Month: May 2009

A Mixed Bag

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.

Practice Makes Perfect

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.

Je Retourne! (Part 3)

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!