RocketChild LuxoRuga

Bugger.

That’s what I though to myself on Tuesday evening after scouring the PSN Store – to no avail – for Dyad. I should have read the fine-print on all the announcements – Dyad‘s July 17 release date was for North America only, with the EU release (which should result in an Australian release) still a couple of weeks away. Deflated, I had to make do with watching poor YouTube videos of other people’s first encounters with the game… but I soon realised I was hyping myself up too much.

Of course, this week’s Giant Bombcast contained a good deal of Dyad discussion which did little to temper my longing, but there was a quick remark in there that made me a little sad – apparently Dyad‘s creator, Shawn McGrath, has been trying to contact Jeff Minter to see what he thought of the game, but Jeff hadn’t responded to any of his messages. From the look of it, Dyad seems like it really could be Minter’s cup of tea, but I wonder whether it’s a cruel reminder of the failed Unity project…

The Bombcast also lead me to another podcast, too – the GameSpot GamePlay Spoilercast for Spec Ops: The Line. Now, I had absolutely zero interest in playing this game prior to hearing the Giant Bomb crew flubber about its narrative, but the Spoilercast – featuring the lead writer on The Line – was absolutely fascinating, making it sound like the story arcs are indeed worthy of investigation. But that interest is curtailed somewhat by the mention of a rather straightforward third-person shooter that sits atop the narrative, and the potentially jarring content within; maybe it’d be asking a bit much of myself to actually enjoy such an experience. In fact, I’m pretty sure that enjoyment would be out of the question, and that I’d be playing it to experience a confronting narrative experience… and I reckon I prefer that sort of thing in the cinema.

So, apart from talking myself out of buying one game – and not being able to buy another – it’s been a pretty solid week on the 360 for me. Plugging along with Luxor 2 (98 levels left!), snaffling another few Achievements in Kinect Adventures (whilst leaving the rest for a co-op session with my ex). I overcame my fear of the Passion Archive in Child of Eden to 100% it and, along with the last Archive, unlocked enough GamerScore to boost my tally on the game to 540 GS – and with that, another Resolution fell.

But, rather than moving on to the next Resolution, I started prodding one of my spreadsheets… and noticed that I’ve got a bit of a milestone coming up. In 222 GS time, I will hit a new personal best completion percentage for my Xbox Live profile – and that number is a pretty significant driving force for me. Now, Kinect Adventures has 350 GS up its sleeve, so I’m not really too concerned about that milestone… but, earlier this morning, I needed 40 GS to hit 96%, and 468 GS for 97%.

That 97% level is tickling my fancy a little, and it should be doable once Kinect Adventures is taken into account; but I thought it’d be nice to get that 96% mark out of the road today. So – back to Child of Eden I went, attempting to snaffle some Achievements for completing levels on the Hard difficulty level… before being rudely rebuffed. So I returned to a game I’d not touched in years – Boom Boom Rocket – and, with TA hints, a twenty-cent piece, and a lot of swearing, I managed to eke out two Achievements and 20 GS.

So… 20 to go. I search my pending Achievements again… oh alright, let’s give Ikaruga a bash again.

After a couple of hours it was becoming clear that I wasn’t really improving all that much – I need another 700,000 points to hit an A rank on the easiest level. But it’s still a bloody brilliant game – tight as a duck’s chuff, though. But it was a welcome distraction from settling down with the next thing on the Resolution list, which will probably be Perfect Dark Zero… again…