2010: The Year in Review

So, with 2010 drawing to a close, and after enduring my last New Year’s Eve as a thirty-something, I take heart in the old adage: another year older, another year wiser, right?

Erm… not quite.

2010 turned out to be an odd year, rife with emotional turmoil and great steps forward in responsibility, mixed (paradoxically) with chunks of silly self-indugence; and that personal stuff impacted on my beloved hobby somewhat. This year marked the first time in years that I’d failed to complete a game in a calendar month… not once, but twice, with December being barren as well. But I don’t feel as unhappy about that as I thought I would: massive inroads into long-standing bugbears were made in December; the foundation of an assault on The List in the year ahead.

But enough yakking; it’s time for my light-hearted, piss-weak, ridiculously-limited-and-skewed look back on 2010!

The Where-Have-You-Been-All-My-Life Award: Why hello, Miss Fifty-Two Inch Telly with HDMI Inputs; I do love you so very much, and can’t possibly imagine what life would be like without you now… Side-by-side, or Picture-in-picture, is the most wonderful thing to have happened to my Gaming World in aeons. Miss Portal was a worthy runner-up, but so far back in the field it didn’t matter.

Blast From The Past Award: So… Chrono Trigger, eh? 70 hours in, and only one of the thirteen endings unlocked. Bloody nice game too. RPG-grinding goodness just made for those long plane flights I suffer for my work.

Proudest Achievement of the Year: After hours and hours of shit-yourself scaredy-cat timid play, I finally beat Halo: Reach on Legendary… solo. A Monument to All Your Sins was mine.

The “Go Fuck Yourself” Dismissal: Introduced last year, this Award allows me to vent at a game that annoys me. This year’s winner? Astropop. May I never play – or mention – it again.

Disappointment of the Year: Not much of a contest for this one; No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle takes the gong for taking a big steaming shit over everything that was wonderful about the original game (my Game of the Year for 2008).

WTF Gaming Moment of the Year: Pretty much all of Bayonetta. Wackiness from beginning to end.

Surprise Discovery of the Year: Back in 2006 I bought Gears of War and, after completing all the campaign elements, I tried out the online multiplayer… and was disgusted by the nature of the people who habited that world. Arrogant, gobby fucks, the lot of them. So imagine my surprise when, returning to Gears for the first time in three years to do a bit of Achievement boosting, I discovered that the vast majority of people still playing the game were kind, fun-loving, and considerate… a delight to play with. Massive props to Lita, narv, beets, Bolch, Raven, Slash, Danger, and others who I’ve just offended by failing to explicitly mention… you guys (and gal) are awesome :)

The “I am the King of the World” Throw-Your-Arms-In-The-Air Trophy: I like the name of this one, and it goes to Braid – or, more specifically, the whittling down of my speed runs until the final Achievement popped, and all the Hidden Stars were collected. An utterly wonderful game, and a totally doable – and immensely rewarding – Achievement.

The Shrugging “Huh?” (for Most Notable Lack of Comprehension for Critical Acclaim): Uncharted. Why, exactly, do people rave about this game, with its sloppy controls? Or am I only going to figure it out on my fourth painful playthrough?

Multiplayer Moment of the Year: Boosting in Gears when three people popped their “Seriously” Achievement in one session was pretty impressive; but Crackdown 2 takes this award for the Battle Bus adventures I experienced with a bunch of people online.

The More-Of-The-Same… And-We-Like-It-That-Way Appreciation Award: Super Mario Galaxy 2 takes this one easily, after Crackdown 2 sadly failed to challenge it. Galaxy 1.5 it may be, but that’s just fine by me; the gameplay is as solid as a rock, and just as rewarding as the original.

The Easy-Peasy… Oh Shit! Discovery Award: This is a new award intended to honour the game that looked like an easy one to beat, but reveals itself to be a List-haunter. After Burner Climax was a doddle to get all 200 GS in, but obtaining all the medals in Score Attack mode? Insane, and about as doable for me as Wave 100 in Robotron. Whoops… a great example of an impulse buy gone bad.

The “I Love You… Honest” Missive of the Year: Get ready for a surprise… because the PS3 console hardware takes the gong. I love my Slim, it’s a beautiful box of electronic goodness – quiet, cool(-ish), and powerful. If only the DualShock controller, XMB software, and PSN were up to the same high standard…

Under-Appreciated Game of the Year: Why oh why aren’t more people raving about Costume Quest? It was the perfect example of a bite-sized, joyous, downloadable nugget of a game, with a wonderful sense of humour and awareness.

AAA-HypeTitle I Missed Award: CODBLOPs. Gran Turismo 5. Red Dead Redemption. Heavy Rain. Mass Effect 2. Assassin’s Creed. I missed ’em all.

Boomshanka – that’s 2010 over and done with. And, for the first time in ages, I don’t have a post ready-to-go about my game of the year… because I like to have crossed stuff off The List before assembling the final article. I like to have experienced all the game has to offer before I clumsily rant about how great it is. And the two real contenders for my Game of the Year are both still firmly on The List.

Halo: Reach coupled a fantastic campaign (which encouraged you to empathise with characters you knew were going to die) with stunningly flexible multiplayer; rich stats tracking wreaks havoc with my OCD, meaning I’ll never be truly satisfied until I hit that Inheritor rank… in another 19.4 million cRedits’ time. Until then, I’ll be ducking in for my Daily Challenges, popping grunts in the head, and belting through the campaign again… and loving every second of it.

But Reach misses out.

Because my 2010 Game of the Year is Bayonetta.

From the moment I first saw Bayonetta in her first teaser trailer – a few brief glimpses and half a lingering calf – I was smitten. A strong female lead in a game of gunplay? Oh, yes please. But when the first gameplay videos came out, I became conflicted; it looked like a hack-and-slash button masher, a style of play with which I’m completely cack-handed. But when I got my copy (well, two copies, really… with playing cards and Scarborough Fair replica pistols) in my hands, all concerns were erased; Bayonetta plays amazingly well, allowing even the clumsiest player to bludgeon their way through to the utterly gobsmacking ending. The combat also has incredible depth; there’s oodles of different combos and attack options, always something new to learn, but endless options should one route prove too difficult.

I love it.

And the storyline… words can’t describe it. I cannot imagine a crazier progression; sure, I’ve engaged in battles on the wings of flying aircraft before, but I haven’t laid the smack down on a many-cocked god-like creature with my hair-fists before. I’ve not had the opportunity to unleash my hirsute hair suit (see that! clever!) as a demonic monster that bites the heads off enemies while I look on, comfortable in my statuesque nudeness. I’ve not ridden a motorbike along the body of a space-bound rocket, punched a space-statue in the eye, battled a massive deity, then flung her through space, guiding her into the sun.

I mean, seriously… Bayonetta won the WTF Gaming Moment of the Year for good reason. But it’s winning my 2010 Game of the Year for a thousand better reasons.

Boost, Baby, Boost!

I played a little bit of Halo: Reach this week. Just a few Daily Challenges, nothing much.

And that’s about all the gaming I’ve got to report.

Hang on a minute… that’s not right. I’ve been essentially glued to my beloved lounge this week doing pretty much one thing, and one thing only: Gears of War boosting.

The day after last week’s gentle introduction into the Gears boosting scene was posted, I applied for – and was accepted by – another boosting group. They kindly showed me the ropes, gave me hints, and were amazingly accepting; and that’s proved true of about two-thirds of the people I’ve encountered in these sessions. It seems that the community is happy to accept another into the fold once they’ve signed up to perform a silly feat (The Seriously Achievement); there’s a common sense of purpose, of acceptance. Knowledge is freely shared, there’s very little judgement, and everyone seems resigned to their fate – and is happy to just try and make the task as easy as possible to accomplish.

For those who don’t know, Seriously is a Gears of War Achievement awarded for attaining 10,000 online, ranked-match kills. Of course, it’s also renowned for being ridiculously fussy, too: various people have reported their Achievement being awarded at anywhere from 9,800 kills, all the way through to 22,000+. No-one’s quite certain what is counted and what is not, and the boosting community saves most of its compassion for those who are in No Man’s Land: 10,000 kills, no Achievement, and just plugging onwards, hoping that the sweet release of the Achievement toast will appear at the end of their next match.

But getting to 10,000 is the first hurdle and, when you consider the Gears team-based multiplayer gameplay, that’s a hell of a lot of playtime. Most three-hour sessions yield around 100 – 148 kills per player; I’m banking on this Achievement requiring one hundred sessions… three hundred hours.

I must be nuts.

But in my first handfuls of sessions, one colleague mentioned the concept of “double-boxing” – two Xboxes, two copies of the game, two Live accounts, leading to double the kills. “Hmmmmm,” I thought, probably out loud, “I have two Xboxes…”

A quick trip to JB Hifi the next day, and I had a grubby old copy of Gears in my hand for the princely sum of $25. Yes, that was a rip-off… but it was paid back almost immediately as I managed to drag my second account (or, as I like to call it, “my alt”) into the mix for an extra 148 kills. That’s three hours of my life back… money well spent.

But I remember standing in JB with that copy of Gears in my hand, excitement sweeping over me as I started thinking about all the double-Xbox opportunities opening up to me; and one game marched out to join Gears as the flavour of the week: Robotron.

There’s a solitary online Robotron Achievement remaining for me: getting to fifth on the online ranked leaderboard. Apparently, it’s dead easy to get if someone in the top five allows themselves to be repeatedly beaten by you; certainly, that’s how a large majority of the top fifty have attained their rank. But a few politely-worded messages to people in those lofty positions failed to garner a response (not even a “fuck off, child, do it yourself” chunk of ironic arrogance); so I thought I’d try to boost myself up there.

Two Xboxes; two accounts. Ranked matches. Lovely telly operating in side-by-side picture mode, allowing me to see the action on two screens at once (also great for Gears sessions when the cricket’s on). One account being pummelled by the other; 226 games later, I’m up to 1500-ish on the leaderboard. Hmmmmm. Needs more work.

So – I’m double-box boosting now. And I’ve got a session in about ten minutes, so I’ll sign off quick. But I don’t want to leave you with the impression that all is wonderful in Boost-Land; certainly, I’ve been stuck in misogynist, racist groups for three hours. I’ve heard such pearls as “I want to move to Japan to marry one of them Chinese chicks.” (“You mean Japanese women?” “Sure, they’re hot too.”) Apparently “sand-nigger” isn’t racist if you say it to an Asian-American. And some people, no matter how clearly you explain a task, will deem your experience as irrelevant and try to learn things the hard way.

But, despite all that, I feel a camaraderie with a lot of the boosting community; I imagine them walking through their days, seeing visions of the roadie-run from one side of War Machine to the other, fingers involuntarily twitching the motions, trying to get those three kills down in less than fifty seconds.

I feel their dedication, and I feel happy knowing that I’m not alone.

HaloHaloGearsQuest

You know, when I get thoroughly sucked into a game, life gets a little one-dimensional. I get a little focussed, a little bit rabid, and pretty much everything else in life takes a back-seat. Anything that’s not involved in the game is simply in the way, an impediment to playing; it dominates my thoughts, and I often find that my fingers will involuntarily exercise themselves in anticipated execution of their functions. Such is the nature of my affliction.

My obsession lately has, of course, been Halo 3: ODST. My Solo Legendary run through the game was smooth as silk – if you ignore the plethora of grisly deaths along the way. But those deaths revealed some wonderful truths about ODST‘s balance; the checkpoints are frequent and sensibly triggered, and when forced back to a checkpoint there always seems to be another way around the problem. Getting mauled when running out of an elevator one way? Try the other! Forced back against the wall in an indefensible position? Push forward to open areas! Swarmed by enemies in the open? Fall back to confined spaces and create a choke-point! So many options are available to the player, and – unlike any other Halo game I’ve tried so far – the Legendary difficulty was an absolute delight.

Of course, that leaves the small matter of the Firefight Achievements; so I found a few like-minded souls and started forming a team of crack Firefighters. Well, “crack” may be too strong a word; one chap had distinctly “good” days (where he appeared to be a Halo ninja) and “bad” days (where he would frequently run into situations we urged him not to… and die). Many of the attempts on some Firefights with only three people ended in abject failure; some attempts died with the network connection (one with the score at 188k of the required 200,000). But, in the end, all the Firefights were done (thanks mainly to a lad in the US whose remoteness lagged the game just enough to allow slightly slowed, but still fluid, action), and even the brilliant Déjà Vu Achievement was earned. All that remains now is Vidmaster Endure… anyone know a team of three ODST ninjas who can carry my fat arse over the finishing line? :}

There was also a bit more Halo: Reach… there will always be more Reach to do. So many Commendations to earn, so many cRedits to whore… This week, however, was a bit special for me: I’ve just attained the rank of Commander. And I’ve just discovered that the “incremental” upgrades are now 50,000 cRedits apiece. Blimey.

The very wonderful Costume Quest got some DLC this weekend – and, aside from the fact that it doesn’t integrate all that cleanly with the game, and a slightly disappointing final boss battle – it’s still very wonderful. So much charm and humour is packed in there; make sure you try out all the new costumes’ battle techniques… the Eyeball is hilarious.

Finally this week, I started work on a massive project… a year-long project, I reckon. It’s name? Gears of War. Yes, I finally decided to start nabbing some of the outstanding Achievements in Gears… including (deep breath) Seriously, for 10,000 ranked online kills. Now, clearly that’s going to involve a hell of a lot of boosting; and my few experiences playing Gears online in the past had led me to expect the worst from the community. However, my first selected boosting session was an absolute blinder; once everyone got settled in, it ran like clockwork, with a comfortable rhythm and plenty of kills for everyone. Just the one Achievement so far, but the bedrock for others to follow… and a mighty mountain to climb. After all, I’m only about 1% of the way there…

HaloHaloHalo (and a little bit of Crackdown)

Just a really quick one this week (or fortnight, as the case may be), because I’ve been doing bugger all for the last five weeks while I’ve been off work but I’m heading into the office again tomorrow and I’m completely unprepared and I’m worried that my sleep pattern is all out of whack and stuff.

With my little writing exercise successfully completed, I thought about giving myself a nice little project for my remaining holidays: visit the folks? Did that. Finish populating The Moobaarn? Well, I did a bit of that. Have a nice relaxing read? Did a tiny bit of that. Resurrect one of my coding projects? Avoided that like the plague.

Play a shitload of Halo games? Oh, alright then.

But first, I wrapped up Crackdown 2 with a sizeable amount of multiplayer. Now, more will be written (hopefully) about Crackdown 2 later on, but the multiplayer components are definitely its strong points. There’s lots of fun to be had, even if it is derived from people who quit a game because their team is losing, then immediately search for another game… and get matchmade with, surprise surprise, the under-manned team they just left. Again and again and again.

So – Crackdown 2 off The List. And I looked at the vast amount of time I had off, and at the remaining multiplayer Achievements I had on the 360… and I thought I might clear a few of them up.

First stop: a Halo 3 boosting session, abandoned by its “host”. I’d already committed to the session, and had created a little spreadsheet of all participants’ required Achievements and cross-referenced them with maps and gametypes. Three hours later, everyone who joined in had every Achievement they required; I cajoled the group where necessary, kept everyone focussed, and reveled in their delight. And when the sole Achievement I required popped… well, I was pretty damn pleased.

But that left one Halo 3 Achievement outstanding: the Vidmaster Annual. Final level, Iron Skull, four players, all finishing on ghosts. My usual crew seems to have disbanded (or, more accurately, gained aspects of life that I’m too immature to indulge in myself), and I’d read a guide on Vidmaster Annual that had mentioned the Spartan I Project, who were “available for hire” (worry not – no items of value change hands).

So – one forum post later, and I’ve got a team, well versed in the art of this Achievement. And, with their guidance, it doesn’t take long before the Achievement pops – and it was a lot of fun, too, whetting my appetite for a Solo Legendary run through Halo 3. Instead, I started a Solo Heroic run, and got about three chapters in (on the road to Voi) before becoming irritated by the lack of friendly checkpoints.

And then the DLC for Halo: Reach was released. Cue a somewhat painful boosting session for that, with one participant continually whining that he wanted another specific Achievement… even after being politely told “no; set up another session for that”. Over and over. Still, Achievements were achieved, and another session wrapped up the last of my Reach Achievements… for now.

Finally came ODST. Now, my memories of ODST were not fond, but I found myself in a Firefight with another Aussie and a couple of Americans that went really quite well. We cleaned up a couple of Firefight Achievements, and then I thought (as with Halo 3 previously) that I might start a Solo Heroic run, just to see what it was like. But I slipped, and accidentally selected Legendary… what the hell, I thought, I’m going to play that eventually anyway.

So I started playing through the levels on Legendary. And bloody hell ODST is good. In fact, I couldn’t stop playing it all weekend – cricket and work-prep be damned! – and I’ve only got the final level to go before it’s done. Boy, knocking ODST off The List would make a pretty nice Christmas present…

More CrackHaloBraidWars

Just a very quick one this week, because I’m just about to scoot back to my childhood home to spend some time with my folks. My writing continues unabated and, despite the fact that the novel itself is turning out to be utter trash (what was intended to be a cutting analysis of modern social networking and the Baby Boomer / Gen X divide has morphed into a deathly dull diatribe about some bloke who just wanders around letting stuff happen to him. But he’s managed to get lucky and, as a result, I’m now deeply envious of him), I’ve managed to get a stack of gaming in this week.

(Read that first paragraph again. Check out that mighty fine structure, with the massive bracketed bollocks in the middle messing up any flow the paragraph may have had. Yeah, I’m a writer ;)

Last week, I ended my post with a tiny little snippet that said I was starting to tackle Braid again. And, dear lord, did it sink its teeth in. I basically played that game for three days straight, improvising and analysing and testing and replaying speed runs over and over again in order to snaffle my last outstanding Achievement on the game, and finally managed to snaffle it (the tale itself is long and boring, but I like it; that’ll be another post, I reckon). But that wasn’t enough to knock Braid off The List, oh no! I went back and bested all the Challenge Times for all the speed runs, then went and hammered out all the hidden Stars. Maybe it wasn’t the Herculean effort that it felt like at the time, but I was mighty pleased to have managed it. Off The List.

What was next, then? Geommie Wars 2, and the Smile Achievement. Much practise, little progress. Harrumph.

But then Crackdown 2 got its Deluge DLC and, despite another rocky start with the DLC installation (the DLC was available for purchase from Marketplace for a good nine or ten hours before the title update that enabled it), it’s again managed to up the interest factor in Crackdown 2. Deluge adds yet more new abilities to your character, and adds some arcadey Horde and CTF modes which are pretty bloody good fun. Though I’m pretty sure there’s a large number of people out there who consider me a griefer for my penchant to spam the helicopters in Deluge mode; certainly, several gained the habit of blowing all the helicopters up before I could get near them.

And so to my final big session for the week, a Halo 3 multiplayer boosting session. I had a solitary social Achievement outstanding, and I joined a boosting team in order to try and snaffle it. The team’s instigator didn’t even turn up to his own session, so I – and my trusty spreadsheet of attending players and Achievements and maps – became the default Master of Ceremonies. And it was a delight – hammering through Rumble Pit and, later, Team Mythic maps, we managed to stay focussed on the tasks at hand… with the occasional devolution into the random explosive mayhem that can make Halo multiplayer so much fun. In the end we managed to get everyone all the social multiplayer Achievements, so it felt like a really productive session.

One more thing before I dash off to the bus station: last week I was quite remiss in not mentioning that I’d managed to snaffle one of the pre-order versions of the Japanese No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle sets (the Hopper Edition – try to buy at Play-Asia). Since it was a pre-order, I managed to grab the “erotic comic” that was issued with it, and… yeah. It’s interesting to see some more of Suda51’s ideas in the NMH universe, and more interesting still to see the Japanese trailers and FMVs from the first game, but… hmmm. Dunno whether it was worth expanding The List for, y’know?

For now – toodle-oo. I’m off to, literally, revisit my childhood.

Unfocused

Sure, I’m trying to write a novel and get other things in my house in order, but you’d expect that I’d be able to conjure a focused, concerted effort when gaming, wouldn’t you?

Wrong.

The week started promisingly enough with a direct attack on Halo: Reach. I was determined to reach the rank of Lieutenant Colonel this week, which I easily managed early on, and have occasionally returned to the game in order to whore cRedits to buy pretty armour trinkets. But then I got the wild idea that it might be a good move to distract myself by playing a little Halo 3.

Now, I love Halo 3. It’s a lovely game. And, starting a solo Heroic playthrough, it felt fantastic to be back inside Master Chief’s armour.

Until the first firefight.

That’s when I realised just how comfortable I’d become with Halo: Reach‘s control scheme… because there’s a few key differences between the games. There’s nothing like running up to a grunt to punch it in the head and instead swapping your beloved battle rifle for a plasma pistol. Where’s melee? How do I reload?

So: I was playing Halo 3 (badly). I’ve only got two Achievements outstanding on the game, so I thought I’d join a boosting party (via TA) to try and snaffle one of them. I find some like-minded individuals and am happily (or sadly, depending on your viewpoint of gaming as a hobby / lifestyle choice) sitting in front of the 360 at 1pm on Saturday.

Expect I’ve got the dates wrong; it’s 1pm next Saturday.

Bugger.

I quickly find another boosting session starting later in the afternoon. Hurrah! In the meantime, I poke around TA some more, looking listlessly at my remaining Achievements… and I begin to think weird things. Things like, “I wonder if there’s any Australians who want to work on Perfect Dark Zero Achievements? Or Kameo co-op stuff?”

I poke around and find a likely name, and fire off a message to them. The Halo 3 session is a bust; the “host” doesn’t bother turning up. Then the chap I’d messaged about Kameo pings me back – let’s go, he says.

You’ve got to admire that enthusiasm :)

We played nearly three hours of Saturday for no result (well, all the Achievements we’re shooting for have zero GamerScore associated with them, so technically they’re all for no result), trying to obtain a Time Attack A-ranking on the first level. We failed dismally but, on the first attempt the next day, we romped it in. The next Time Attack fell soon thereafter, as well as a brace of Expert levels on co-op.

I’ve always sung the praises of Kameo – I think it’s a lovely little game, and these extra modes of play really work out well for it. As for Joe, my partner-in-crime… I doff my cap to you, sir, for putting up with a buffoon like myself. A couple of brilliant sessions so far, with more (hopefully!) to come.

Finally this week, I also started playing Braid again. I’ve no idea why. Blimey that Speed Run is going to be hard.

Reach for the Twin Sticks…

This is likely to be the first of a month’s worth of short, perfunctory posts. Mainly because there’s not a whole not new happening (or likely to happen) in the gaming corner of the moobaarn in the next four weeks, but also because I want to preserve my typing digits for NaNoWriMo, in which I’m participating for the first time this year (follow my progress here!)

Luckily, there’s no monster stories about Reach left to tell. I’m on the final cRedit grind on my way to Lieutenant Colonel, and trying to ease my progress by taking advantage of the cRedit bumps given when you receive a Commendation upgrade… which, in turn, has led to plenty of Checkpoint restarting and Gruntpocalypse. But I’ve also taken the opportunity to start playing with a number of Reach‘s other gameplay modes, including online Firefights with randoms. These have been, with one exception, a genuine delight: the firefight scenarios, with their infinite-life / infinite-ammo / fixed-time-limit options, lead to some downright silly, thrilling, seat-of-your-pants, explodey goodness.

Of course, the first time I played one of hese online firefights, I netted an Achievement (for scoring 20K in the game). This caused me to reflect on my GamerScore a bit more and, harking back to my stats on TrueAchievements, I realised I was getting close to a milestone: 94% of my possible gamerscore. And, knowing that Crackdown 2 and Halo: Reach DLC is incoming (with more percentage-mangling Achievements), this was my chance to set a new high-water mark.

The Halo: Reach achievement had left me with a mere 21 additional GS to hit the 94% mark; scouring my gamercard, I noticed that Geometry Wars Evolved^2 had a solitary 25 GS Achievement outstanding. If I could snaffle that, then I’d knock a game off The List, and clear 94%. Two birds with one stone.

Brilliant idea, huh? One little problem, though.

I’m shit at Geometry Wars Evolved^2. Bloody rubbish. I gave Smile a good old bash, and got nowhere near comfortable with it. Buggered if I know how I managed to complete Sequence previously.

It’s all so pretty and neon and… overwhelming. So, to hone my skills, I thought I’d drop back to the rustic Robotron 2084. And wouldn’t-you-know-it, I’m shit at that, too.

So – I’m no closer to nailing my 21 GS. I look further afield… Halo 3: ODST. One of the VidMaster Achievements in ODST has long been regarded as pretty straightforward, so I gave it a bash… and in less than thirty minutes, the Achievement popped. 25 GS, piece of piss. Welcome to 94%-land.

Of course, that led to me looking at the firefight score attack Achievements in ODST, but that’s a task for another month. Given it was November 7th today, I did pop in the Halo 3 multiplayer disc from ODST to chance my arm on the 7-on-7 playlist, hoping that the opportunity to snaffle my final Halo 3 multiplayer Achievement would pop up… that’s when I discovered that there’s 301 people still playing Halo 3 online, and they’re all ninja good. I got one kill, and that’s only because someone else softened up my target with multiple rockets.

So: the whoring in Reach goes on. And I’ve just written 500 words on this blog post that could have gone into my novel. There’s the odd oblique reference to gaming in my novel, you know… ;)

CostumeRocketReach

Last week I proudly rambled about ignoring any desire for retail therapy (aka impulse purchases); unfortunately, there’s a couple of titles that have been on my radar for awhile now that have caused my “buy now” button to throb with anticipation. Luckily, Vanquish deemed itself a non-buy, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn has been pushed into 2011 for PAL regions. Epic Mickey isn’t out for another four weeks, and that feels like a good Christmas / New Year reward to myself. But I have a List (another one) of companies for whom I grant myself a free pass; whose games I will buy Day One, sight unseen, without guilt. Double Fine is one of those companies; Costume Quest is their latest game.

Now, to be fair, I was planning to hold off buying Costume Quest for another couple of weeks (to bump the required Microsoft points purchase into the next credit card billing period – sometimes, I can think too small), but then I mulled on my gaming achievements of October – only one game completed (and what a shit game it was). That didn’t feel like much of an accomplishment at all and, knowing that Costume Quest was supposed to be a relatively short romp, I downloaded the demo to tease myself.

Within five minutes of starting the demo, I’d decided that I was purchasing the full version immediately. Yet such was the wonderful sense of humour and fun on display in the demo, I couldn’t tear myself away from it until it was done. The graphics are gorgeous, the sound full of subtle little bits of joy; the battle system is absolutely delightful and so wonderfully streamlined that it knocks the recently-caned Chrono Trigger into a cocked hat.

When I started playing the full game (around 10pm on Friday night), the grins returned immediately. Five hours straight before I forced myself to bed, and then the game reached out to waylay me on my way to the markets the following morning. Another couple of hours, and the game is done – everything collected, all Achievements snaffled. But that didn’t stop me from leaping back in and playing another 100% game (using the other character) almost immediately; that playthrough was wrapped up by lunchtime Sunday. Costume Quest, on and off The List within days – and thoroughly recommended.

(An aside: the Statue of Liberty’s “Anthem” special attack would have to rate as one of the most magical gaming moments of the year :)

The surprise for the week was a completely inexplicable desire to play Boom Boom Rocket. I’ve no idea where that hankering came from; it’s (essentially) a rhythm-action game, and I generally suck when rhythm is concerned – as evidenced by my performance this week. Playing on Medium, the best grade I managed was a B – and that was after many, many attempts – and venturing into Hard was a complete joke… the game was over in seconds as I battered away at my gamepad with seemingly scant regard for the colours I was supposed to be matching. The timing was askew, too. Needless to say, the hand-eye coordination needs a bit of work there.

The big effort this week, though, was the continuation of my solo Legendary run through Halo: Reach. Last week, I’d managed to get to the penultimate battle: a brute-laden firefight. I’d managed to shuffle a selection of around half-a-dozen potent weapons to that location – a fully-laden DMR, a plasma launcher, needler, shotgun, rocket launcher, needle rifle. All I had to do is choose which to take into battle… and the significance of that decision stymied my enthusiasm to do anything. But, walking home from work Monday night, I snapped – just get in there, I told myself, and do some damage. If it doesn’t work out, dig up an old checkpoint and try again.

I got home, backed up my current savegame to multiple memory sticks, and went in.

The first attempt didn’t go to plan. Covenant 1, petee 0. Ahem. Second attempt was a little better; got a few brutes knocked down, then went to trigger the secret ammo cache (such foresight!). Sure enough, a big block of blammo popped out… then landed face-down on the ground, completely inaccessible to me.

Ummmmm. Restart, try again.

The next attempt is much better; pop some brutes, cap some grunts, ammo cache accessible. I sit up top with my UNSC distractions, and they promptly walk in front of multiple streams of plasma fire and die. Prone and alone, I take cover down below… and there I stay for nearly three hours, popping my head out the door, maybe squeezing off a sniped round or two before being drowned in plasma and retreating to safety.

Seriously – nearly three hours. Check out the (very boring) stats yourself. That’s 39 kills, 9 deaths, 168 minutes.

But here’s the thing, though: from that tiny room, nursing every bullet in my DMR, I felt safe. I was alive. It was all manageable – I’d poke my head out, whittle down the enemy, and then retreat. Checkpoints seemed plentiful, and I felt like I was very slowly making progress.

Eventually, I kill the easily visible enemies – and some of Martin O’Donnell’s characteristically ominous tones start playing. “Hurrah,” I think, “I must be on the final wave already. That was surprisingly easy! Three hours well spent.” I keep up my ultra-conservative play, sniping from shelter with my DMR, and letting loose with my shotgun should brutes venture into my little hidey-hole. One by one the red dots disappear off my mini-map; I can still see the odd brute running around on an outcrop in the distance, but there’s only one enemy somewhere above me. I wait until I’ve got a checkpoint, then wander outside to check out the red triangle that distracts me from the bottom corner of the screen.

Oh shit. Hero brute. With a Gravity Hammer. Which he uses to flatten a surprised me.

Restart from checkpoint. Venture out again. He intercepts my run, mashes me up good. Third time around I notice that merely stepping out of my saferoom is enough to bring him running down to my level; then he’d either rush the room, or pace fretfully outside before returning to his rooftop position.

I hatch a plan. Lure, grenade, shotgun… Oh. Hero brutes have shields. Well there is a painful lesson learned.

On about the twelfth attempt, he rushes the room into which I’ve backpedalled, spraying shotgun shells. He lunges with his hammer, I dodge… and suddenly I’m halfway down a stairwell with two handrails between me and him. The AI doesn’t quite know how to negotiate the stairwell, and he looks to be running on the spot. I reload the shotgun and empty it into him. Reload, more shots… and then he’s dead.

And now I have a Gravity Hammer.

The checkpoint flashes up; I switch off the 360 and go to bed. That night I dream of Covenant slain and yet to face my wrath. Work couldn’t finish quickly enough the next day; I scoot home, back up the savegame again, then start my final assault. And now it’s easy; catch the enemy’s attention (an errant shot here or there, or just running out in the open), then beat them with the mighty hammer. Of course, there was another massive wave of enemies before the end of that section – my previous audio cue guesses were completely wrong – but, with Hammer in hand, I felt good. Strong. Legendary.

Checkpoint. Onto the final battle. The n00b combo (overcharged plasma pistol, followed by a UNSC pistol headshot) is… well, not second nature, but doable. It clears the room out, and there’s one last ultra-fast, ultra-shielded, ultra-angry elite between me and my objective.

He, too, gets stuck on the furniture. And dies by my hand.

As I executed the end-game sequence, I didn’t feel the same overwhelming emotional attachment to the game that I did when I completed the first Halo on Legendary (I had literally wept tears of joy that almost obscured those fleeting seconds of extra footage I’d worked to hard for, and had so yearned to see). But, as my Xbox popped up a “Achievement Unlocked – 2 for 275G”, I must admit that felt a little bit sad that the task was over.

Then I came to my senses. Never again… never again. There’s no need to put yourself through that again. No need to tiptoe through Nightfall, no need to launch an attack on the Corvette, no need to panic-run through Bugger attacks. Never again.

Wait a minute… “Data Pads,” you say? Of which over half only appear in Legendary?

Sign me up!

HaloTrigger

This post could be incredibly short and sweet; I could just say “last week, I played Reach, ground Chrono Trigger into the dirt, and checked out a couple of demos on XBLA”. And whilst that is factually correct, it’s the periphery and the detail that holds all the interesting stuff.

This week is the first week in ages where I’ve felt the need for a bit of retail therapy; the opportunity to try something new. That’s been something I’ve been resisting for much of this year (with notable weakening of resolve around Portal and After Burner Climax) but by and large I’ve managed to stick to my guns – I had a List (surprise, surprise) of stuff that I really cared about, and desperately wanted to stick to it. I even managed to strike one off that List (Vanquish, which – much to my disappointment – was too much Gears of War, not enough P.N.03). Lately, though, trusted chums have been banging on about Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, and the demo (despite reeking of the shiny-Unreal Engine) felt interesting enough to warrant a buy. I managed to suppress that urge, only to have an inexplicable yearning for Borderlands (nearly a year old at this point), which was recently released onto XBL. Again – I bit my lip, buried the urge, and decided instead to try and satisfy my wanderlust by dabbling in a few missed XBLA demos.

First up was Darwinia+ – and it’s fair to say that, despite looking and sounding lovely (like a Proper Computer Game), it’s not my cup of tea at all. I can imagine what would transpire should I buy that: I’d toddle about ineffectively in-game for a dozen hours, before resorting to a guide to help me dominate. And that doesn’t feel right; although I love the fact that Introversion have put out a game that’s polished just the way I like it, it’s not really fair to subject myself to guilt and anguish if I’m not going to get on with the game.

On the other hand, Costume Quest ticked just about every box imaginable. Gorgeous audiovisuals, wonderful sense of play and humour, and the opportunity (hopefully) to grind away at a (hopefully) shortish quest. Double Fine’s latest is on the Must Buy List (yes, yet another List)… but something else has to be finished first.

And this week I invested all my time in the same games that I’ve been playing for… well, pretty much the last month. My second Chrono Trigger playthrough (and first on my intended 100% Save File) was completed, with a thumb-numbing bit of grinding that managed to drag my character levels into the 90s, and one character to Max. That allowed me to clean up the last of Spekkio’s forms – part of my 100% quest – and a New Game + for the second playthrough is coming up soon. But that’s all fallen by the wayside…

…because my Solo Legendary run through Halo: Reach has consumed me. This time last week, I had just started struggling through the Sixth Mission (Long Night of Solace), otherwise known as the Space Mission. Now – spoilers beware! – I’d really struggled with a number of sections of this level when playing on Normal and Heroic, and Legendary was wiping the floor with me… so I was very, very, very nervous about tackling the Corvette sections. Of course, they had to wait until I learnt how to survive space combat on Legendary… who knew the flip would be so shield-protectingly effective?

So – I eventually landed on the Corvette. Two Elites floated up to greet me and my Sabre pals and obliterated us. Oh, OK – learn where they appear and deal. A couple of attempts and I’ve got my melee-dash-melee down pat; two dead bad guys and no ammo wasted. Perfect! …hang on, where have my offsiders gone? Oh, they leap into the ship (and a nest of nasty Elites) once the two up top have been vanquished? Bummer for them… and me. Restart from checkpoint. Do it all again, follow my chaps down. We don’t stand a chance – there’s crossfire opportunities a-plenty for the Covenant nasty-pasties, and even when I stick to the high ground, the sheer weight of numbers means that I don’t stand a chance.

Off to the Interwebs. What do other people say? “Give one of your colleagues your rocket launcher,” someone recommends. But I don’t have a rocket launcher…

Restart level. Grab rocket launcher. Space battle. Re-jig my melee-dash-melee path when I can’t palm the rocket launcher off to the closest friendly due to another poor weapon choice. Drop down into the room… and we’re still hammered. Even from my lofty “safe” position, I’m still slaughtered, and my rocket-powered friend is completely ineffective.

Hmmmmm. Teeth are ground.

Interwebs. “Don’t forget the Bubble Shield” …what?

Restart level. Grab rocket launcher. Grab bubble shield. Space battle. Further refine my melee-dash-melee because… well, I had to forgo Sprint for the Bubble Shield. Finally, all is in place…

Lambs to the slaughter. Again.

Deep breath. Try it again…

I drop down to my usual vantage point, and the enemies seem to have been expecting me; volleys of plasma come from multiple directions and my health is shredded. I erect the Bubble Shield to restore my health; the Covenant’s eyes collectively light up as they target the Shield, barely affording it enough time to replenish my health before it collapses. I’m crouching to avoid their fire, wondering how in the hell I’m going to get past this… when I hear it.

Voices.

My UNSC buddies – they weren’t yet dead! Apparently the bubble shield had distracted the Covenant long enough for my men to float to the ground floor; two had made it, and the guy with the rocket launcher was lighting the room up.

It was beautiful.

Of course, they eventually both perished – but the damage had been done. A few headshots from me had helped thin the numbers out and, bounding up to safety when my shields were down, I managed to whittle down the rest of the opposition. That next Checkpoint was a relief.

I pushed on. The odd death here and there was expected, usually as a result of trying to rush the enemy. Slowly, I learn about the need for patience. I clear the way for Jorge to meet me; I collect a new group of cannon fodder soldiers and move on. They die quickly, but I’m through the room… and suddenly I’m facing the area that I dread, the Corvette Control Room. I get a checkpoint; I duck back to the dashboard, copy my save file to another device. There’s no way I want to risk having to do all that again.

I’m being ripped apart by nerves now; I’m thoroughly amped, jittery, unable to sit still. To help soothe my nerves, I decide to watch one of the many Legendary walkthroughs on YouTube (I really enjoyed HaloReachTutor’s video). And it is calming, leaving me with a good idea of what was to follow.

Namely, death. Mine. A lot.

Still, eventually the game takes pity on me. The principal Elite in the room winds up watching me from the opposite side of the map; he seemed content just standing there (as opposed to dashing about looking to kill me), so I took the opportunity to shoot him in the head. Repeatedly. He didn’t even move when I whittled his shields down to expose the fatal head shot.

Phew. Easier than expected!

The trek back to Jorge was tense. I’d started nursing weapons – dragging a stockpile of arms along with me, covering any eventuality – and a few of them came in mighty handy when I was set upon in the next room. I return to the hanger, help Jorge out with his fight… and then the final batch of Elites arrive.

I run. I run like a chickenshit scaredycat. I run for the “safe” room, where “usually” the Elites don’t follow… I’ve already hidden a sniper rifle there, but just as I get to cover…

…a plasma launcher?

Ducking back for the plasma launcher almosts costs me my life, but it was well worth it. Two of the Elites noticed me in the “safe” room, and started coming towards me; Jorge saw fit to shoot them in the back. The Elites, obviously miffed, turned to accost him… and, ever the opportunist, I globbed them with lots of explodey plasma.

Done!

Bear in mind, that action took over five days, I reckon. The anticipation of that level had terrified me, and now it was done. To say I was relieved would be quite an understatement.

…so I pushed on.

The next level, Exodus, also has a few fearful memories, but another visit to YouTube found the Beginner’s Guide to Legendary, which demonstrated easy solutions to several of my pain points; better still, they were solutions that were easy enough for me to implement. Far from being a feared level, Exodus ended up being the easiest on my Legendary run to date.

The next mission was a bit more of a headache; again, I was terrified at the thought of I intended to ease my run by taking advantage of the Grunt Disco easter egg to help me get through the big Hunter face-off; unfortunately, you apparently need to access the hospital before the nightclub for the easter egg to work… and it was then I discovered that the objectives issued in the Eighth Mission come in a random order.

Which meant I got to do the Bug Run first. I mapped my route, timed my run, then threw the whole plan away because a Bugger saw through my active camouflage and started shooting, leading to a lot of very tense hide-and-seek before I escaped. The hospital eventually became my final objective, and was a nightmare – ammo was at a premium, and I managed to knock off the final jetpacking Elite with my last DMR bullet. Apart from that, New Alexandria was pretty straightforward.

Then came The Package, ending in the monstrous defence objective. Again, the Beginner’s Guide pointed out the best approach which made the task a doddle, to be frank. Which just leaves The Pillar of Autumn.

Oh god.

I spent most of today playing through this level, nursing weapons across vast distances (only to have them disappear when I turn my back), getting slaughtered by the three Elites just before the Hunters, but now I’m perched just before the penultimate battle: the firefight standoff with the Brutes at the landing pad.

And I’m absolutely shitting myself. I struggled here on Normal, barely made it through on Heroic (mainly due to a surprise attack which turned very bad for the attacker and netted me a Gravity Hammer), and none of the walkthrough videos I’ve seen look even remotely doable to me. I’ve got no Noble team-mate to lean on, I’m jittery as hell, and I can’t sit still long enough to even trigger the first wave; nervous energy has decimated my ability to even start. The backups have been made, and all I have to do is start. Push through it. One kill at a time. Checkpoint.

…that’s tomorrow’s job. Right now, I’m just scared.

Yes, this post could have been incredibly short and sweet; instead, you got me blathering about Reach for over a thousand words. Thanks for reading this far! :P

I Love A Good Grind…

After last week’s aggressive chunk of negativity (which I like to think was cathartic), I’m going to tap out a few words on something near and dear to my heart… something I often forget about until I realise I’m knee-deep in its clutches, having a rollicking good time: grinding.

Because I love a good grind-fest.

I’m currently focussing my gaming time on two gorgeous examples of great grinding: Chrono Trigger and Halo: Reach. The former, nearing the end of a second playthrough, has seen me level up from a relatively comfortable Level 35 to the mid-70s, exploiting the hell out of a couple of well-known EXP-farming spots exposed in the late-game sidequests.

Now, some people may think that running through the same areas over and over and over and over and over again, using the same button presses to dispose of your foes, with no variation in the proceedings from one iteration to the next… well, that would be boring, wouldn’t it? And there’s a part of me – a tiny little part of me, mind – that may (when the repetitions climb into three-figures) agree with them.

But the payoff… oh, the payoff. Running into battles with not a care in the world about the offensive/defensive abilities of the party. Caring not a jot for the fine-tuning of equipment. Being able to run into an otherwise tricky fight and beat the living shit out of your opponent…

Yes, I am a bully. A big, grinding bully.

I love games that give me the option of trading time for talent. Chrono Trigger gives me the ability to waste an hour or two on a long flight, or half-watch the news while playing, or catch up on e-mail during the predictable successful-battle celebrations… all while my EXP is accumulated, and I march steadily forwards to becoming an all-conquering tank. Now, I know that there’s no real requirement in levelling up that much (apart from the OCD stat-maxing that must be done… but hey, Chrono Trigger requires at least twelve playthroughs, so I’m not sure EXP accumulation is going to be a problem); but the feeling of power associated with being that over-levelled is undeniably intoxicating.

That trade-off – time versus talent – must be a bitch to get right… if indeed it is even considered. I’d love to think that it is a focus for game designers; certainly something like Ocarina of Time is moderately challenging if you’re just playing through “normally”, a doddle if you collect as many additional Heart Pieces as you can at any given point in time, and a major challenge if you’re attempting a Minimal Run. The very idea that the game can be satisfying on so many levels is fantastic.

So my Chrono Trigger grinding is pressing all the right buttons, so to speak; but what about Halo Reach? The obvious grindable benefit in Reach is for the accumulation of cRedits, used to buy additional armour and gain rank. The armour adornments are purely cosmetic – there’s no additional protection afforded by one piece over another – and the rank has, likewise, no impact on either single- or multi-player gameplay… but, when you discover the correlation between rank and cRedits, it all gets a little bit addictive.

Or maybe that’s just me ;)

Now – I’m no great shakes as a Halo player. Yes, I’ve completed the original Combat Evolved solo on Legendary, but I used many cowardly practices that would make hardened veterans scoff. Certainly, my ongoing solo Legendary run through Reach has seen me leave most of the killing to the rest of Noble Team; my thankfully-completed run through the Fourth Mission saw me notch up a mere 55 Covenant kills. Amongst many, many restarts.

So – I’m not going to attain rank through my inherent skills. But I can gain rank through… erm… time served.

And my time served is spent playing one of the Score Attack modes in Reach‘s many playlists: Gruntpocalypse. In particular, Gruntpocalypse on the Corvette map. Because, over the course of ninety (yes, I just counted) games so far, I’ve nailed that particular process. Sprint ability; run for ammo. Scoot to top of ramp. Headshots as Grunts emerge from doors, stairs, doors. Clean up, wait for “reinforcement” announcement, run for ammo. Rinse, repeat… 970-ish cR for twelve minute’s work.

And, after those ninety games, there’s still plenty to learn, and plenty to surprise me. The different intonations of Grunts when they’ve got you in their sights; the way you can drag the reticule whilst firing for a better chance at a headshot. And the repetition has even helped my in-game skills somewhat; dropping back to help a friend on Normal this evening was a real joy, with my precision skills making me far more useful on the battlefield of Reach than the scaredycat of old.

Of course, to hit the (rumoured) top rank of Inheritor I only need an additional 19,758,126 cR – which is only around 20,370 more games of Gruntpocalypse on Corvette. Now that is a grinding challenge.

Lastly this week, I just wanted to sing the praises of three gamers I met during a Crackdown 2 session this weekend. We gathered using TrueAchievements‘ party support to wrap up some of Crackdown 2‘s trickier multiplayer co-op Achievements; focussing on a common goal, we nailed the immediate problem, and then the group started cleaning up other outstanding Achievements. This resulted in me wrapping up the current batch for the game (though I’m reluctant to strike the game from The List just yet, with additional DLC incoming), and a great wodge of progress for other players, too – it really was a wonderful session, with a great bunch of strangers gathering to be helpful. So thanks again to lordmaster andy, LitaOsiris, and hatchywatchy – for reminding me that not everyone on LIVE is a mewling teenager :)

Astropop

Looooong ago, seemingly a lifetime away, the Xbox 360 was released in Australia. I was there on launch day, picking up my pre-ordered-four-months-ago collection of hardware and software, and I remember urging the SO to drive home faster, swiftly whisking the bits from her car and then bidding her adieu for the day… she went to work, I stayed home and played and played and played. Yes, Thursday the 23rd of March 2006 was a great day.

Unfortunately, after the initial rush of all these shiny new games (and the compulsion to overtake some of my UK mates’ gamerscores) passed, I began to feel a little… well, bored. My three launch titles were Perfect Dark Zero (which I didn’t get on with at all), Kameo (which I finished within a couple of days), and Ridge Racer 6 (whose charms didn’t grab me for another couple of months). Because my international friends had a four-month headstart with the console, I’d been subjected to their ravings about various XBLA games… and so I snaffled, sight unseen, Robotron and Geometry Wars and Mutant Storm Reloaded (I’d been a fan of PomPom for years).

You see the problem, don’t you? Two games that were rubbing me the wrong way, one that was a doddle to plow through, and three twin-stick shooters that I’m rubbish at. Not a whole lot of delectable variety there.

So again I turned to my network of friends: what next? what are they enjoying? A few more titles were mentioned, and so I took advantage of the wonderful demo feature of XBLA to snaffle a few tasters: Wik: Fable of Souls, Gauntlet (an old arcade fave), and the focus of this blog post: Astropop.

Now, I don’t recall who recommended Astropop to me, and I hope that the forum responsible for that interaction has since lost track of that post; because I never want to associate that game – that horrible game – with someone’s name, someone’s face. That person surely has loved ones who need not know their mistake.

The thing is, I initially wasn’t even aware of how truly awful the game was; I’d downloaded the demo and fired it up – only to be told that it wouldn’t run in PAL-50 mode. Which was news to me, since I was running my 360 through VGA… but whatever. I deleted the demo, and thought nothing more of it.

It wasn’t until I discovered MyGamerCard that the GamerScore bug really bit me… and then, hiding on the left-hand side of my profile, I discovered a number that would taunt me forever: “GS Completion %”.

My percentage was depressingly low.

“But why?” I asked myself. After all, I was getting a fair few Achievements in all my games; why was this number so low?

I looked, and it became clear: the percentage took into account demos.

I checked my GamerCard on xbox.com; it, too, kept a record of these demos. There didn’t appear to be any way to remove these unwanted guests, so the only way to get my percentage up to some reasonable level was to purchase and play them.

Look, it made sense at the time. And I viewed it as appropriate punishment for not having played the demos on a separate profile.

Now, some of these miscreant demos actually led to some enjoyable games: I actually quite enjoyed Wik. But Astropop, on the other hand…

I eventually discovered a fix for the PAL-50 problem, and finally got to play the game. And I truly sucked at it. Block matching games aren’t really my thing at all, especially block matching games with cluttered graphics (worthy only of two generations of hardware past), annoying music, and a piss-poor attempt at a “story” to hang the whole thing on. I would’ve felt I’d received an unfair deal if I’d bought this for my Commodore 64; but here I was, playing this abomination on my shiny new Xbox 360 – “next generation,” indeed.

Sure, one Achievement popped straight away… but it was another seven months before I could bear to return to the horrid little Match-4-fest (and in that time, Microsoft saw the error of their ways and started allowing 0-Achievement games to be removed from one’s GamerCard. I was furious). A few more Achievements, some through luck and some through bloody-minded determination, brought my GamerScore from the game to 60. Of 200.

Another year passed, and I discovered that you were actually able to save the game. Judicious use of memory and a shitload of rebooting gouged another handful of Achievements out, leaving just two remaining… but I just couldn’t do it. I had grown to loathe Astropop so much that I simply could not face it again.

Until last week.

“This has to stop,” I said to myself. “I have to get this game – no, this spectre – out of my life.”

So I started practising. After a couple of days, I tried the well-known attack on Level 3 for the Captain Quick Brick achievement… and got it on the second attempt.

Somewhat elated at seeing that little toast appear, I immediately set forth on another Survival game… my previous best time (from two years ago) had been something around 7 minutes & 10 seconds, but I needed 9 minutes…

My next attempt floundered at five minutes. I – again – felt The Rage. But I started another game regardless.

At the four minute mark, I started noticing that things seemed a little different. I seemed to be the recipient of some good luck from the game; a horrid wall of iron bricks? Here’s a handy row buster. Disparate obstructions? Why, your SuperWeapon has just powered up. An outbreak of poison blocks all over the screen? Why, they just happen to all be right next to red blocks, and here’s a red Nuke block! Uncanny timing, maybe, but the last thing I was prepared to accept was this game’s pity.

Suddenly, I realised that I was in the 8-minute region… I held on as long as I could, frantically blocking and memorising and pausing for breath and unpausing and going again – and then I saw the clock said 8:48… and my SuperWeapon was available.

Haha, you fucker. I have you now.

I let fly. I cleared the screen. The Achievement toast popped up. I cleared the screen again. “Fuck you,” I seethed. I wanted the game to suffer. I wanted the game to pay for every shitty moment I had spent with it, suffering because of that demo left on my GamerCard, because of that one Achievement. I cleared the screen yet again before the SuperWeapon exhausted itself and the bricks marched onwards towards my doom… and the end of Astropop.

9:42, or thereabouts. I could check the leaderboards, but I refuse to let that game poison the memory of my beloved console again. The game over screen bleated some message along the lines of “Try again to beat your high score!”… fat fucking chance.

I hated Astropop. I hated it with every fibre of my being, with every beat of my black little heart that pumps thick bilious hateful goo through my veins. I hope it drops to the bottom of my list of games and keeps going, not stopping its descent until it is incinerated in the bowels of a fiery hell. Yes, it only cost 800 points, and yes, I eventually “conquered” Astropop, but at the end of the day I’m left to wonder as to what the true cost of my accumulated suffering will be.

Back From The Dead… Again

Nearly three months it’s been since I last posted here. Three months.

But there’s an excuse for my absence.

A really, really good excuse.

…erm, not really. As you might have gathered, my gaming mojo had been flagging a bit back then; in fact, August was the first month in over three years in which I didn’t knock something off The List. There was a fair bit of emotional hullabaloo going on as well, which sapped away any enthusiasm to get into The Zone. A significant amount of work-related travel didn’t help, either… but it did help me out with the first game I’d like to have a little blather about: Chrono Trigger.

Now, Chrono Trigger always seems to get mentioned as one of the greatest games of the SNES era and, given my new-found love of grinding out RPG success, I figured this would be right up my street. It sat in the shrinkwrap for over a year before finally being chucked in one of my resurrected DSes – and initial impressions were favourable, with lots of running around and chatting with cute characters in their beautifully pixellated world. Levelling up was a delight, the battle mechanic (when switched to the wussy Wait mode) was really nice, and – apart from the mute and anonymous nature of Chrono himself – there was plenty to like about my expanding party of protagonists.

But about halfway through the game, it all became a bit too much. Sure, I had probably played 15 hours in four days, but it suddenly felt too twee, and actions too obtuse; I began to miss things. Exits became obscured from my view, actions that should have been obvious were invisible to me. Suspecting burn-out, I gave the game a break, returning a few weeks later (on another work trip) to finish it off. But the initial delight didn’t return, so my feeling towards Chrono Trigger is a reluctant “meh”.

Of course, there’s no way that Chrono Trigger has been struck off The List yet; after all, I’ve merely finished the game with all characters levelled up to the high 60s & low 70s (mainly thanks to a red-eye flight to Perth offering the opportunity for much bleary-eyed farming in one particularly button-mashy level). But I’ve taken to referencing this FAQ as my Chrono Trigger bible, and I’m aiming for a Level 3 (of 5) Perfect File:

LEVEL 1: (Only one playthrough required, no New Game +)

  • Beat the game and unlock Ending #1 and #13.
  • All sidequests complete.
  • 100% Treasure found.
  • Have a complete Bestiary list, excluding Magus at North Cape.
  • At least 1 of every item in the Inventory.
  • Learned all Single, Double, and Triple Techs.
  • 200 Silver Points at Leene Square.
  • A Doppel Doll and Poyozo Doll for each character.

LEVEL 2:

  • Everything from level 1.
  • All characters at Level 99.
  • Defeat Spekkio’s most powerful form, the Pink Nu.
  • Have a complete Bestiary.
  • Unlock all 13 Endings.
  • 100% Extras. Everything unlocked.

LEVEL 3:

  • Everything from level 2.
  • MAX stats for every character.
  • 11 Cats in Crono’s house.
  • Get a Perfect Score of 2371 while racing Johnny at Site 32.
  • Defeat ALL of Spekkio’s forms; Frog form included.

Despite Chrono Trigger‘s New Game+ option, straight away I see I’m in trouble: my Level 60+ characters preclude me from fighting most of Spekkio’s forms, especially the tricky-to-encounter Frog form. You can guess what that means, can’t you? Yep – let’s start again. Save slot number two, 14 hours in, Level 30-ish, and at least a third of the game to go. Again.

And then there’s the small matter of the other 11 endings. Progress will, obviously, be ongoing; a short game this is not.

After a completion-free August, I felt the need to get something done, to make some inroads into The List. I decided that the early part of September would be devoted to the belated conquering of my final Texas Hold’em Achievement: the Tournament Expert. Now, I’m rubbish at poker, and had been royally (and repeatedly) trounced by the penultimate tournament AI last time I’d attempted this; but a dig around my beloved TA yielded a simple solution that I followed in an extremely disciplined and cautious manner. Except for that rash All-In which could’ve cost me everything. Lady Luck, however, granted me a free pass that time, and a couple of hours on a dreary Saturday saw me clear Texas Hold’em off The List.

Then, harkening back to my Resolutions for 2010, I thought it time to tackle one of the non-current-gen platforms; I opted for the Dreamcast and ChuChu Rocket! I’d already cleared all the challenge mode puzzles and played a bit of multiplayer with a mate last year, so a couple of evenings saw off the solo puzzle levels without much incident. In fact, I probably spent more time trying to get the software to back up my VMU running properly on my laptop.

But the latter half of September, of course, was devoted solely to Halo: Reach. Tragically, work saw fit to send me to Perth on the day of release; as fate would have it, that’s where I was also stranded for the release of Halo 2. And Halo 3. (And Rez HD, but that’s another story). So I picked up my pre-ordered copy on the way to the airport; arriving home at 10:30pm on a Friday night, I fired up the 360 before I’d even dropped my backpack.

I drank in the loading visuals, listened to the familiar-yet-new extended tones, then set about building up my avatar – as usual, mauve was the go-to colour, “M000” my call-sign. I started playing.

Now, I loved the original Halo. It was the first console game I every really played, the game that dragged me into the world of console gaming, and the game that convinced me that twin-stick FPSs could actually work. I loved the characters, I loved the story, I loved the feel of the controls and (in a move that separates me from most other fans of the game) I loved the repetition of it all. I loved The Library (and recall letting out a little squeal of delight when I first entered the Library-esque structure in Halo 2), and I loved retracing one’s steps through previously conquered environments. Somehow, that made the Combat Evolved world feel more real.

The immediate sequel disappointed me somewhat. The controls felt slipperier, the cartoon-ish graphic overhaul was offputting (oh, how I loathe the sights and sounds of the New Flood), and the humanised Covenant jarred. Halo 3 fixed the control issues and delivered a great game to-boot, but Halo: Reach… well, it feels like a big love-letter to the original Halo. From the solidity of the action, through the return visits to battle-torn environments, it really feels like Bungie returned to the original game, leveraging later works only where necessary.

My first playthrough was on Normal (a real departure for me, since I usually start on the Easiest skill levels and work my way up), followed quickly by a repeat playthrough on Heroic… and I felt a massive difficulty spike there, especially when I got to the penultimate battle. And now, since starting my solo Legendary assault, progress has slowed dramatically – I’m currently using the active camo Loadout to avoid fighting as much as possible, because I’m getting pulverised if I engage the enemy.

Of course, there’s the odd ally AI bug – on my first playthrough, I got stuck in a battle with two Hunters which took every ounce of courage (and two dozen shotgun shells) to overcome, because my Noble Team partner had buggered off somewhere to look at the scenery. Second time through he obviously pitied me, because he joined in the biffo and made the fight a whole lot simpler. But, on the whole, I’m absolutely loving Reach.

But there’s so much more to the game than that; the Commendation system is extremely addictive, and I reckon I’ve already played more online multiplayer against randoms than I have in any other game ever. It feels great getting involved in that part of the community early on (rather than being typically late to the party), and levelling up a Commendation (along with all the ranking credits associated with it) is immensely fulfilling. And whoring the shit out of Gruntpocalypse on Corvette will never get old… headshots ahoy!

The big problem with Halo: Reach is the requirement for completion. Sure, the initial set of Achievements seem relatively doable (assuming I can overcome Legendary), but it’s only to be expected that there will be a ruck of additional Achievements associated with the inevitable DLC. But there’s niggling little statistics like “Armoury Completion” and “Commendation Progress” that weigh heavy on my mind; and with the highest rank requiring twenty million credits of accumulated carnage, it’s fair to say that this may be a game that will forever remain on The List…

…which is a brilliant way to segue into Ballistic. Now, I hate Zuma-like games with all my black little heart, and Ballistic is Zuma‘s grandfather. I finally decided to give it a red-hot go yesterday, and dug out my old Samsung N501 Nuon (and the chunky step-down transformer I need to run the bugger) and hooked it up to my old CRT telly. And Ballistic looks bloody awful; chunky graphics which somehow manage to also have a fuzzy feel to them, accompanied by steel-drum “tunes” that grate after a handfull of minutes playtime.

And I still suck at the game itself.

Because the Nuon doesn’t support a save-state, and Ballistic itself doesn’t support any in-game passwords, to beat all 25 levels (twenty-five? that doesn’t sound like much…) I’ll have to do it without powering down the system; a worrying prospect when one considers the ominous buzzing of the step-down transformer. “Still,” I mused, “surely it won’t take more than a concerted weekend to bludgeon my way through the levels?”

Wrong. So very, very wrong.

A good four hours of concentration failed to get me any further than Level 3-1… the eleventh level of the game. There’s a reason I hate these games, and that’s because they hate me.

Which leads me into my final game for discussion: Astropop. But maybe that’s better saved for another post…

I Feel So Old…

There was almost no gaming for me to report this week; only on Friday did I recover from perhaps a little too much Mario Galaxy the previous week, and start a completely new instance of Panzer Dragoon Orta. Two playthroughs have been completed, and I’m dropping into the groove of it again – figuring out Gene Bases, boss tactics, all the fun stuff.

And it’s not hard to become immersed in the world of Orta – it’s absolutely beautiful, with the original Xbox upscaling to widescreen component with ease. The sound, too, is delightful, and the gameplay’s tighter than a gnat’s chuff. I’m loving it (again) so far, and can’t wait to start cranking the difficulty and push my play into more defensive directions.

The other big reason for minimal gaming this week was AVCon… and, as with last year’s event, it’s left me feeling old again.

Last year saw me bullied via PictoChat by a bunch of youngsters; this year, my advancing years were highlighted in the Retro Gaming Panel. The younger members of the audience mercilessly mocked older games that actually were piquing my interest, and their constant stream of criticism and loud-mouthed buffoonery just made me feel sad. Apart from that, though, the panel itself was pretty good, covering a handful of consoles from the nineties (including the CD-32 & PC Engine), though the Jaguar section was a little soft – Cybermorph and Aliens vs Predator? No T2K or Zero 5?

The gaming side of AVCon is getting bigger and better – as well as the plethora of consoles set up for free play: current gen all evenly represented, with a smattering of older consoles (NES, SNES, Dreamcast, N64) for nostalgia, and a bunch of booths for music games (Donkey Konga – or one of its ilk – got a fair old hammering all weekend). The LAN setup was pretty big, too, though I saw the odd connection errors during Quake III(!) play. The Indie games room was a bit of a gem – they had a massive amount of space, and with the increasing popularity of gaming on the iPhone and XBLIG, there were a couple of really professional looking titles on display. Look out for inCline on the iPhone… it’s a one-touch game (like Canabalt) that feels absolutely wonderful. Should be in the App Store in a couple of weeks, they reckon.

Yes, I splurged on anime and manga again; but at least I indulged in sweet, sweet irony by making sure that Halo Legends was the first Blu-Ray I ever purchased. Didn’t attend either cosplay competition, but I did see an amazing Midna (from Zelda: Twilight Princess) wandering the halls.

And… that’s about my week. Next week: more Orta! More Crackdown 2! And, perhaps, the start of the only thing approaching a JRPG I have outstanding… Chrono Trigger

AfterGalaxyCrackdown

Something I neglected to mention last week was that I’d managed to ignore my previously steely resolve regarding the purchasing of perhaps (retail therapeutically) unnecessary games in purchasing After Burner Climax when it was on sale on XBLA recently. Post-blogging last Sunday night, I sat down and played it for the first time… and bugger me if it wasn’t a barrel of fun. Lots of things flying about at breakneck speed, Achievements popping left and right, and an extras system that frequently unlocked ways to make the game more explodey and… easy.

Yes, ABC is one of a select group of games that seems intent on making it significantly easier for the gamer the more they play… and it’s not just a matter of practise making perfect. The EX options steadily add options that make the task at hand (at worst, a fifteen minute run through a dozen stages) a doddle: auto-fire, increased lock-on capabilities, decreased damage rates. So, after a handful of runs though the game, all the EX options are unlocked, the Achievements on offer are cleaned up, and I’m ready to knock ABC off The List almost as quickly as it appeared on it…

…until I dug around the Score Attack section of the game. More specifically, the Medals awarded for various events in Score Attack mode. The Score Attack mode which, in the interests of fairness, doesn’t allow any of the EX options to be enabled when blasting through the game. And – to be quite honest – I’m fucking rubbish at After Burner. My aiming reticule zips across the screen with no semblance of control, my fighter plane is rolling almost constantly, and the enemy appear to just hang out in the distance, giggling at my inept piloting.

And those Score Attack medals… they mock me. My OCD is terrified of them now, and I have that bitter taste of disappointment in my mouth that I usually get when I make a rash purchase that lingers, goading me.

In short: another game on The List that will take ages to cross off, even with all the GamerSmarties acquired.

Crackdown 2 also got a bit of a hammering this week, with a little elbow grease yielding decent progress. I was pottering along at a comfortable rate of an Achievement-a-day, which was nice; a few clever exploits coughed up all the Renegade Agility Orbs, and then I started on a few races, a few Renegade Driving Orbs. But on Friday, I went chasing one particular Orb; scooting around canyons, in all manner of vehicles, frustration rose… and then something snapped. The experience was, quite tangibly, not fun. I turned off the 360, and fired up the Wii…

…for a return to Super Mario Galaxy 2. I was already well into the Green Star Challenge, which I was lock-stepping with my Luigi playthrough – finishing a level with Luigi unlocks a staff ghost, just the kind of content I love. And in the last couple of days I have absolutely caned SMG2; the Luigi playthrough is complete, all the Green Stars have been obtained, and the Grandmaster Galaxy opened up as a result.

Now, Star 241 – The Ultimate Test – wasn’t too difficult; sure, a lot of lives were lost exploring the worlds contained therein, but that was just practise, really. Star 242 – The Perfect Run – was a return to the same worlds… but in a one-hit, no checkpoint, daredevil format. And I don’t mind admitting that I attempted that level upwards of 150 times – lots of little mistakes ending promising runs – before finally managing what was, indeed, The Perfect Run.

And, just like that, Super Mario Galaxy 2 was off The List.

Somewhere along the line, the ability to display the Death Count on the SMG2 save file is unlocked; when I saved after acquiring that 242nd Star, the Death Count read 1257. That’s a lot of deaths… but a hell of a lot of fun. Not once during this weekend’s onslaught did the game feel like a chore, or an impossible challenge; I was always aware of what was required of me, and all the mistakes were my own. Compare and contrast to Crackdown 2, where I constantly feel like I have to exploit the game to garner any progress from it; compare also to Uncharted, which I fired up to celebrate SMG2‘s passing… and quickly switched off again.

That’s the thing about Great Games, isn’t it; they may not be the prettiest, but they’re always upstaging their shinier cousins.

CrackdownGalaxy

The past week began with me wholly immersed in Super Mario Galaxy 2; I was anxious to get through the first batch of 120 Stars before the arrival of Crackdown 2 later in the week. Tuesday night saw the final two stars (including the terrifying cousin of Luigi’s Purple Coins) succumb; a replay of the divine final level then unlocked the Green Star Challenge, another 120 collectible stars. Then I discovered that playing through levels as Luigi unlocks staff ghosts, full of nifty tricks & techniques… so now the target is to play through the whole game again as Luigi, collect all the Green Stars, and polish off whatever else gets in the way.

So – a long term project, then.

Thanks to JB Hifi reliably breaking street-date again, Crackdown 2 was welcomed into The Moobaarn… and first impressions were mixed. The opening cutscenes felt muddled, and first steps were disappointing; the once cheery and vibrant Pacific City was now decaying, decrepit. The distinct gangs of the original were sorely missed, replaced by an anonymous night-time foe that annoyed me so much in my early progress that I feared the in-game darkness.

But, technically, the game looked amazing; the graphics harken back to those on display during the original Crackdown‘s development, a gorgeously solid cel-shaded-lite. And the draw-distance is incredible… incredible. Looking from atop the Agency Tower, it’s possible to spot details of action within each of the three islands… it’s really quite an amazing achievement.

The gameplay, though…

Oh dear.

Initially, I was nonplussed – run here, cause some damage, open up progress to the next little bit. But then comes the first big Freak battle, defending your beacon from the oncoming hordes – and I’m lost. I get mercilessly pummelled, confidence shattered, and my desire to continue evaporates.

So I decided to sidestep those particular battles and play the rest of the game instead. Orb collection, rooftop races, stunt rings… all the side-quests that are so memorable from the original. And that was genuinely enjoyable – my OCD kicked in, I started collecting away like a busy little bee, and the hours flew by.

Strength was my first attribute to max out at Level 5, unleashing a wonderful ground-pound that has since become my signature get-out-of-trouble move. Agility soon followed, allowing all the freedom associated with unrestricted bounding around the city… but it also allows access to the biggest gamebreaker in Crackdown 2: the helicopter.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love the helicopter, I really do, but its inclusion in this game (along with the new “orb-sonar” ping that can be performed using the minimap) butchers the OCD-aspects that made the original Crackdown so satisfying. It’s now possible to cruise around the world eyeballing for Agility Orbs, making the quest to find all 500 quite straightforward (it took me less than four days, maybe less than 20 hours game-time). Hidden Orbs are a little trickier, but a regimented scan-and-sweep dug them up without too many problems.

So – with most of the game done (except for those loathsome beacon protection battles), OCD thirst quenched, and my head sore from beating it against the wall from the frustration of some of the later rooftop races, I was pretty down on Crackdown 2. I considered it a passable attempt at carrying on the legacy of the first game (my game of the year from 2007, I remind you), but bits had been changed for the worst without any improvements being added. Kinda like No More Heroes 2 in that regard, I guess, but nowhere near as disappointing…

But still disappointing.

And then a friend of mine popped online – he’d snaffled Crackdown 2 last Tuesday. I ping him; his world or mine? He joins my game, and all of a sudden everything changes. We leap into beacon defence situations and blast through them with barely a scratch. We fall back into old Crackdown habits of attempting a silly stunt then failing then blowing the crap out of each other with rockets, then attempting the stunt again. It’s brilliant with a partner by your side; all the depressing bits about the game are forgotten, you revel in the fun. My game gets finished in short order, so we switch to his, more objectives conquered and Orbs sought and experiments performed. Give me a pair of mag grenades, a helicopter, and an SUV, and I’ll show you two men laughing their arses off at the result.

I’d be hard pressed to think of a game that manages to change so drastically with the presence of a second person; Crackdown 2 manages to transform from a grind-to-the-finish experience into something that I wish I was playing right now. Sure, there’s still a stack of Achievements that need achieving, races to be run, and rings to be leapt through, but what I really want to do is grab a UV Shotgun in one hand and Cluster Grenades in the other, sitting in a car suspended beneath a helicopter until the pilot takes a turn too quickly tossing my SUV into the heli blades destroying them both, resulting in a five minute rampage around Pacific City while I try to stuff a grenade down his throat. Then we beat up bad guys.

What a great week :)