Puzzle Quest Galactrix

posted by Jaitu at 08:48

You know it's things like this that remind me why restricted internet access during work hours can be a *good* thing. Puzzle Quest Galactrix is the soon to be released follow up to Puzzle Quest. Shifting it's focus from swords and sorcery RPG themes to those of deep space sci-fi. It also departs from the rigid grid based match three game play to a hexagonal matrix. I remember reading an interview months ago where (I think) the guy behind Tetris said "if you want to make a successful puzzle game stay away from hex grids", but then he was also the man behind Hexic.
Although this is only an online demo (the game will eventually be released on all major formats) it's clear that they've managed to infuse the game with the digital equivalent of crack cocaine.

KODU

posted by Jaitu at 08:11

Many years ago now I studied programming at college. The course was focused on business application and although the languages were becoming obsolete even as we learnt it was still useful. During that time I also spent a lot of time playing with AMOS on the Commodore Amiga putting together little bits of code. I then went on to take jobs that didn't have anything to do with writing code and pretty much stopped altogether. My current job has me writing SQL to test a very large database and it's supporting applications but still nothing major.
I have often had ideas for simple games that I would like to prototype but have never had the time (or more accurately the discipline) to devote to learning a new platform. That hasn't stopped me acquiring and installing all sorts of things to try and ultimately give up on.
Microsoft recently announced KODU a game development tool originally designed with the intention of introducing school kids to concepts of programming. Although necessary limited it still seems like a potentially powerful platform for rapid prototyping and the fact that it will be on the XBOX360 means there's a reasonable chance I might actually create something with it.

Gears Of War 2: Half Horde

posted by Jaitu at 17:34

When TechMaster and I finished playing the Halo3 Campaign we agreed that Gears Of War 2 would be our next co-op endeavour. He has been taking his own sweet time finishing up his first lonesome play through though. So in the meantime we have been enjoying the Horde variant of the GOW2 multiplayer options. Horde supports up to five players working together to hold of wave after wave of Locusts. We've been battling it out with just the two of us and it has proven extremely good fun. Simply choose a map (any of the available multiplayer arenas) set your starting wave (anything up to your highest achievement to date) and off you go. Spawning into the map you have a few seconds to choose your battleground and get dug in before the opposition start to appear. There is no time limit per wave and so long as one of you can survive to the finish anyone who fell and wasn't revived will spawn back in before the next wave starts. We played the majority of the first 18 or so waves on the 'Day One' map which is essentially a single city crossroads with each of the four streets blocked with an enormous and un-navigable crater in the middle. This forces you to take the long way around whenever it is necessary to cross the map. Fortunately two opposing corner buildings have balconies accessible via street level staircases and make useful nests that are relatively easy to defend. As we tackled waves in the high-teens these corners became more difficult to defend so we began to explore some other map options. We ended up in 'Jacinto' hiding at the end of a short stone outcropping with a helipad at the end. The entrance to the pier makes for a serviceable killing floor and the mortar that respawns a short dash from cover provides welcome heavy support options. We called an end to the last session having just defeated wave twenty-five of fifty.
Since then TechMaster has finished his first run through the story so our next meeting will be centred around the commencement of an Insane level co-op campaign run.

Gears Of War 2

posted by Jaitu at 08:12

Looking for a new co-op title to follow Halo3 I bought Gears Of War 2 last week. It's very much more of the same only bigger. Aside from a couple of vehicle based distractions the game does an excellent job of taking you from one shooting gallery firefight to the next with copious cut scenes and 'plot progression'. Compared to Gears One there is certainly more story in evidence although it is still possible to completely ignore and not lose anything from the experience.
I completed the game on Casual last night having managed to garner 28 of the 50 achievements along the way. A second play through is guaranteed as, just like Dead Space, the hardest difficulty of 'Insane' does not become available until the game has been completed for the first time. Further achievements are available for completion at the remaining three difficulty levels but these 'stack' so beating Insane means picking up any below it. The easiest way to beat Insane will be to team up and co-op with someone else so this will become the next gaming mission for myself and TechMaster to tackle.

Doritos Dash Of Destruction, Puzzle Arcade, Vigilante 8

posted by Jaitu at 07:50

After completing Halo3 I turned my attention to some smaller titles.

Doritos Dash Of Destruction.
A shameless Doritos advert was free to download from the XBOX Marketplace so, naturally, I took it. It's a reasonably fun though short-lived affair. The game has two basic modes where you choose to play as either a Doritos delivery driver or a cybernetically enhanced T-Rex. When playing as the delivery van you have to race around a top-down-viewed town hitting checkpoints while avoiding a rampaging T-Rex. When playing as the T-Rex you have to rampage through a top-down-viewed town trying to catch delivery vans. There are online (and maybe(?) local) mulitplayer options which should certainly add some party style fun. Despite playing for probably less than an hour I've already picked up 9 of the 12 achievements which total 155 of the 200 available points. Truthfully, it's a free advert targeted at achievement whores and I'm fine with that.

Puzzle Arcade.
On the surface a straightforward jigsaw game but with some sophisticated details. Puzzle Arcade is a good suppliment to all the twitch based shooters that I've been playing. At it's easiest it's like putting together large-piece wooden puzzles for four-year-olds. This is surprisingly addictive though. There are a number of pictures available (more can be downloaded or captured using the camera) and the number of pieces can be controlled as well as options such as rotation of pieces on screen to reamp up the complexity. One nice little surprise was that the default puzzle set includes two photos from Sam Javanrouh from one of my favourite photo blogs, TopLeftPixel.

Vigilante 8.
Although I've not really played this yet I did buy the full version already. Vigilante 8 (V8) is a car combat game that was born from the Interstate '76 series of games. It's an arena deathmatch style using vehicles with weapons attached. Not a lot more to say than that. There is a story mode which I'll comment on after I've given it a go.

HALO 3: Leg-END-ary

posted by Jaitu at 21:37

Finally the fight is finished. Earlier this week TechMaster and I put in around five hours to finish up the Legendary Halo3 Campaign. From an achievement point of view there are only five points between us (I have one extra achievement). Aside from the remaining 'Skulls' there are very few left to get that do not involve the online multiplayer modes. I intend to go back in on a casual setting to try and pick up the skulls but for now my attention has wandered elsewhere.

Game Swapping, Bully and PS3s

posted by Jaitu at 12:03

With only five achievements remaining to be had from Dead Space I decided to give it a rest and embark on something different. To that end TechMaster and I swapped a of couple titles. He had recently completed Bully so I took that and he took Dead Space.
Bully is essentially Grand Theft Auto set in a private school. Amazingly I've never actually spent any time playing a Grand Theft Auto game since the very first top-down title, which I loved. Bully puts you in the role of Jimmy Hopkins an unloved kid with a string of expulsions who is dumped into Bullworth Academy by his Mother and Step-Father. The game follows the GTA open world format with new areas opening up as you progress. There are a number of missions that must be completed before moving on through the school years as well as side errands that can be taken. Missions range from finding and returning lost or stolen objects, picking lockers, fighting school bullys, defending the nerds (for cash) and putting burning bags of dog feces outside the staff room. I've just completed sophomore year and according to the game stats am about 5% through the game.

On another note entirely I'd like to welcome WorthyBoy to the blog. As a PS3 owner he brings the Sony side of the story. Funnily enough though, despite our many good natured 'discussions' over the relative merits of the Microsoft and Sony platforms, WorthyBoy has recently been contemplating the purchase of an Xbox360 and TechMaster has just had Santa deliver a PS3 into his arsenal.

Dead Space: Complete Incompletion

posted by Jaitu at 12:46

I finished Dead Space a couple of days ago and am happy to report that it remained consistently excellent right through to the finish. There are a number of achievements that I have not yet picked up but, as previously detailed, the game does indeed allow you to begin a 'round 2' from the very beginning but with any suit/weapon upgrades carried over. One little additional detail is that the second play through is exactly the same as if you were starting a new game. The opening cinematic must be watched, the control introductions pop up again and despite having the powered up armour, weapon collection, credits and nodes you will not be able to use special abilities such as Stasis or Kenesis until the plot introduces you to them a second time. This can be a little odd at first as techniques that have become second nature are suddenly stripped from you.
I have begun the second run and having completed round one using nothing but the Plasma Cutter (to grab the 'One Gun' achievement) am now trying to dispatch as many biomorph as possible using the two other weapons currently in my inventory. I won't be able to use any of the others that I picked up before until I get to one of the STORE locations and change them out.
I also made a point of beginning an Impossible difficulty campaign and getting the first save point stashed away.

Dead Space: Room To Breath

posted by Jaitu at 07:50

I got back to the point I was at on the not-quite-hardest level and have moved on further. Last night I made may way through the hydroponics level and cleared the atmosphere before continuing on to the beginning of chapter seven and calling it a night.
While I'm about it I've decided to playthrough the whole game using nothing but the basic Plasma Cutter in order to pick up yet another achievement. Once I start the second run through I'll start using the other weapons to get their respective points.

A Weekend Of Restarts And Do-Overs: Halo3, Dead Space, Pinball FX

posted by Jaitu at 07:49

This weekend had a definite feeling of 'again-ness' to it. Quite apart from spending a sizable chunk of it putting glass back into places the previous owners of our house had removed it from; re-painting a wall that has seen four different colours in the few years we've been living here; climbing a ladder in the conservatory to tidy paint work (something I have done too many times to count recently); and, finally, scratching myself to pieces while constructing our artificial Christmas Tree for the fourth or fifth time in about as many years. The last couple of days gaming has also been of an 'again' nature.

Dead Space.
In the last post I discovered that the Dead Space achievement for completing the game on the hardest difficulty could not be gained by simply choosing the hardest difficulty and piling in. The truly hardest difficulty is not available as an option until you complete the game for the first time. So having struggled my way to chapter five of twelve I decided to give up on the campaign and begin again on easy. My aim now is to play through to the end, picking up as many achievements as I can along the way. I'm already not far from where I left off. Once I'm given the option for the 'Impossible Mode' I'll start a game of it and save a checkpoint so that I can return later. Then, I'll go back to the last save of the Easy campaign and finish it again. The reason for that is you can then begin the campaign on easy a second time but with all the resources you have collected on the first play through. This is in order to tidy up the other achievements which cannot be done on a single play through. The Impossible mission can wait for a time in the future when I wish to torture myself - a time that may never come.

Halo 3.
Techmaster and I continued our Legendary Halo 3 campaign yesterday. We managed to tick off 'The Ark' but in truth we could probably have completed another chapter as well if we had made better decisions and not suffered some poor luck. Firstly we should not have spent way more than half an hour trying fruitlessly to grab the Famine Skull. Secondly had the game not stuttered to a halt before throwing us out two thirds into the chapter and requiring us restart from the beginning (after more than two hours of play) we would likely have gotten further.

Pinball FX.
Lastly, I've been playing Pinball FX again. I like it because it's a game that allows you to come and go as you please. There are no long scripted missions that you can't walk away from until you reach an arbitrary check point or save location. It's simply an excellently put together pinball game. I say it allows you to walk away, in truth it doesn't. It is so packed to the bumpers with the magic of just-one-more-go that a new ball is being fired into the table as soon as the last of the previous game has disappeared from view.

Dead Space: Harder Than I Thought

posted by Jaitu at 07:57

I've been playing Dead Space recently and it's proving to be a fairly excellent third-person-shooter with plenty of tension and more than a few horror surprises.
I decided from the outset to play through on the hardest difficulty setting in order to get the 'Epic Tier 3 Engineer' achievement which is worth a substantial 150 gamer points. The description for the achievement is "Complete the game on the hardest difficulty setting". So I launched myself in and have toiled as far as chapter 5 of 12 so far.
BUT NOW!
Now I have just learned that the 'hardest' difficulty isn't actually available until you complete the game at least once. On completion a hidden option of 'Impossible' becomes available and it's this level of difficulty that'll allow the achievement.
Well, crap. I'm now sorely tempted to restart the whole thing on easy and play through it to get all the other achievements - which in themselves require at least two plays through to accrue.
By all accounts 'easy' is significantly easier than the level I'm currently playing on so I should, at least, be able to get back to where I am in a few hours.

Catching Up: GRID, HALO3, Penny Arcade, Dead Space

posted by Jaitu at 18:31

It's been a little while so here's a quick run down of what's been played in the meantime.
In no particular order.

Penny Arcade Adventures : On The Rain-Slick Precipice Of Darkness - Episode Two.
The adventure continues with Tycho and Gabe. Some (very) small tweaks to the controls improve the environment investigation. The story continues on a pace and the humour remains top PA fayre. I had a system crash during the final boss battle but other than that I enjoyed the second installment even more than the first.

Race Driver: GRID.
I haven't actually played this since almost the last post. I think I'm at the top tier of competition now. My only gripe, and it's a pathetic one that I have with all racing games of this nature, is that the rounds become increasingly long and include more races. This makes it harder to pick up and play for a quick gaming hit. I'm at the stage now where to complete a round involves maybe four races that each take ten minutes or more to finish.

HALO 3.
Techmaster and I managed to hook up online long enough to complete another two chapters on Legendary. I'm still peeved that you must complete the whole chapter in one sitting for it to count. We'll have to go back and run one again as despite having gone more than half-way through when we picked it up again from a checkpoint only about a third in the chapter wasn't marked as done when we finished it.

Dead Space.
I picked this up a month or so ago but found it almost impossible to play at the time. I was suffering from flu and the third person viewpoint gave me terrible motion sickness so I put it to one side (and played through Penny Arcade Adventures instead). Returning later I hit a bit of a choke point - I had decided to tackle it on the hardest setting from the get go - but once past that the game picked up some momentum and I've really been enjoying it.

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.

GRID: Team Building

posted by Jaitu at 15:44

The success of the British based RTDL2 Racing outfit continues. Team
owner/driver Jaitu acquired Class B Licenses in both Europe and Asia and
as a direct result of the step up RTDL2 Racing has now expanded to a two
car team. Jaitu continues to drive the number 75 car and Japanese
Pro-Tuned specialist Eiji Matsuke has been brought in to partner.
With the addition of a second entry and some new sponsors the team funds
are also looking healthy. Successes in the Nissan Cup events and the
Skyline Versus Viper Touge were significant highpoints. Unfortunately
Jaitu's guest drive at Le Mans in a Corvette ended in disappointment
after contact with Tomas Enge's Aston Martin while leading the group
left the car damaged and off the pace. Jaitu ultimately brought the car
home last in group and only second from last overall. Rumours of a
potential RTDL2 team entry in the next Le Mans 24 Hours are yet to be
confirmed and could well depend on the results of the forthcoming
season.

Halo3: A Legendary Coalition On A Legendary Campaign

posted by Jaitu at 12:30

With the Locust hordes of Gears Of War conclusively defeated, at least
until GOW2 in November, TechMaster and Myself have move on to dealing
with the Covenant threat.
Playing the Halo3 campaign with a friend fighting alongside me changes
the dynamic of the game somewhat. My natural tendency towards cautious
progress sees me fall in to a supporting role which has so far gelled
nicely with the willingness of TechMaster to act as the pathfinder. In
this instance the role of pathfinder is almost exactly the same as that
of cannon fodder but he seems happy and his numerous and spectacular
deaths allow me to identify and hopefully dispatch the offending
Covenant aggressor.
We have agreed that we'll run through the campaign on the Legendary
difficulty and pickup the hidden Skulls as and when the game allows it.
Any that we miss or prove too much of a chore at this level we will
return for at a later date and with the resistance turned down again.

Gears Of War: War Is Over If You Want It

posted by Jaitu at 11:33

Finally.
The Insane campaign is complete. TechMaster and I put in a final push
over the weekend and can now lay another title to rest. We have
completed the campaign on all three difficulty levels and garnered as
many achievement points as either of us can be bothered to. Almost all
the remaining achievements are to be had from online multiplayer and it
just doesn't tempt me. A couple are for things like killing multiple
enemies multiple times but I think I'd rather move on to something else.

Geometry Wars Evolved 2

posted by Jaitu at 11:43

I remember playing the original Geometry Wars when it was an arcade
machine in the Project Gotham Racing virtual garage. Back then it was a
simple, though visually arresting, twin-stick shooter that went on for
as long as you could survive.
I played the trial version of the XBLA Geometry Wars Evolved but never
felt compelled to purchase the full game. I had already bought Mutant
Storm from PomPom Software which uses the same twin stick mechanic and
has proven to be inexplicably hard when I'm in control.
Geometry Wars Evolved 2 is now out and I have heard nothing but high
praise for it so yesterday I decided to just go ahead and buy it.
The game has kept the same neon vectors, fragments and particles aesthetic and ramped up the on screen business to a dizzying degree. Building on the original simple mechanic the game has been expanded and
now contains 6 distinct game modes.

Deadline: Played against a strict time limit and with infinite lives.
Just keep going and score as much as possible.

King: There are three circular safe zones randomly positioned on screen.
The enemy shapes cannot enter these zones and you can only fire when
you're inside one. The trouble is that as soon as you enter a safe zone
you have only a few seconds before it diminishes to nothing leaving you
defenceless until you get to the next. As one disappears a new one
spawns elsewhere on screen.

Evolve: Score points to earn extra lives and bombs. Each successive life
requires ten times the points of the previous.

Pacifism: You can move but you cannot fire. As time passes slowly
spinning gates will appear on screen. When you fly through a gate any
enemy shapes nearby will be destroyed.

Waves: Lines of enemy shapes will appear and sweep backwards and
forwards across or up and down the screen. You have to shoot gaps in the
waves as they approach.

Sequence: Twenty timed challenges with thirty seconds to clear each
screen. Success or failure will move you to the next challenge until you
have either completed them all or run out of lives.

Each successive mode is unlocked by playing the previous one three or
four times (your progress towards the next is shown at the game select
screen). The achievements are based around particular challenges within
the game modes. For instance the Wax On achievement requires you to rub
along each wall of the screen during one game of Pacifism. Once you have
rubbed a certain amount the edge begins to light up in segments so you
can see where you need to go and your percentage progress is displayed
at the foot of the screen. The Wax Off achievement requires you to do
this twice in one game. There are also achievements for simply unlocking
all the six game modes and another for scoring at least 1,000,000 points
in each.
I managed to get five of the twelve achievements in a couple of hours
playing. It's an incredibly addictive game with at least the last half
hour of my play session taken up by successive one-more-goes. I'm not
sure how often I'm likely to return to it once all the achievements have
been attained but as a quick blast of fun it will be hard to beat.

GOW: Beginning Of The End Of The Line

posted by Jaitu at 12:27

While Wife and Wife's Mother were away for the night I managed to hook
up with TechMaster online to continue our Insane Gears Of War campaign.
TechMaster had taken the bold but sensible decision to complete the
short section that had caused us so much hardship without me, playing
through with three expendable NPCs making for a far easier route. We
picked up from just after the courtyard battle and continued onwards
toward the family home. There were a couple of sections that were in
fact much harder to complete on the easier levels although this may well
be down to knowing what was coming. In all it took us about a hour and
three quarters of play to complete Act IV and arrive at the train
station. It was there that we decided to call time and leave the final
Act V and the fight with Raam for another day.

Burnout Paradise: Cagney

posted by Jaitu at 09:40

The Cagney update for Burnout Paradise finally made it out of
certification limbo and to the Xbox360 community at large last night. I
haven't played Paradise for a little while but thought I might as well
get the update while I had some time. Upon booting the game I was
informed that an update was indeed available and chose to download it.
The process completed in approximately four seconds which didn't strike
me as a likely success. In fact when I started the game again there was
a minor cosmetic change only. Trying to view the news feed or start an
online Freeburn session just resulted in a message telling me that I
couldn't go online until I'd taken the latest update. There was no way
to get the update from within the game and I had to drop back to the
dashboard and line up the download through the Marketplace. Once
completed I restarted the game and was welcomed by the new front page
which shows the latest news from Criterion Games along with time and
date information, world ranking, weather info from major cities around
the World and a calendar with special event days highlighted. Within the
game proper the effects are less immediately obvious. There are a number
of new online challenges and game modes and three new vehicles and
liveries. The sound mix has been tweaked such that the soundtrack and
engine noise is noticeably different between the bumper and chase cam
views. It is also now possible to click the left stick when driving the
police cruiser and turn on the blues and two's.
The Davis update is due in around a month and will deliver even more
radical changes.

Gears Of War: Quite Hard

posted by Jaitu at 20:38

TechMaster and I resumed our co-op campaign through Gears Of War on Insane difficulty today. It's been some months since either of us played any GOW and it took a while to re-familiarise ourselves with the controls. I found myself constantly clicking a stick to run a la Bad Company instead of simply pressing the A button. Even after we were back into the swing of things the Insane difficulty level seemed harder than either of us could recall. After spending what seemed like an age trying to complete the split path section in Act 3's Belly Of The Beast we finally picked up a little momentum and made some reasonable progress picking up the final COG Tag to complete another achievement. Then almost immediately reaching the next split path section where one of us battles through courtyards while the other negotiates the first floor hallways of the surrounding buildings and together take on a Seeder. After somewhere in the region of four hours playing and replaying this level we decided to call it a day.

Race Driver GRID: Start Your Engines

posted by Jaitu at 09:29

I began my GRID career last night and managed to collect a handful of
achievements without really trying. In fact a couple of them I was
really trying not to get - the ones for rolling your car or being
involved in a ten car pile up for example.
Like the previous Race Driver and TOCA games GRID is weighted heavily
toward the realistic end of the handling spectrum. This doesn't
instantly sit well with my more arcade-y style of virtual racing which
leaves me able to drive quickly or cleanly but not both at the same
time. Like those previous CodeMasters games I am sure that I'll be
investing a huge number of hours in to this one too.
Graphically the game looks great, shedding the slightly too crisp and
colourful aesthetic of the earlier titles and adopting shaders that give
a more naturalistic effect.
A new Gameplay mechanic that has been added is the ability to
'Flashback' at any point during an event. This gives you the power to
rewind time within a limit and have another go, think Prince Of Persia:
Sands Of Time, very useful having just ploughed into a tyre barrier. The
number of available flashbacks varies depending on your chosen
difficulty level.
Surprisingly, in the races I have completed thus far I have found the
most success in the Japanese Drift events. When I played the demo a
month or to back I was horribly bad at the drifts.
I am now seriously considering getting a racing wheel to go with this
game as I feel it would benefit from the control method. I always
struggle in the more simulation styled racers when relying on
thumbsticks.

Bad Company: Single Player Completely Complete

posted by Jaitu at 10:15

I wrapped up the single player achievements for Bad Company last night.
I've found the game to be very entertaining. Overall it has less
diversity to the actual mission content than COD4 but the persistent
game state mechanic allows for a great deal more freedom when choosing
an approach. I actually missed a Gold Crate on what should have been my
final run through the last mission and had to repeat it. Because I had
already got everything else out of the level as far as achievements were
concerned I was able to jump in vehicles and race through to the last
crate in record time.
I then gave the online multiplayer a quick go (literally two games) and
found that to be a fairly frenetic affair. I'll probably keep that as my
go-to online shooter instead of COD4 for the time being. For now though
I have Race Driver GRID ready and waiting to go.

Bad Company: First Run Complete

posted by Jaitu at 16:30

Last night I completed the first run through of Battlefield: Bad
Company. I went through at the hardest difficulty to begin with a plan
to then play through a second time on normal difficulty to clean up the
other achievements. It certainly a good thing that when the end credits
rolled I was more than happy to jump straight back in at the start
without it feeling like a chore to have to play through the whole game a
second time. The only slight frustration I've found so far is that on
the second run only a couple of the cut scenes are skip-able meaning you
have to sit through them again.

Monkey Tennis

posted by Jaitu at 12:18

Well not really but ten monkeys doesn't sound so catchy.
As of last night I have in excess of 5000 gamer points.

Bad Company: A Little Bit More

posted by Jaitu at 08:43

I'm enjoying Bad Company a lot.
We've just accidentally invaded a neutral country and have decided to
follow the mercenaries' gold.
I'm going through on the 'Hard' setting which doesn't so far seem all
that hard. Because the game keeps going when you die you effectively
have infinite lives. I suspect you could pretty much just run through
with no particular care and a huge number of respawns.
The difficulty achievements don't stack (completing Hard doesn't get you
the Normal achievement) so I'll have to play it through twice to get all
of them. I figure I'll play through it on Hard then go back through on
Normal and tidy up anything I've missed. I'm being fairly cautious in my
approach despite the slim penalty for failure.
There are a fair number of online-only achievements too.

Bad Company: First Impressions

posted by Jaitu at 11:25

Battlefield: Bad Company arrived through the post yesterday. I had already played through the demo and that had convinced me to buy the full product.
Upon playing the game you instantly get a sense that some thing slightly different is in store. On the surface BC is very similar to COD4. Both are military FPS in a modern setting. Both follow a mission structure in the single player campaign and both were developed primarily with the multiplayer component in mind.
Despite my limited time with BC there are significant differences in evidence right from the outset. The main menu music could not be more different. In COD4, as with most games of this type, the theme music has a very cinematic score feel in the style of a Tom Clancy or Bruckheimer movie. Bad Company has some laid back jazz.
The main characters are the comedic trio of Sarge, Sweetwater and Haggard who constantly quip and taunt each other as well as 'New Guy' Preston (played by you). A couple of obvious game play differences are the lack of regenerative health and a persistence of the world when you inevitably die. Unlike many recent games you must manually apply a health boost whenever your injuries begin to mount up. You do this by equipping one of an endless supply of syringes and using it. This means you cannot use you weapon and so it helps to take cover when treating yourself. In practice this is no different to finding somewhere safe to recover automatically except that you have to consciously intervene. There are also fewer indicators that your health is getting low so one eye must be kept on your health stat in the corner of the screen. Should you forget the penalty for dying doesn't seem so harsh here either. Unlike similar mission based games you do not have to restart the mission from the beginning should you fall. Instead you re-spawn at the last checkpoint and make your way back into the fight complete with any weapons you were carrying before you died. This makes the game more dynamic as you are not constantly repeating scripted sequences and the enemy continue to move and adapt as you re-spawn. This may become a situation of 'infinite lives' where you could simply rush in, chip away, die, rush in, chip away etc... So far I have not encountered any situation that suggests the streams of never ending enemy soldiers such as you would frequently find in COD4.
Unfortunately I won't get a chance to playing anything more for a day or two but I am really looking forward to getting back to Bad Company.

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.

Ack - Terbile Splling

posted by Jaitu at 08:42

Must remember to fix spelling and grammar before posting!

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.

Halo3: First Play Complete

posted by Jaitu at 11:31

So that was Halo3.
Despite the almost non-existent depth of my emotional investment in this
game even I found the ending to be somewhat anticlimactic. It wasn't
just because I still had to go and replay a couple of areas again to
officially "complete" the game either. I went back, ran through the
allegedly missing missions and got the customary be-dunk for
achievements earned. As I've previously documented the lack of
connection I experienced with the story did not in anyway lessen the
enjoyment I got from playing through and I look forward to running the
Legendary co-op campaign path.
Unlike COD4, in which all achievements are from the solo campaign, Halo3
has a number of achievements that can only be gained through online
ranked match play. I don't know how many of these I'll bother going for.
The game has been around for a year now and it likely that most people
playing online will have been doing so for some time and as a result I
will get my arse handed to me. I think I'll experiment a little with the
online but not go all out for it.

Halo3: Gone Bye Bye

posted by Jaitu at 10:30

I've been playing Halo3 for a while now and enjoying it as much as I had expected. There's supposed to be some kind of grand story in there but either it's not very clear or I just stopped paying attention somewhere in the first game. To be honest I think it's both. The plot seems to be that someone wants to blow stuff up and we mustn't let them. To prevent them blowing stuff up we have to blow a load of stuff up. When a major blowing things up based victory is achieved we all celebrate until something important to us unexpectedly blows up and then we have to head of to blow something up. Ultimately we catch up with the guy who wants to blow stuff up and dispatch them only to find a former enemy who recently became an ally against the blowing-things-up guy is now a greater enemy than before. The only way to end this new and even more deadly than ever threat is to blow something up.
That's the point I'm at now.
Truthfully the plot doesn't matter to me. Just keep giving somewhere to run and something to gun.
One issue I have with the game is the way that save-games seem to be dealt with. On first loading the game for a session the main menu has an option to "Resume Solo Game" which will start you back where you last left off. While there are copious checkpoints during each level in each chapter unless you "Save and Quit" while playing you will generally only resume from the start of the last full level. I must not have saved the session before last as when I resumed I restarted about an hour and a half's worth of game play prior to where I was last. The frustrating thing is that you cannot continue the Solo game from anywhere you like within the areas that you have completed. You can pick and choose when launching a co-op campaign but this then overwrites your Solo progress leaving with just the option to start the Solo game from the very beginning once more. This was the position I found myself in last night. So as a result I am now playing the game as a co-op mission but on my own.
I think I must be somewhere near completion. I have seen the death of Truth and the rise once more of The Flood and am now embarking on the mission to detonate the partially constructed Halo.
Hopefully next time I play it'll be from that same place.

COD4: Inch By Inch

posted by Jaitu at 09:18

I'm slowly picking off those achievements.
My ultimate goal is to get 100% from this game, my immediate goal is to at least equal and hopefully surpass TechMaster on it. Currently he has 940 points and I have 920. I've managed to close the gap a little by running through the War Room level on a Hardened setting (second hardest difficulty) which gave me the achievement for game complete at that level. I narrowed it further by getting the "Your Show Sucks" achievement for shooting out all the televisions broadcasting Al Asad in the "Charlie Don't Surf" level. That's one achievement that TechMaster hasn't got yet.
I also picked up the last of the laptop Intel Items from near the Pripyat Ferris wheel. That leaves me with "Ultimatum" - by defeating the War Room on Veteran, "Mile High Club" - by completing the hidden mission in the final credits on Veteran and "New Squadron Record" - by completing the mock-up training run in under 19 seconds, so far my best run is 21 and some.
These last three are going to be tricky.

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.

Halo 3

posted by Jaitu at 07:50

When the COD4 War Room once again became too much I decided to finally give Master Chief a run. Before now I had played a couple of hours of local multi player Halo3 with Womble692 and BigGayAl. The first thing to note is that although this is far from the best looking game on the 360 it does look a great deal better than the previous episode.
Taking my lead from Barney Stinson I went straight for the most difficult setting of Legen - wait for it - Dary. So after about five hours of incrementally picking my way past a ridiculous number of sniping Jackals I arrived at an early "War Room" scenario. Time and again I tried and failed to clear the motor pool of Brutes. The problem mostly being that I run short of ammunition and have to venture out of cover and into the battlefield to replenish. This invariably culminates in my explosive demise.
Talking this through with TechMaster he convinced me to run through the solo campaign on a Normal difficulty. The plan being for us to later tackle Legen - wait for it, and I hope you're not lactose-intolerant because the second half of this word is - Dary as a multi player co-op game. We employed a similar plan for Gears Of War. We should really finish that before getting too caught up in this.
So, after accepting my limitations and reducing the difficulty, I decided to restart the entire campaign from page one. Once I got out of the over-cautious habits that Legendary dictates I found myself back at the motor pool well within only an hour or so. A few short minutes later I found myself beyond the motor pool and running towards the barracks. There's no denying that the game is much-much-much easier now but no less enjoyable.

COD4: Frustration Continues

posted by Jaitu at 07:43

Just a little at a time.
Farmer: Saved.
Helicopter: Shot down with the RPG
30th Laptop: Still in enemy hands - I'll get that one next.
Game Complete On Veteran: Yeah, that's damned hard.
I got frustrated with my progress again. Having picked up a couple more of the outstanding achievements I thought I'd go back in to the veteran campaign. One small advantage was that, due to the break in mission structure, I now start the War Room with a red-dot-sighted weapon. Still, I only got as far as I did before. So I tried for a while and then thought I'd try something else. If COD4 wasn't such a great game this would be one of those choke points that could have me walk away and never return.
I'll be back.

COD4: Achievement Hunting

posted by Jaitu at 16:42

Having taken a break from the constant cycle of frustrating death that
is "No Fighting In The War Room" on Veteran difficulty I am now trying
to tidy up the outstanding achievements. I have found 29 of the 30 intel
items and know where the last one should be but so far have not been
able to find it. Allegedly the final laptop is in a building near the
Ferris wheel at the end of "One Shot One Kill". A door is supposed to
open when the enemy choppers fly in but this hasn't happened while I've
been playing. One thing I did notice was how easy the game is on the
Recruit setting (easiest difficulty) after playing Veteran. More often
than not you can simply run through a crowd of the opposing force and
make it easily to your destination. Even playing through the dreaded War
Room became a relative cake walk. On Veteran I have been unable to get
to the blast doors with more than about 3 minutes left on the clock,
last night I made it on my first and only "Recruit" attempt with more
than 10 minutes to spare.
My plan for the next gaming assault is to at least save the farmer and
shoot down a helicopter with an RPG. With luck I'll also put a bullet in
each of the remaining televisions and maybe get that last laptop too. I
think that should leave me with just the mock-up record and, of course,
finishing the game on Veteran.

Penny Arcade Adventures

posted by Jaitu at 08:12

Last night I finished my first play through of Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One. If I'm honest I wasn't convinced by the demo when I played it. The game looks great and particularly so if, like me, you're a fan of the Penny Arcade web comic. The problem I had with it was that it seems quite slow to get going and a lot of your time will be spent hitting inanimate objects with a rake in order to find inventory items. The combat is a kind of simultaneous turn-based affair which will no doubt be familiar to players of this style of game. I am not normally a player of this style of game but at the end of the demo and despite not being totally happy with the experience I decided to buy the full game. Unfortunatley I then had to play through everything I'd just completed in the demo (I don't know whether this is just the way it is or if it was because I failed to do something). I said I completed my first play through as I found the game grew on me as it went on and I will quite happily play through again to try and get those remaining achievements. I suspect however that the one for completing the game without losing anyone during the combat sequences will forever be out of my reach. This is also only the first episode in a series which should see new parts released every three or four months. Bring it.

Wii Fit Begins

posted by Jaitu at 07:44

Yesterday morning I picked up Wii Fit and last night after a warm-up consisting of some gentle painting and decorating we cracked it open and gave it a go. After the initial setup of the Wii Fit board (press a button on the board and a button on the console to sync them) it's time to register yourself with the software.
Choose your Mii or create a new one and the system will ask you for your height and date of birth. Then you're asked to remove your shoes and socks and step onto the board. The software then measures your centre of gravity and weight showing a graphical representation of your natural balance and BMI (Body Mass Index).
My balance turned out to be nearly perfect with Left/Right weight distribution of 49.7%/50.3%. If anything my COG (Centre Of Gravity) was a little to the back but otherwise the result surprised me. Something that didn't surprise me so much was my BMI. I weighed in at 14st 6lbs which put me in the 'Overweight' category on the BMI chart. Interestingly the software recorded me at around 4lbs heavier then both our bathroom scales and the scales in our hotel room a fortnight ago so I'm taking the result with a pinch of salt. The important thing will be how my weight changes relative to this first reading and not so much the actual figure. The software then rescales your Mii to match the reading, making mine significantly wider around the middle. A basic balance test asking you to shift your weight and hold it in certain positions for a fixed period then allows your Wii Fit Age to be calculated. I have an initial WFA of 42, 8 years older than my real age.
You can also set yourself a goal for your training. My chosen goal is to lose 1st8lbs in 6 months to get me into the 'Ideal' BMI range. This should be easy to achieve and the goal can be tweaked depending on how you progress. The actual training is made up of a variety of activities divided into four categories - Muscle, Balance, Aerobic and Yoga. Four or five of each are available when you first begin and you choose which ones you want to do and in what order. Each one you do earns you Fit Cash (measured in minutes) and is not dependant on how well you do but how long you do. The more time you spend in the activities the more new activities become available to you. The overall presentation of the package is incredibly straight forward and friendly.
I'm going to try and do at least 10 minutes a day and hopefully 30 or more and I'll track my progress here. I'll also talk more about the individual activities in further posts.

COD4

posted by Jaitu at 07:59

I haven't had a lot of time to play recently so the last couple of nights I have grabbed a couple of hours. Mostly I have played COD4 on the Xbox360. There's really not much I can tell you about this game that you won't already know. It is an excellent FPS both as a single player campaign and particularly as a multi player game. The campaign has had some criticism for being short and it's true that it can be completed in a few hours at the easier settings but is also, in my opinion, a very demanding challenge. When I first started playing at the beginning of the year I worked my way through the campaign at an intermediate difficulty and found the variety in the missions more than made up for any perceived brevity. I tasted the much lauded multi player but only for around twenty minutes. It's quite a frenetic activity and when you join in for the first time it can be a fairly intimidating experience. I quickly shied away from it and turned my attentions to Burnout Paradise when it launched. Ultimately I came back to COD4 and decided to tackle the campaign again at the Veteran (hardest) difficulty. At this level it throws up some very frustrating moments, moments that stretch into hours. I have been stuck on a level towards the end of the game called 'No Fighting In War Room' and specifically a mission called '9 Minutes'. In it you must fight your way through an underground missile command centre and enter abort codes for missiles that are already in flight, hence the 9 minutes. I am at a point with about five and a half minutes remaining and must battle through a complex of corridors and silos to a set of blast doors which then open very, very slowly. So far I am not making it to the doors with enough time on the clock. Having made many, many, many fruitless attempts I eventually admitted defeat and moved on to the next mission which proved far less taxing. I now only have the 'No Fighting In the War Room' and the hidden 'Mile High' missions to beat on Veteran level and a couple of sundry achievements. I also took another stab at the multi player a while back and found that playing the 'Free-For-All' mode where everyone is an enemy allows you to play it essentially like a bot match. I've played a fair bit now and worked my up to around a level 16 so far. In order to level up you must earn experience points through kills. Each level takes progressively more points to reach and along the way you unlock more weapons options and 'perks' which allow a choice of tweaks and abilities to augment your playing.

The State Of Play

posted by Jaitu at 19:22

I wouldn't describe myself as a Hardcore or avid gamer but I do enjoy playing the odd game every now and then. In the last year or so, maybe because I'm getting old or maybe because of the finances, I have begun to think that I really should try and finish games before starting new ones. This doesn't always happen. Currently the games I am actively engaged in are:
Burnout Paradise (around 9 Stunt Runs and 12 Road Rules Times until completion),
Call of Duty 4 (Completed on an intermediate difficulty and now working through in Veteran mode and cursing the War Room)
and very recently Penny Arcade Adventures: On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode One (Defeated the chap with the shiny hair and looking for the invisible mime articles).

You could theoretically add to these the titles that got put on back burners as a result of those above:
Assassins Creed (first three or four assassinations completed but attention diverted by COD4),
Mario Galaxy (I can't remember how far I got, fun but not *that* fun) and
No More Heroes (Gave it a go to see what it's like, really quite liked it but was busy with other things).

On top of all this there's the online portions of COD4 and Burnout Paradise.
Anyway, I'll pick up on each of these as I next play them and give more of my feelings towards them so far and as we go along.

Another One To Be Ignored

posted by Jaitu at 18:35

Here's the first post in yet another blog.

This one is where we'll write about the games we are playing, the progress we're making and how we're finding the experience. I've called it Playing Catch-Up because it isn't about playing the latest and greatest or being first to achieve something. There won't be any hype about an as yet unreleased game. The idea is that we can just log whatever we feel like as we feel like.

I have never been much for getting a game on day of release and playing it until it's beaten. I'm quite happy to pick up a game long after it's no longer the hot new thing and enjoy it at my own pace. That said, the titles that I'm most invovlved in right now are Burnout Paradise, COD4 and Penny Arcade Adventures. So, there'll be something written about each of those in due course.