The O/C Gamer

A muted and moribund start to the gaming week - I didn't want to continue Killer7 on a school night, and aside from a few more Rub Rabbits attempts (current score is 17-0) nothing else took my fancy.

The weekend saw an old friend escape from family duties for a half-day of gaming; these are always a good laugh, the best being when we explored a whole heap of dodgy Dreamcast games in gobsmacked disbelief. This time, though, we started with Excite Truck (I snaffled one of my six remaining Challenge S-Ranks), before belting through a potted history of my 360 goodies - Bullet Witch, Ninety-Nine Nights, Space Giraffe, E4, Mutant Storm Empire all got a bit of airtime before we settled on Lego Star Wars II. We played through the whole game, ate lots of junk food, he left happy.

After seeing him out, however, I sank back into the lounge chair. This was only the second time the 360 had been connected to the TV (rather than the Dell monitor in my office) and, despite the non-widescreen aspect ratio (yep, I've still got a clunky CRT TV!), something really felt different playing 360 games in a laid-back setting. Inspired by a bit of Mutant Storm Empire earlier in the day, I fired up Mutant Storm Reloaded and started poking around Tally Mode, looking at the Leaderboards, comparing scores to friends.

And then the Highscore Bug bit me.

Into the wee small hours of the morning I played, upping the scores of various levels in Tally Mode, all the while keeping one eye on the Leaderboards. I managed to clamber about five thousand places before retiring to bed, only to pick up where I left off the following morning. Upping the first third of the game's levels to Purple Belt or better dragged me safely inside the Top 4000; plenty of room for improvement there.

The Bug was still there, so I returned to Mutant Storm Empire. It's a lovely evolution of the twin-stick shooter, and shares the Tally Mode of its predecessor - more Leaderboard clambering, and I managed to Black Belt World 1, too.

Finally, I fired up Ikaruga for the first time since its release on XBLA. I'd bought it as soon as it was available, but not played it - I didn't want to dent my Gamerscore percentage. Today, though, I bit the bullet and plunged in for a couple of hours, snaffling the Dot Eater Achievement first go (my first Achievement for months!) and grabbing a couple of other boss-beating cheevos. Fantastic game, but lordy those A-Ranks are going to be tough.

Again, though, I got sucked into Leaderboard watching - committing myself to beating certain Friends scores. That scoreboard pressure is unfamiliar to me - it'll be interesting to see whether that develops at all, especially in the knowledge that some of my XBL chums are hard-core gaming ninjas.

Posted by pete at 09:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

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)

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)

A late entry this week, which I'm blaming on the Australia Day holiday. Staying up late caning my way through the Carcassonne Achievements wasn't responsible, oh no.

A reader (or rather, "My Only Reader") Aureole posted a comment asking...

How the hell do you get the time for this? I'm 1/3 of the way into Bioshock and I've had that since the launch. And I've only completed Portal out of the Orange box in a similar time.

As I've noted before, the Bioshock demo gave me the heebie jeebies, so I figured it would be too scary(!) for me to comfortably play through; and The Orange Box is just waaaaay too much game for me to commit to. That, and I fucking hated the original Half-Life (which shares the dubious honour - with Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - of being the only games I've ever gotten rid of). But the very best of luck to you, Aureole - may you never be afflicted with an obsession such as mine ;)

This week started with a bit of a run; for five days straight, I'd managed at least one Achievement - mainly due to the battering of Bullet Witch and Astropop. I decided to see how long I could continue this run...

Gears of War: Struggling for reachable Achievements, I decided to use up one of my trump cards... the giveaway for your first online ranked match in GoW. So online I ventured; and, after the lush Halo 3 support, GoW feels positively rustic. Once the game - eventually - began, it was clear I'd stumbled into something akin to a 4v4 turf war - albeit one perforated intermittently with awful lag. Five rounds passed before I scored my first kill - an accidental chainsawing of someone I was trying to melee. That dictated my future strategy, and I began running around like a chainsawing loon. I wound up with five kills, and the team won (mainly due to one exceptional chap), but the whole experience felt horribly clinical - not fun at all. Why was this game so popular online, exactly?

Astropop: I managed to clear a screen five times to snaffle one Achievement - that was Day 7. The GoW Cheevo was Day 8. I tried to stretch into Day 9 with the level-in-25-seconds Astropop Achievement; I failed. 8 days is all I could manage.

Halo 2: finally got past that Drone ambush section I mentioned last week. Imagine my relief when I actually saw the words "Checkpoint" appear onscreen! Imagine my dismay when I subsequently emerged in a room with two Hunters, that I barely scraped through on Normal! Scared, I switched the Xbox off again.

Frogger: Last week I neglected to mention that I'd decided to give the XBLA rendition of Frogger another bash, in an attempt to conquer that bastard Level 5. That carried over to this week, and I've yet to lay eyes on that Level. Bugger. Two weeks of practice for no reward; go me.

Carcassonne: I downloaded for free this back during the "Live is 5" "celebration" a few months back... and left it unplayed. If only I fired this up for the first time on Day 9... Alas. Played this for the first time on Sunday. 100%-ed the game same day. Had a ton of fun, some good giggles playing with mates online contriving spectacular results, and it barely troubled The List. My kind of game, really :)

Texas Hold'Em: it's still churning away next to me, A-button on the Hori Fighting Stick held down by a power brick. Royal Flush, eh? Not bloody likely.

Undertow: I knew I'd play this. Against all good sense. And play it I did, despite 95% of the 360-owning Internet bitching to Microsoft about how shit this game is. And they're wrong - it's not the greatest game ever, but it's very far from the worst. Playing online with mates, attempting the rock-hard Ultra levels, provides some genuine fun - a nice mix of capture-the-flag and blowing the shit out of stuff, with good bits of teamwork and tense, almost nail-biting moments where we - as a team - grimly hung on to our capture points and watched the counters tick down.

Ridge Racer 6: with the Rodent Awards coming up this week, a bunch of us decided to give the departing 2006 Game of the Year a bit of a send off. And bugger me if the old girl still has it... more fun than you can poke a fun-stick at. Glorious.

Finally - Rez HD is due this Wednesday. Which utterly, utterly pisses me off, because I'll be interstate on work until Saturday night. Have fun with your four-controller trance-vibrator rumbles, you lucky buggers - I'll be joining you the moment I get home :)

Posted by pete at 02:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

After last weeks commitment to Achievement whoring, I thought I'd continue and commit one round of Gears of War a day, building up to the release of some more of those shitty online Cheevos... this commitment lasted all of one day.

Stranger's Wrath: completed a second run through, did a lot of the little side-tinkerings that I didn't manage the first play-through... these tinkerings mostly involved Clacker abuse. Knocking them all down into the sewers, knocking them into the water, that sort of thing. Anyhoo, Stranger's Wrath is now crossed off The List.

Halo 3: last week, I felt a sense of dread regarding online Achievements - what happens when players abandon your game-of-interest for the next big thing? So I thought I'd try and knock off my remaining Halo 3 tasklets... only problem being, they were all bloody tricky. Two kills at once with the Spartan Laser? I've been lucky to get one - ever - and I'm pretty sure that was someone on my Team.

So - I gave the much-publicised language-filter trick a try. Bang - the first ranked game that came up had five like-minded chaps who organised Achievement scavenging with ruthless efficiency. Within thirty minutes I had my five remaining ranked Achievements, and my eyes were opened to the seedily-perceived world of Boosting. Bloody funny stuff, though - helping other people get their Achievements when they've not got a headset to communicate through is certainly an amusing exercise in machinimatic mime.

With the ranked tasks out of the way, I went back and finished the rest of my pending Meta-Game runs... bloody hell, that Cortana level shits me up badly. It's no Library, that's for sure. And so came 1000/1000 for Halo 3, but no crossing-off The List yet - my goal is to beat single-player on Legendary. Which has to wait for Halo 2 to be finished on Legendary...

Halo 2: fired this up for the first time in aaaaages to discover that my current checkpoint - Heroic, Gravemind, end of Detention Block - is incredibly badly placed; I'm instantly set upon by those bastard Drones and killed. Try again - dead. Again - dead. Again - and I escape. Tip-toe sniping, I take out the little bastards, then the Elite Guards (who I'd completely forgotten about). Room cleared, I move forward... to be ambushed by more Drones.

Shit.

Start again. 3 more tries to last longer than the opening salvo, take out the Elites, trigger the Drone ambush, run away, snipe, creep into next room. I see some text appear in the top left corner of the screen and, assuming it was the "Checkpoint" text, I save & exit.

It was not the "Checkpoint" text.

Double shit.

Start again. 2 more tries blah blah, take out the Elites blah, go to trigger the Drone ambush... oh poo, where'd this Brute come from? And why is he pummelling me so? And why do my melees, so effective in Halo 3 on Normal, do him no harm? Oh dear, I'm dead. Again.

Sigh. Power down Xbox.

Astropop: two more Achievements. I'll be glad to see the tail end of this bugger.

Bullet Witch: finished Chaos difficulty. HELL is waiting for me, and then the opportunity to write about the heartbreak that is this game.

Texas Hold'Em: I rue the day I downloaded this for "free". It will remain the noose around my neck, even when Astropop has gone. As I type this, my 360 is churning away, trying to randomly conjure a Luck Of The Draw Achievement. Sigh.

In other news - no Rez HD, obviously. And Microsoft has seen fit to offer everyone a copy of Undertow for persevering through the Live "difficulties" over the New Year. In general, the response was unfavourable and, given the "joy" I've had with the last "free" game, I'm not exactly waiting for the chance to download this freebie.

But I know I will.

Sigh.

Posted by pete at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This week started off like any other - a bit of Stranger's Wrath, a few practice games of Geometry Wars and Lumines - but, after a bit of discussion by the members of the Way of the Rodent Leaderboard, I thought it appropriate that I focus on getting my completion percentage up to 85% - especially since I reckon that Rez HD will get a release this week, and I'd be guessing there'll be some less-than-straightforward tasks in there (something tricky like 100%-ing each level, for example). The 85% target meant that I needed to scrounge up 66 points from my (seemingly) already tapped-out games.

First step: Mutant Storm Empire, with its cheap multiplayer Achievements. I enlist the SO again, who proves to be utterly piss useless and completely unable to process the visual cues of incoming death. We fluke it through to my intended multiplier-whoring spot, only to discover that time-limited levels mean that whoring is not really an option. "Cheap" multiplayer Achievements, indeed.

Next stop: Empire's predecessor, Mutant Storm Reloaded. Surprisingly, I manage to snaffle the Black Belt Achievement at first attempt... 30 points. Impressed with the ease of that task, I figured I'd give the Black Belt Grandmaster a bash: I lasted 3 levels. Of 89.

Given my apparent improvement in Reloaded, I thought I'd give the grand-daddy of twin-stick shooters another bash: Robotron: 2084. And lo, my first three games all saw me bump up my high-score; eventually, the High Score Achievement pops up. A day later, a joyous bit of blasting say the Wave 10 toast appears. 30 more points, woohoo!

Looking down my list of games, Astropop stood out - a mere 60 points from the game. A bit of poking around revealed an glitch which relieves the time-pressure of the game somewhat; exploiting that yielded another couple of Achievements, another 40 points... and the job is done, I've hit 85% completion on the Xbox 360.

So - the next target is, logically, 90%... but I'm hamstrung by the bastardic Gears of War, with 620 points - nearly half - from multiplayer. I've never got on with Gears in multiplayer, and I generally regard ranked Achievements as evil; but then I realise that the "additional content" Achievements are not listed as "ranked". Cue 2-player local games, and another 90 points... with a further 160 points in the wings.

The best thing about this week, however, was the re-exposure to Robotron. It's a fantastic game, and really knocks Geometry Wars into a cocked hat... if only because it doesn't jar when restarting the game. I was also surprised at my apparent improvement in ability - I put this down to the effort I've put into with Geommie Wars. My word, this "practice" stuff really pays off!

Next week: hopefully, we'll see an awesome Rez HD, more Stranger's Wrath, and (hopefully) the return of Killer7...

Posted by pete at 03:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Wow. Now that was a wacky week.

Killer7 - finished in about 15 hours. What a fantastic headfuck! I loved this; just giving it a little break before attacking the harder skill level (then Killer8, then Hopper7).

Stranger's Wrath - just started a second play-through. Lovely game :)

N2O - a new one this week (as well as Killer7). Ace game, though it still feels a bit loose to control. My recently-obtained PS1 memory card makes all the difference, here, as it means I can save high-scores and forget all those arcane level codes. Level 8, half-a-million points so far.

Phantom Hourglass - ummmm... I found a ship part. And a Courage Gem. Still have six million of each left to find, however.

Lumines Live, Geometry Wars - didn't play either. I still don't trust Live.

Microsoft have announced (probably to avoid a class-action suit... oops, too late) that there'll be some sort of compensation for the Live issues over the New Year period... here's hoping it's points. Rez HD is a-coming... :D

Posted by pete at 04:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Another year on, and still only two readers. Doubtless they'll give not-a-shit about these worthless opinions; why start now, eh? Still, for prosperity, here's my bouquets and brickbats for the gaming world (as I experienced it) circa 2007…

Website of the Year: The always amusing, constantly cutting, totally tongue-in-cheek Sony Defense Force.

Almost-but-not-quite Award: Oh, how I wanted Bullet Witch to work. Something about the movie presented at the 2006 E3 left me utterly smitten. Maybe it was the idea of a gun-toting witch. Maybe it was the fact that said witch was hot. Whatever it was, my pre-order was in as soon as I saw it on my local's list, and I awaited delivery with bated breath. Sadly, whilst Alicia the Bullet Witch was indeed hot (especially when decked out in the schoolgirl and secretary costumes), the gameplay was astoundingly average. A little more content, a few less crashes, and a coherent plot may have made this a winner; sadly, most of the pleasure derived from this game was either lecherous or directed at the laughable "writing".

Game Writing of the Year: tough one this, but Super Paper Mario takes the gong for this little next-gen dig:

I long for the sweet peace of the pasture… but the bright colors of the world taunt me!

Why must all things be so bright? Why can things not appear only in hues of brown!

I am so serious about this!
Dull colors are the future!
…The next generation!

Disappointment of the Year: The PS3s lineup of compelling games… or lack thereof. I was expecting my anti-Sony resolve to be tested, but no - release after hyped release was deemed no better than "good" by the majority of the gaming press. Uncharted: Drake's Fortune seems to be upping the ante a little, though - about bloody time. Honorary mention to Shadow of the Colossus - why is this game so revered, again?

Under-Appreciated Game of the Year: Normally, this would have been a no-brainer for Space Giraffe; however, judging by the Leaderboards, that title managed at least 15,000 sales (despite Minter's almost abusive rantings… surely a candidate for Saddest Moment in Gaming for the year). However, the wonderfully weighted and polished Mutant Storm Empire was played by far fewer than it deserved - 6,454 people worldwide have claimed the impossible-not-to-get Beastie Combo Achievement. A massive shame; here's hoping that the PomPom guys (and other publishers, too) don't abandon the fledgling Live Arcade platform.

Funnest Gaming Moment of the Year: Halo 3. Rocket Races. Eight mates spanning three continents. I was hoarse from laughing. Honorary mentions go to Excite Truck, Crackdown, and the opening moments of Just Cause.

WTF Gaming Moment of the Year: Space Giraffe, level 52. Followed closely by level 64. Then there's the other 98 levels, then a real big drop-off to the next game. Of course, Space Giraffe also picks up the Gaming Payback of the Year award, for the absolute glee I felt when I learnt to "see" all the levels. Brilliant stuff.

Couples Counseling Award: Earth Defense Force 2017, for bringing me and my SO closer together - in a gaming sense, at least.

Bring-On-The-Divorce Award: Halo 3, more late nights, early mornings, and inter-continental swearing and laughs than she could possibly imagine. New rule - if you see the headset on, I'm not actually talking to you. Honorable mention goes to Every Extend Extra Extreme - the SO thought it a great idea to drag me out of the zone by asking me something utterly trivial. On level 98 of Revenge Mode. Game over, achievement not unlocked.

Learning On The Job Award: Crackdown, for that initial vertiginous climb up the Agency Tower. With further play - especially with the foot races - comes the ability to just belt up the side of the building like it was an ant-hill. I can't actually recall learning how to do that ;)

Bastard Technology Award: The EEPROM chips in Jaguar cartridges. Lost heaps of good Tempest 2000 progress because of that dodgy mid-nineties tech.

That's What Gaming's All About Award: this is kind of a runner-up for Game of the Year; but Super Mario Galaxy, with its worlds of imagination and gentle difficulty and giggles and fun was a brilliant example of a game for everyone, not just the gaming-since-birth crowd.

In Summary: Last year, I wrote "2006 was a bloody brilliant year to be a gamer "; but it could be argued that 2007 yielded more quality titles than any other year in gaming history. Even the over-hyped critical duds were huge - see Lair, Assassin's Creed, Heavenly Sword. My spreadsheet tells me that I bought a lazy twenty games in 2007, but look at the AAA titles I didn't buy: The Orange Box (an O/C nightmare), Bioshock (the demo scared the shit out of me), Guitar Hero III and Rock Band (I don't need more rhythm games), and all manner of Wii Virtual Console (Super Metroid, Mario 64, A Link to the Past) and XBLA (Pac-Man CE, Alien Hominid) titles. There's far more games than time, and my records show that I've still got 63 games incomplete. Maybe I should consider making a New Year's Resolution regarding the "incomplete" list? Something along the lines of reducing it to around 50? Hah - I'm nowhere near that naïve… a more realistic resolution would be to not let it blow out much further.

But bring on 2008…

Posted by pete at 04:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A bit of time-in-lieu, and I'm off work for the whole week; but a trek to my parents' place for Christmas left me with nothing but the DS to hammer for three days. Regardless, this was a big week... a big week.

Lumines Live, Geometry Wars - didn't play either. Not really hard to avoid these chaps, what with the problems with Live over the last few weeks. Since my 360 Premium hard drive is now attached to my 360 Arcade, I require a Live login to play my XBLA games... and with Live going up and down like a whore's knickers, I was constantly getting booted out of my games. Ho, hum.

Super Mario Galaxy - finished. 100% complete. Crossed off the list. All 121 stars, with both Mario and Luigi. That included a particularly heroic 14-hour day doing Luigi's last 56(!) stars, including all the bastard muscle-memory-test purple coin challenges. Fantastic stuff; I loved Galaxy.

Stranger's Wrath - finished. Just a few hours ago, in fact. After finishing Galaxy, I figured I'd push on through with this. I hadn't felt especially driven to do so; sure, I really enjoyed playing it when I had the controller in my hand, but I wasn't being compelled to play it. All that changed when I hit the plot twist about two-thirds through the game; when the game changed from the (decent) first-and-third-person shooter style to start incorporating run and dodge and hard-core shooter and... wow. Just wow. Great game. Will give this another play-through in a few weeks.

Phantom Hourglass - finished the main story... but, as with all modern Zeldas, the game doesn't end there. Oodles of side-quests and ship parts and trading games and fishing left to do.

The completion of Zelda niggled me, though. In some ways, Super Mario Galaxy and Phantom Hourglass have a lot in common; both are flagship titles for their respective systems, and both show that careful design can lead to brilliant new control mechanisms that exemplify what those systems are capable of. The difference between them, though, is that the liberating control methods Galaxy are built on top of a game which, by itself, is all manner of awesome; it's pretty hard to say the same of Zelda. Great controls, and some bits of the game are fantastic; but there's huge chunks of crud there, too - walking into the Temple of the Ocean King for (what was to be) the penultimate time was utterly demoralising, and nearly broke my resolve.

So that wraps up a big week for me. Tonight, I start the critical darling that is Killer 7; I can't wait :)

Posted by pete at 05:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yet another quick catch-up entry. Progress is as follows:

Lumines Live - bugger all progress. A couple of scores in the high-300-thousands (using the Rockin' Holiday Pack, which seems a lot easier than the Advanced, and I haven't even clocked the skins yet), but nothing new unlocked.

Geometry Wars - oooooh, something's coming together. First, I managed to string together a stack of inspired dodge-and-shoot, netting me 1,000,315 points - and an Achievement! Quite proud of that, especially considering it was built on an utterly craptacular first-life score of under 100,000. Followed that up the next day with a first-life score of 465,000 - another Achievement. Feeling good about Geommie Wars now...

Stranger's Wrath - didn't play it.

Phantom Hourglass - didn't play it. But a bit of travel over Christmas bodes well.

Super Mario Galaxy - oh my word yes. Finished with Mario - all 120 stars, including the complete bastardry of Luigi's Purple Coins (a pain made worse when you find a YouTube video of someone grabbing all 150 coins... playing as Luigi). Have started playing as Luigi now, a touch over 30 coins in... his slip-slidey nature, of course, adds a little to the difficulty level, but the first Cosmic Luigi race I attempted left me aghast - Cosmic Luigi seems a much more cluey individual than his shorter, fatter brother.

So there you go. Feeling a bit of a hankering to tackle Killer 7 soon, but one of these buggers is going to be wrapped up first...

Posted by pete at 11:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

OK - a few days on, and I'm forcing myself to write again. How's my progress going?

Lumines Live - unlocked a bunch of skins (currently at 82%, what with the Base, Advanced, VS CPU & Puzzle packs), and managed to loop Advanced in Challenge Mode for a decent score of 457,000. My 60 second Time Attack is stuck at 57, though... well off the pace. Really enjoying Lumines, though, even though my Challenge Mode games are usually over an hour apiece; there's a whole lot of blinking later in the game when my eyes have dried out from the staring :}

Geometry Wars - no real progress, though I did have one pearler of a game that yielded a first-life score of 425,000-ish (another two seconds and I would've netted that ninth life, but no, I had to run straight at that black hole, didn't I? Idiot). The big problem with Geommie Wars - apart from the fact that I'm crap at it - is that it's very hard for me to start a second game. Going from the frenetic late-game stages back to the start is so jarring it almost dooms the subsequent game.

Stranger's Wrath - didn't play it.

Phantom Hourglass - another few days away from home with work presents another perfect opportunity to belt this around. I'm now two-thirds of the way through the second "half" of the game - you know what I'm talking about, right? - and managed to have a blissful moment in the airport. To my left was a young girl, maybe twelve, playing Nintendogs on her white DS. To my right, a boy - about the same age - playing something D-pad-centric on his black DS. And there's me, a fat dishevelled bloke in his late thirties, grinning like an absolute fucking loon because I just figured out how to deal with Gleeok, the Two-Headed Dragon, by scribbling madly on my little white screen. Some mad tapping battles raised some eyebrows on the flight, too.

The big winner, though, has been Super Mario Galaxy. 96 stars now, and they're starting to get pretty damn devious. I left an infuriating bunny hunt to come write this, and I hear their little bunnyish snickers haunting me now, the bastards. SMG is obviously very polished, and a hell of a lot of fun to play... but Game of the Year material? Hardly.

Game of the Year, eh? There's a thought for another entry...

Posted by pete at 09:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A mere fortnight after privately declaring that I would post something - anything - at least once a week, I slipped. For the best part of a month. A frantic cocktail of work and work managed to dismember my plans whilst allowing a tantalising morsel of time each day to get my game on. As such, there's been a bit of playing, but no writing.

Let's redress the balance, shall we? This is the first of (hopefully) many updates that will outline exactly what I'm up to - what I'm playing, how I'm progressing.

After I had a blitz of game completion (Space Giraffe, E4, and Dig Dug all falling in quick succession) I thought it appropriate to start clearing my backlog. So I turned my attention to the very first Xbox 360 game I ever played, Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved. It's always annoyed me that I'm not better at this than I am - it's the type of twitch gaming I love, and the graphical aesthetic appeals to me no end. But I'll be buggered if I can consistently get reasonable scores; a mere 60 GS is all Geommie Wars has coughed up, with a high score around 570,000. The aim, then, is to practise until I can up the score, and get at least another Achievement before the end of the year; the "nine lives" Achievement looks like the target, since a first life of 450,000 would hit the target.

After not having played Geommie Wars for at least six months, first signs looked good - I seemed to see the playfield clearer than I ever had before, and somehow manage to zip in amongst the swarms of baddies in ways that genuinely excited me. Within a day or two, I'd bumped my high score to 620,000. A few more days yielded one extraordinary (for me) game that was constant panic, bumping the high up to 930,000. And yet, the best first life score remains tapped at about 350,000, and further progress has been limited - scores greater than half-a-million are becoming more common, but not frequent enough. Lots more practise required.

At the same time I nominated Geommie Wars, I also chose Lumines Live - I figured that concentrating on two such different games at once would provide sufficient variety. And Lumines is another of those games that I really want to be able to love - and, truth be told, I wasn't sure I had enjoyed my first excursions with the game at all. Something about the structure of the game - most likely the timeline - had rubbed me the wrong way, and the 50 GS I'd gleaned from the game seemed forced. I really didn't like it, yet felt like I should - bloody hell, I loved all the other games Miz had touched, why not this one?

No matter - I committed to improving my return of Achievements from Lumines. And a few days of practise yielded the remaining lower-tier Time Attack Achievements; another day or two of punishing the Base skins gained me a complete lap. 100 GS; half-way there. But the higher-tier Time Attack Achievements are renowned for being hellishly difficult, and I'm struggling to hit a half-million points for the last score-based Achievement. Not only that, in-game stats tell me that I've only unlocked 70% of the skins! This game will be the end of me :}

So - two games on the go. Both pretty tough, but that's OK.

And then a friend mentioned that he was selling Stranger's Wrath for the original Xbox. This had been on my "must play someday" list (yes - another list), so a quick visit to Paypal and it was on its way to me. Bloody hell, it's impressive. Really impressive. But somewhere along the way I forgot to pick up a rather important item from the shop... a shop that's no longer open. So I'm important-item-less. Granted, it's not critical, but I'm pottering around thinking life would be much easier with this item. Regardless - I'm loving this game, with it's mixture of gruff charm and freedom-of-movement, and looking forward to playing it at every opportunity.

So - that's three games on the go. Then another friend decides to put in an order at DVDCrave... "can I piggyback on that order?"

And suddenly I've got Zelda: Phantom Hourglass in my DS and - whaddayaknow - I'm away from home on work for a week.

What an ace game. Four solid nights of play in, and I'm loving it to bits. The problem is, I know there's more work-based travel in my future, so I'm trying (desperately) not to play it at every opportunity.

Anyway - I get home from that week away, and there's a shrink-wrapped copy of Super Mario Galaxy sitting there, waiting for me.

...

So - my plan of two-games-on-the-go has ballooned somewhat... there's now five. And I'm loving Every. Single. One. Of. Them.

Yes, even Lumines.

Hopefully, future posts will include details of progress in these five games... and others. There's untold delights in Killer 7 that I'm looking forward to over the Christmas break, a bit of Halo 3 with the lads, I just got a PS1 memory card allowing me to hammer N2O, and Psychonauts is available on Xbox Live now...

What a great time to be a gamer. What a shit time to be an O/C Gamer ;)

Posted by pete at 10:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Posted by pete at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Coincidences are weird, aren't they?

I've just finished getting my final Achievement for Dig Dug and, in between pumping my fist into the air in triumph, started drifting through the gaming-news-of-the-day.

I spot an article by fellow Aussie Luke Plunkett on Kotaku: I'm Free of my Achievement Complex. It seems that, due to a minor snafu with multiple accounts, he lost about 6,000 GS of Achievements.

Ouch. Double ouch, with a stabbing on top.

But, rather than being mad as hell (as I would have been in that position... after I dammed the river of tears, anyway), Plunkett saw it as a liberation, a chance to be rid of the Curse of unachieved Achievements. Which I can kind of appreciate: I'd trade a kidney - and probably a testicle - to have not had Astro Pop grace my Gamer Card.

Back to the coincidence - during my Space Giraffe scoring spree, I thought a quick blast of Dig Dug was a good palate-cleanser. Coincidentally enough, I'd only bought Dig Dug during another Giraffe break because (a) it was a mere 200 MS Points, and (2) I still harboured some guilt from having a dodgy copy on the C64 all those years ago. The night I bought it, a quick game or two gave a lazy 8 (of 12) Achievements - but a bit of research revealed that one of the remaining Achievements, "Dig", was... well, a bit of a bitch, frankly. Tales of woe exist everywhere - whinges about failures to unlock were countered with helpful tips and "works for me"-isms which were subsequently followed by more whinges and threats that Microsoft had better fix this game or else.

Anyway...

I finally returned to Dig Dug, and was adamant that my brand spanking new Hori EX2 Arcade Stick would provide oodles of assistance (as opposed to the deservedly-maligned 360 controller D-pad). An hour or two of frustration later (much musing over whether it was better to tackle Level 1 with two Pookas, or Level 2 with two Fygars), and the Achievement was mine. The remaining collect-em-up Achievements quickly followed, and Dig Dug was complete - ticked off the To-Do List, probably never to be played again.

But the fact remains that I had returned to it, and the only reason why was because of those outstanding Achievements. For the O/C Gamer, it makes it very easy to define the extent of the game: get the full allotment of GS, tick the game off - it's done. Which is, in a way, much easier to handle than something like "complete the game on every skill level, collecting every item, one-handed". Sometimes Achievements set the bar low - Dig Dug's item collection is a rudimentary "completion", at best, and EDF 2017's brace of tasks were just plain thoughtless. Sometimes Achievements are a bit silly - 1 point for Bullet Witch's Hell Mode? Nearly half of Gears of War's points coming from ranked online matches? People attempting to subvert ranked online games to speedify their GamerScore plumpification?

But many other cases provide lovingly selected, gameplay-extending ideas. The meta-game targets in Halo 3. Crackdown's grinningly loony little destructive side-quests. Even the Ridge Racer 6 No Crash Victory takes the original game and squeezes it into a new shape, yielding hours more enjoyment.

So - Achievements can be good, and they can be bad. I admit that, if a game is teetering on the edge of purchase, I'll consider at the perceived difficulty of the Achievements before making a decision. But could I turn my back - as Plunkett did - on my gameplay? Hell no. The O/C Gamer requires proof of Achievement, for better or worse - and those lovely little icons and common nomenclature between gamers really hits the spot.

About that coincidence... bugger it, it's in there somewhere. It made sense when I sketched this piece out :}

Posted by pete at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

My brother and I have little besides parents in common. One thing that we do share, however, is a love - well, perennial interest - in Simple Minds (the band, not dullards). Thus, when my brother rang me (on my mobile on my birthday at some silly hour during the Fringe) to let me know that Jim, Charlie and the boys were doing an Australian Tour… well, I was in. An overnighter in Melbourne was required, but no biggie.

We wind up getting a hotel berth a short stroll from the Palais in St Kilda, so we wandered down Ackland Street for quite possibly the dirtiest dirty-burger I've ever stuck in my mouth - seriously, it was filth, like charred falafel and sawdust with red gelatinous goop for "flavour". No matter; we pop into the Palais, grab a beer or three, and observe how the opening chords of the backup band caused absolutely no-one to rush to their seats.

We eventually amble to our seats (Row ZZ - fantastic, eh? It sounds more like a joke than an actual location - and there were still another half-dozen rows behind us) moments before the Minds take to the stage. And suddenly we're amidst a performance that, as much as it existed in the present, felt like it transported me to an earlier time with a younger me. Which is odd, because the average age of the audience is - guessing - late 30s to mid 40s. Oh shit - that very nearly includes me :}

Initially, I was a little concerned… they opened with AnonymousNewSongFromLatestAlbumThatNo-OneKnows. Eventually, though, I hear the brooding bassline and always-warbling lead guitar of Burchill in "Love Song", and I'm sold.

"Ghostdancing" has the crowd up and jumping. The mid-song interlude into "Gloria" is a treat, and only heightens the tension leading to the crescendous end of the song - which delivers gobs of glorious rock goodness.

It's scary when you realise that the punch of the song you're grooving to is "81, 82, 83, 84", the era for which the song proposes hope. That I felt disappointment - after the initial quirky delight of the difference - when the phrase is reduced to a meaningless "1, 2, 3, 4" is a genuine surprise.

Whilst I'll not say that this was the greatest show ever, the inclusion of "Love Song", "Ghost Dancing," and "Waterfront" made it more than worthwhile; and the only post-80's SM song I like, "She's A River", received a suitably rocking treatment. Lovely stuff; a bit of filler, but that's only to be expected.

So - what does this have to do with gaming?

The fact that this middle-aged crowd were on their feet - stomping, clapping, singing, wide-eyed with joy - looking at each other in recognition of a shared experience, a collective youth, led me to believe there's a deeper connection to the formative experiences.

Formative experiences - those occasions, when growing up, that shape your life. That mold your soon-to-be-adult thinking. The common childhood encounters that bind adults. The collective shared knowledge of a generation.

And maybe that's what we - as gamers - need. When will great games reach the same level of collective recognition as the great bands or concerts that create such indelible marks in our formative consciousness? When will they form a cogent part of the formative experience? I believe we're approaching such an era now; men in their mid-to-late twenties may have had a childhood featuring a NES or SMS; in ten years time, people of the same age have a pretty good chance of being raised in a PS2 household.

Of course, gaming has nowhere near the social acceptance or availability that music has; it's still a relatively niche passtime, a solitary hobby. But acceptance continues to grow - parents these days seem to see less evil in children plonked in front of the TV all day if they're being actively involved in an activity that fires cognitive neurons. Right or wrong, that's making gaming more mainstream.

Posted by pete at 03:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Yet another collection of worthless opinions from some guy you don't know.

Surprise Discovery of the Year: 2006 saw me acquire my first handheld gaming device since my good ol' Helmet (CN-07) Game And Watch… I picked up a Nintendo DS Lite. This really opened my eyes to the opportunities of handheld gaming, mainly because of the World Cup in Germany. I'd sit in front of the telly, "watching" every minute of every game (including Australia being robbed) and, during breaks or dull bits of play (hello, USA) I'd belt through some Project Rub or Sonic Rush.
However, late 2006 also saw the arrival of the Wii - and what a blast the last couple of weeks has been.
Wii Sports Tennis, Wii Zelda… it's been brilliant. Sure, my shoulder's stuffed now from that bloody Baseball, but it's just fantastic fun. And so the Surprise Discovery of 2006 Award goes to… Nintendo. For… well, everything. Hey look at me, I'm a born-again Ninty fanboy :)

Disappointment of the Year: Easy one, this. After the sheer bliss of Project Rub, I felt compelled to snaffle the sequel, Rub Rabbits. Big mistake; no real advance in gameplay, and several aspects broken. And, let's face it, Stampede on Hell Mode is just stupid. Booooooooooo.

Almost-but-not-quite Award: Ninety-Nine Nights. So much potential, and when the stars are correctly aligned the gameplay blissful. But the fact that it crashes more-than-occasionally, the completely half-arsed "story" (and I use that term very loosely), and the fact that there's no checkpoints or save opportunities in Missions that can last half-an-hour result in you screaming with rage at the 360 because an end-of-Mission boss mashed you to a pulp because your dry eyes blinked at the wrong time or maybe the 360 Blade-Of-Death appeared right after the DVD drive spun down whilst trying to load the "Mission Complete" screen… ahem. Bugspray and a bit of care in the concept would've seen N3 highly regarded; instead, it's a sorry tale of All That Could Have Been.

Press Conference of the Year: No-one could have guessed at the time that E3 2006 would be the last rendition of the Gamer's favourite meat-market; no doubt a squillion smaller dev studios heaved many a sigh of relief after the announcement, thanking their deities that yet another make-or-break deadline for their pride and joy had disappeared. Still, E3 went out with a trio of variable press conferences from the console manufacturers. Sony started the ball rolling with the epitome of marketing suicide - talking smack, followed by gob-smacking stupidity. "The next generation doesn't start until we say it does" blended right into "actually happened in actual ancient actually actual Japan" and, of course, the giant enemy crabs. Never has one hour of such head-up-arse arrogant dribble turned me against a company so completely. Compare and contrast, then, against the much shorter press gig that Nintendo put on - chock full of enthusiasm and, dare I say it, FUN and JOY and LOVE OF GAMING. So, who takes the award - the people who encouraged me to hate (and I do love a good hate-fest), or the people who projected love? Nintendo, hands down.

Saviour/Death of Gaming Award: I've professed my love for Xbox Live and its GamerPoints before, but in that missive - right at the end, for all two of you who bothered reading - I expressed concern for the cheating potential. Of course, human greed is a wonderfully predictable thing, and so the numbers of people cheating via gamesaves (or similar) has gone through the roof, and there's even "services" now who pledge to acquire GamerPoints on your Xbox Live account in exchange for cold hard cash. Delightful. And yet, Live still proffers plenty of moments from Gaming Heaven; wonderful demonstrations of international camaraderie and competition, and gentle encouraging GP goading. I guess the good comes with the bad.

Where-have-you-been-all-my-life Award: My Nintendo DS allowed me access to a game family that I had never previously tasted: I snaffled New Super Mario Brothers and indulged, for the first time, in the glorious 2D platforming antics that Mario (apparently) typifies. And NSMB would be a more-than-worthy winner of this Award - symbolising the gaping holes in my gaming upbringing - were it not for the stunning beauty of Ico. For which my words cannot… ummmm… express stuff. But it's a bloody brilliant game, I'll tell you that.

In Summary: 2006 was a great year to be a gamer here in Australia - even if we had to make do with late 360/DS Lite/Wii launches and no PS3 (guess what, Sony? The next gen has already come to Casa Moobaa, and the PS3 isn't part of it - oh boo hoo). The brickbats from this rag-tag bunch of awards went to Rub Rabbits, Ninety-Nine Nights, and Sony; bouquets were delivered unto Nintendo, Nintendo again, Xbox Live, Ico, Ridge Racer 6, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. I threw those two at the end in just because.

Anyway, what are you still doing reading this? It's 2007 - a whole new year - so get gaming!

Posted by pete at 05:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)