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.