Beck sent me a plea for help while I was playing skate., asking for information on the Battle Mode power-ups. I sent her some instructions (although they’re right there when you start Battle Mode anyway – women lol :P), and she said “well if yuo fancy any two player anytime let me know”. Who could resist? I “leapt” right into Hexic 2 and invited her to a game. And she just ignored me! Pff. So I played Ranked Battle Mode …
I decided to just take the board out for a bit and have a skate about. It’s a pain having to play through the tutorial every time you play the demo, but then, it is only a demo and it only takes a couple of minutes to complete. Managed to do a Christ Air, which looked fantastic until I forgot to land it and faceplanted the concrete. Oops.
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.
Six games of Battle Mode against my wife, and I won the first four. Then I told her about how you could make your attacks more powerful (just fill the relevant bar up more notches) and then proceeded to lose the next two games. In future, she will be kept in the dark about such things.
Played four Battle Mode games online, in Ranked Matches this evening. I won the first game, but only just, but then failed to win any of the next three even though it appeared my opponents were all crap. Clearly, I was wrong…
I spend a whole hour trying to lay a particular line down. There’s a section where there are two rails, in series, with a short gap between them, and I was trying to ollie onto the first one, grind it, ollie off and manual to the next, then ollie on that and grind it. And, eventually, I did! Of course, in Tony Hawk that’s a real beginner trick, and is stupidly easy to pull off. In skate. however, it’s a …
As well as skate., which I’ve posted about already, I had a go at a few other demo games that were made available on the 360 this week. Street Trace: NYCIt’s like some evil cross between the awful Dreamcast game TrickStyle and the awful Playstation 2 game Twisted Metal. And isn’t nearly as good as either of them. You have a hoverboard, and some weapons, and it’s futuristic. And it’s a deathmatch game. Rubbish. Space GiraffeJeff Minter promised us he …
I really, really want to hate this. I mean, Tony Hawk games are aces, and all other extreme sports games (Matt Hoffman, Kelly Slater, BMX XXX and even the actually pretty brilliant Aggressive Inline) pale in comparison. And now EA (who are like Satan in game publisher form) are trying to muscle in on Tony’s sacred domain. How very dare them. But… It’s good. There. I said it. Quietly, so Tony won’t hear. It took a while for the controls …
You know, this is my 2000th Gaming Diary post. 2000 posts. Amazing. Played Hexic 2 for a couple of hours this evening. First spent over an hour playing my wife at Battle Mode, but soon had to stop playing as she got good at it and began to win. Tch. It’s pretty good, and there’s a power-up dynamic to the game which I’ve not seen in any other puzzle game. Power-ups are only available at certain times, and either of …
Yes, it’s the same as the first game, only with more “industrial” graphics and a few extra bits. And yes, I was pretty crap at the first one. But, as is often the way with XBLA games, I couldn’t resist and bought the full version anyway. And I’m glad I did, because it’s actually a bit easier than Hexic HD. There are new power-ups and you can now get rid of hexes with a line of five, both of which …
Ecco the Dolphin is, and always has been, crap. There – I said it. The controls need an analogue stick, the jumping out of the water stuff is rubbish, the nose-attack is stupid, and the “find a key!” and “find a whale!” and “find some other thing!” gameplay is dull. The XBLA version is the same as the Megadrive original. So, in that respect, is still crap. Even more so in that for some reason, having talked to a shark …
Two days and two great Xbox 360 demos? With these you are really spoiling us! Six times I played through it. Six. OK, so it’s not very long (three minutes) but it does show how much I’m looking forward to a new Katamari game. It’s more of the same, only in HD and (I’m hoping) no mid-level loading!
Oh. My. Word. This has to be the best looking console game ever made. Nothing I’ve seen (not even Oblivion) comes even close. The attention to detail, the water and fire effects, the style, the smoothness – everything. Amazing. And the game? Staggering. It’s fantastic. If this isn’t voted Game of the Year, then either the demo isn’t a representation of the full game at all, or people need their heads seeing to. The setting (a 1950s underwater city) is …
I paid for and downloaded the River II expansion pack today. It adds a load more river tiles to the game, allowing the river to have a bit more of an effect on the game – it splits, and there are city-bridges, etc. Played a couple of games with my wife, both of which ended up with really high scores (due to the extra tiles, I’ll bet), but I won both!
Well, I say “assorted”, but in fact there were only two: StrangleholdIt’s John Woo, in game form! It’s a stylish third-person shooter, with now-clichéd bullet-time (or rather, “Tequila Time”. Cue “Tequila, it makes me happy” and “Stop! Tequila Time!” jokes, which I’ll refrain from. It looks nice, has some clever bits (like the multi-way showdowns where you must dodge bullets with one stick, and aim your guns with the other), and is full of impressive Woo stunt direction, but I …