Mass Effect (360)

This is the game I’ve played most this week. In fact, it’s pretty much the only thing bar Excitebike I’ve played. I’m getting into it now, and really enjoying it. It’s not perfect (the jerking graphics, the difficult to negotiate “bumpy” planets, the stupid lifts, the backtracking, the item and weapon management, etc.) but the story if gripping and the “just another ten minutes” factor is high. I’m not sure I like having mission after mission thrown at me every …

Excitebike: World Challenge (Wii)

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. …

Mass Effect (360)

All the excitement surrounding the recent release of Mass Effect 2 made me interested in picking up the original game. After all, I enjoyed Knights of the Old Republic, which is very similar (and by the same people), and it should be mere pennies to buy now. In fact, it was even less than pennies, as somewhere along the line I’d already bought it. And promptly forgotten about it. It certainly made obtaining it to play much quicker, anyway! I …

Lego Rock Band (360): COMPLETED!

There are still lots of gigs to do, and I only have around half of the 1000 possible stars, but I completed the story today. There’s not a lot else to say about it, really, apart from that the finale track was a bit poor compared to The Final Countdown (which could have the the finale, only they added a bit more game onto the end). I’d also like to know why every single time I play a random setlist …

iPad Needage

Yesterday, Apple announced the iPad. Not that anyone was really surprised, as all bar the nitty gritty specifics had been leaked already over the last few weeks. And, although I was looking forward to the reveal, I didn’t think I was going to be especially interested in the product. After all, I’ve had tablet PCs and PDAs and an iPhone and laptops and netbooks and stuff in the past. So it wasn’t going to be anything new. I was wrong. …

Lego Rock Band (360)

This is pretty much all I’ve played since it arrived on Friday. The first thing I’d like to point out is this: Lego Rock Band is 896896347286463 times better than Guitar Hero World Tour. The game’s Story Mode structure is great, it’s funny, and – most importantly – the track list is excellent. World Tour’s is just pants. Of course, the tracks in Lego Rock Band are more “mainstream”, and not just obscure B-sides from 1970s dinosaurs. Really enjoying it …

The Gaming Diary Moveathon

Blogger is dead, long live WordPress! You see, Blogger announced recently that they were going to ditch FTP support for Blogger users. Since my Gaming Diary uses Blogger’s FTP features, and always has, this caused me a problem. My options were: Migrate to a Blogger subdomain (urgh) Create a lofi-gaming.org.uk subdomain and direct that to my Blogger-hosted diary (not that bad an issue, but my URL would change) Move away from Blogger entirely (to WordPress, by preference) Close the diary …

The £20 Game Challenge

Just over two years ago, I came up with the £25 Game Challenge. In summary, it was a rule preventing me from paying over £25 for any game. And, in that time I only broke the rule once, except that somehow, I hadn’t. So the time has come to update the challenge. Looking at every game I’ve bought in the last year or so, not a single one has cost me more than £20. Why not, then, drop the limit …

A Boy and His Blob (Wii): COMPLETED!

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” …

Broken Sword: The Director’s Cut (Wii): COMPLETED!

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 …

Broken Sword: The Director’s Cut (Wii)

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 …