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 …
I tried the demo, was instantly hooked, so bought the full game. I’d played the Flash version a few months ago, but was slightly put off by the controls – keys don’t seem to work well with it. No such problems with the 360 pad though! It’s brilliant. I’ve done up to Episode 5 and most of the Tutorial mode so far, and haven’t foundany particularly hard levels yet. Mind you, there are about 375 left to do…
Up to mission 8 now. This really is very good, especially when, like on mission 6, I completely obliterated the enemy using a million tanks and light artillery, finishing the mission without losing a single unit and with full health. Aces! Mission 7 was a “stay alive for X rounds” mission, and the first to have enemy aircraft. My advisor recommended I use anti-air units, but they were really underpowered and could be destroyed by a gunship in one turn. …
After several more attempts, I finally figured out that using the woman as the CO for Mission 3 was a bad idea and Alex was far better, especially if I kept all my units close. As a result, on my first attempt with him, I beat it without losing a single unit. Mission 4 was easy, and Mission 5 started off badly but I won in the end. Hurrahs!
Cripes. It got very hard very quickly, didn’t it? I’m only on Mission 3, and I’ve tried it four times now and still can’t manage it. I was under the impression that the artillery unit you come across was pretty much the only real danger, and after finally dispatching of it (leaving me with just some heavy infantry units) I thought there was just a couple of light infantry left to kill. Easy! Or not, as I turned a corner …
I don’t know why I returned to this today, but I did. No online play, however, for two reasons: 1) they haven’t patched it yet, so I would assume it’s as crap and impossible to play as it was previously, and 2) no-one is playing online any more, presumably because of point 1. So I played lots of friendlies offline, won a lot (playing as Parma), then completed a few leagues coaching “London Reds”, eventually winning the Premier League. Aces!
Tried the demo, thought “OMG! It’s Advance Wars!”, and bought the full game. Played the training and first mission again once I’d bought it, and it really is very nice indeed. I think the points system (you can attack twice if you move less) and the few other differences to Advance Wars will take some getting used to, but it’s easing me in slowly so it shouldn’t be a problem.
Gah! I swear this is harder than when I played it on the PS2. Or even on the Dreamcast. I just can’t beat the Level 2 boss. In fact, this time, I didn’t even manage to reach it with better than just the starting “form” of your player. Rubbish.
Straight in, no trial, no testing, no hesitation – I just paid for and downloaded the full game. And? It’s crap. NOT REALLY! LOL! No, it’s great. It’s just like the PS2 version I have, only with three main differences: I don’t have to use that awful PS2 pad. It’s slightly better looking. It sounds AMAZING. Admittedly, one of those things could be solved by the Dreamcast version, and another by plugging my PS2 into my new surround sound system, …
So I hated the demo, but Microsoft gave it away free last week (as a “we’re sorry Xbox Live has been broken for a month – here, have some crap” gesture) so I’d downloaded it. You can see that there’s been a week’s delay in playing it – I was hardly excited to do so. It’s still crap. Like, really crap. I was compelled to switch it off after the first level, and I really don’t see myself ever playing …
Tried the other game modes today. Classic is much harder than Arcade, because the bunnies move forward every three moves, not every few seconds. This means that when you’re in a panic and need a specific colour bunny, you can’t just chuck bunnies until you get is as you’ll just quicken your demise. As a result, I died halfway through the jungle levels. Endless Mode is just that. Only got around 20,000 points there though, which is crap.
Yeah, it’s just a normal, nothing special puzzle game. But it’s cute and fun and that’s all you need, right? It seems so, as I really like it. Reached the beach level on Arcade Mode, before dying. That placed me 307th in the world – amazing! Of course, I’ll be 300,007th this time tomorrow…
Beck got a load of free XBLA games as part of the “10 free games for you and a friend” deal new 360 owners can sign up for, and she let me have the code for Assault Heroes. I did play the demo of it when it first game out, and seem to recall that it wasn’t anything special, but not bad. I didn’t buy it was it’s not really my sort of thing. So I played it today, and …
OK, so it’s nowhere near as bad as Tron, but it’s still not great. I’m not a big fan of shooters like this anyway, so that might have something to do with my dislike of it. However, there are still issues. For example, your character is far too big on the screen, which makes the game difficult to play – not least because the screen gets cluttered very quickly with the also-too-big baddies. Then there’s the baddies that just leap …