Month: October 2008

JetSetPortal

A quiet (gaming) week has drawn to a close; a week dominated by some drunken dating revelry and the looming spectre of Work. But, thanks to the resurrection of the Dreamcast, I managed to get some quality time where it matters – in front of the consoles :)

Jet Set Radio, of course, got the bulk of my attention this week. Managed to finish (not complete, List Watchers!) the game this evening, giving it a pretty naked game-time of five evenings and an afternoon – maybe ten hours? Which seems a little light, really – when I first played through (a long, long time ago) it felt like it was much longer – and much more difficult. But, with few lingering memories in place, I managed to cruise through the story mode & all the immediate challenges, just leaving the simple matter of getting Jet Rankings in all the levels to finish unlocking playable characters.

…oh wait, did I just say “simple”?

Hahahahahaaahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa. Hahahaaa haaa haaaaaaa. Whee.

Jet Set Radio‘s Jet Rankings seem to be anything but simple. Sure, I managed to nail an Infinite Grind in Shibuya first go, netting a Jet Ranking in Technique there, but the Jet Crush races are just insanely difficult. Falling back to my fair Mew, I only just managed to snaffle a win in Kogane… and was presented with a lowly Turbo Ranking. Much work to be done, I fear.

…no, “fear” is the wrong word. I’m loving Jet Set Radio the second time around; it’s got a wonderful style, a good solid world, and isn’t the clunky game I first thought it was. And it’s got Mew.

*swoon*

The only other game played this week was the stand-alone release of Portal on XBLA. This is, surprisingly enough, the first time I’d played Portal – yes, I remain(ed) a virgin to the game which garnered approximately twelve billion Game-Of-The-Year salutations last year. Well, I downloaded the demo to pop my cherry and… it’s not bad. Not bad at all. The portal device has a wonderful satisfying *thunk* to it – bound to be even more impressive with a decent subwoofer – and the game plays rather spiffingly. I bailed out around Chamber 13, so I know better than to comment on the “story”, but I’m committed to picking up Portal: Still Alive… when something else has been knocked off the list.

Now, back to those Jet Rankings…

Back From The Dead (Part 1)

Woohoo!

A little bit of TLC, a pair of needle-nosed pliers, and advice from this page has led to my Dreamcast being resurrected. Which, in turn, has led to a spate of Jet Set Radio which, whilst still not as arresting as its older Future sibling, is proving to be a lot better than I remember.

I’ve just unlocked Mew, who annoyed me on first playthrough by being somewhat – but not exactly like her successor, Rhyth (who remains my favourite gaming heroine of all time). Obviously my resolve has weakened with age, because Mew has melted my dark and twisted heart, the little minx. Oh how I’ll enjoy the rest of this game (three times… PAL/US/JPN copies to play through!) because of her cute and beguiling “hi there!”

*swoon*

DukeMercenaries of GOO

…and so another week skates by, with so many lofty plans (like finishing one of the four longer game musings I’m working on) drifting by the wayside. And what did I manage to do with my week?

Well, not a whole lot.

Truth be told, it was a relatively glum start to the week. Work is going pear-shaped, the ex moved out, and anything else that could go wrong, did. For example: with the extra room in the house, I decided to create a little retro gaming shrine with the spare TV. “Aha,” I thought with a desperate gleam in my eye, “an opportunity to knock some of the Jaguar games off The List.” Alas, my video cable for the Jag has suffered one bend too many, and the only replacement I could find on eBay is now en route from England at the lazy cost of AU$40. Useless Jaguar sitting forlornly by the TV, I seek another platform, and dig out my “useful” Dreamcast (I have two Dreamcasts; one that has the GD-ROM “tuned” for Rez – and plays nothing else – and the other that plays everything except Rez). All plugged in, I fire up Jet Set Radio, keen to give it a concentrated playthrough that I neglected to afford it a few years ago. All seems good, until… it suddenly reboots. And again. And again, at a completely different point in play. So I surmise that the power supply on the “good” DC is on the fritz; looks like a transplant is in order.

There was glum news in the gaming world, too – new gaming darling Little Big Planet got delayed due to Muslim pressures over some background music. Astro Tripper (which, from this video, looks like a HD & tuned-scoring version of Space Tripper) was announced for the PS3, which I fear means that PomPom have turned their backs on the 360 & XBLA. And, despite my giddy excitement the other day, we won’t see No More Heroes 2 until 2010.

But some good stuff did happen over the last seven days; a friend finally picked up Mercenaries 2, leading to many co-op hijinks (and marvelling at the poor voice acting. Again). He managed to snaffle 260 GS inside an hour, and I managed none – but that’s OK. There’s still a lazy 150 points in the wings there that we can work on later.

Scanning The List, I noticed that Duke Nukem remained relatively untouched – if only because I find it somewhat annoying to play, and my current save-point sees me spawning with a mere 4% health, little ammo, and even less of a chance of getting out of the corner I’m stuck in. So I decided, instead, to try and eke out some online ranked kills – after all, there’s achievements all the way up to 500 kills, and my OCD won’t let that go. And – surprise surprise – it’s really good fun. Getting an eight-player duke-match going on the Stadium map is an absolute blast, and there’s a few other maps that are nearly as good. Yes, there’s the lag that seems to affect every XBLA game, but – long story short – I scored 507 kills over the weekend, netting all the online achievements… and actually enjoying Duke Nukem in the process!

There was one more Good Thing for the week… and, as Good Things go, this has lots of sweet whipped cream and a cherry on top.

World Of Goo.

It’s fantastic.

Yes, we antipodeans (and Europeans, for that matter… let’s just say “non-North-Americans”) have to jump through some hoops to get it (install the Homebrew Channel, and then work through these instructions), but the effort is more than worth it. Or just buy it on the PC (but then you’ll miss out on the delightful Wii control). It’s got all the immediate impact and cleverness and greatness of Braid, but comes from a completely different angle, tongue firmly in cheek. There’s times where I’ve completed a level and jumped up clapping; it’s just an utterly joyous experience. And building a Goo Tower, complete with little cute little flag-carrying clouds that tell me that my tower is the tallest in Australia, is like a Goo-ey form of Achievements.

Seriously, just go and get it now.

Another Post About Music

With the turmoil in my life outside the nice fluffy goodness of gaming (yes, I didn’t completely give all other aspects of life to get No Collisions) reaching a stressful crescendo this week, I’m taking the soft option and pulling out an easy post this Sunday night. There’s not really been much gaming, anyway – I’ve been plugging away at Mercenaries 2, finishing the game through one path (of six), and giggling at some of the shitty voice acting and clunky programming – watching Agent Joyce call himself on the radio to alert himself that I was beating his face in was most amusing. So much more to do, though.

And so to the topic of this post: more gaming music. This idea was seeded by a post on the Llamasoft Blog a while back which announced that the soundtrack for Space Giraffe was available for free download. “So what?” I hear you say, “there’s only four songs on there.” Yes, but one it the super-wonderful Satipn, created by the equally-super-wonderful Redpoint who, by coincidence, have just released their latest collection of tunes, Nostalgia For Now – well worth the pittance they’re charging (and they offer a FLAC download, too). Most of Redpoint’s back-catalogue – including the stunning Firem – is available gratis (legit!) from Hidden Music… which is home to Covert, whose latest release Symbolic is a beautifully retro-tinged harbour of melancholic goodness. Highly recommended, all.

Releasing gaming soundtracks is, of course, nothing new – the number of CDs available of (say) music from the Final Fantasy series is, quite simply, staggering. In fact, my first ever purchase off eBay was a pair of (bootleg) Jet Set Radio / Future CDs. But the release of tunes for free is a little rarer; some recent releases include the score for Bioshock (as advertised on The Cult of Rapture on August 24, 2007 – check “Articles” for the original posting, and also an interview with composer Garry Schyman). Another recommended download is the soundtrack to The Longest Journey.

Of course, you could always do the somewhat-dubious perhaps-legit method of soundtrack acquisition – a modded Xbox yields all manner of raw source material, from ADX files of all of Jet Set Radio Future‘s rockin’ radio mixes, to raw WAVs from Panzer Dragoon Orta. There’s more goodies to be had by peeking into Super Galdelic Hour‘s PS2 disk, too, as well as the raw CD-format audio present on games such as Quake and N2O.

Shadier still are the torrent and rip sites. Poking around the seedier places on the Internet at the moment will probably have you tripping over complete compilations of all music from the Wipeout series – which, as much as it is lauded, really failed to impress me much. Give me the bright and bouncy JSRF soundtracks, anyday!

And now our mega-games seem to require mega-soundtracks. Check out the track listing for GTA4 – that’s an astonishing number of songs. And, as much as I can claim disinterest in Saints Row 2, the tracklist for radio station The Mix is just about perfect for this child of the eighties.

And if you followed that last link, it would just confirm what you probably suspected: that you should stop reading this post now. Because my cloth ears are hopelessly nostalgic and my opinions rooted in the eighties… and that’s good for maybe three people out there. One of whom is me.

So, music, yeah? Ummm… check some of the above links out. Throw some money Redpoint’s way. And next week, hopefully, I’ll write something about a game… fancy that.

The List

Inspired by a chat with a lovely lass down the pub on a Sunday afternoon, and desperate for something to post with minimal effort, I present unto you: The List.

It now sits atop every page on this blog, constantly reminding me of its existence; appropriate, really, given the psychological weight that its contents place upon me, hovering overhead, goading me.

Funny – I thought that posting The List out into the open might somehow prove cathartic, or magically imbue me with hard-core l33t gaming powers… like the ability to get through the Story Mode of F-Zero GX, or to get 1,000,000 points in Geommie Wars without loss of life. Sadly, I feel no different, and shall instead continue plugging away at the increasingly annoying OCD content of Mercenaries 2.

Sigh.