The O/C Gamer

This week started as many others, continuing the exploits of the previous week, and saw me dismally fail to improve my AstroPop survival time (stuck just over the seven minute mark), as well as making no discernible progress beating Stampede in Rub Rabbits' Memories. In fact, I decided to start keeping records of Stampede's heart-of-hearts attempts midweek; the record currently stands at 12 attempts, 0 successful completions.

A little more Burnout Paradise and Halo 3 with friends didn't offer enough variety to tickle my palate, so I had a peek at The List to grab a few outstanding targets to tinker with. The winners were Killer7 and Super Monkey Ball. The former is still a delight, and - despite my love for No More Heroes - really highlights the maturity of Suda51's previous work in comparison. I'm just playing through Normal Mode again (to re-familiarise myself with the level structures) before tackling the harder difficulty modes.

Super Monkey Ball, on the other hand, has led to me questioning the extent to which I can satisfy my OCD tendencies. It's a fantastic game, of course, and both me and the ex had big grins on our faces as we started belting through the main game levels (she's not one for the included party- or mini-games); but after she disappeared, I started considering my Completion Target for the game. It's pretty reasonable, I thought: have all main-game levels unlocked in Practise Mode. But here's the problem: it's really, really, really hard to unlock all of SMB's levels.

The progress on my most recent save-file indicated that I'd happily unlocked all of Beginner, Advanced, and Expert modes, along with Beginner Extra and Advanced Extra. That merely left Expert Extra, Master, and Master Extra for completion. Piece of piss... couple of hours tops, eh?

Um... no.

After about six hours of concerted effort I couldn't replicate the unlocking of Advanced Extra, and Expert truly does seem like a monumental effort - four hours of unlimited continues only saw me at level 43 (of 50), and the idea of being able to complete Expert without using a continue (to unlock the Extra levels), and then completing both Expert and Expert Extra without using a continue (to unlock Master) just seems like a Herculean task.

And so, faced with my gaming mortality in Super Monkey Ball, coming off a fortnight of depression with Rub Rabbits and AstroPop, I started asking myself the question: Have I bitten off more than I can chew?

My compulsion is to fully explore each game, witness all the assets that a production has to offer - which I think is an appropriate goal, and respectful to the artists responsible for creating these games. And, certainly, the presence of Achievements on the 360 creates a tangible definition for "Completion" - though, again, the need to experience the game in full can often override the simple 100% GamerScore "completion" (Ninety-Nine Nights remains on the list purely because I haven't collected all the in-game items yet; Rez HD is still there because I owe it to Miz to 100%-shot-down every level). But let's look at some games from other platforms that are still on The List, along with the requirements for Completion that are sketched beside them in my head:

• Wii Sports and Wii Play: get all Pro rankings, all Gold medals (not Platinum).
• Time Splitters 2: finish all skill levels, Gold Medals in all Challenges / Arcade Leagues.
• Outrun 2: unlock all cards, all Missions.
• Halo 2 and Halo 3: finish singleplayer campaign on Legendary.
• F-Zero GX: witness every driver interview, complete story mode.
• FreQuency and Amplitude: unlock every song, every skill level.
• Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari: collect all items.
• Cybermorph and Zero 5: 100% completion (without cheating!).

In fact, a quick skate down The List reveals that - by my current optimistic estimates - I'll probably only ever Complete 36 out of the remaining 66 games. Bloody hell, just typing that makes me darkly shudder with depression. But then I think about those other thirty games... There's no way I'll beat Meta-Ridley in Metroid Prime on Hard. There's no way I'll steer every driver to a series win in F-Zero GX, let alone dent story mode. There's no way I'll hit Round 100 on Robotron, or Black-Belt Grandmaster Mutant Storm Reloaded. Neither of the GameCube's Monkey Balls will be mastered. Bujingai will likely never advance past the two-thirds point on the penultimate skill level; Tempest 2000's Beastly Mode will see me off, and Tempest 3000 will melt my brain long before the final level. And there's no way I'll manage to A-rank all of Ikaruga - and that's on The List twice.

But I'm pretty sure I'll have fun trying.

And a little part of me is anxiously looking at all the new games coming out, arguing and baiting their attractiveness with the part of my brain that says "you've still got sixty-six games left to finish, Monkey-Boy". And yes, I'd love to be playing the same things that my friends are playing - those friends with their shiny next-gen games and new thrills and greener grass.

But then I remember the fucking massive thrill I got when I saw that Papillon end-game in P.N.03, or how I wept with joy seeing that extra couple of seconds footage at the end of Halo's Legendary, or the fist-pumping thrill of getting that final Ridge Racer 6 achievement, or the glorious flood of relief when I found that final Agility Orb in Crackdown.

And I fire up the Wii again, giggle inside at the sheer insanity of a monkey in a ball, and pick up the controller.

Posted by pete at 08:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

After playing nothing but Zack & Wiki in anger for a fortnight (putting aside a few hours of Burnout Paradise and RR6 with the Rodents), it was a nice change to be forced to play something different, courtesy of another trip away for work. This time, I went prepared: I took all four DS games that remained on The List: Metroid Prime: First Hunt, The Rub Rabbits, Electroplankton, and The Phantom Hourglass.

I'd acquired the preview-demo-ish Metroid Prime: First Hunt as a freebie when I'd bought Zookeeper and the (rather excellent) Project Rub (that's Feel The Magic XX/XY to you US readers… who am I kidding, I've seen the Google Analytics drill for this blog - there's one US visitor. Who visited once. And lives in Alaska). Normally, I'd be happy, but perturbed by scoring freebie games (The List is long enough thankyouverymuch; see 7 Blades for another example), but I figured that MP:FH was only a demo, so it wouldn't be on The List for long.

And then I played it.

Now, I've played a bit of the Metroid Prime series: the original game was great (notwithstanding the stupidly difficult final three bosses), but Metroid Prime 2: Echoes rubbed me the wrong way (and remains one of a precious few games that I've ever sold). But first impressions of the DS version of the franchise left the following impressions, listed in chronological order:

1. Wow, those graphics are pretty tasty for such a meagre machine; and…
2. This plays like shit.

Fast forward two years, and I've had a shit day at the office. I decide to fire up MP:FH… and something's changed. I'm at One with the default controls, ripping through the demo levels and easily topping the tables, continuing to play for ages after viewing the nice bonus movie. So that's another game off The List, my third this calendar month.

And so I returned to The Rub Rabbits. A disappointing sequel to Project Rub (that's Feel The Magic XX/XY to you US readers… who am I kiddi - oh wait, I've already done that bit), Rabbits is plagued by a couple of completely shittily unfair mini-games. Those who have played it know the ones I mean - Roshambo (a rock/paper/scissors game that offers a one-in-twentyseven chance of actually completing it in Memories mode) and Stampede (whose internal timing logic is inexplicable). In fact, Memories mode is generally a pain in the arse, essentially requiring you to get through Normal, Hard & Hell difficulties without failure for each of the mini-games. At the start of the week, six (of thirty-eight) mini-games were outstanding; by the end of the week, I'd ploughed through Poke (inexplicably untouched), Wish (a test of nerves), Lovebomber and Disc (a war of attrition), and managed to guess my way through the randomness of Roshambo (which led to one of those celebratory exaltations that scare the neighbours). Unfortunately, that leaves the final little snippet required to cross the game off The List: Stampede.

Stampede consists of two stages: the Easy stage, where you simply tap the oncoming bulls whilst avoiding gentlemen(!), and the Hard stage, where you have to tap hearts placed on the screen within a fixed amount of time. And when the hearts form the shape of a larger heart, that time limit seems unfeasibly small. In fact, I think I've only ever managed to successfully clear that stage about a dozen times (in a squillion attempts)… no big deal on Normal or Hard, where a failure simply takes one of your three "lives", but it was a major stumbling block on Hell, in which you had a single attempt to clear two such hearts. After many many many concerted efforts, I managed to squeeze past the Hell challenge - but clearing Memories mode, of course, requires you to successfully clear the heart-of-hearts six time in one game, with no room for failure.

And, quite frankly, that's too fucking hard.

I've nailed everything else in The Rub Rabbits, and even spent a few hours grinding 99,999 points to unlock additional costumes et al; but getting even one - let alone six - of those hearts was nigh-on impossible. Obviously I've managed two-in-a-row once (well, thrice actually), and that clearly demonstrates that it’s doable… but still, this task feels out of reach.

I enlisted the help of the (now ex-) SO, who had managed to act as my wing-man during my EDF 2017 assault. I figured that two styli would be able to click twice as many hearts as one, making the job that much easier. Alas, I soon discovered that the DS is not a multi-touch device; if two styli touch at the same time, one will go unrecognised. The plan was shot down; I'd have to either pull six sterling performances in a row from out of nowhere, or…

…cheat.

I have to admit, I've got a bit of a flexible attitude towards cheating a game. Exploiting dodgy AI or poor programming is always fair game, but in this case I was contemplating getting a CycloDS to utilise its real-time save function, bludgeoning my way through the Stampede. And, in my own mind, I was comfortable with that - after all, I was still performing the task, wasn't I?

But then I thought I'd try one of the many DS emulators out there. I've already ripped my own DS games & saves for use with my R4 cart (using the quite fantastic NDS_BACKUP utility with my old Passcard3/Slot 2 M3 combo… sadly, Rudolph's NDS_BACKUP site seems to be AWOL at the moment), so I fired up iDeaS on my PC to discover that it only managed to play The Rub Rabbits at about 14 fps. Given the frame-locked nature of the game, this made it really easy - if time consuming - to push through Stampede, completing Memories mode (with 20,000 bonus points and an extra unlockable costume) and finishing the game.

Except it doesn't feel right. Even though I've got a nice save file which I could dump back to my Rub Rabbits ROM, there's an icky taste in my mouth. I can't, in good faith, cross that bastard game off The List.

Yet.

Since then, I've gone back to the ROM and have continued to explore Stampede. Looking for that oh-so-obvious thing I've overlooked that's impeding my progress. Nothing's forthcoming, but I've successfully beaten the heart-of-hearts twice more. Out of a squillion attempts.

Sigh.

Furthering a week where I seemed to be tackling games I'm not especially fond of, I decided to fire up Astropop again. Two achievements outstanding, one of which is the notoriously difficult 9-minutes-in-Survival-Mode challenge. I managed 6 minutes. Hmmmm. A dozen restarts later and I've just broken through the 7-minute barrier, but it seems terribly variable - some attempts barely make the 5-minute mark. So it looks like I'll need to bribe Lady Luck into being my co-pilot. Again.

I wonder if she's any good at The Rub Rabbits.

Posted by pete at 08:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

For a game as seemingly kid-oriented and innocuous as this, another of Capcom's attempts to create strong new franchises for the Wii, it sure was a time-sink. In fact, having just completed the game (in my usual O/C manner), the game clock is reading 53 hours, 53 minutes, spread over about a fortnight.

Which is odd, because the first play-through only took ten or fifteen hours.

From the opening orchestral strains, it's clear that Zelda is a massive influence. The bulk of the score could charitably be called an homage to the Ocarina and Wind Waker soundtracks; the more cynical gamer might use a phrase featuring the word "rip". Regardless, it fits the cartoony adventure of Zack & Wiki well.

The characters aren't anything special - there's little background proffered for the young pirate Zack, the miniskirt-wearing Captain Rose shifts little from her initial spoilt-bitch persona, and Wiki - a magical flying monkey who can instantly transform into a hand-bell - just annoys with his overly optimistic and sugar-sweet cutesy comments. They're all beautifully depicted using vibrantly coloured cel-shading, which makes the experience of playing Zack & Wiki more akin to interacting with a cartoon.

Ah yes, the gameplay. Let's cut to the chase: Zack & Wiki is a point-and-click adventure, similar to the SCUMM games of old. There's very few reflex- (or "skill"-) oriented parts of the game, allowing you to explore the small levels, experiment with various object interactions, and generally just have fun with the experience.

That's right - fun. It's an really enjoyable experience, with the small levels and limited inventory facilitating the type of "problem-solving" that often trips other games of this type up - ie, the try-every-object-everywhere approach. The penultimate level took me upwards of four hours and three concerted efforts to solve; I can go back and knock the bugger off in 15 minutes now, however.

And that's the biggest flaw in this game: the replayability, or lack thereof. Sure, the Obsessive/Compulsive in me gleaned another forty hours out of the title (and the time just flew by, performing gleeful 100% treasure hunts a-plenty); but, outside of maxing your highscore (which, once you've sussed the puzzles, is almost a step-by-step proposition) and acquiring all the collectibles (of which there are tons) there's little to draw you back. And, whilst that's an unavoidable failing of the fundamental structure of the game, it's still a shame - Zack & Wiki is thoroughly enjoyable while it lasts, a fantastic reminder that sometimes it's better to have a muddled think about a problem than go in with guns blazing.

(And, having just bashed out all of the above... Yahtzee says it so much better.)

Posted by pete at 04:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Another Wii-centric week.

I spent most of the week hammering WarioWare: Smooth Moves - unlocking all the microgames, collecting all the Pose Cards, and generally just exploring the extent of the game. The Pose Cards were interesting; it appears that, far from being "randomly" awarded, certain cards are awarded for getting through Level 1, 2, and 3 Boss Battles - for example, the last four Cards seem to be gained by getting past (not necessarily defeating) the Level 3 Orbulon Boss. Regardless, everything's unlocked, everything's been played - Smooth Moves is off The List. A bright start to the month - especially taking into account the grinningly good fun to be found in the Block Star and Pyoro S minigames :)

I also managed to finish (not complete) Psychonauts. Fantastic game, marred by some stupid design choices resulting in some immensely frustrating sections in the final couple of levels. Lots of work to do to 100% that one though, and another play-through is required. And imagine my surprise when, after sitting through the credits (on my PAL copy that I felt privileged to find by proxy in a secondhand bin), I saw reference to the Double Fine Shop, where Psychonauts is still available in all flavours.

Lastly, I also started playing the game that WarioWare came free with - Zack & Wiki: Franchise with a Long Subtitle. And it's great fun - point and click adventure goodness, gorgeous graphics, somewhat annoying character vocalisations, and some wonderfully realised levels. Nothings too big to get lost in, and it all feels lovely so far (I've just moved onto the second Treasure Map). Really looking forward to the rest of this :)

As a bit of an aside, I also had a look at a couple of PC-based free-or-shareware games this week. Execution is a really... ummm... interesting idea. Well worth the tiny download, but don't read any of the comments in the forum thread beforehand. Make sure you play it twice to experience the full game... it's a really nice bit of headspace gameplay. A spectacular little Japanese shmup with some awesome object counts - and massive CPU & GPU requirements - is Exception; go here to download a demo, and here for some english-language instructions if you wish to purchase. And, last but not least, I snaffled a demo of Go Beryllium! - but can't provide a link, because I've completely forgotten where it came from. You'll just have to make do with a video :)

I still haven't turned on my 360 lately. I'm harbouring resentment towards Microsoft because of the XBLA mangling mentioned last week. Normally, I would've forgotten about things by now, but there was an interview with Aaron Greenberg on Major Nelson's last podcast, and there was something about his smug (self-) rationalisation of the XBLA de-listing that really, really, really pissed me off. Sony-E3-2006 levels of pissed-offedness. And, given my Wii-focus the last couple of weeks, I'm more than happy to start supporting WiiWare instead.

Until WiiWare management start doing something stupid, too.

Posted by pete at 09:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not much to report this week - I was away for work, then returned to finish off the US version of No More Heroes. I then started work on a "full" NMH post, and it's turned into a monster. Still working on it. It may be awhile, but there's some goodies attached to it that'll make it worth the wait. Maybe ;)

One thing I forgot to mention last week was the acquisition of Wii Fit. Even though I'm a tubby bugger (or, as Wii Fit so delicately stated, "Obese"), this wasn't bought through some desperate need to get into shape through the power of video games; no, it was because the Namco We Ski game (which is supposed to leverage the balance board) looked bloody fantastic. Luckily, Wii Fit's own skiing games are also great fun; haven't really done much else with it, though.

The big news of the week, however, is the announcement from Microsoft that they're going to de-list games on XBLA, thus making them unavailable for further sales (though they may be downloaded again by those who have already purchased them, if necessary); GamerscoreBlog has the nitty gritty, as well as a decent selection of outraged comments. The shitstorm continues over at Wired. This strikes me as being an astonishingly short-sighted and misguided decision, which removes the Long Tail opportunities availed by online distribution. Given the monies paid to Microsoft (in terms of certification costs, as well as royalty rates on XBLA sales), the least they could do is provide perpetual support for sales! Instead, Microsoft seem to be pretending that the issue with being "unable to find" games is due to too many games on the service - a problem which I think PSN would love to have.

If it's difficult to find games on XBLA, then surely Microsoft should clean up the interface, no? At least, that's what the majority of commenters around the interweb seem to think (although, to be honest, I'm surprised at the number of people who think that de-listing is a good idea... mind you, they use brick-and-mortar stores to support their arguments). But what's the chance that Microsoft will listen to the complainers?

As I mentioned on the GamerscoreBlog comments, the poignant thing for me is that Space Giraffe - one of my favourite games from last year - only missed out on one of the criteria for de-listing... by three percent on MetaCritic. A quick peek at other MetaCritic "failures" indicate that Robotron is in danger of de-listing - depending, of course, on the (rather arbitrary) 6% conversion rate, of which many questions remain unanswered (eg, the influence of automatic downloads). Harrumph.

Posted by pete at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Really quick entry this week, since I'm bloody tired, have a massively painful sprained ankle, and have a flight out tomorrow at stupid o'clock.

This was yet another week of No More Heroes. I'm attempting the same feats (that I performed with the PAL version) on the US version but, in my progress, I discovered that I didn't truly 100% my earlier run-through. Sacrilege! The US run is progressing smoothly, though, and I'm half-way through Bitter mode with all the O/C collecting done.

A tiny bit of Psychonauts - two very annoying snippets very near the end of the game - is all that stopped this from being an all-Wii week. An old friend dropped by, allowing me the opportunity to revisit some earlier Wii goodies - most notably Super Mario Galaxy and Excite Truck. The latter was especially good, allowing for oodles of two-player hilarity. The "Bungee Buddies" mini-game in Wario Ware also garnered a stupid number of laughs :)

Next week? Away on work. Shitpigs.

Posted by pete at 09:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A week away from home should yield opportunities galore for DS-abuse, right?

Wrong. The only thing that got abused during my travels was my liver, haemochromatosis be damned. Although I did fire up the DS to check out Colors!, and awesome little homebrew paint program. If you've got a modded DS (or an appropriate passcard), I highly recommend checking it out - the use of the touch screen (with support for variable pressures) is sublime.

Returning home, I launched straight back into Psychonauts. After having poked around the Web and finding that it posed about ten hours of play for most players, I figured I was getting pretty near the end - but some ambling levels (the Napoleonic board game had me bemused for at least two hours alone), coupled with the onset of a few Frustrating Levels, saw me racking northwards of fifteen hours up so far. I'm still loving the writing, but I'm now engaged in levels that are approaching Annoying... bugger-your-progress-start-from-the-beginning-again types of gameplay had me drawing a deep breath, carefully placing the controller on the floor, and turning the Xbox off. It can wait.

No matter, because my copy of the US version of No More Heroes arrived from Play-Asia (along with the NMH Soundtrack and a luscious white Gamecube controller to match the Wii). The main difference between the PAL (European) version of NMH and the US version is blood. Oceans of blood. And dismemberments. After getting used to the dissolution into black ash that accompanies all deaths in the PAL version, the overt showers of blood, decapitated heads, and cleaved torsos certainly are... ummm... eye-catching. At times, there's almost too much onscreen - plumes of blood from exploding bodies and spurts from the newly severed add up to frames which are mostly red. Dark Side mode is gorgeous now: the darkened screen providing a muted backdrop to brilliant red blood fountains. And the post-boss cut-scenes... Gore-a-rama! YouTube has plenty of comparison videos, but they're very spoilerific, so I'll not link to them here.

Of course, I've decided to play through the whole game (on every skill level, natch) again. And I'm loving it, even if I'd clearly forgotten how tedious t-shirt collecting is. But all the collecting has been done, and I'm onto my second playthrough; it feels mostly the same, but the red additions shift the tongue in the cheek a little.

(And yes, those links above are affiliate links into Play-Asia. If you click through to those items and purchase (or use this generic link to Play-Asia), I'll get pennies - pennies! - and a warm glowing feeling. Thanks :)

Next week: ...more of the same.

Posted by pete at 09:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The week began with a few nights of soothing WarioWare: Smooth Moves to take the edge off post-work nerves. Nearly all the microgames are unlocked now, but there's still a lot of Pose Cards to collect - and that, I reckon, is WW:SM's great failing: all the unlockables are dished out randomly. While I reckon that's a massive pain in the arse, I also understand that the game wasn't pitched to people like me... and, as fun as it is in small doses (an hour a day, tops), I doubt I'll be booting Wario again when the stragglers have been obtained.

Here in The Moobaarn, the pangs of being GTA4-free hit - as expected - as the gaming world settled in for their 100-hours-of-content earlier in the week. I almost wavered, considered that I may purchase the game after all... until I saw the (lauded!) "Girls of GTA4" video on IGN. To say that I was offended would be wrong; it takes a bit to offend me. But I did find it distasteful, and it quelled any desire that might have been rising (fnarr, fnarr) to blow my wad (hoot hoot) on GTA4. As a young colleague said when I struggled to articulate my thoughts: "You're not fourteen. It's not for you."

Instead, Psychonauts blasted its way into my life, courtesy of a mate in the UK snaffling it from a second-hand bin. After being completely overwhelmed - in a good way - by Tim Schafer's Grim Fandango, Psychonauts has long been on the To Buy section of The List; even though it's available on Xbox Live's Originals section, I snaffled it for the original Xbox - hey, I thought, I'll just dump it to the hard-drive and play it on the TV by the couch, rather than in my office (where the 360's set up).

Except the bloody game won't dump to the HDD properly, will it! It fails to copy all the FMVs, which appear to be on a separate section of the DVD. Sigh... at least the load times aren't too bad.

Anyway...

Psychonauts is brilliant. Truly, truly wonderful. Not without its faults, to be sure (some of the platforming antics are... ummm... a little testing. Of patience, not skill). But in terms of a wonderfully realised, beautifully presented world - and its inhabitants - it is beyond reproach. How ironic I should find something so wonderful in a four-year-old game the week the new high-water mark is set.

The thing is, I'd be happy with more games like Psychonauts. I'm about a third through, and it's feeling like it's going to be a perfectly weighted, two-play-through game. That's all I want, and I'm going to have fun doing it.

Ahem.

This week's a quiet one - in Perth on business. The DS might see some lovin' for the first time in months.

Posted by pete at 09:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This week was extraordinarily similar to last week; more Challenges around Paradise City - up to 332 of 350 now, with a lone 8-Player Challenge stopping this from being an all-7-Player affair. The fact that I was disconnected from the Burnout Paradise servers when seven of eight people had completed their part of that final 8P task still raises my hackles. I also managed to spend a lot of time online playing with Random Xbox Live peeps; quite why someone finds it ridiculously (and repetitively) funny to smash the shit out of someone they don't know over and over and over and over and over and over again is beyond me; not a fun experience for those with a goal in mind.

WarioWare: Smooth Moves also got another hour or so. Unlocked some goodies, and thankfully got through the Elephant Houses (if you've played it, you'll know what I mean). Short, and still very much like a block of Lindt Hazelnut chocolate - deliciously sweet and oh-so-nutty.

But, once again, No More Heroes ruled the week. Monday night, after an astoundingly shithouse day at work, I collapsed in front of the TV and got absolutely flogged by the final (final) boss. A second attempt saw me nail the sidestep technique with incredible regularity, and I handed the lesson back to him... And with that, I conquered the Bitter difficulty level. My OCD wouldn't let the game go that easily, though - and so I played through the game again on all difficulty levels. More details on that effort are forthcoming, but a second run through those bosses on Bitter reminded me what a wonderful game this is. There's rhythms to the prolonged battles, yes, but they rise far above the mechanical patterns of other games - they feel like they demand your cognitive involvement, not just an exercise in your muscle memory.

I must say, I'm not looking forward to the next week. It seems the entire gaming world is going to be pre-occupied with GTA4 and, sad to say, I'm going to feel quite lonely by not joining them. Now, ordinarily the idea of a sandbox-world would have me giddy - witness Crackdown - but with GTA4's purported 100 hours of content, I'm apprehensive... scared, even. I've got more than enough gaming on my plate to contemplate adding that much work to it; not to mention that the hype surrounding this release just puts me right off.

As press embargoes lift and perfect Tens get bandied about by all and sundry, I worry a little that maybe - just maybe - I'm missing one of the Games Of My Life, one of the True Greats. But, in the absence of any other sane judgement, I consider the list of Edge Tens:

• Super Mario 64: I've only ever played this through emulation, but enjoyed the experience so much using a ROM downloaded from a dodgy Russian site that I sought out an original cartridge so I could feel like I was playing it "legitimately". Fair Use, and all that. Never got very far, and it's been on my "To Buy" list for the Wii Shopping Channel.
• Gran Turismo: Never played it.
• The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time: Gorgeous. Bloody shooting gallery sections are keeping me from knocking it (and it's Master Quest cousin) off The List, though.
• Halo: Quite brilliant.
• Half-Life 2: Never played it, and not especially concerned about it. The original Half-Life was only "interesting", at best, plagued by XP bugs and a woeful final level.
• Halo 3: Loved this, but wouldn't rate it that high... though Edge's reasoning (that the multiplayer experience was ground-breaking) was sound.
• The Orange Box: Never played any of it. Watched videos of Portal; looked "interesting". Loved the character design in Team Fortress 2 but, given my inclination (or lack thereof) to online multiplayer, that was never going to swing me.
• Super Mario Galaxy: Played it. Loved it. Was actually gutted that I couldn't link to my piece on Galaxy because... ummm... I apparently haven't written it.

And with that in mind, I'll try to sit on my hands for the next week... fortnight... month, while everyone and their dog gets over their GTA4 fever. I've got my own sickness to think about, thankyouverymuch.

Posted by pete at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A really short one this week.

Another bout of intercontinental Burnout Paradise led to the completion of all the 2- to 6-player Challenges. 49 to go, split across the 7- and 8-player groups. At this rate, they'll be finished by Christmas (what with the entire planet choosing to focus on GTA4 for the foreseeable future).

No More Heroes continues to delight. The bosses on the Bitter difficulty level are a real step up, and the beauty of the game - for me - is that it's teaching me new tricks as I progress. Even now, stuck as I am on the ridiculously lively final (final) boss, I've learnt two new tricks that thankfully will drop the ETA for defeating that bastard to under an hour. As long as the one-hit-kill doesn't get me first.

Toys'R'Us had a cool offer this week that saw me pick up Zack & Wiki for the Wii, and get WarioWare: Smooth Moves thrown in for nix. A quick blast through WarioWare saw me "finish" the "story mode" within a handful of hours. Nutty, colourfully bold, giggle-inducing fun.

Next week: the end of NMH. That's all I care about at this stage.

Posted by pete at 09:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

If last week's entry was brief, this one will be positively fleeting.

I had all of one attempt at another A-Rank in Kameo - I'm attempting the Snow Temple, I'd completely forgotten what utter shitpigs the ice trolls with shields are. I was attempting to get one A-Rank a week through April, but I've lost all inspiration now... burnt out, maybe?

It's a shit segueway... but Burnout Paradise is still awesome online with mates. Up to 298 Challenges complete, now, with most of the stragglers in the 7- and 8-player categories.

I paid for Ikaruga. I played it on one of my demo accounts (so as not to taint my glorious completion percentage... in the short term). I gasped at the glorious rotated screen options. Oh yes, this is so totally what I wanted from this title... expect a painful blow-by-blow account of Ikaruga Achievement chasing later this year.

And finally... No More Heroes. I have to admit, my first impressions were not good, but I soon got into the groove of things... that groove is now nearing 40 hours, including two Sweet (Easy) playthroughs and a Mild (Normal) playthrough. All the collection sub-quests have been completed (even all 138 t-shirts!), all Gold Medals for side missions have been won, and I've started a Bitter (Hard) playthrough.

Oh. My. God.

The sheer joy of the fighting mechanic has now been revealed to me. Now, bear in mind that I normally hate boss battles... or rather, I hate boss battles that I can't easily beat. Repeating the same strategies over and over and over and over again just shits me to tears; usually I can only give it two attempts in a row before throwing the controller away in disgust, angry at the black mark on The List that the game will likely leave (Bujingai, I'm looking at you).

But...

And I've just played Shinobu, the 8th ranked boss in No More Heroes (the third in the game) - and the conflict was fantastic. Utterly, utterly brilliant. Five failed attempts in a row, each getting down to the final pixels of health for us both, before finally breaking through for the win. A great ending, a brilliant fight; I'm loving this game.

Next week? More Bitter, more Burnout. And that's plenty :)

Posted by pete at 08:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Short and simple this week.

A brief mention (again) for Burnout Paradise: continuing to hammer through the Challenges. I've got about 280 (of 350) done at the moment; I'm aiming to polish the rest off and tackle the inevitable DLC before striking it off The List.

Kameo coughed up a couple of Achievements, too. I managed to nail the Forgotten Forest level not once but twice, netting me both the solo and co-op A-Rank achievements. I followed that up with a monthly-record hammering of the Water Temple level - my first level score over 100 million! - and now I'm musing over the upcoming Snow Temple, rated as second-hardest of the bunch. I never liked that level when I was just playing through the game, so the prospect of protecting those fucking walruses as well as my own multipliers gives me The Fear, quite frankly.

Just as well I picked up No More Heroes for the Wii, then. After promising myself I wouldn't buy it until after I lopped another Wii game off The List, I caved under the immense pressure of a 10%-off deal with DVDcrave. And so, with 18 hours invested in Suda51's followup to Killer7, I managed to finish it on Sweet (that is, Easy) mode. And there were bits that delighted, and bits that disappointed; elements of genius, and head-slapping crapulence. This will be a real marmite game I reckon; the overworld is so incredibly clunky that it's offputting, and the near vertical difficulty leap at the end of the game is a touch nasty, too.

Early levels are fantastic - you can deal massive amounts of death by button-mashing, but the subtlety in the controls expose themselves later on. But it's style is really quite disturbingly brash - and that's not a "good" disturbing either. There's a real lack of coherency; retro plays a big influence, but that clashes with some of the more modern aspects of the production, and Heavenly Star sticks out like a sore fucking thumb. There's be more written about No More Heroes later, but as of now I'm only half looking forward to playing through it again.

Next week? Kameo: that bastard Snow Temple. Maybe more No More Heroes, on the Mild mode. Maybe Ikaruga on XBLA.

Posted by pete at 09:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

An unimaginative title for an ordinary week, variety-wise; whilst I mentioned a number of target games in my last post, I managed to play only two of them.

Burnout Paradise pretty much stole my weekend with huge amounts of time spent online trying to get the last few multiplayer achievements. This weekend was also a sponsored weekend of Xbox Live, so I suspect a lot of people who were in the various Paradise games were unfamiliar with good online etiquette. I'm being as nice as I can. Needless to say, after struggling over the course of three hours to share 3 Challenges with various random strangers, I decided to perform as many future Challenges with friends instead. 6 hours on a Sunday morning saw the 250 Challenge Achievement pop up, and lots of goodness for all those who chose to participate. Co-operation really works.

The other focus this week was Kameo. I've got a stack of A-Rankings left to acquire, and - having previously A-ed the first level - decided to attempt the second. A little reading indicated that it's widely regarded to be the hardest of the A-Rankings and, having spent a good number of hours on it, I can see why; there doesn't appear to be much room for error there. My top score is a touch over 5 million, the target is 15 million - but Kameo's somewhat exponential scoring scheme means there's probably only two or three little mistakes separating those two scores.

Speaking of wacky scoring schemes... Ikaruga should be appearing on XBLA on April 9. Whilst I've still got the Gamecube version on The List to complete, I'm sorely tempted to splash my 800pts on this, simply to let The Man know that it's appreciated. The Achievements look like a bitch, though; I reckon my best rank ever was a B. So: do I buy the game that will be long-term on the list, or just pretend to get the Achievements on the Gamecube version? Decisions, decisions...

Posted by pete at 08:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, after four or five weeks writing about other forms of entertainment, it's good to be back in the land of the Gaming.

The big news is, of course, my absolute lack of willpower regarding Burnout Paradise. A mere day after vowing that I'd not purchase it until after all my Festival and Fringe hijinks, I made a completely self-fulfilling "deal" with myself that saw me purchase the latest Burnout and a Live Vision camera. Much fun ensued; Paradise is a really lovely game, and completely bereft of all the difficulty spikes that existed in the last iteration I'd played (Burnout 3). Sure, there's still some broken bits - the Stunt Runs when you're approaching your Elite license are seriously broken - but it's mostly bloody good fun, especially when you take it online.

As well as Burnout Paradise, I also gave Undertow a bit of hammer over the last month or so (when I should've been writing up Fringe shows). Managed to get a group of like-minded souls together to push through its Ultra difficulty, which managed to be equal parts frustrating and fun. One of our hand-picked band disappeared just as we hit the final level, to be replaced by a young American chap who appeared to be experiencing the game for the first time. Our simple instructions to him - "stay over there, in the corner, and don't die!" - may have seemed a little abrupt and cruel, but he scored an Achievement out of it and seemed happy with his lot.

Over this (Australian) long weekend, I thought of no better way to celebrate the death and resurrection of JC than to dress my hot young female avatar in a (skimpy) schoolgirl's uniform and leap about (upskirts, ahoy!) killing Geist. Yes, it was a return to Bullet Witch - the game that just keeps on bringing the disappointment - in a bid to conquer Hell Mode, the hardest difficulty level in the game. The reward for such a monumental task? A solitary 1 GP. Cheeky bastards. Still, it's been done now - so that's another game off The List.

I've also returned to Perfect Dark Zero - which is most definitely not a shit game, with the exception of Mission 10 - in an attempt to garner some of the points there. I've enlisted the help of an English chum for the co-op levels, but he's a n00b to the game and deserved a bash at the early skill levels. So far, so good - but I'm aware this is a long-term project.

Finally, the only other games I've missed were Geometry Wars (which I fired up to see whether I'd magically gained some new, hard-core skills... I had not) and Outrun 2, a real blast from the Xbox past. I really like Outrun 2, but I'm stuck in Mission Mode Stage 8; I can't, for the life of me, nail that last Single Race. It's no Ridge Racer 6 - I seem to be fighting drift all the time. More practise required, I think.

So now we're all caught up. The aim for the next few weeks is to clean up the online elements of Burnout Paradise, continue plodding through PDZ, start working on those A-rankings in Kameo, and satisfying my O/C Needs in Katamari Damacy. And writing a longer post on Bullet Witch, which should be good for a laugh.

Posted by pete at 04:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As might have been evident from last week's post, life has been consumed by Rez. For a week, it was pretty much all I played, and I've got a crippled RezThumb to prove it.

Rez's Achievements were perfect for the game, and pretty much matched my definition for 100%-ing the game (as I'd previously managed on both the Dreamcast and the PS2). But I really savoured this one, using the 30 Score Attack runs to explore the alternative graphic and sound filters. The new graphics filters were wacky - Tile ups the challenge mightily, and both Bloom and Glare are distractingly scary when you get to the Area 4 Boss. And, even though I've snaffled all 200pts from Rez, it remains on The List - I'm committing myself to 100% Shot Down / Collecting each Area... any less would feel disrespectful.

Also did a little whoring post-Rez - racked up a few kills in Undertow (anyone want to co-op Ultra?), and collected the rest of the DLC Achievements in Gears of War. That's enough to bump my GamerScore Completion percentage over 90% - something I'm immensely proud of, and yet find pricklingly goady at the same time. But, given my roster of games, getting to 95% is going to be nigh-on impossible... too many points are tied up in ranked Gears, Perfect Dark Zero, and the twin-stick triumvirate of Robotron, MutantStorm, and Geometry Wars.

Also pottered around with the Burnout Paradise demo - lovely stuff, and very reminiscient of the freedom found in Crackdown. So I'll be picking that up in a month or so.

A little housekeeping: hopefully-regular commenter Aureole mentioned...

I think the point of the GOW multiplayer, like them all really, is to do it with people you know. Of course, I was way more into the co-op than the versus mode, and I think the game is biased towards that. Halo 3 is a multiplayer game served along with a functionless parsley leaf of a single player campaign daintily perched on top.

And I'll also respectfully disagree with Aureole's dissing of Halo 3's single-player campaign - which I found much more engaging than Gears' big-men-go-bang "story" ;)

He goes on to say:

BTW: Bioshock is shockingly generous with the points - even the "ultra hard" Brass Balls achievement which turns off the bit of the game that makes you effectively invincible and immortal.

Alas, this is likely to be the last weekly report for a month or so - my other compulsive habit, the Adelaide Festival & Fringe, kick off soon, so I'll be tending to my other blog where I write up everything I see. I reckon 90 shows is looking doable this year which, as you may imagine, is going to be a bit of walking and writing. Hopefully, the writing I've been doing here will help me slip into the groove a little quicker this year :}

See you in a few weeks!

Posted by pete at 09:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)