The O/C Gamer

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)