Month: September 2008

After the lovely comments received last week – thanks aureole and Richard! – this week feels like a bit of a let-down. No real progress in Texas Hold’Em, a couple of failed attempts at the multiplayer aspects of Mutant Storm Empire, and a couple of purchases isn’t going to result in a monster post similar to last weeks. But still, I’ve thought of a fragment of a thread of a theme that I’ll try running with.

But first, a little word on Mercenaries 2: World In Flames. For some reason this caught my eye late in the development cycle, and I anxiously awaited the demo to hit Live Marketplace. I duly downloaded all 1.2GB of it, and was frankly unimpressed. But the need for retail therapy after a shitty week at work was strong, and so another purchase was made – forcing my GamerScore percentage to plummet back into the 80s. Luckily, the game dishes the first 300-odd points of GS out like candy early on.

Merccenaries 2 really feels like the bastard child of Crackdown and Just Cause. It’s got about 80% of the fun of the former, and the expansive backdrops & OCD of the latter. It’s not going to trouble my Game-of-the-Year thoughts, but it’s entertaining and mindless enough to distract – and, right now, that’s all I’m looking for in a game. More on Mercs 2 later.

My other recent purchase was the re-release of Duke Nukem 3D on XBLA. Now I’m not a massive fan of Duke by any means – this purchase was solely driven by guilt. Allow me to meander in my explanation…

Back in my formative years, growing up in country South Australia, there wasn’t really the opportunity to pop down the shop to buy some new games for the fledgling technology that was the C64. In fact, I’d had my C64 for several years before a small computer shop opened in a town ten kilometres from home. Thus, in between family trips to The Big Smoke of Adelaide, the only opportunity to try some new software was via the area’s high school. We all know the drill; tape (and later disk) trading was rife, and the more enterprising amongst us learnt to diddle the $01 register with machine code so we could copy Mr Ridge’s treasured Choplifter cartridge.

And that pretty much set the tone, set the foundation for how I thought about software for a long while. Yes, I still used to get original copies of games for birthdays & Christmas, but they were gladly shared around the schoolyard. When I got to Uni, and opted to swim against the tide and invest in a Mac Plus, I paid for my copy of Word 4 only because I didn’t have any Mac friends to nick it off. Eventually I graduated and, once I started contracting, I took the rough “tools of the trade” rules seriously and – through gritted teeth – started purchasing all my software legit. The last thing I wanted was a software audit on my pokey business.

But it wasn’t until I joined YakYak that I started thinking about piracy seriously. On that forum, and eventually in real life, I met childhood heroes – people I’d read (and read of) in awe in Zzap, Commodore Format, and all the other UK gaming magazines that took way too long to reach our shores (unless I wanted to shell our $8 for an import copy). These people wrote and produced and created games I loved.

And some of them painted a very bleak picture of the movement of money in the games industry, even when considering “hit” titles. Surely these people are living fat off the massive profits from these successes?

No, apparently.

The responsible part of my brain started tweeting away. “Support those that do the things you love,” or somesuch.

Eleven years ago I’d acquired a dodgy copy of Duke Nukem 3D from a chap in my office, and I’d played it a bit before storing it in my dodgy disc drawer. Recently, all the dodgy discs got chucked, but I still felt a twinge of guilt for all those hours I obtained from them.

So I bought Nukem 3D on XBLA. My guilt for that title has gone. And I’m looking down the barrel of a bunch of shitty ranked multiplayer Achievements and another game that’ll stay on The List for ages.

…This seemed like a much more coherent idea when I originally thought of it. I’ve got to stop trying to write these posts last thing on a Sunday night :}

Right! Back into the fray…

There’s been no updates the last couple of weeksmonths because of a number of reasons – the first of which is actually a really good excuse. My old web host, MD Web Hosting, decided it’d be a lovely and completely non-impactful idea to change the web server that moobaa.com was hosted on. That’s all fine and good, but they only decided to do this six days after the old server crashed. That’s six days without e-mail, websites, everything. Then, when they eventually responded to my clearly foolish request for web hosting (gasp!) the replacement server – although admittedly much quicker – was also bereft of any cgi-bin support – hence, my blog-powering MovableType installation was… um… dead.

So – off to a new host, then. Ilisys, for those who care, recommended by a friend and sealed by the “carbon neutral” flyer. Support has been excellent, and everything else feels great – though it’s a real flashback dropping back to a Linux host. And, since I was changing hosting providers and OSes, I took the opportunity to re-visit my choice of blogging platform – and bugger me if WordPress hasn’t grown a massive set of balls since I last looked at it. It’s now approximately ten times easier to install than my old MovableType platform, and doesn’t suffer from the annoying “publish” stage that MT did… The flipside of this is, of course, that pages are dynamically served, but for the audience numbers I’ve got (single-digits for both my blogs, I’m sure) it shouldn’t be an issue.

So – welcome to the new look (though the Theme should be changing as I tweak), and for those of you who rely on RSS please note the new RSS feed location (though, hopefully, the old one should continue working).

Anyway… onto the gaming.

To cut a (very) long story short, the past couple of months has been a real mix. It started off brilliantly; I got completely sucked back into Excite Truck, despite the nastiness of the outstanding tasks: Super Challenges are a real pain in the arse. A bit of concerted effort saw the last Ring Challenge in Fiji fall; a handy hint is that strategic crashing can make all the difference. The Smash Challenges also fell relatively quickly – luck and aggression in equal doses seem to be the recipe there. But the final two Gate Challenges had me stomping and swearing. A lot. Especially when a “perfect” run in Canada saw my score two points shy of the S-Rank target. The China Challenge just continually kicked my arse; I rarely finished the course, and never within cooee of the target score.

Firing up the Wii at half-time whilst watching the footy, I thought I’d give both tracks a quick bash – for “practise”. And bugger me dead if I didn’t completely nail both courses, one after the other, in a feat of driving the likes of which I’ll never achieve again. Yes, all Challenge S-Ranks were snaffled, I’ve got some pretty stars on the Excite Truck title screen, and a bunch of fun racing yielded all the trophies on offer. Excite Truck is off The List.

A quick tinker turned into a 20-hour, week-spanning 100% Psychonauts run, which re-affirmed the sheer bliss that is this game. I’d be quite satisfied if Schafer’s gem was the epitome of gaming – the graphics are superb (try running up to the camp Lodge at night), the sound is perfect, and the gameplay is divine. On my second time through the game, even the final couple of levels (which I’d initially considered ridiculously unbalanced) posed no problems, and the OC-collect-em-up was a delight. Totally worth it – if you’ve got a 360, download it on XBLA Originals; buy the PC version on Steam, and the Xbox & PS2 versions are available at the Double Fine store (which also sells a truckload of other Psychonauts goodies, including some great hoodies – you’ll see me strutting around in the burgundy – and an adorable Mr Pokeylope one-piece baby thingy for the smaller gamers out there).

Mutant Storm Reloaded kept the high-score bug well fed, until I got seriously – seriously – waylaid by Mutant Storm Empire. Not only did I hammer out the OCD-tastic “All Beastie Combos” Achievement, but – through the application of plenty of blood, sweat, and swearing – I nabbed the “Black Belt Grandmaster”, too. Bloody proud of that, I am; even though it pales into insignificance compared to the difficulty of its predecessor, it’s still no cakewalk. The high-score chasing on Empire also sees me in the Top 40 worldwide for Tally Mode, and Top 80 for Adventure Mode – not bad for a rubbishy player such as myself.

I also played Ikaruga and, in doing so, knocked major chunks off my completion percentage that I’m only now recovering. Dear lord, I am supremely poor at that game. I managed to cherry-pick a few Achievements (namely the easy beat-the-boss events), but I’ll be arsed if I’ll ever be able to nut out the A-ranks…

Killer7 is also off The List now, thanks to a blast through Normal and Hard skill levels, followed by the quite awesomely tricky Killer 8 (Bloodbath) mode. The Hopper 7 joke level was a lovely cherry-on-top, a tongue-in-cheek wrap-up to a stunning game. More to come on that.

After my previous rants and raves about the shitty statements by XBLA management, they ever-so-cleverly managed to win me (and millions of others) over with their superlative Summer of Arcade – which managed to get two (and maybe three) purchases out of me. Geometry Wars 2 kicked off proceedings, improving on the original XBLA title in nearly every way and proving to be more fun than a very fun thing indeed – except for the “Wax Off” and “Treaty” Achievements, those were fucking annoying. Braid followed, and deserves each and every superlative given to it – the initial time-controlling platform hijinks, however intoxicating, gave way to fiendish level design and cerebral delight. The final level was stunning – despite the learned lack-of-peril, I felt a genuine sense of panic and dread as flame chased Tim across the screen… Gorgeous plot twist? Epilogue which strays dangerously close to self-indulgence? Oh yes – it all makes the overall package feel complete, and if this is indicative of higher price-point games, then bring ’em on.

Week three of the Summer of Arcade brought Bionic Commando Rearmed, the demo of which impressed the hell out of me – that’s a “Buy” somewhere down the road. Despite the gorgeous pre-release screenshots, Galaga Legions was singularly unimpressive… A sentiment repeated a week later with the much-anticipated Castle Crashers, which seemed to be a stunningly well-produced button-masher. And I’m not overly fond of button mashers.

But now I seem to be in a Texas Hold’Em rut, trying to eke out the final Achievements to get this freebie blight off The List. A bit of concerted effort – and learning to curb my instinct to go All In when I get a card 10-or-above – has yielded a few cheevos, but there’s a long grind to $1,000,000 ahead – I’m currently at $369,000.

A few drunken games of Space Giraffe, the odd cack-handed wobble at Geometry Wars, a disappointing poke around Burnout Paradise‘s Cagney update, and a heart-racingly brilliant flogging of Burnout Paradise‘s Bikes update rounds out an eventful couple of months. A few games conquered, a few games acquired, a few games pending. And a lot to write about.