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).