Currently Playing: Final Fantasy II

I've just clocked up my tenth hour on Final Fantasy II so it's probably over due a few words on here. My last experience of a FInal Fantasy game was the famous number seven on PSone where I don't think I progressed off the first disc and my only other experience of a 2d RPG was Legend of Zelda on the GBA. Superficially they make look similar but they actually play very differently what with Zelda being more action based.

Anyone whose familiar with the famous 'Telescope incident' will probably be unsurprised to learn that I'm following a FAQ fairly closely. There's a couple of reason for this. These old skool games don't really break you in gently and what with the constant random battles visiting places in the wrong order can be a chore and secondly I wanted some hints and tips on learning the genres conventions. The only exceptions being that I'm mostly attempting the dungeons on my own and item management is all down to me too.. This has proved a revelation compared to say Skies of Arcadia where I didn't have a clue. In FFII it very clear which items are going to improve a team member and which aren't. It's also easy to experiment with different things.

I'm about a third or so into the game now and while my HP stats are coming along nicely and I have a reasonable spread of abilities through out my party a feel perhaps a more experienced RPG-er would of boosted a few more magical abilities throughout the team.. After some long dungeon crawls I'm now rather flush with cash so hopefully there'll be time to remedy this before long....

The "Complete" List

John Woo Presents Stranglehold
Portal
Test Drive: Unlimited ( ALL Gold in the SP challenges.)
Loco Roco*
The Darkness (Easy)

I read the Eurogamer.Net review today and it pretty much sums up exactly what's right and wrong with this game. To sum up there's far more right so if you fancy a great adventure go buy it. It's a solid game. There's a couple of pacing issues, The creeping dark tentacles I mention in the 'CP' update don't work quite as smoothly as they could but are still great great fun and as Eurogamer point out theres some scenes towards the end where you're powers are utilised to awesome effect but you're not in control. Other than that I have no complaints. I may well have another play through on a harder difficulty and try and hoover up some of the missed achievement points (295 points first time through). I really enjoyed it.

*Not a first time completion.

Purchase Power

Today is payday. Thus a little splurge at HMV.

I bought Band of Brothers on DVD. Little Joe has been banging on about it for ages but for me the tipping point was finding out that Dexter Fletcher from my favourite childhood TV show Press Gang was in it.

I also got the new Goldfrapp album and in yet another attempt to enjoy an RPG game (see also Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy VII and Skies of Arcadia)I purchased Final Fantasy II for PSP at £18.

I'm very tempted to buy another DS as well.. My old one was one of the chunky originals and of course the Slim ones are a lot nicer. My colleauge in the office has one now and we could play Mario Kart together...

To Bald-ly Go!

Apologies for the terrible pun. The internet is alive today with the news of Phil Harrison leaving Sony. I've not much to add other than with PS3 seemingly on the cusp of great things it seems a strange time to go.

Currently Playing: The Darkness

I should probably start by saying that I have no experience of the comic on which this game is based. It doesn't seem to matter all that much as the game introduces the set up and story very well as the game progresses. It does this in two ways. Through the hero of the game, Jackie, talking to an unseen character during loading screens and through conversations with characters as the game goes along.

Jackie is a mafia hitman who, as the game unfolds, becomes possessed by a mysterious power called The Darkness which manifests itself through powers Jackie is able to use and a strange creepy voice that communicates with Jackie himself. The powers are unlocked as you progress collecting enemies hearts as you go. Jackie can use, what I assume are sort of specteral tenticals, that sprout from him when you invoke The Darkness to over come puzzles that stop him from progressing as well as for scouting out the terrain and dealing with enemies. He is also able to call forth darklings. Small beings that he can direct and each with a specilized ability (Their are four to collect).

It's basically a story based shooter however there's less emphasis on shooting and quite a bit on exploring and progressing the story. It's linear in so much as you're assigned tasks (for instance finding your girlfriends flat) but the world you're in is reasonably open and you don't feel like you're progressing down one long corridor to you're goal.

Appropriatly enough the game is rather dark all round. Both in visuals and atmosphere. Your darkness powers gradually fade in the light too so a lot of time is spent in making the enviroment even darker. This occasionally makes finding out what you're supposed to be doing quite tricky although the game does have a lot of hints and clues in it's 'journal' along with a list of your abilities and powers and how to use them. So while a lot is introduced in a relatively short time it's fairly easy to keep track of it all and I made reasonable progress yesterday completing the first section of the game. That's when things started to get really strange....

Purchase Power

I picked up The Darkness for twenty notes today. I haven't played a good FPS adventure for a while and it was either Clive Barkers Jericho which was also in Game for £20. Both where games that where on my radar pre-release but neither seemed to realise their full potential for a purchase on release. Having checked out Eurogamer The Darkness scored higher and seemed to offer less frustration.

Blast from the past!

Apparently Commodore have inked a deal with Nintendo to release Commodore 64 classics on the Virtual Console. Now I remember the 8 bit era fondly and the C64 was a king amongst men at the time... But seriously does anyone expect 500 Wii points of entertainment from any C64 title at all?

If you're going to release old computer classics at least make 'em from the Amiga.. Stunt Car Racer! Now there's a game that'd be worth 500 points

The "Complete" List

John Woo Presents Stranglehold
Portal
Test Drive: Unlimited ( ALL Gold in the SP challenges.)
Loco Roco*

*Not a first time completion.

This time around I got 71 more Loco Roco than last time and 17 more Mui. Although I totally bombed World 4 getting 11 less Loco Roco and 3 less Mui. It's a great great game. The completion took a couple of hours more but it's worth it to find all the hidden stuff.

The "Complete" List

John Woo Presents Stranglehold
Portal
Test Drive: Unlimited ( ALL Gold in the SP challenges.)

Finally polished off the last of the gold cups to put this old-ey but goody to bed.

Not that anyone will be that interested but I do have a few titles on the cusp of being completed.

Currently Playing Round Up!

I've been playing a lot of different stuff so time for another quick round up of my gaming activity.

Loco Roco

Having a lot of fun replaying this on the now dusted off PSP. Mainly in anticipation of Patapon being released later this month. Spending more time just enjoying the game. Some of it I just haven't the patience for but I've been doing a lot more exploring. Probably the best PSP game in my collection.

Tiger Woods 2008

I loved '07 but I'm struggling with '08 so far. The Hook and Slice (whether the ball swings left or right when your supposed to be hitting it straight is a lot more pronounced making every shot a challenge and most holes a slog in the early stages.. This is making it rather tough to get into. Combined with a collection of rubbish achievements I can't see myself spending as much time on this as last year.

Devil May Cry 4

The adaptive difficulty and relatively easy start of 'Human' means that I'm making regular progress through the missions but I don't really feel like I'm learning much. Dante is way cooler than Nero but his lack of bendy grabby arm makes it much tougher to fight with him for the beginner whose suddenly stripped of the one power that was making combat fun and four confusing fighting styles don't make for much recompense. Combine this with a flexible upgrade system that allows you to undo and you choices and 'respend' your souls there should be plenty of moves but it's difficult for the beginner and, to be frank, it all looks the same. Resulting in much button mashing. It's not really my type of game. I'm 14 missions in so I may as well now continue to the bitter end but the result of the experiment is that I wont be bothering again. Even the over blown cut scenes don't do a lot for me.

Test Drive: Unlimited

As part of a forthcoming blog entry (hopefully) discussing my thoughts on EDGE's essay on driving games I thought I'd revisit this old chestnut and try and polish off the last couple of achievements to finish it off.. It still quite a stunning technical achievement (Compared to Burnout Paradise the island is huge. Graphically it's amazing how much we've moved on as it's not terribly pretty by todays standards.. It can be a bit juddery as well (presumably as it tries to load on the fly) but it's a great game and perhaps an indication of how developers should be challenging the genre.

Burnout Paradise

On the other hand this brave experiment is finding something of a lack of longevity. It's too unfocused. There's not enough sense of progression. When you've got to find and complete 40 odd (Similar) events to progress to the next license (BPs skill levels) it's hard to really care. The point to point racing is fun but for me they they should of included some circuits made up from the road layouts (a la PGR or even TD:U which had a similar open world layout).

The Powers that Be.

For the first time since it arrived the batteries in my Wii-mote are about to run out.. It seems to have much better battery life than the equivalent 360 pad gets from it's two AA batteries. Or perhaps the Wii hasn't had enough play time.. All that may change now ExciteTruck has arrived.

Purchase Power

A couple of eBay (not so) bargains to update you all on.

I picked up ExciteTruck for the Wii cos it hasn't had much action recently and I do so love driving games. I'm hoping it's going to be a bit like the SNES 3D driving game with the Super FX chip that I enjoyed so much as a young whipper snapper but whose name my poor old man brain can never remember.

I also got Tiger Woods 2008. I was of the school of thought that said if EA couldn't be bothered to make a new game each year then I couldn't be bothered to buy them each year. However I really enjoyed the '07 version and it's been a while so I thought I'd have another bash now it was fairly cheap.

What's on the Box(set)?

Having now exhausted seasons of 24 to watch (no mention on here of seasons 5 or 6 cos they simply weren't as good as season 4) and I was in search of something new to watch.

Rescue Me stars Denis Leary as New York fireman and his team mates after 9/11. It was co-created by Leary himself His character Tommy Gavin is a straight talking new yorker (there's a lot of Leary himself in there). He's the kind of flawed hero that american TV does so well. He's divorced and a struggling alcoholic but you can't help warming to him.

It also has a great title sequence and a with The Von Bondies banging out c'mon c'mon it's off to an excellent start. The action focuses mainly on Tommy as he's haunted by the victims he couldn't save and the colleagues he lost on 9/11. There's a strong ensemble cast and although the season is short at just 12 episdoes it cracks along. There's some fire fighting action but mostly it deals with relationships. Anyone whose familiar with Leary's stand up will also recognise the dark humour it's shot through with.

I thoroughly enjoyed it and can't recommend it highly enough.

Currently Playing: Burnout Paradise & Devil May Cry 4

Well it's a tale of two halves in this update. Both games are the latest installments in popular franchises. But it seems that is pretty much where the simularity ends. 

Burnout Paradise almost completely does away with menus and other game conventions. The game is set in Paradise City and it's yours to roam about in from the very off. Almost every junction in the game can be pulled up at and will then offer you an event. There's a selection of events from point to point racing to a set number of takedowns. It feels properly next or indeed this generation. There's no loading times at all and everything works almost seemlessly. 

Devil May Cry 4 is, to be honest, my first proper experience of a DMC game. It's obvious however that apart from a lovely graphical sheen (apart from the characters skin looking a bit plastic in some of the cut scenes (certainly not as impressive as Ninja Theory's work on Heavenly Sword) it hasn't changed a jot from it's Resi based start in life. Fixed camera angles make it difficult to see some areas and mean that you can run out of one screen only to find that because of a change of perspective you're running straight back into the screen you've come from. Opening doors requires a short loading sequence just like the original Resident Evil on PSone. 

Thankfully though it breaks the newcomer in gently. I've got it set on Human Difficulty with Automatic move selection which (Hopefully, I couldn't tell much difference with or without) selects the best moves from your button presses. I'm also letting the game pick the best upgrades moves to purchase. There's a lot of fun to be had from taking apart hordes of demons and exploring the enviroments. Hopefully I'll make it through to the end at least once!

Purchase Power

After a quick bash on the demo I decided that I would have my first Devil May Cry experience. There was a lot of talk on my regular forum as to why the PS3 version is £10 more than the 360 version. I'm assuming the larger installed 360 fanbase means that it can recoup it's costs from a larger number of sales.

All this is another way of saying that once again I've plumped for a 360 version of a multi-format title. My local Game where charging £34.99 for the regular version (Sorry but no more limited edition tin + Art books for me) and WHSmiths had both versions (Tin + Regular) for £34.99. Sadly I ran out of time to go all the way to HMV so I picked it up in Woolies for £32.99.

I'm looking forward to letting you all know how my Devil May Cry 4 experience goes.