The O/C Gamer

It’s been an odd week.

A week of creeping horror, with the dawning realisation that my aging skills may not be enough to drag me through the Hard difficulty on Bionic Commando: Rearmed, let alone the Achievement-linked Super Hard mode. Hard is proving to be… well, ninja hard: there’s very little room for error, with three hits killing you in levels that seem to be more heavily populated with bullets. I’m still enjoying it, but in short bursts; often I’ll fire up the 360, figure out a quick route through a level to the boss fight, and then get absolutely belted. Try again, same result. Switch off 360 in frustration. Turn it on ten minutes later for another go. Repeat.

A week of lost love, with my very first 360 controller’s thumbstick disintegrating beneath me. This was the controller that helped me get most of my significant gaming victories; Ridge Racer 6. Space Giraffe. Crackdown. And now, after suffering years of my abuse, she’s gone. I only wish I could tell her how much I miss her, but… y’know… gaming time is precious. She’d have wanted me concentrating on the next Achievement, not moping around her grave.

A week of unwanted excessive effort, with my Wii Sports practice yielding a Gold Medal in the Bowling Power Throws, and an unfortunate Platinum in the Boxing Dodging. That Platinum will gnaw away at my mind for years, I can tell… I’d happily revert to a backed-up save of my status to under-achieve a Gold in its place, if it wasn’t risking my Boxing rank (740-ish… but Tennis is up to 1740-ish!) And, of course, excessive vigour in the remaining Bowling training modes leads to a dodgy shoulder and elbow.

A week of returning to old friends. Beset with doubts of my own abilities, bereft with injuries, I just wanted something to crash in front of the telly with on a drowsy Sunday. Wind Waker seemed like a perfect fit, and before I knew it bedtime had arrived, I’d forgotten to eat dinner, and I had to sadly bid the Deluxe Picto Box goodnight. I love that game - the wonderful pacing (compared to Twilight Princess, anyway), the gorgeous presentation… and the OCD pandering of it. I will fill that Nintendo Figurine Gallery, oh yes I will.

Oh dear. I think I may have messed myself. I had no idea Bayonetta’s lovely black bodysuit was so… transient.

You can just sense one of the Achievements now… “Execute every combo - 50 GS”.

At the start of the week, I was feeling pretty good about myself: I’d knocked Burnout Paradise off The List, and I was snaffling regular Achievements from the purportedly difficult Bionic Commando: Rearmed. My plan was to hammer away at a few of BC’s Challenge Rooms, a spot of current project N2O, and a little bit of Geometry Wars practice. So, how did I do?

Ermmm…

Hmmm.

I started positively enough, clearing four or five Challenge Rooms a night. The first dozen or so were straightforward enough, although it’s a bit peturbing to check the Friend’s Leaderboard after successfully clearing a “tricky” level and seeing that a mate completed the same Room in one-fifth the attempts. But suddenly the Rooms started getting… well, impossible. I resorted to YouTube, awash with videos of people completing these rooms in stupid-quick times with maximum rank. I see - and replicate - some new tricks, and eventually the Rooms become straightforward again; tricky, sure, but nothing practice can’t overcome. Well, practice and 180-ish attempts. I kid you not.

And suddenly, it’s Friday night and there’s only six of the Challenge Rooms outstanding. A couple of them are quite silly; number 55, in particular, leaves me absolutely bemused; no videos or descriptions make the slightest bit of sense to me. I mean, check this out:

Start by just dropping down to the platform below. Face the left wall to grapple the first block. Once you’ve done that, wait till you’re at the height of your swing going right. Press down to do the arc jump and at the height of this jump, throw your grapple at the white block. If you hit this successfully, you’ll pass through the wall. Once you do, press down to let go and then immediately do a vertical grapple back up to the white block. Pull yourself up, press down to let go and immediately press B to do a regular diagonal grapple so that you start swinging. Then just hold right to fall off and finish the stage.

I watch, I read, and I try… and, after the 150th attempt with not a single second grapple connecting, I think: fuck this.

And, just like that, my Gaming Mojo disappears.

Saturday saw me listless, not willing to commit to any gaming time at all. Most would consider that normal, not undesired, behavior, but to this O/C Gamer it feels something like the Kiss Of Death… how can the psychological weight of The List be reduced if I’m not working to lessen it? But I reluctantly decide to give myself a bit of time, and spend the day catching up on anime (yet another habit stereotyped by the thirty-eight year old male). Sunday starts much the same, but a brisk walk through the parklands at least inspires me to fire up one of my Go-To Games.

I’ve got a couple of Go-To Games, games that I can use as mood shifters, as comfort food for my thumbs: Jet Set Radio Future is the perfect medicine for when I’m feeling sick-and-sorry for myself. Speed-running The Library in Halo raises my confidence when it’s shot. When everything feels like a grind, New Super Mario Brothers reminds me that games are, indeed, fun. But today I opted for a spot of tennis in Wii Sports.

And it was just the ticket.

I love Wii Sports tennis. Now, I’m not good at it (with a Rank hovering around 1400, whereas the EliteScores high is 2400), but I find it a great palate cleanser. A few games, and I’m feeling perky again; suddenly, I wonder where I’m at with my Wii Sports goals.

My targets are pretty simple: all Pro status on the games, all Gold Medals on the training levels (and yes, I am aware that there are Platinum Medals… I just don’t think they’re a reasonable goal). A quick review tells me that the only Pro rank I’m missing is in the boxing, and there are eight Golds missing: all the bowling, all the boxing, and a couple of the golf. A couple of hours sees my boxing Rank leap from 200 to 600-ish, a Silver and a Bronze where there was previously none in the boxing training, and a lucky Gold in the golf Target Practice.

Oh, and a wrenched shoulder.

That is why I don’t play more Wii Sports.

So - it’s been a fortnight since I last wrote (due in no small part with a little distraction called “four years of tax returns”), and in that time it’s been bedlam in the gaming world… or, as it’s more popularly known, E3. And whilst a large number of the “big” announcements had been leaked beforehand (the PSP Go, Team Ico’s The Last Guardian footage), there were still a couple of surprises: New Super Mario Brothers Wii looks fantastic, and Super Mario Galaxy 2 arrived without any prior fanfare to offer more of the same - which is most definitely a good thing. Just Cause 2 got a lot of positive press, Brütal Legend earned some new fans (and an idiotic lawsuit from Activision), and Halo: Reach was announced.

And then there was this girl:

I don’t want to appear as if I get sucked in by any game featuring curvy vixens, wrapped in a thin veneer of “she’s just a strong female character, honest” justification for ludicrous over-the-top overt sexuality. No, it takes a bit more to have me drooling… and Bayonetta’s batshit-insane antics have me sold. The gameplay looks to be the type of Japanese insanity that will leave it on The List forever, but I can’t not buy it; visuals are amazing, the character designs wonderfully bizarre, and the whole aesthetic just makes me well up with gamelust.

The arse, tits, and specs sure help, too.

*Sigh*

Seeing Halo 3: ODST in various presentations encouraged me to round up a group of friends to go Achievement hunting in Halo 3. Ten “players” (four of them, strangely enough, on my 360) in a little social group yielded us the perfect opportunity to grab a wad of the Mythic Achievements… and a two week EXP-ban from Bungie. Oh well.

But the big (bigbigbig) news was the release of Burnout Paradise’s Big Surf Island. Now, I don’t mind admitting I was like a little schoolgirl just prior to its release: giggling to myself in anticipation, hitting F5 to reload the Marketplace page online every couple of seconds and, whilst it was loading, refreshing the 360 Marketplace tab. It finally appeared, and my release vigilance rewarded me with a speedy download… and then I was there. On The Island.

And it was wonderful.

Big Surf Island reminded me of everything that was glorious about Paradise: the big jumps, the endless distractions, the beautiful handling. Some UK friends eventually came online, joined in, and we must have burned that Island for six or seven hours that night… and the next night, I went back for more, even with all the Achievements, events, smash gates, and billboards wrapped up. I’ve belted through the Island Challenges at least seven times now; I find myself driving to the next location before the current Challenge is finished.

Casting my eyes over the Island Stats, I noticed that I’d pretty much OCDed the add-on… except for one thing. “Vehicles: 8/9″. A bit of research revealed that final car is unlocked when the game is Complete… which, in Criterion’s thankfully symbiotic manner of speech, matched my definition. Everything done, 500/500 Challenges.

And there I was, sitting on 478/500 Challenges like a schmuck.

They were all Bike Challenges, too; four- to seven-players. Figuring there may be four-to-seven other people out there thinking like I do, I ducked into Bike mode and created an Open Freeburn session in Paradise. And waited.

For the first hour or so, not much happened; people would appear, and I’d have enough time to mouth their words for them - “this isn’t the Island! and what’s this motorbike?” - before they disappeared. By the end of the second hour, though, I seemed to have a party of four who were actually desperate for Challenges. Shy as we all were, there were no headsets in use, which made for some pretty cool bits of silent co-operation and camaraderie. Hours three and four saw numbers drift around a core group of six, until suddenly I realised that I had one Challenge left…

One. Challenge. Left.

A six player Challenge. And I had a party of eight.

I figured that this was my time to be an Xbox LIVE prick. I selected the two mouthy newcomers (one of which seemed to have a vocabulary that consisted solely of “fuck”, “bitch”, and “nigger”) and kicked them out of the game, then quickly started that Final Challenge. It was a doddle, and there was a palpable sense of relief when I saw “500/500″ pop onto the screen. I opened the party back up, and started taking requests off other players until I could take the mouthy randoms no more. I killed the session, scooted back into Island Car mode, and looked at my new - and final - acquisition: the Diamond P12. I painted it a soothing pink.

And then I realised: Burnout Paradise is off The List.

And I felt very, very pleased with myself :)

Later, I fired up Bionic Commando: Rearmed for the first time. I’d tried the demo after its appearance during last year’s Summer of Arcade, and had put it on the To Buy list; the recent price-drop (to 400 MS Points) made it a steal, regardless of the apparent difficulty of the Achievements. And, two levels in on Easy, I was getting increasingly frustrated; the controls felt alien and obstructive.

But suddenly, something in my head clicked - and the bionic arm became second nature. I breezed through the rest of the game… but I was very aware (by the presence of awkward white blocks) that Easy was… well, deliberately easy. The final level looks nigh-on impossible without the safety of the white blocks; I’m not looking forward to Super Hard difficulty at all.

It’s a lovely game, though: it exudes polish, and it a visual delight. The vector cannon upgrade is positively delicious, and there’s a neat aural and visual surprise in the last level that had me grinning like a Cheshire cat.

Next week? More of Bionic Commando: Rearmed’s Challenge Rooms. More Geometry Wars practise. And a return to game du jour, N2O.

And some lustful thoughts involving Bayonetta.

Being Australian, there are times where I don’t want to fuck around with words. Hence the title of this post, because this week’s gaming has been a real mixed bag.

Having wrapped up Master Quest last week, I needed a new project; and, being mindful of my New Year’s Gaming Resolutions, I figure I’d best start work on the Playstation side of things. To that end, I started N2O.

N2O is an interesting one; I bought it, of course, because of its links with my 8-bit past. Written by Tony Crowther (responsible for the first Monty Mole game, and the Loco / Suicide Express / Black Thunder trio of near-identical games, amongst others), it’s very much a love-child of Tempest and one of Crowther’s earlier games, Phobia. Fly along the rim of undulating tunnels, shoot bugs. Easy.

But, as a shooter, it’s got a bit of depth. There’s a great speed-up mechanic (the more you shoot, the faster you travel), and there’s a certain puzzle-solving element to it, too. But it’s blackened somewhat by (seemingly) random weapon drops and a tendency to obscure your view with too many twists in the tunnel. Still, I’m having a fair bit of fun with it at the moment; I’ve clocked it on Easy, and am about a quarter of the way through Normal. Whether or not I require Hard for Completion is yet to be decided.

But the problem with N2O (and a lot of other twitchy shooters) is that I can’t concentrate on them for long stretches; so off into the vaults I went, checking out a few other games for the Next Project. I fired up Bujingai - again - and got nowhere on the boss I’m stuck on - again. I pootled around in the wacky world of Katamari Damacy, looked at all the items I need to collect to satisfy my OCD, and quickly moved on to Frequency - Harmonix’s original rhythm action game. Unfortunately, the use of the word “rhythm” there makes me completely unable to play it.

Hoping for a cheap win, I dug out my Nuon and threw the unknown Ballistic on. Oh shit - it’s Zuma. I fucking hate Zuma. Nine of the twenty-five levels was all I could bear; the Completion Requirement for that one will be All Levels On Easy, I think. And that’s kinda fair enough, given the harder skill levels just increase the speed.

Then there was a little bit of Wind Waker, but I turned that off after an hour or two… I’m wary of burning out on Zelda, as I did when I first encountered the games (when I played through Ocarina and Wind Waker, back-to-back, in a two week holiday of gaming where I rarely left the house). I fired up the 360 for the first time in two months, grabbed all the Burnout Paradise and Halo 3 add-ons that had been released in my absence, and then scored a couple of easy skull-finding Achievements in Halo 3.

Finally, I pulled my finger out and finished GTA: Chinatown Wars. There’s still oodles left to do in-game - I only finished with 81.15% - but it’s still the annoying experience that I remembered. It reminds me somewhat of Heroes or Dexter on TV; fantastic openings that convince you that they’re groundbreakers, before extended exposure reveals a tepid unsatisfying grind. Sigh.

So.

Two consecutive Sunday nights at home for the first time since March. And, wouldn’t you know it, I wind up falling annoyingly sick last Thursday. “Annoyingly” in the debilitating sense: unable to concentrate for long periods due to a fogginess in my skull, I found myself stuck in the shitty position where I couldn’t work, couldn’t read, and - more importantly for this blog - couldn’t game. Most such afflictions last three days with me, and this instance was no different; I awoke this Sunday morning with a clearing head, and the drizzly weather outside made me think of only one thing: fishing.

But let’s take a step back.

Prior to falling ill, the week was all about Zelda, and my parallel playthroughs of Ocarina of Time and its close cousin, Master Quest. Progress had been steady on both; most side-quests wrapped up, dungeons falling relatively quickly, referring to a walkthrough for only the most troubling of Gold Skulltalas in Master Quest. I intended to step through the pair dungeon-by-dungeon, but I’d often skip ahead on one, then overshoot on the other, eventually wrapping up the bulk of the reworked rendition a good three dungeons before the original. A bit of catchup, and suddenly all I had left were the problem points, the bits I knew were always going to be a problem: the Hylian Loach. The Gerudo Archery.

And here, if you hadn’t already guessed, is where the title of this post comes in.

I had really suffered over the Gerudo archery challenge when I’d 100%-ed my Collector’s Edition copy of Ocarina; many thousands of Rupees were spent before finally hitting 1560 points, just enough to acquire the Biggest Quiver. This week, though, my first attempt yielded 1430 points. Another four attempts netted a round 1500, a new Quiver, and a raised eyebrow of incredulous disbelief. Sensing a mental zone, I swapped to the other version; this one took thirty-six attempts, but most of those were aborted very soon after acknowledging that I’d buggered up by missing too many pots at the start of the run.

Somehow, my fingers had remembered all that training late last year, twitchy controls be damned. Needless to say, I was pretty bloody happy.

And that brings me to today. Dopey, drizzle… fishing.

I’d blown a huge chunk of time netting my only Hylian Loach. So imagine my surprise when the first one was landed within an hour, with the second taking a tiny bite less.

And there I sat, somewhat hungover with sickness, amazed that everything just seemed to be coming together. Another hour of filling my pockets with Rupees, bombchus, and Deku Seeds, and it was time to tackle Ganondorf… who, along with his über-incarnation, fell in the most emphatic, one-sided battles I’ve ever had against them. One of the Ganon battles didn’t even yield a scratch.

And so, surprisingly, I deem Master Quest to be complete. Sure, there’s a troublesome chest (not containing anything important, probably just a recovery heart) on 3F of the Fire Temple - eastern-most room, southern-most chest - that I can’t figure out, but… Off The List.

Compared to the original, it didn’t feel as complete, as rounded; dungeons didn’t feel as holistic, with enemies sparse in favour of puzzles that verged on the annoyingly obscure. Luckily, my side-by-side playthroughs allowed me the opportunity to experience the original again; and, let’s face it, it’s bloody amazing. And it continues to surprise with all its little details; today, for the first time, I noticed the tinge of sadness in the closing movies, with King Zora and Mido sitting together lamenting the (perceived) losses of their loved ones. And, again, I marveled at the size and completeness of Ocarina’s world.

And, at the end of the day, this is the third time I’ve 100%-ed Ocarina of Time this year… which makes me a bit sad really. Emotionally sad, sure, because it will likely be my last visit to Hyrule this year; but completing the same game three times in one year? Bit of a worry, that.

Four weeks since my last post. Four weeks, three of those spent at a construction camp an hour out of Karratha, tethered to the Interwebs - and hence, my sanity - by a satellite connection that was lucky to hold 5KB/s for a solid minute. And so, with the exception of this weekend (grinningly punctuated by my annual dose of Eurovision kitsch and bloc favouritism), my gaming has been sporadic - and mostly handheld based.

And by “handheld,” of course, I mean “DS.” The PSP has only tempted me with Patapon, Loco Roco, and (more importantly) the potential for a powerful emulation platform. Prior to the DS, my only other handhelds were also Nintendo in nature: old style Game & Watches (Helmet & Donkey Kong). But I digress, distracted by history and Sweden’s off-key Eurovision entry.

Just before my last painful journey to site, I picked up my first-ever entry into the Grand Theft Auto franchise: GTA: Chinatown Wars. And early impressions were fantastic - I loved the open world, the presentation, the scope. After 13 hours (56% complete), however, the lustre has most certainly been lost: where I initially thought the writing was mature, it now feels hopelessly juvenile; where I once savoured the morsel-sized missions, it now feels like an annoying grind. If this is the franchise that defines modern gaming, then I’m not really sure I want in; an especially ironic comment, given my undying love of Crackdown, which owes so much to GTA’s heritage. But where Crackdown is wonderfully refined and constrained in its maturity, GTA: CW feels like it’s trying too hard to be Adult. Technically impressive and fun in small doses, sure - and it most definitely deserves to sell more than its reported numbers. But it’s hardly the most compelling thing on the DS.

Compare and contrast with another recent DS acquisition - Soul Bubbles. Seemingly victim to an unsupportive import policy (it was available in Australia for all of two weeks, I reckon), I had to get a UK mate to snaffle this for me (Amazon UK had it for a paltry 6 quid). And it’s a cracking game - utterly unique control mechanism, fun without frustration, a perfect little package. It’s shameful that this has gone so unnoticed.

Other site-based gaming has been limited to more Sight Training (which has proven to be quite enjoyable in a minigame-ish way) and Rub Rabbits (which leads me to believe that practice may, indeed, may - eventually - make perfect). The last couple of days has presented opportunities to get back into my Zelda Master Questing, with a couple of today’s dungeons surprising with their re-jigged ease; both Dodongo’s Cavern and the much-feared Jabu-Jabu’s Belly felt much easier in their Master Quest renditions.

To be honest, though, my mind has been more focussed on a game that’s still some months off: Bayonetta. Ever since I first laid eyes on the initial teaser trailer, I’ve been gagging for more goodies from Platinum - and they’ve delivered some delicious tidbits on the complexities of modelling Bayonetta’s arse. Now, I’m a bit of a fan of a bit of female protagonist posterior, and Bayonetta backs that up with some nutball looking action - I can’t wait.

The near future, however, is (annoyingly) still dictated by work - do I have more lovely Zelda in my future, or am I going to be grinding more GTA: CW in airplanes? It’s pretty much a day-by-day proposition at the moment, but hopefully there’s only another four-to-six weeks of this flux left. I want a chance to feel at home again, bed myself back into my old gaming habits; I haven’t turned on my 360 since March!

And so, after 6 weeks away from this blog, I returned - only to be shipped off to site for work. And site, in this case, was north-of-nowhere in Karratha, living in a project camp - the likes of which I’ve never encountered before. With nothing on the cards except working 12-hour days, eat at the mess (not as bad as I’d feared), and drink at the cheap wet-mess, the few hours up my sleeve every night were available to catch up on all the video podcasts I’d been downloading in the last five years… and to get a spot of gaming in.

The thing is, I wasn’t about to drag a console up to a mining site - which left me with the DS and the PC to choose from. I started off with my much-belated attack on Tim Schafer’s Full Throttle. Created prior to the glorious Grim Fandango, I was expecting clever writing, silly puzzles, and an all-round solid package - after all, Fandango gave me four full solid days of delight. But, whilst the writing lived up to its end of the deal (creating caricatures which managed to feel solid, with a splendidly quippy script), I found the SCUMM-based puzzles to be of the “click everywhere and hope” variety. In particular, the final section of the game unfortunately lingers in my memory, because its key was to click (essentially) offscreen - and that type of trick shits me right off. Couple annoying puzzles with a short game (something like ten hours, I reckon), and you can colour me - sadly - disappointed. It may have been just worth the ten bucks it cost me, if only to see Schafer’s progression… but Grim Fandango also only cost ten bucks, and is oodles better in every respect.

A day of airplanes and airports had me home for three days over Easter and, desperate for some retail therapy, I picked up a new Nintendo DSi. The new matte finish feels lovely in the hand, but is tempered by the fact that the serial number sticker breaks up the finish under my fingers; despite some reservations with the new interface, it’s proven itself to be a great acquisition… although I recently found the receipt for my original DS - AU$188, whereas three years later the DSi was AU$299. And, as I’ve previously mentioned, the very idea of a freebie game horrifies me - despite trying to barter for some Points Cards instead, I had to plump for Sight Training; another blight on The List, though hopefully not a long-lasting one. The DSi has also got me looking at Electroplankton and Rub Rabbits again, too…

Finally, one of the videos I consumed whilst on-site was a “History of Zelda” documentary (acquired, possibly dodgily, through Zentendo). Seemingly released around the same time as Wind Waker, it features interviews with a bunch of Nintendo fans and luminaries (including Shigsy himself, and Eiji Aonuma - who, I was somewhat disappointed to discover, directed both Majora’s and Wind Waker). And it’s a great doco, but it had the effect of stoking the flames of passion for Zelda again… and so, on Easter Saturday, I broke out my Limited Edition of Wind Waker, popped the bonus disc in the Wii, and started playing through both Ocarina (again) and Master Quest, side-by-side… and I admit to being surprised just how much harder Master Quest is compared to the original: even the very first dungeon offers a significant challenge. So, with essentially two Ocarina playthroughs being attempted at the same time, and further opportunities for work-related travel in the near future, it’s pretty safe to say that the rest of April is taken care of, game-wise. And May. And probably June, too. Bloody Gerudo archery.

And so I return from my self-imposed gaming exile, having seen a lazy 103 Fringe shows. Pity I’ve only written up half of them :}

In the five weeks since I last posted, I have got some gaming in - the Prince of Persia DLC was obtained and conquered, and proved to be a fair step up in difficulty over the original. Some great exposition (if you went digging for it), some lazy character design, but all-in-all a worthy 800-point purchase (on XBLA - no idea what it is for you PS3 peeps, and PC PoP fans miss out altogether). And towards the end of the Fringe, I got sucked back into the glorious world of New Super Mario Brothers on the DS - and what a magnificent game it is. Utterly, utterly fabulous.

I was surprised, though, how much I hankered for a bit of gaming during the first few weeks of my “holiday” - until I gave in to Prince of Persia, I was wandering home from theatrical sojourns each night feeling a genuine yearning for a bit of gamage… something, anything. Christ, I was even considering digging up FreQuency for a bit of a bash. Once the Fringe was over, though, it was on for young and old; Geometry Wars practice has recommenced, with an eye to getting my skill levels up, and already I’m seeing promising progress (not bad for someone who celebrated his 38th birthday a few weeks back). I’ve dug up a decent copy of Tempest 2000 for the Jaguar (my first copy had a dodgy EEPROM, hindering progress somewhat), and I’ve progressed to Level 64 so far… but getting beyond that may be an issue, since I’ve yet to make any impact on it at all.

But the big story (for me) has been Majora’s Mask. I was having a real problem even firing the game up; it’s left such an unsavoury taste in my mouth that I just couldn’t face it. Eventually, I pushed myself into playing it again, if only to start practicing the shitty Town Shooting Gallery minigame - which had all the hallmarks of being another Gerudo Fortress archery pain-in-the-arse. Surprisingly, I managed to nail the Gallery for a perfect score, yielding my desired Heart Piece, well before lunch today… looking at the clock, I bit my lip, grabbed a FAQ, and finished the bastard off. 100% complete (all collectibles), two saves - one penultimate and one with all Masks. And that game is finally out of my life.

I know there’s a zillion people out there who loved Majora’s Mask - but it really, really didn’t click with me. At all. Sure, there’s some nice bits - the beauty of the final level, the Kafei & Anju quest - but I found so much of the core game to be cumbersome, clunky, and oppressive, that I couldn’t bring myself to admit that I enjoyed it. Pretty impressive to think that the whole game fit in 64MB, though.

Just a quick note to say that, starting tomorrow, my annual binge on my other hobby - the Adelaide Fringe Festival - begins. And that means I’ll have precious little time to write anything non-Fringe-related, let alone play any games!

Please stay subscribed & keep reading - I’ll only be gone a month or so, and (if you were, like, really desperate for something to do) you can follow my exploits on my other blog, Festival Freak.

(It’s OK, I’m not a Street Fighter fan anyway ;)

A return visit by my UK friends led to a rather drunken flurry of gaming on Monday night - the Resident Evil 5 demo, the R-Type Dimensions demo, Ikaruga, Dash of Destruction, and EDF 2017 all got a look in.

My gaming pal, Andy - prior to his backpacking odyssey, he was quite the prolific GS accumulator - was keen to check out Resi 5. I’ve never played any of the series, even the “second best game ever” (according to Edge) Resident Evil 4… “survival horror”, as a genre, doesn’t appeal to me in the least. Mostly because I know I’d have trouble actually watching the screen, such is my scaredy-cat nature (I couldn’t play through the demo of Bioshock, remember?) So it was quite a treat to have a Resi fan accompany me as we co-opped the demo levels.

Our opinions couldn’t have been further apart, either - he loved the graphics, I thought it looked depressingly dry and dusty. He loved the action, I felt hamstrung and helpless. He felt immediately at home, I didn’t have the slightest fucking clue what I was doing - though once I figured out how to knife zombies, I was good. For about ten seconds. Before they ate my brains.

Erm… no. Not buying that one.

R-Type Dimensions will also remain unpurchased; I was never really a fan of it in the arcade (though I recall applying plenty of blood, sweat, and tears to get through the bastard on freeplay during a lock-in at the TimeZone around the corner from my old Uni digs). And whilst the XBLA version certainly looks pretty, and plays faithfully, I can’t deal with the psychological weight of it. Christ, Ikaruga’s bad enough.

Apart from the abovementioned - and a Valentine’s Day bash through Paradise City with my online chums - nothing else really got played this week… except Majora’s Mask. Which, it must be said, has turned into a mechanical sufferance. The Water Temple (or whatever it’s called) has been conquered, all the fairies therein have been captured, and I step-by-stepped a walkthrough to do it. I’m not proud of that, but the sad truth is that I no longer care; I just want that game off my List soon and forever.

Once upon a time, in a generation of computers several orders of magnitude less grunty than those we enjoy now, ran a game called Prince of Persia. Like its predecessor, Karateka, it was stunning in motion an utterly, interminably boring for me to play. Not enough aliens and shooting and monstrous scores, y’see (oh how those words make me feel old now). But when the Prince of Persia franchise was rebooted in 2003 (with The Sands of Time), popular and critical acclaim led me to at least stickybeak into the demo on the Xbox. Looked lovely - still - and had sweet controls, but a rumoured difficulty spike (and a pile of other games on The List) stopped me short of purchase. Later games in the series allegedly detrimentally tinkered with the gameplay mechanic, according to trusted sources, so the franchise dropped off my radar.

And then Ubisoft Montreal announced another entry in the Prince of Persia series. And lo, did the internet have a field day! “The graphics look stupid and kiddy,” said the fictitious xI HardCoreShooter Ix (amongst others). After release, MetaCritic was filled with comments on the lack of difficulty, the fact you couldn’t die, and the broken combat.

And, in a marked change for internet forum fanboys everywhere, they’re all right - but that actually makes the game more appealing to me.

Opening with a suitably broken and abstract movie, The Prince (who is never actually identified as such) emerges from the desert, and plunges into a short and simple tutorial section. Within minutes, you know all that’s required of you - the difficulty curve is pretty flat, and there’s very little to break up the wonderful free-running platforming and occasional combat. Well, three puzzle sections, and the odd stop to chat with your off-sider, but that’s it.

My first glimpse of the protagonist annoyed me, for The Prince’s head scarf is annoyingly off-kilter. That drove me mad. I’m arsed if I know how a poncey, buffed-up thieving Prince could bounce around the place with one eye almost completely covered - surely that would affect his sense of spatial awareness, of balance? It doesn’t seem to bother Our Prince, though, as he hooks up with his hot magical playmate, Elika.

Now, I like female game characters. Really, I do. They don’t all have to look like Vanessa Z Schneider (although some of the Burnout Bikes girls do), but a decent, strong female character is always a treat. And, whilst Elika is easy on the eye, I’m not sure that her character design is what I’d call strong - she readily morphs from flippant to ponderous, flirtatious to prudent. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to her mood - but, given the open manner in which you can tackle the various areas in the game, that’s kind of understandable. And game-engine cutscenes are, generally, far from horrible - though there’s a ton of typical talking-torsos, some of the mouth and eye animation is delightful. I swear I saw a sparkle in Elika’s eye as she flirted, a dullness when she felt glum, and The Prince’s usual cheeky grin loses its edge with dialogue of weight.

And the dialogue… well, it’s a mixed bag. Some of it’s quite wonderful - touching, emotive. Some of it is dire - the “you should buy her a pony” line that pops up early on is, thankfully, not representative of the rest of the game. There’s some common threads - a constant luck-versus-fate debate, and repeated lewd, tongue-in-cheek references to The Prince’s relationship with his donkey. Rarely does the incidental dialogue get annoying - and, indeed, occasionally it generates some corkers. “This isn’t such a bad view,” said The Prince, with Elika’s arse parked just above him as he climbs a fissure. I laughed, then agreed.

As previously mentioned, it’s surprising that the central plot to Prince of Persia seems to have been “acquired” from Bullet Witch - but let’s face it, the story is merely a means to an end here. What we’re here for is platforming and combat - and what we’re given is slick, polished, and gleaming.

The combat is combo-based button mashing, limited to certain areas, and not very frequent. In fact, there’s only really six enemies in the game - four bosses which are tackled six times each, another recurring character, and the soulless soldiers of darkness that guard the paths between levels. Sure, they gradually increase in difficulty over time, but - as mentioned above - the curve is very gentle. And the combos themselves are almost as much as a delight to perform as they are to behold; it’s possible to string together massive links of sword slashes, Elika bashes, jumps, and throws that are pretty bloody impressive to watch. Mistakes are mostly inconsequential; as soon as you’re in perilous danger, Elika magically appears and yanks you to safety.

The platforming is pretty much the same; watching someone else play is like watching a well-choreographed free-running movie, even if the player is in far less danger than they’d think. Initial plays saw me prodding the action buttons with rampant fury, jerking the control stick to and fro in an attempt to keep The Prince on track; acclimatisation leads to the understanding that you can get by with just a tap here, a nudge there. But it really does look impressive, and in many ways is a perfect demonstration of style over substance: the end sequence (with slow-motion fly-bys lighting the monstrous Ahriman in the dark) evokes great exhilaration, even if the danger is largely imagined. There’s another sequence, in the north-east level of The Warrior’s City, that is absolutely stunning - sure, it’s scripted to all hell, and only requires one real decision of timing to succeed. But I’ll be buggered if my heart wasn’t beating like a drum, holding my breath in anticipation, as I pushed through that sequence - brilliant.

At game’s end, you’re offered the choice - leave the world as it is, or destroy it, undoing all your work. And the Achievements encourage you to both consider the emotional weight of the story progression, as well as wreaking carnage; the player winds up fucking the world for those 80 points of GS. Whether intentional or not, it’s an appreciated mental engagement; as is the dialogue of The Concubine (with the only references to The Prince’s… erm, princeliness) and the final fight with The Warrior, flames lighting the arena in an eerie setting to the hulk’s demise.

In fact, more than once the Prince of Persia evoked memories of Ico - which is horribly unfair to both games. Ico is a stone-cold classic, the quality of which Prince of Persia could only dream of attaining; but the fact that those memories were brought forth at all is, I think, a good thing… it means that companies are trying to conjure something better.

Now, I’ve been waxing lyrical about Prince of Persia for awhile now, but I want to make one thing clear: I don’t think this is a brilliant game. That statement may seem contrary to the rest of this post, but I’d like to think I can maintain a critique of the work separate from my enjoyment of it. And, truth be told, Prince of Persia has too many flaws to be truly considered “great”; some of the dialogue is atrocious, and the essentially western characters don’t exactly evoke the feel of Persia (though incidental tunes and the curves & spires of the world do create a mid-eastern feel). A lot of people claim that the combat system is… well, “shit”, but I had no problems with it. Mind you, I neglected pretty much every attack combo button except “X” most of the time.

The second play-through was fantastic - familiar with the levels, I was able to romp through the game in little more than a handful of hours. And it was only then that I figured out the impact of the deflection in combat; boss battles turned from death-filled wars of attrition to simple romps. The initially daunting “Be gentle with her” achievement (awarded for only requiring Elika’s resurrection ability less than 100 times) took just over six hours, and less than thirty deaths.

And I reckon this was the right game for me at the right time. After subjecting myself to N64-era Zelda games for a month, to be blasted by a game of such visual delight (hey, I love the cel-shaded-lite look) was a joy; to feel compelled by such a straightforward collection quest was a surprise. Prince of Persia hit all the right buttons - visually and sonically impressive, above-par writing, a fantastic ending, gettable Achievements, a cheeky adolescent sense of humour, and - with Elika donning the delicious “Farah” skin - some cute white knicker flashes.

And that’s just fine by me.

The week started with my traditional games of Archon on Australia Day - after digging up my Stelladaptor and firing up VICE-64, the first game (playing as Dark) was a little dicey - my usual teleport-the-Basilisk-into-the-backlines technique only yielded a dead Basilisk, a panicked resurrection, and soon thereafter my Shapeshifter went MIA. A war of attrition followed, but exploiting the silly C64 AI yielded a win. Playing as Light was a much more conventional - but no less enjoyable - affair, and Archon once again proved itself a wonderful game.

A fair bit of work has been done on Majora’s Mask in the last fortnight, too - pretty much everything up until the final two dungeons is done, save the Town Shooting Gallery heart-piece (which looks like it will be a Gerudo’s-Archery-level of frustration). All the Mask quests are done and, whilst my attitude to the game has softened somewhat due to the touching nature of the Kafei & Anju side quest, it’s still a bane, still a thorn in my side; I suspect I’ll be finishing Majora’s sometime next month and never touching it again.

Finally, I had some wonderful guests from the UK staying with me over the last couple of days; and, as a “thankyou” for the accommodation amidst their backpacking odyssey, Andy & Jax treated me to a copy of Prince of Persia. Andy and I created a new account on the 360, then started playing with interest - we joked “let’s see how long it’ll take for the first Achievement.” And colour us surprised when the first toast appeared within two minutes, with another handful appearing at regular 2-3 minute intervals. Inside an hour we’d netted over a hundred GS, but at that point we stopped caring - because the spectacle of Prince of Persia is really something to behold.

For starters, it’s gorgeous to look at - the cel-shading-lite is delicious, owing a lot to Crackdown. The audio is lovely, but bemusing - I’m genuinely undecided as to whether the voice acting is brilliant, or shit! Having played a lot more of the optional cutscenes (that provide a lot of backstory to the Prince and Elika) I’m prepared to lean to the former; there’s a lot of humour and sensitivity buried in there, but it’s tempered by the fact that the plot appears to be a rehash of Bullet Witch (and yes, that’d be a spoiler… if anyone had actually played Bullet Witch ;)

So - next week sees more Majora’s and Prince of Persia; realistically, I’m expecting to Complete them in February and March, respectively.

We’re in the midst of a long weekend here, with the 26th being Australia Day. And I fucking love being Australian.

Not in the boorish way that seems to typify over-use of the recent “oi oi oi” chants of Aussies overseas; no, I grew up when Australia had no impact on anything. When we were crap at cricket, rubbish at rugby, soccer was still publicly called wogball and the Olympics were a glum television event; when we were politically inconsequential. Those days had a massive influence on me; the idea of the Little Aussie Battler, the support for the underdog, the respect for the people who just get the job done - and appropriate injections of Tall Poppy Syndrome for those who get too big for their own boots. There’s no braindead chants in my vision of Australia - just a thrill when the battler gets up, and an accepting grunt when the other team excels.

But what’s that all got to do with gaming?

Allow me the luxury of a few more words to explain.

I grew up in a country town, population 2,000. As a male kid, you played cricket or tennis on a Saturday morning; graduating to an adult, you did the same in the afternoon. Social time was Saturday night, at the larger pubs in the area, and Sundays would see the young men work through their hangovers at Apex gatherings & working bees; it just seemed to be the natural progression of things.

One of the Apex regular tasks was the organisation of the Australia Day breakfast, where a huge chunk of the town would dawdle in to the lawns by the side of the Town Hall for a plate of deliciously greasy bacon & eggs, with the eggs later being fried in Australia-shaped holes in slices of bread. Sloppily served with a smile and good cheer, it was always a great morning event; we’d wander around, watch the Young Australian of the Year award, then maybe bugger off to the beach later in the day. And there’s so much of the spirit of those Australia Days that make me proud.

But I haven’t explained anything yet. A few more words…

Between the gorging at breakfast - the smiles, the enthusiastic catch-ups across the rows of trestle tables - and the beach, there was a necessary stop-off at home (Mum made certain we had at least an hour break between eating and swimming). One year, long ago, I wandered via the Main Street, stopping by the newsagent - one of the few shops open on this most sacred of public holidays. And a shiny magazine caught my eye - the Home Electronics Yearbook. I was just entering my “interested in electronics” phase; I bought it in a heartbeat. I flicked through it while I walked along the sea-wall home: it wasn’t an “electronics” magazine at all! Instead, it was a consumer-oriented mag highlighting exciting new products - hi-fi, television, and something new - home computers.

I looked at these machines with wonder, with lust - I couldn’t quite understand what they were, but I knew I wanted one. Within those glossy pages, I compared the unknown features - numbers, really - of the Apple II (expensive!), Atari 800 (surely a gamer’s paradise!) and the VIC-20 (but it’s only got 5 RAMs!). That one magazine, that one Australia Day, somehow triggered a love in computing that would see me get my C64 soon thereafter (64KB! under a third of the high school’s new Apple’s cost!), and hence an introduction to gaming.

Fast forward a few years - I’ve got my C64, I’ve got my 1541 disk drive, and it’s Australia Day again. My oldest friend and I drop by my home between the breakfast and the beach, avoiding the worst of the midday sun. To while away the hours, we fire up the C64 - “any new games?” he queried, looking over my small collection of hookey floppies.

We started playing one game - a game I’d briefly looked at before, but hadn’t bothered trying to figure out. He, on the other hand, was made of sterner stuff, so we started digging, figuring out the rules, discovering the game.

Archon.

We played and played that game. Our intended afternoon at the beach became a quick dip at dusk (not too long, though - the jellyfish get a little feisty on balmy summer nights). I went home and played Archon for hours; my mate returned the next day, we played it a lot more. Once we’d sussed the impact of the red/green squares, figured out the meaning of “power points are proof against magic”, we were set - and then the real fun started. Challenging each other to nutty battles - “knight versus dragon on white!”, “shapeshifter versus phoenix!” - and setting up the most shameful of victories - imprisoning the opposition’s final piece. Endless debates about whether the brute force of the Dragon, combined with the uneven Shapeshifter, favoured the Dark Side over the Light’s powerful Djini and crapulent Phoenix. The hot Sorceress versus the cool Wizard; my preferred Unicorn over the Basilisk; the wimpy Valkyrie, or the annoying Banshee. So much depth, so much fun.

We kept the “traditional” Australia Day bouts of Archon going but, as you’d expect, we started getting older, and after a few years I was tackling the game solo. And so it will be again this year - Australia Day, greasy breakfast with a grin, and two solo games of Archon - one against Light, one against Dark.

I love being Australian, and I love my Australia Day.

I do so enjoy the opportunity to post something fun in the middle of the week, far from my usual week-in-review compendiums and all-too-occasional “features”. Just my luck, then, that a couple of things popped up today that deserved mentioning.

First up: Space Giraffe (for the PC) got a worthy review in PC Gamer and, in a blog post celebrating that fact, Yak mentions that Gridrunner+++ (a working title - but so was Space Giraffe) is slated for release on XBLA PC in late April.

Delight!

But that reminds me that I’ve never mentioned its predecessor, Gridrunner++. GR++ can be held largely responsible for my return to gaming after a long, unfocused absence, and also my introduction to the wider social internet. Through this game, I’ve made dozens of really, really good friends, found a welcoming place to crash in every part of the UK, and… well, it was a gateway to a better life. Grandiose responsibility to be laid at a game’s feet, eh? But it is a thoroughly wonderful game, available for both PC and Mac, and totally Minter.

Please - if you’ve not tried it before, head over to the game’s page, and at least try the demo. Then buy it - for $10, you can hardly go wrong.

Secondly, and snarkily: just caught this snippet of a Kaz Hirai interview in the Official PlayStation Magazine over on EuroGamer. I’ll not get snagged by some of the more… “popular” bits, but will call out this quote:

We don’t provide the ‘easy to program for’ console that [developers] want, because ‘easy to program for’ means that anybody will be able to take advantage of pretty much what the hardware can do, so then the question is what do you do for the rest of the nine-and-a-half years?

To which I can only add this: hahahahahahaaaaaa ahahahahahahaaaa. Whee!