tony Hawk games (which I love) the different controls and mechanics just put me off. Odd, since they never bothered me in the DS version.

Anyway, I’m actually enjoying it. It’s not perfect, but it’s fun and surprisingly controllable. And so it came to pass that I’m already up to the final (I think) tier of events.

The level before the final boss was a real pain. Lots of sweeping lights, most of which need to be turned off as well as on, and many only just in reach (meaning a million accidental I-walked-too-far deaths). Needless to say, I was relieved when it was over.

And then the final boss. He was… reasonably easy. He’s the only boss where the entire fight requires pixel-perfect positioning and exact timing, all at speed. Thankfully, I realised you don’t have to go into over-the-shoulder view in order to throw cherry bombs – something which, if I’d known sooner, would have made a few other levels much easier.

Anyway, he only took about 10 attempts, and on the successful attempt, only about 20 seconds to kill. And game over!

I don’t think I got the “good” ending though, as I don’t remember answering the phone in every room there was a phone in. Oops.