deKay

Phew! I’m on the final run now, with just 16 of the levels remaining. Currently, my rank in the main game stands at 68th in the world – not bad considering I haven’t even finished the game yet! It’s getting very hard now though.

Hmm. I didn’t like all the in-the-dark stuff of some of the levels today. I know it just adds another element to the puzzles, but it made my brane hurt. Anyway, I’m about a third of the way through the penultimate zone (or world, or planet, or whatever) now, and things are getting really brain-warpy now, with gravity flippers and levitation thingies. I have managed the “10 levels with two items remaining” achievement though, which is ace. And I’m 99th …

That’s Zone Three all done and dusted now too. Go me! Managed par for most levels, and had quite a few “one item left” successes, as well as a couple of “two items left” and one “three items left”. I should be on line for an achievement for those now, I think. Had another go at Marsho Madness too, but only got 120,000-ish. It does put me back into top-400 territory though, as I’d been bumped down to around 600 …

Most of this evening’s pinballing was spent trying to improve my feeble score on the Agents table. I did, of course, but not to any great amount. I’m up to around 34 million now, a 12 million improvement, but I’m still quite low down on my friends leaderboard. I did get an achievement though, but I don’t know what it was for.

I’ve now finished all of the second zone, and a few on the third. It’s getting quite hard now, but I seem to be finding plenty of “wrong” ways of completing levels – mainly using fewer items than necessary. One level was completed with a single item instead of the four provided, and the time it took was under three seconds, compared to the 30 that par time was set at. Ace! I then had another go at the brain-hurty …

And this was the other new XBLA title today. There’s something very wrong with the ball, in that it sounds heavy and metallic, but it moves like it’s a floaty ping pong ball or something. You soon get used to it though. Pinball FX is no Pinball Fantasies or Digital Pinball, but it isn’t bad at all. Even the so-bad-it’s-good Extreme table with the faux-gangsta soundbites is reasonable. The scores on the boards then: 56,000,000, 52,000,000 and 20,000,000-ish on the …

Two new games on XBLA again today, and I bought both of them. First up was this platformy puzzley game which reminded me a bit of Bills Tomato Game on the Amiga. Game ideas are never new, you see, they just hibernate sometimes. I’ve completed all of the first “zone”, having no problems (although I don’t have a faster than par time on one level), and I’m now half way through the second zone. I have four achievements already too!

Played through this on single player this evening for a while, finishing off the Traveller course in 8 under par or so. I then had a go at the Explorer course, and finished at 36 over par – not good. Afterwards, I played a few rounds in two player mode with my wife, which was hardly fair as she’d not played it before. That didn’t stop her getting a hole in one on her first shot, though…