It’s Outrun 2006 Coast 2 Coast! Only not quite! For 800 points on Xbox Live Arcade! What is ace: It’s FUN. Like the older versions. It’s also SHINY. What is not ace: There’s less there in the previous games. It has Arcade mode and Heat Attack mode, but no mission mode or anything. What is a real killer: online mode, the main point of the game, is broken. It’s all too easy to get the BSOD – where the track …
For four years now, I’ve kept a diary detailing the games I play. Part of the reason was to see how many games I buy (and to reduce this number), and how many I complete (and to increase this number). 2008 saw a drop in completed games – 33 compared to 61 in 2007. I don’t think this is bad, when you look at the games I’ve been completing. In 2007, there were quite a few shorter games, including 5 …
Bought, downloaded, played, and completed all in the space of 30 minutes. That’s not to say it’s rubbish, as it isn’t. It has issues (mainly in that some areas of some of the “tables” are too difficult to reach, and the swooping camera is sometimes too slow to keep up with the ball), and is short, but it’s fun. And pinball games aren’t all about the story mode, are they? No – it’s all score-chasing! Sadly, the online high score …
I downloaded the Proto Man and Endless Mode content for this during the week, but didn’t really get a chance to try it out until today. Endless Mode is great. You get random sections of the game, tweaked a bit, one after another with no break, one life, and no shop. The idea is to get as far as you can without dying, with your record recorded in number of rooms. I managed 24. The current online leaderboard says the …
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 …
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.
This arrived yesterday. Played it for about an hour in “traditional” mode – the same Bomberman game in multiplayer since the dawn of time. And in this respect, it is very good. It’s missing some of the more recent (well, 15 year old…) additions like throwing bombs and things to ride on, but it has all the required power-ups and plays as well as it ever did. There are a few different modes, such as Star Mode where when you …
Eh? The game had forgotten that I’ve played Episodes 5, 9, 11, 12, 13 and 14. Even though I still had leaderboard entries for them, and I only played them in order. How very odd. So I played them all again, and as before, got stuck on the final level of Episode 14. It’s very, very hard. I died so many times, I got the “You’ve died 1000 times!” achievement. I did manage it, finally, however, and quickly got through …
May May was more varied than previous months this year.¬¨‚Ć There was Eledees and Wing Island on the Wii, Crackdown, Lego Star Wars II and Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland on the 360, and the amazing Ouendan 2 on the DS, as well a plethora of 360 demos, XBLA games, and Wii VC titles. I struggled with the original NES Castlevania (on the VC) for a while too, and never did manage to complete it.¬¨‚Ć It’s just too hard! June Oh …
Since I don’t fancy the “unlimited mode” test of stamina any more (the game gets easier the longer you play, meaning the only way you can die is if you force yourself), I tried some of the timed modes and achieved scores that put me around the middle of my friends leaderboard. I then thought I’d try the “Wiz Ur Muzik” mode, and set about sampling “Run On The Spot” by Bentley Rhythm Ace. With that done, I then couldn’t …
I noticed the scoreboards had all been reset recently, so took the opportunity to try to make it to the top of my friends leaderboard. Sadly, I fell short of Robert Hazelby’s feeble 13,840 with a slightly less feeble 13,760. Ish. And I remember my 25k days. Bah.
I’ve been away all week, so not been playing a huge amount in the way of games. However, my holiday was partly affected by rain, so my DS did get an airing. On that, I started playing Puzzle Quest, which is a Bejewelled/Zoo Keeper clone in an RPG setting. So you have to battle orcs and things by matching gems, and have special powers and stats and stuff. It sounds totally ridiculous, but is actually somewhat amazing. I also played …
Didn’t play this for long. I was scrolling through my XBLA games list (some 40 games long now) and realised I hadn’t played this all that much. So I had a few goes on the Speed Machine table, and eat my previous 50 million score… by getting almost 300 million. And I’m not sure how. One minute I was stil around 35 million, the next I’d broken 250. Managed to get two achievements for this too, and reached second placed …
No, not the awful recent 3D “masterpiece” that I refuse to buy, but the original Megadrive version, available today on XBLA. Yes. I already have this game twelventyzillion times. Yes, I have completed it on the Wii since Christmas. Yes. I did buy it. Again. But it is lovely, see? And this version lets you save your game whenever you want! And there are leaderboards! So it was worth it, yes? Of course it was. Anyway. I’m up to Spring …
This isn’t due for another two days, but a glitch in the Xbox Live Arcade banners allowed me and (at the time of typing) 13 other people access to downloading it. And so, for the first time ever, I managed to be top of a leaderboard on an Xbox 360 game. A leaderboard of 14 people, but still – there I am: As for the game itself, well – it’s pretty good. It works surprisingly well with the pad (although …