Category: _General

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.

So – me and the Edge Tens have a spotty history that swings between “yay” and “meh”, with a few sidetrips to “wha?”

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.

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.

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 :)

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.

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…

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.

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.

The first point is spot-on, and the co-op campaign of Gears is truly a wonderful thing. The problem for people checking their GamerCards on a daily basis – like me – is that Gears‘ Achievements are mostly weighted to the Ranked online stuff – which is, frankly, rubbish (as I’ve noted before).

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.

Thanks for that – but ease-of-Achievements wasn’t the thing holding me back from Bioshock – it was the fact that I nearly shit myself playing the demo! I couldn’t subject myself to 20 hours of that! ;)

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!

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.

The answer is remarkably dull, I’m afraid; I normally work only four days a week (due to a miraculous agreement with my employer; it really is liberating, I recommend it to everyone), so I deem my fifth “workday” a gaming bonanza. In addition, I have no qualms whatsoever about living in an absolute pigsty, so 95% of all housework is ignored. Result: more time for satisfying my O/C Gaming habits.

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 :)

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.

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…

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

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…

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 :)

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…

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…