Saturday 27 February 2010

Currently Playing: Heavy Rain

This will be a completely spoiler free post and as such I can't really say too much about it. But I want to say something about it. I picked up the special edition in HMV for £45.

For once I opted not to play my iPod but to instead allow the games music to do its thing. I'm rather glad I did because it certainly adds to the experience.

I'm a little disappointed with the characters movement. The head turning and press [R2] to move mechanism smacks a bit of early Resident Evil and occasionally it's hard to get him to line up with things you can interact with. I can't see for the life of me where a direct control scheme mapped to the left stick wouldn't of been better.

I enjoyed both the prologue and the opening titles.. very high production values. I noticed from the titles that David Cage wrote the story. I wonder whether he wrote just the story or all the dialogue? It may have been worth having it polished by a 'proper' writer because just ocassionally it's a little clunky in places.

Mostly though I'm really enjoying it. It's very atmospheric. The game looks and sounds mostly amazing (although some of the characters look more realistic than others) and its certainly not a whole string of QTEs. I'm fairly well versed in the Dualshock pad and so I'm finding the rest of the control scheme very intuative.

So far then I'm very impressed.. I haven't even been introduced to Madison yet.

Thursday 25 February 2010

The "Complete" List

Left 4 Dead 2 - (All Campaigns)
Mass Effect
Lego Rock Band - Story Mode
Darksiders - Easy
BAYONETTA - Easy Automatic
Lego Batman
Call of Duty: Classic - Normal
Fracture - Casual
Dragon Quest: The Hand of the Heavenly Bride

I completed this, my first ever JRPG completion, in just over 30 hours with the help of a very well written and indepth FAQ. Thanks Mr Threeman!

I've started and given up on a few JRPGs in my time and this is the first time that I really enjoyed one and, more importantly, got a good handle on the mechanics of play. I soon got into the swing of visiting the shops in every new location and upgrading my party. I also, eventually, got the hang of using the magic effectively both when exploring and in combat.

Of course random battles are frequent and often brutal. Especially when exploring the many dungeons. Here though, rather than see them as a chore, I found myself excited at the prospect of levelling up and unlocking new spells. The wide variety of enemies and the chance, later in the game, to recruit monsters to your party all help to keep things interesting.

It'd be unfair to spoil any of the epic story or the set pieces along the way. Suffice to say that despite the fact that it's all told in game with 2d sprites and text chat it's a compelling narrative. The dungeons are good and there's a fair few interesting puzzles.. One particular highlight involving mine carts.

The last RPG I completed was also on the DS but this couldn't be more different. There's no use of the DS's touch screen, microphone or anything particularly innovative, as you'd expect from an old SNES game but the graphics are, if not state of the art, very atmospheric.

Similar to my Mass Effect play through it was pretty much a speed run (I spent a couple of hours grinding on a couple of occasions, missed out the board games, Casinos and a couple of optional quests and of course I had the benefit of the FAQ which showed me exactly where to go) but every single hour was enjoyable.

Tuesday 23 February 2010

The "Complete" List

Left 4 Dead 2 - (All Campaigns)
Mass Effect
Lego Rock Band - Story Mode
Darksiders - Easy
BAYONETTA - Easy Automatic
Lego Batman
Call of Duty: Classic - Normal
Fracture - Casual

Picked this up in HMV, brand new, for £5. It probably provided almost exactly five pounds worth of entertainment. It's an old school 3rd person shooter with the added gimmick of being able to raise and lower certain areas of terrain (I seem to remember this being derided in reviews but you can raise or lower almost any dirt/earth area and not concrete/metal which seems like a fairly consistent rule).

There's almost too many weapons and enemies introduced in what is a very small game so weapons and powers get introduced and you barley have time to use them before it's on to the next. If you're not hunting achievements, like me, you end up relying on one particular weapons with a decent zoom and large capacity of ammo and just using the others when you have to to over come certain puzzles.

Other than that it's very generic, The hero, called Jet, has the standard space issue armour, no helmet, bald head and scar and could of come out of any sci-fi shooter. The plot is forgettable and the game is very short. It's a bit like a late period Arnie action.. the ingredients are all there but you feel his heart isn't in it.

Saturday 20 February 2010

To be this good takes....

I downloaded the demo for Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing as a recent flourish of online Mario Kart Wii left me hungry for more karting action.

Turns out while it's relatively easy to make a Karting game and especially so if you've got a roster of well loved characters to fill it with there's a reason why there's still only one really good Karting game in existence.

The demo instantly annoyed me with the absence of an option to turn the music off. Nevermind the annoying voice over guy who shouts continually.

Still, I swallowed my pride, turned the TV down, Peter Gabriels new album up (Although it turns out a covers album rendered almost entirely in strings and orchestral arrangements probably isn't the best accompanyment to SEGA's day glo world) and got down to business.

Now I know Sumo Digital have a strong tradition of converting SEGA IP to home console but in this instance they seemed to have lost the plot.

All the classic ingredients are there. The demo gives you one track based on Sonic's Green Hill Zone. There's a roster of fairly well know SEGA characters and much like Dantes Inferno has been 'inspired' by God of War only someone whose been in prison for the last 20 years would fail to spot the inspiration here. There's homing red rockets. Green rockets that fire straight ahead and bounce and even a blue rocket that homes in on the leader.

Just like in Mario Kart you can press the bumper button to hop in the air and begin a drift. But where as in Mario Kart this leads to a precise test of skill as you balance the drift and earn a boost for completing one here the kart turns through almost 90 degrees taking all the subtly out of it.

It's also proper hard. Even when I'd managed to get a boost start I only managed to finish fourth. I got as high as second before a red she.. sorry I mean rocket sent me spinning and I was down to eight. Now one of the joys of Mario Kart is that you can go from first to last and vice versa within a lap. Here though it's almost impossible to claw your way back. Even when I earned sonics super star power up (he actually leaps out of his Kart and you hammer the 'A' button to turbo him along) I only managed to make up one place, over taking Ryu (sadly not in his trademark forklift truck in the demo) only for him to over take me on the very next corner. You're constantly being over taken by faster AI and pummeled with rockets and bombs.. the frustration factor was high.

Suffice to say I'll be waiting for either reviews or bargain bins before I pick this up.

Still while I was playing that Yazuka 3, also a SEGA game, was downloading and installing on my PS3.

Now this is more like it. I should say that while I'm aware of the previous two games on PS2 I've never played one. I was instantly impressed with the game. The visuals are hardly state of the art. The character models are reasonable but the city itself looks a bit meh. Especially given how close in the camera is meaning it's not even having to render a huge draw distance. But it more than makes up for that in atmosphere. It's night in the demo and the city is lit up in lots of gaudy neon and full of hussle.. Just like I'd imagine Tokyo is.

I'd imagine the full game breaks you in a bit more gently and perhaps has some on screen tutorials that help you learn the combat? Here after a conversation with some rival gangsters you're straight into a fight with multiple bad guys. I was soon knocking some heads together and using bar stools and what ever else I could find to kick some ass.

Like GTA IV the main character uses his mobile to get information and access e.mails and the like and I was then off to find a singing joint and meet a young lady. The rhythmn action singing and clapping was tough but again really captured that kind of cheesy japanese enthusiasm.. there's a kind of Hard Boiled feel to it all.

Another battle and it's all over.. but it certainly left me intrigued and wanting to explore some more. I'm assuming that there's a lot of slow exploring and chatting mixed in with bouts of intense violence?

So a tail of two halfs really.

Tuesday 16 February 2010

The "Complete" List

Left 4 Dead 2 - (All Campaigns)
Mass Effect
Lego Rock Band - Story Mode
Darksiders - Easy
BAYONETTA - Easy Automatic
Lego Batman
Call of Duty: Classic - Normal

This XBLA game was included with my Prestige Edition of Modern Warfare 2 and I was intrigued to play it seeing as I'd completed every other Call of Duty game on my 360.

Considering that it's now a fairly basic looking game and it's installed to the HHD the loading times are terrible. The bar takes forever and then there's a big gap before the last section finishes. I'm also assuming that graphically nothing has been done to sharpen it up for todays huge flat screen HD TVs as it looks pretty awful.

Having said that you can feel the Infinty Ward heritage and it is a good solid game. Actually the first thing you notice is an old fashioned health bar and health packs dotted about. Very old school. The next thing you'll notice is the brutal spacing of the checkpoints. If they register at all combined with the the fact that when it does to choose to autosave at a checkpoint for you you'll respawn with the exact same health you had before you die. It can lead to some teeth grinding frustration.

It actually managed to autosave me, with a tiny bit of health, as I entered a room with two Nazi's gunning straight for me. After many restarts (Happily there is no reloading. It puts you straight back into the action if you want) I worked out that if I started pushing the control stick forward before the game loaded I could just make it through a doorway and to relative safety. It wasn't great for the old blood pressure.

There where many memorable missions and set pieces though and I can see, despite the clunky AI and graphics, why it had the impact it did. I'm not sure whether I can recommend it whole heartedly though. Games don't age too well.

Purchase Power

Inspired by a retrospective article in 360 magazine (Called "Club 360". It's a bit like Time extend but with input from the forumites) I picked up a copy of Hitman: Blood Money from GAME for £12.99 used.

I've never played a Hitman game before and I liked what I'd read. However for the what I think is the first time ever my 360 wont run it. I actually read the manual and it does clearly state the game only runs in 60Hz. My 360 is connected to the TV by a HDMI lead and the TV clearly states (A little box comes up when you change channels) that it's running in 1080p 60Hz yet the game tries to load and then informs me it's not capable of running at 50Hz. The instructions for the game don't marry up with the setting options my 360 shows me.. I've no idea what to do except maybe take it back to GAME, After half term, with a picture showing the TV setting and the error message and see what they suggest.

Unless my regular readers can help?

Sunday 14 February 2010

The "Complete" List

Left 4 Dead 2 - (All Campaigns)
Mass Effect
Lego Rock Band - Story Mode
Darksiders - Easy
BAYONETTA - Easy Automatic
Lego Batman

I only paid £10.50 for this and I still feel ripped off. The campaign is criminally short. Even allowing for playing as Hero and Villains the whole things over in about 4 hours. Apparently I've only completed 18.5% of the game but I'm really not interested in replaying the game for collectables when the basics are so broken.

This is the third LEGO game I've played and it's really time Travellers Tales addressed some basic issues which just aren't forgivable anymore. The infinite lives is like applying a sticking plaster to a broken leg. The controls need sharpening up. Most of all the AI on your partner is in dire need of addressing. He can't even cover you when you're building something that's vital to progression.

Must try harder.

Saturday 13 February 2010

The "Complete" List

Left 4 Dead 2 - (All Campaigns)
Mass Effect
Lego Rock Band - Story Mode
Darksiders - Easy
BAYONETTA - Easy Automatic



Bonkers!

Friday 12 February 2010

The "Complete" List

Left 4 Dead 2 - (All Campaigns)
Mass Effect
Lego Rock Band - Story Mode
Darksiders - Easy

Not a huge amount to add to what I wrote in the 'Currently Playing' post. Generally a solid if not outstanding game. For me the last three or four hours was a bit of a slog. I didn't particularly enjoy the last dungeon and there's a bit of cheap padding near the end.

I certainly didn't feel, Once I had all the powers available, the need to go and hoover up all the different collectables. As I was playing on Easy I didn't need to and the final boss, despite some cheap energy zapping attacks, went down fairly easily.

Sunday 7 February 2010

Unfinished / Sympathy?

Inspired by Nish and his interesting and entertaining lists of games he's finished each year regular readers will know that I've become somewhat obsessed with a tally of my own yearly finishings.. Last year was somewhat inspired with a lot of games finished and a lot of old games dragged off the shelf and polished off to add to the tally... However recently I feel my enthusiasm for finishing games may have began to wane again...

Let me explain. I've been a game for over 25 years ago since interactive experience required me to press the space key on my ZX81 to drop a single 'Bomb' per pass of the screen on a 'Building' in the hope that you'd flatten all the buildings before you crashed into one in a kind of.. taliban simulator. In all those years I've mainly played until I was bored or frustrated and then moved on. Of course that has meant some games (Hello F1 2000 and Gran Turismo 2) that I've spend countless hours on without fear of 'achievements' or 'completion' just for the fun of playing.

At the moment I'm very close to finishing Darksiders which has already over stayed it's welcome. I'm about 3/4 of the way through Dragons Quest V on my DS. I'm two missions from the end of inFamous
. I'm on the last mission of Just Cause and the last boss battle of Ninja Blade. I've made a good deal of progress on Bayonetta and if we include downloadable games I'm very near the end of CoD: Classic and I need to collect a few more jewels to unlock the last boss battle on Pixel Junk: Shooter.

So should I crack on and try and finish these games up? Or should I admit that there's not enough time in the day and there's other games to play? Is the list that important? You decide.

Monday 1 February 2010

The "Complete" List

Left 4 Dead 2 - (All Campaigns)
Mass Effect
Lego Rock Band - Story Mode

I really enjoyed this. You'd think the Lego franchise wouldn't really mesh with the Rock Band and all you'd be left with is the bitter after taste of a cheap cash in. True there's no online multiplayer.. But that did mean I completed the whole thing on my own.. All at Medium difficulty too. (I think I might plateau here .. the orange note is pretty tough for my ham fists.)

The first great thing about is the set list. Apart from one duff Blink 182 song (are there any other kind?) every track is either good, really good or an FM classic that you'd know but probably couldn't name the artist. Either way they're fun to play. The Lego idea works well to. You're custom band is able to customise they're crib with unlockable Lego items and music equipment, There's Lego vehicles and cool Rock Challenges (What's not to love about playing Ray Parker Jr's classic anthem to clear a haunted house of Ghosts?).

Purchase Power

My Sony headphones gave up the ghost on Friday. They're not that old but the iPod is in and out of my bag a lot and I wind them around the iPod to keep them neat. I was listening with one ear in when I changed to the other ear it had stopped working. Of course nothing these days is made to be fixed and I couldn't take the ear phone apart with out breaking it. One of the wires inside had dropped off the solder. Anyhow I decided to do a tiny bit of research on getting some decent replacement ones.

The What Hi-Fi website recommended Sennheiser CX 300 IIs as their 'budget buy'. Play.com listed them at £30 which, for in ear headphones, is pretty high end in my books! Still the post can take ages to get here so I decided to have a wander to HMV. There are many nice things about living on a small-ish island.. Retail choice isn't one of them. So imagine my surprise when HMV not only had them in a choice of colours (I got white cos it's kind of an "I've got an iPod" colour even though my iPod is a black and grey classic.) they also had £5 off matching Play.com's price. Sold!

I also wanted Hatful of Hollow by The Smiths having found out that a lot of the well known songs on there weren't the traditional single version but live BBC archive versions. They also had that! (Again a rarity in non-chart stuff) but it was in a 2 for £10 offer. Of course I would then be spending an extra £4 to save a £1 but I can rarely resist a 2 for £10 offer on CDs. Still, lunch time was nearly over.. I was in the S section and I spied a Steely Dan Best of Double CD which seemed like good value. The kind of thing that I probably wouldn't want to listen to in it's entirety but I hope will enrich my iPod shuffle experiences.

All in all one of my better local shopping experiences.