Endless Ocean

posted by Jaitu at 16:47

Endless Ocean was released on the Wii earlier this year. I read the Edge Magazine review of it and thought I'd give it a go. Unfortunately although it was listed at most retailers none of them seemed to have any stock of it. I had all but forgotten obout the title until Doug emailed me saying he had found somewhere that had it and did I still want a copy. At only twenty quid I said yes.
As the IGN video review below says this is almost a non-game. The object is to travel around a fictional sea and catalogue the creatures you discover. Along the way you will receive requests to guide other divers to particular species, supply photographs of a given subject or go hunting for lost relics. The only thing I'd add to the video review is that last night I decided to give it 'a quick first look' and didn't stop playing until more than three hours later and really only then because it was the early hours of a new day and I was in need of a comfort break and some sleep.

Horizons: Broadened

posted by Jaitu at 08:26

In an effort to extend my game playing range beyond the usual first-person-shooters and racing games I have ordered up two new titles.
Battlefield: Bad Company (A military based first-person-shooter) and Race Driver: GRID (unsurprisingly a racing game).

World Of World Of Warcraft

posted by Jaitu at 08:19

From the Onion News Network.


'Warcraft' Sequel Lets Gamers Play A Character Playing 'Warcraft'

Assassin's Creed: Another Stab

posted by Jaitu at 16:02

I fired up Assassin's Creed for the first time since last year. I
couldn't remember where I'd got to or what I was supposed to be doing. I
spent some time running away from angry guards and occasionally tried to
rescue a citizen or beat information out of an informant. It's not
grabbed me again.
This is a strange game for me. I'm having the same reaction as when I
first played it. Visually the game is pretty gorgeous. The cities are
large and rendered with an impressive amount of detail and atmosphere.
The movement is mostly fluid and the animation rarely skips a beat. The
problem I had then and now is that once the limited joy of being able to
run around through and over the sprawling buildings runs out the actual
game is a little thin and repetitive. Find yourself a high tower, climb
it and 'synchronise' your view of the city. Locate a mission objective
and perform one of a few tasks. Rinse and repeat until you have done
enough for the game to reveal where your main target will be and then go
in for the kill.
First time I played I soon had realised that there only appeared to be a
lot to the game but it still hooked me some how. This time around the
hooks aren't catching and after only an hour or so I'm feeling that old
lethargy creep in. I still *want* to play the game to the finish I just
don't know if I can be bothered.

No More Heroes: Still More Heroes

posted by Jaitu at 08:02

I thought I'd give the Wii a bit of exercise other than for Wii Fit so I dug out No More Heroes again. Doug and I gave this game it's first airing when it was first released but then somehow neither of us played it again until this last week.
No More Heroes has a particularly stylised appearance with a harsh, sometimes ugly, cell shaded effect.
The back story is that you are Travis Touchdown a guy that really is an otaku loser who likes to kill. The main drive is to work your way up through an assassins league by buying your way into a series of contests where you meet successively higher ranked opponents and dispatch them to take their place on the roster. The counterpoint to these fights are the mundane jobs you must take on to earn the entrance fees for the fights. So far the jobs I've encountered are collecting coconuts, mowing lawns and picking up garbage. You can also take on violent missions for cash rewards.
Travis got into the assassination game after winning an online auction for a 'Beam Katana' which is essentially a light sabre. The control scheme is fairly straight forward. Use the thumb stick on the nun chuck to run around. Pound the 'A' button to slash at enemies with the Beam Katana and when prompted flick the Wiimote in the given direction to perform a finishing move. There are lots of other little control touches that keep things interesting and it's a decent solution. When your mobile phone rings during the game the sound comes from the speaker on the Wiimote and the conversation is held while hold the it up to your ear.
There is a great deal of humour to the game, much of it in the odd category. Saving your progress is done by using the toilet in Travis' apartment.
The biggest frustration for me is the running around between missions. Travis rides an enormous motorbike - think a combination of the bike from Akira and a Sinclair C5 - between locations in the town of Santa Destroy. The town is the least appealing thing in the game. It is rendered in a very basic style and sparsely populated. In order to take part time jobs you must ride to one place, to take missions another, to work out another, to save the game another, to deposit the cash to enter the next ranked round another. Then to actually start your jobs or your missions you must ride to yet further locations. The riding is dull and offers nothing to engage with. Worse still every building you enter or exit requires a short but annoyingly frequent load time. Most annoying is that every second location (taking a job or a mission) sees you in the buildings for only a moment but needs the load time to enter and then leave to the game world each time.
When in the combat this game is actually pretty great but the lulls between the action is enough to make it an effort to return to.

Rockout Paradise

posted by Jaitu at 08:23

Here's a video that was posted on the Criterion Games blog. German band 3Typen took the guitar tabs to the Burnout Paradise theme and recorded their own tribute. The video includes lots of in game footage as well as the Burnout Team rockin' out.


Burnout Paradize (Criterion Edition) from 3typen on Vimeo.

Burnout Paradise is a game I have spent many enjoyable hours with and will definitely return to. July 10th will see the release of the Cagney update which introduces some new online play styles as well as new challenges, vehicles and liveries.