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 …
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 …
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!
It would appear that swapping from buttons to stick for the running is a good idea, as my time for the 100m dropped from 12.40-ish to 9.09s, and everything else improved somewhat too. I even managed to pass the hammer throw, and clear two high jump settings, although faulted too many times and failed the qualifying jump. That puts me ahead of “I’m the bestest ever at Track and Field” Zomoniac from ugvm. So HA.
I said I wasn’t going to buy this. But, I bought it anyway, and then spent an hour or so completely destroying my wrist. Button mashing on an Xbox 360 pad == badness. And I can’t do the hammer throw without fluking it, and I can’t do the high jump at all. And why can’t you just practice individual events? Rubbish.
I downloaded this last week but never got round to playing it, so while waiting for Track and Field was downloading, I had a play. It’s meh. There’s not really much wrong with it (aside from the silly 3D camera angle), but there’s nothing special about it either. Why, though, is the logo for “Spyglass” not a spyglass at all, but a telescope?
I was joust going to have an hour or so of Forza 2 when I realised Tim was online and playing Bomberman Live. “Aha!” I thought, “I can thrash him at that!” And promptly did. By “thrash” I mean, I won what was essentially a very close set of best-of-threes, with me winning 4 sets to 3 overall. But it’s the winning that counts, right? Right.
It isn’t all that long ago I played the original Marathon on my MacBook via AlephOne. I wasn’t all that impressed then, and I’m not very impressed with it’s sequel (why do the sequel first?) on XBLA either. There’s nothing actually wrong with it at all. It’s just that Marathon is, and always has been, a poor man’s Doom. I got hold of an old Mac about 7 years ago with Marathon on it, and I didn’t like it then, …
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 …
Played a few online games, but in every game there was at least one player who was lagging something chronic. This meant he was essentially invincible, as bombs couldn’t hurt his as he wasn’t really where he appeared, and also he magically seemed to drop bombs around you while he was actually somewhere else on screen. It was very frustrating! Despite this, I did manage win a couple of sets-of-2!
Hurrah! I won my first ranked match this evening. In fact, it was the first ranked match the game has actually let me play, I think – every other time I tried I get disconnected, there’s no-one playing, or my opponent quits before the game starts. But I only won by a single point! I was convinced I was going to win when we were down to about 10 tiles, as even though we had the same number of points, …
Played several games this evening with my wife and a few bots, with every setting possible set to Random. I won more than her, but then, I am Best. Bomberman is ace, isn’t it?
True story: When I was little, I was given a copy of a games magazine (which I think was Computer and Video Games, but I’m not sure). In it, there was a glowing review of the Spectrum version of Yie Ar Kung-Fu, and an advert for the same game. In fact, here’s the advert… Amazing scenes, yes? Anyway. I recall pestering my mum for days about this game. Reading her excepts from the review. Saying how great it was. You …