deKay's Gaming Diary

I got internet access back at home this week, finally, just in time for the release of Bit.Trip Runner. I’d played one of the previous Bit.Trip games – Beat – a while back, but found it way too hard. Although I liked the style, I didn’t bother with Core and Void as I thought they’d be too hard too.

With Runner, however, I couldn’t resist. I knew it was going to play like a “big” version of games like Run! on the iPhone and Canabalt, both of which I love. And Runner, too, is amazing.

And hard.

It took me about 40 minutes to clear levels 1-1 to 1-10. Then it took a whole hour to finish 1-11! Now I’m on the boss, who is also hard.

Thing is, the instant-restart (you don’t press anything – you just begin the level again immediately upon death) really pushes the just-one-more-go factor, pretty much forcing you to play again, so it was quite difficult to stop!

I played a little bit of this last week, but have managed a few more hours on it over the last few days.

And I’m enjoying it less and less. A couple of days ago, I had to catch a fish. Which was fine, except it then took almost an hour figuring out that I wasn’t supposed to pick the fish up, but turn into the wolf and sniff it. Obviously. Then yesterday there was an awful snowboarding section. Yes, snowboarding. In Zelda.

Today? Crate puzzles. Yes – Irritating and Unnecessary Gaming Cliché #2. Joy.

Hmm. I’m now over 11 hours in. I’ve just got all the tears from Lake Hylia. And it still doesn’t feel like Zelda. It has the right place names, and the right characters, and the right music and sound effects, but it doesn’t play like a Zelda game.

I really, really, dislike the wolf bits. And they’ve made up more than half the game so far. And after 11 hours I’ve still only had 2 dungeons? It’s just not right.

Utterly, utterly compelling. Excellent script, brilliant story, and some amazing set pieces and twists. The end of Level 9 is a complete shocker too.

I’m always impressed by great story and pacing in games, and Dead Space: Extraction stands as one of the best examples of how to implement a story into a game.

Once again, like many games I’ve played recently, it’s a crying shame that nobody bothered buying this. In fact, on the back of it, I’m tempted to buy the 360 game even though it’s a FPS and I hated the demo. I’m that into the story now.

Taken as a shooty game, Dead Space: Extraction isn’t especially special. It’s pretty and everything, but there’s little variety in the baddies. It has some nice weapons, but once I obtained the line gun I found I didn’t need anything else (aside from the rivet gun for, er, the riveting bits).

However, taken as an interactive film, Dead Space: Extraction is fantastic. A plot to out-do many SciFi flicks, mostly excellent voice acting (although some of the accents do drop in and out a bit), and superb storytelling. With shooting!

In many ways, it feels like a cross between Aliens and Left 4 Dead. And it really makes me want to keep playing just to find out what’s going to happen next. Oh! And the unlockable comics are well worth playing for too.

Hard.

Very, very hard.

That is all.

I hated the Dead Space demo on the 360. Mainly because I found the controls impossible and the game far too hard. However, on the recommendation of virtually everyone in existence following me playing Ghost Squad and House of the Dead: Swearathon, I decided to pick up the Wii prequel.

And I’m glad I did, because it’s more than a bit ace.

I’ve only done the first two levels so far, but each was a good 45 minutes or so long. It’s a pretty (but PRETTY) standard on-rails shooter, but the story is great – gripping and plot-twisty already.

And did I mention it was pretty? The graphics are outstanding.

Six and a half hours in. Now, don’t hit me, but I’m not actually enjoying it. I’ve never completed a 3D Zelda before, but it’s not because I’ve not enjoyed them – it’s just because I’ve…stopped. But this? It’s not bad by any means, but I don’t really like it. In true deKay fashion, lets list the faults, yes?

1) It’s Not Zelda

Well, the Link-as-Link bits are. But since more than half of the game has been Link-as-a-dog, that’s not good enough. Linkwolf’s need to dig everywhere and the stupid using Midna to jump (but only in fixed, predetermined places) is rubbish. The grow-a-circle to kill the baddies attack is a pain in the arse too.

2) My eyes! My beautiful eyes!

As Link, everywhere looks lovely. A bit below what I’m used to for Wii games now, but this is a 4 year old game so it’s excused. However, the purple colour scheme when you’re a wolf in the twilight makes my eyes bleed real blood. It’s even worse when you then switch to Senses mode.

3) Nosenses.

If only. Having to swap every 17 seconds to check for ground to dig or invisible insects or to listen to spirits is crap.

4) “We’ve lost lock-on!”

Either my Z button is broken, or the game is. It seems impossible to stay locked on to any baddie for more than one attack.

5) Wagglelaggle

There’s too big a gap between shake and smack. Which made the Epona vs Warthog Head-On Smashup bit virtually impossible to time, so I had to rely on luck.

6) Camer-where?

If only there was a button to centre the camera behind Link. You know, like tapping Z is supposed to. All too often, when fighting something, I’ve ended up against a wall, or in a corner, and haven’t a clue where what I’m fighting is. Or I’ve entered an area, killed something straight away, then carried on walking only to realise I’ve come out the way I went in because the camera flipped round without me noticing. Gah!

7) Remute

Too many noises from the remote’s speaker, so off it went.

I have to say though, I did like the Forest Temple dungeon. As that’s proper Zelda’ing that is. And revisiting areas as Link/Dog does make me think of Minish Cap (which is a good thing). But as it is, I’m not lovin’ it lovin’ it lovin’ it. Yet at least.

2D Zelda >>>> 3D Zelda.

Many moons ago, when the Wii came out, Twilight Princess was released. And I bought it. Even though I knew I probably would never complete it, as despite my best intentions, I’ve never managed to finish a 3D Zelda game. 2D – fo’ sho. But 3D? For some reason I just… stop playing.

With Twilight Princess, I stopped at an hour in. Not for any real reason – I just never went back. Until now.

I played it, from the start again, tonight. And reached about 10 minutes past the point I’d previously reached, having just saved the little girl (boy?) and the monkey from a cage outside what looks suspiciously like the Deku Tree. Hmm…

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!