deKay's Gaming Diary

Been a while since I last played this, but the Street Fighter II table for it was released recently and, in an attempt to break free from the evil clutches of Fallout 3, I gave it a go.

It’s a pretty good table, actually. Better than most of the others in Pinball FX, anyway. It’s difficult to light the lights above the top-left bumpers as they’re hidden, but aside from that it’s very nice. Except Trousers is already above me on the scoretable, beating my score of about 5 million with one approaching 9 million. Boo!!

Demo catchup time again:

PDC Darts
Crap. But with amazing northern loons doing “commentary”.

NBA ’09
Crap. You can’t even shove. And there’s no BOOMSHAKALAKA.

Beat ‘N Groovy
Impossible to control and crap. Why is the green “note” X? And the blue one the d-pad? What?

Crazy Mouse
Awful. Worse than crap.

Age of Booty
OK, but looks like it’ll be a bit tedious. It’s like a RTS only with no S.

Episode 2 COMPLETED! Hurrah!

The last couple of levels were pretty short – the boss one especially. The boss himself was somewhat easy too, thanks to run-mode circle-strafe and a full compliment of rockets and devastator ammo. Excellent, though.

And another couple of levels done. Still enjoying it, still loving the level designs, still getting completely flummoxed every time there’s a place I could use a jetpack as I keep forgetting such an item exists…

Must be near the end of the episode now though, right?

Yes, I know I bought the Wii version this morning. I just thought I’d try it and see how it fares on the 360.

Of course, it’s virtually identical. I’m glad I did buy the Wii version though, as the 360′s pad isn’t designed for digital control – the dpad is in the wrong place, and the stick has too much dead-area. As well as that, the added XBLA bits on the menu break the retro-game illusion too.

Completed another couple of levels on Episode 2 this evening. They’re certainly longer this episode than last, and there appear to be more of them too – I’ve just finished E2M5, and the first episode only went up to E1M4.

I’m also further into the game than I ever got on the PC or Saturn

First episode completed! Didn’t find any of it especially hard, although did get a bit lost a couple of time meaning my completion time was something approaching far too long. The end of level (episode? world?) boss was a bit of pain too, until I realised you could use the raised bit of floor to block his shots.

Shake it, baby!

No messing around here – straight in, bought it, played it for an hour. And only completed as far as the end of the bit with the submarine. 37 minutes for one mission? I’m so slow.

But it is excellent. As it always has been.

Four games against my wife today, with three wins for me.

I also got the “underachiever” achievement, for playing 10 games without getting an achievement. What a strange achievement to get.

There were three new games on XBLA today, and I tried the demos of them all. Oh, what a bad week…

Shred Nebula
Rubbish shooter with wonky controls.

Pirates vs Ninjas Dodgeball
Rubbish fighting game (well, it is!) with stupid too-far-away camera.

Gin Rummy
Rubbish card game. Well, OK – it isn’t rubbish, but it’s not very exciting.

Played a few things this weekend:

Beautiful Katamari (360)
Me am cry. If I play the final level on Eternal mode, and collect absolutely everything (including The King), I can only get my Katamari up to 1,450,000km. Meaning 1,500,000 is, in fact, impossible – black hole or no black hole. With this revelation, I set about redoing levels again, making more and more planets so that I’ll have some more to collect next time I try. Assuming the black hole doesn’t eat me.

Galaga Legions (360)
I’m getting worse at this. I can barely make it as far as Level 3 now, let alone complete it. And I still can’t complete Area 1 or 2 without losing a life. In more positive news, I’m still at the top of my leaderboard, but that probably just reinforces how difficult the game is.

Geometry Wars Evolved 2 (360)
Thankfully, nobody on my “to beat” list (that’s parm, SomethingWitty, That Rev Chap, Lufferov and Zomoniac) has managed to overtake me on any of the scoreboards. I had a go at improving my standings on the Sequence and Pacifism tables, but didn’t.

Ticket to Ride (360)
Four games against my wife, two won each.

Mr Driller Online (360)
Attempted Russia (3000m). Managed to reach 1800m. Rubbish.

Tiger Woods ’09 Demo (360)
Golf: Tee it Up has better camera controls, and the speech and between-hole golfer animations just get in the way. PGA Tour hasn’t been the same since it left the Amiga, and I won’t be buying this when other, better, golf games exist.

It’s Guardian Heroes in cartoon form! Almost!

I played through to the boss (where the demo ends) and enjoyed it very much. It’s very slick, very pretty, and lots of fun. But it’s also 1200 points, and I’m not sure I can fork out that much for it. Yes, I realise that I paid the same for Braid, but that seemed… special somehow. Maybe another time I’ll rethink it.

Well, having sorted out the multiplier issues I’ve been having (it would appear that “1G” is actually “16″ and therefore the multiplier and not something else), I managed to get a score of just over 2.2 million. This takes me back to the top of my (now extended) friends list, but I still can’t complete Area 3.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – I don’t like shooters. Except Defender. And Geometry Wars. And Smash TV. And Side Arms. And Parodius. And Sol Feace. And Space Invaders. And Galaga. And Dominator.

But generally, I don’t like shooters. So why did I buy this? Because it’s BIG and SHOOTY and makes my eyes bleed, only bleed slightly less than GWE2 does. And it was by the Pac-man CE team, and that was amazing.

This is less amazing. But I’m enjoying it. I think I may be missing some basic game mechanic, though, as people on the ‘muk are posting about multipliers and stuff I haven’t even seen. I’ve managed to reach Area 3, though, and I’m top of my friends list – without thinking about multipliers, so I must be playing it half-way competently.

I haven’t posted in a few days, but I have been playing things. Just been a bit busy and tired and stuff. Anyway, here’s what I’ve been up to this week:

Fable II Pub Games Demo (360)
Marginally entertaining collection of gambling games. If I was interested in buying Fable II (I’m not), and it was 400 points, I’d buy it. So I’m not, then.

Bionic Commando Rearmed Demo (360)
Quite good fun, although I can’t get used to having no jump button. Had the same problem with the original though. Looks good, and the “This is a demo! Buy the full game!” messages are excellent. Again, if it was 400 points, I’d get it, but at 800 I don’t think I’m tempted. Besides, I have no points because I spent them all on…

Beautiful Katamari (360)
…DLC for this. I’ve bought all the levels now, and played it quite a lot. I’ve mainly been trying to get the achievement for an Astronomic Katamari, but that involves not falling in the black hole too soon. And it takes 20 minutes to redo the level! Gah!

Ticket to Ride (360)
About time the next expansion for this was released, yes? Not that we’re bored of Europe – far from it – it’s just we want the next one now. Managed another achievement in this during the week too.

Many, many, many attempts to beat my Pacifism score this evening, but I only managed a feeble 27 million.

Of course, 27 million is higher than certain other people’s scores. People I have mentioned here before. But, it’s nowhere near the 373 million the guy at the top of my friends leaderboard has.

Three games tonight against my wife, and three wins. I finished two of the three games using all my trains too.

Also managed my highest score so far – 176, which included 10 destinations!

Well, I don’t know what happened, but everything I was struggling with last night clicked today, and bar a couple of head-scratchers, I didn’t have any real problems completing the rest of the game.

It was very lovely, and there is some “find the stars” thing I could still do which is completely impossible without a guide, but at just over two hours long it wasn’t really the epic puzzler I was expecting.

But is it art? Oh yes, definitely.

Brane! Hurting! So… very… confusing.

Braid is a 3D platform puzzle game. Only instead of depth being the third dimension, time is. So you go left and right, up and down, and forwards and backwards in time. But not just that – each world changes the rules a little.

F’r'instance, on one world, when you reverse time a shadow of yourself re-does whatever it was you just reversed. Example: You need to get through a door, but the switch to open it is too far away and by the time you’ve pulled the switch and legged it to the door, it’s shut again. So you go and pull the switch, then reverse time. Your shadow then goes and pulls the switch as you did, leaving you free to make it to the door.

In another world, time flows forwards as you walk right, and backwards when you walk left.

Anyway. The point is to collect jigsaw pieces along the way. Which is too hard and my brain is now bent the wrong way. Pff.

I AM WINNER!

After another billion attempts, I finally managed to beat The Rev’s score on Deadline! By around 750k, I think. I even leapfrogged the next person up the list too!

GLOAT.

Once more, The Rev thought he could beat my scores. In fact, he’d only beaten my King score (although his cheat-obtained Deadline score still stands), but not by a huge amount.

After a few (say, 30) goes I’d beaten him by around a million points. Hurrah!

Sadly, the news was not so good for Deadline. I beat my own score by another 300,000 or so, but didn’t manage to topple The Rev from his perch. Yet.

Several attempts at Deadline, Sequence and Pacifism to try and beat the scores I had set already, but unfortunately failed on all three. I think, in order to beat The Rev’s 4.5 million-ish on Deadline, I have to be up to around 600k after one minute, and 2 million after two minutes – and I just can’t do it.

So The Rev thought he could beat four of my scores, eh? Of course, they didn’t last long. I’d soon overtaken three of them again, and then went and improved even further on the two he couldn’t beat anyway (Pacifism and Sequence). I’m nice like that. Oh, and his Deadline score? He cheated. I’ve reported him for it.

I was also nice to Something Witty, mainly by sending him messages while he was trying to beat my scores.

Four more games against my wife on the Europe map today, and, in a reverse of last night, four wins for me.

I haven’t needed to use any stations yet though.

The Europe map was available for download today, at a slightly expensive 600 points. But I bought it, and it is pretty aces.

Played four games with my wife, and she won all four. Of course, we were both totally thrown by the added new rules – the ferries, the tunnels, and the stations. They all make it a bit more complicated!