That’s right, kids, Space Giraffe has been revised, remixed, and released on the PC. One of my favourite games from last year – and one of the most gloriously nutty shooters ever – has made it to a platform that should see it receive a deservedly larger audience.
Scoot on over to Llamasoft’s Space Giraffe page to buy (and try, if you’re feeling a little shy).
Aside from a brief reminiscient blast through Ninety-Nine Nights (to test out the NXE’s dump-to-HDD performance with that title), most of the week was taken up with – you guessed it – World of Goo. I’m having a blast hammering through those OCD ranks on my second profile; only eleven left now, but one of those is the deeply unfair Bulletin Board System. Still, this actually feels like a doable endeavour, so I hope to knock the Goo off The List before the New Year.
The weekend, however, was a different story. At the turning of the page on the calendar for the last four months, I decreed that That Month would hark the Completion of Mutant Storm Empire; all that remained were some very gettable co-op multiplayer Achievements. I had an accomplice who pledged to assist in the endeavour, but every time we made a serious attempt we’d encounter some type of glitch: players getting stuck on walls, cameras zooming off in the distance, and other happenstances that could be used as an excuse for our generally poor play. Given that he was in the UK, and I in Australia, I attributed such glitches (except for the poor play, of course) to network latencies, and decided last week to search for a partner who was a little more local.
I peeked on the Achieve360Points forum, but couldn’t find a partner-seeker who’d already been sated; the Xbox.com forums yielded one potential match who, when contacted, claimed to have never played the game. Odd that it was on his GamerCard, but who am I to stalk? Eventually, though, I found a chap in Wales who enthusiastically agreed to help out and, after two big sessions on the weekend, we managed to get the 10x Multiplier and Millionaire Twins Achievements… thus allowing me to cross Mutant Storm Empire off The List. Cheers Edd! :)
Once that was done, however, I ducked back to help another pal out in his quest for Achievements. Today’s target? The O/C Gamer’s GOTY 2007, Crackdown. And fuck me, it’s still absolutely brilliant. We both cackled with unbridled glee as we romped through the easiest skill level, engaging in massive amounts of mayhem as we went; my Mercenaries muscle memory only helped in that regard as I kept mashing the reload and switch-weapons buttons inappropriately, leading to room-filling explosions rather than the intended close-quarters gunfire. If anything, I left that joyous session nostalgic – pining for the first time I encountered that world, the almost motherly embrace I associate with my growth and progression through the game.
And then I wonder – has anything made me feel like that this year?
So I’m playing World Of Goo. As I mentioned earlier, I had 38 OCD ranks to acquire before I’d award myself Completion status. I’ve chewed through a bunch, whittling it down to 25, when I decide to give one of the later Level 4 stages a go. “MOM’s Computer” was its name, and it seemed fair game for an easy OCD ranking.
Unfortunately, it seems that there’s a teensy little bug with World Of Goo that prevents you from attaining OCD status on any but your first attempt.
Which is a bit of a bastard, really. I could start a new profile to ensure a clean sheets of OCDs, but that’s a whole ruck of additional effort… especially since I’d already managed a 9-second run on that evil prick “Hello, World” level.
So what do I do? Do I start the new profile, or carry on regardless?
…
I started the new profile.
Lordy! Posting to my own blog two days in a row! Who’d have thunk it.
But events warrant such outlandish action! For one thing, fire up your 360 and pop on over to Live Marketplace and download the latest Marble Blast Ultra map pack; it’s a mere 200 MS Points to buy, contains a bunch of new multiplayer maps (three of which are great, one is a shocker, and another scared me just to look at it). There’s another new Achievement wodged in there too, which is pretty easy to snaffle with a bit of online play. I really like this approach to MBU‘s DLC, and firing it up again today just demonstrated how lovely the gameplay is. Can’t wait for the next map pack.
After goading a mate at work into trying to pick my next Target Game from The List (go on, readers – what game do you think my focus should be on next?), I realised that I hadn’t updated it to contain World of Goo, purchased from the US Wii Shop via a bit of Homebrew Channel hackery. So I’ve rectified that omission and, inspired by typing the word “goo”, decided to fire it up again. And it’s still as brilliant as when I first laid eyes on it (then promptly ignored for a month).
The end of Level 3 is a real treat, right up there with the emotional brainfuckery of Braid – but without the headachey bits. And tonight I managed to finish the game – but I’ve still got 38 (fittingly-named) OCD ranks to snaffled before Completion. I’ll say it again – an absolutely fantastic game, well in contention for Game of the Year.
Speaking of which, at the moment my yearly highlights are Rez HD, Braid, No More Heroes, and World of Goo – with a bit of Burnout Paradise thrown in for good measure. What about you?
As November drew to a close, I painfully reminded myself that it’s been another month without any games crossed off The List. There was a patch earlier in the year where I had a good run – one game one month, a couple the next, always a little progress. But the last four months has seen no decrease at all, and – feeling a bit glum from my day job and in need of a little retail therapy – I decided to splurge on something that would ensure that November would be a winning month.
A cheat system for the DS: the CycloDS Evolution.
I’ve mentioned cheating before, and truth be told I only wanted this particular device for one game – The Rub Rabbits. The one remaining barrier to Completion in this game (as I’ve written before) is the horribly unfair Stampede (in Memories) – but the CycloDS, with its real-time save feature, offered a solution that I considered completely tenable. After all, I reasoned, if I merely create a fall-back save every time I successfully get past one of the dreaded heart-of-hearts… well, I’m still actually playing the game, aren’t I? I’m still actually performing the actions required to get the game done, right? Maybe not in the time-frame the creators had in mind, but still.
Now, I’ve got a couple of other flash-cart combos for my DS – an old M3 / Passcard combo (still incredibly useful for ripping my own ROMs and grabbing existing save-game information), and a relatively new R4 (an utterly lovely bit of kit and a real revelation after the rub-your-tummy-whilst-patting-your-head trickery of the M3). The CycloDS is very similar to the R4, in that it supports unpatched, raw ROMs – simplicity itself to use – as well as presenting a polished interface, and access to Action Replay-style cheat codes. The R4 is slightly nicer in that it pre-empts the DS’s normal boot sequence, saving you the hassle of actually booting the cart – but apart from that there’s little to separate the two cards.
…Except for the CycloDS’ real-time save feature. Once enabled, the rather contorted A+B+X+Y+L+R button combo interrupts the game, allowing you to save the current state of the game back to the flash-cart’s Micro-SD card – easily reloaded at a later date to enable you to pick up exactly where you left off. Thus, my task was simple: play The Rub Rabbits‘ shitty Stampede mini-game, save the state when I get over a tricky bit, reload if I fail, and just push on through to Completion. And it turned out exactly as planned, though for some bizarre reason I was able to complete the six heart-of-hearts in a total of seven attempts (but some other sequences caused a few problems). Still, twenty minutes later, the job was done.
I could cross The Rub Rabbits off The List.
…Except that something didn’t feel right (again). Could it be that the DS ROM’s save state was stuck on my Micro-SD card, rather than on The Rub Rabbits‘ cartridge? That’s not an issue – I could reverse-dump the save state back onto the cart no problems. Or could it be the fact that I was objecting to my own (subjective) cheatiness? Surely not – even back in the C64 days, before I started devoting time to coding assembly rather than gaming, I’d use my trusty Expert cartridge to do much the same thing as I was doing now. I still remember the utterly convincing joy I felt after slowly-but-surely conquering Uridium.
Clearly, that was not why I was feeling slightly icky.
…Except it was. And, I think, part of it was the ease at which I managed the task when all pressure was off; only one botched heart-of-heart! Now my mind’s playing tricks on me – why can’t I reproduce that quality of play in regular conditions? Maybe all that’s required is the ability to calm myself, pretend that there’s no pressure there. It’s all about control – mind games.
More games.
And suddenly I’m playing The Rub Rabbits again, original cartridge wodged in the DS, utterly convinced I can do this absolutely, unequivocally, one-hundred-percent legit. And failing miserably. Fuck knows what that scoreline looks like now – let’s just say something like 30-1 heart-of-hearts attempts have been unsuccessful.
And so, once again, my brain has conspired to prevent me from moving on, from crossing something off The List. November was yet another dry month.
(Luckily, though, December has already been covered – Mercenaries 2 has stepped up to fill in the void. More on that later…)
Stranger’s Wrath, another visitation into the Oddworld, is one of those anomalies in gaming that sadly transpire a little too often; despite being well received by critics and punters alike, precious few outside those that actually submitted their Metacritic reviews have ever heard of the game. And that’s a massive shame, because all those rave reviews are thoroughly deserved.
The player’s introduction to the game is a nice, gentle tutorial which still makes you feel like you’re involved in the action, and not just biding time until the game proper starts. The character of Stranger, a likable ornery bounty hunter who speaks more through gruff tone than words, uses the much-vaunted live ammo (critters collected from the environment) in both first- and third-person viewpoints. Progression is marked through the bountying of bosses, with a well pitched difficulty curve.
There’s not a whole lot of story behind the game, though the plot-twist about two-thirds of the way through is a corker. It’s at that point the game really opens up, too – whilst the perspective shifting boss rushes of the early game are satisfying enough (including some great on-rails shooting action, leaving the player prone in a rollicking mine cart), the end-game contains some glorious change-ups – there’s some sublime row-boat action, and a race-against-time that’s reminiscent of Halo‘s triumphant finale.
Everything about Stranger’s Wrath screams quality: visuals are almost without peer on the Xbox, there’s gorgeous voice acting and perfect mood-setting music, and the control of Stranger is perfect; he’s got a wonderful weight to him, and shaking off your damage to “recharge your shield” is a nice touch. The environments are also stunningly realised: it’s hard to think of a game with such a lavishly realised world that contains so much incidental stuff, so much detail that creates an utterly immersive environment. Trotting down to the waterfront in Mongo Valley for the first time yields a beautiful sight, all green foliage and blue skies reflecting off the river… it really made me ask myself why we needed a next generation at all.
In fact, there’s so much outside the linear “game” to see and do in Stranger’s Wrath that I played through it twice in close succession. I rubbernecked like a tourist, I herded the residents of Buzzarton into the sewers, I checked out the spaghetti-western inspired graphics filter, I went to key locations early to hear Stranger’s wry comments on what-was-to-come. But there came a point where the difficulty got to the stage where I wasn’t afforded my look-at-all-the-pretty-scenery-time; so out came the cheat codes (it was my second run through, so I didn’t feel too guilty about that).
And, whilst the cheat codes allowed me to explore the environments without fear of death, there’s one thing that they did not do – hinder the sheer fun provided by the game. Stranger’s Wrath encourages a sense of play that is rarely seen – far from holding your hand as you tackle a particularly tricky bounty mission, you’re left to flounder with little assistance. But this is nowhere near as frustrating as it may sound, such is the balance of the weaponry – there’s always an easier way to get the job done, a different tack that can be taken, more moolah to be earned. Replayability is assured, with the option to try and capture your bounties alive (rather than safely killing them from afar) or to leverage different weapons’ strengths.
If you hadn’t guessed yet, I loved Stranger’s Wrath. As mentioned before, it really makes me wonder why we needed the next-generation of gaming machines at all, and (along with Psychonauts) is an amazing example of why gameplay is king. It’s just a massive shame that it was missed by the vast majority.
The glasses are all wrong, and the hair’s a bit short, but the t-shirt is nearly a dead-ringer for my fave Young Gods shirt…
Back in May 2006, there was a little event called E3. It was a different gaming world back then: the Xbox 360 had been released, but the RRoD complaints hadn’t started flooding in; Sony’s diabolical press conference was brushed aside by the joyous Nintendo press gig. But Microsoft were the only company there that had next-gen hardware in consumer hands, and they were bigging it up.
To press home the advantage – preaching to the converted, sure – they released all the promo movies they’d collated and curated over Xbox Live Marketplace. For me, this was brilliant; I’d get up every morning, sometimes two or three hours earlier than normal, just to see what had been released overnight. Publisher movies, Microsoft compendiums, I downloaded it all, devoured it. For someone on the opposite side of the world to the action, it was a genuinely exciting time.
One of the movies that, for some bizarre reason, caught my eye was this one. Although I’d heard of Cavia, it seemed that the company was not seen in the most positive of lights; the buzz around Bullet Witch was also muted, but there was something about that trailer that had me convinced that the risk was worth taking. A middling GameTrailers review only further piqued my interest and, after a long and protracted online order / sorry-it’s-unavailable / but-you’ve-already-taken-my-money-and-it’s-available-across-the-road process, I was ready to dive headlong into the world of Alicia, the Bullet Witch.
The game starts with a ridiculous mess of a FMV – it’s all very pretty, but any sense of immersion is immediately arrested by the near-future timeline – the demon hordes are on their way next year, folks! And in just another three years, “2012 – Nations Dead” forecasts the poorly written, half-translated on-screen exposition. And yet, none of that matters the first time you take control of Alicia; in third-person mode, you can move slowly with weapon at the ready, run a little quicker at the expense of a re-arming period, and – using your broomstick-esque gun – mow down hordes of Geist.
You leap through the air with reckless abandon – and, since you’re unable to be shot whilst you’re leaping, you’ll be watching Alicia perform her acrobatic split-leg flips a fair bit. And – let’s be honest here – she looks pretty nice onscreen; yes, her voice acting is pretty average, but nowhere near as bad as that of the leader of the resistance. The AI of all characters would be generously defined as “dumber than dogshit” – your pals do a splendid job of getting in your line-of-fire, and the enemy is easy to manipulate.
Of course, after the delicious titular character, the first thing you notice is her gun… her Very Big Gun. A quick prod of the B button lets you flip between any of four different weapons, once you’ve acquired them via a simplistic RPG-lite levelling system. The initial machine gun is almost pea-shooter-esque, but the gattling gun – by far the most viciously effective weapon – is totally worth the upgrade effort, and almost necessary on later levels. Ammo’s not a problem – you simply reload when the clip is empty, depleting your magic meter temporarily. This – in theory – should encourage you to not waste your shots, since killing your enemy is the only way to replenish your magic meter; in practise, however, you have to be pretty bloody shit to be in a situation where you can’t reload, leading to a practically limitless flow of bullets.
The spells – responsible for the “Witch” part of Alicia’s moniker – are pretty hit-and-miss. These, too, deplete your magic-meter, and there’s only one really useful low-level spell – the ability to push objects around with a blast of telekinesis. Some of the spells are downright impractical – the Rose Spear, which launches a cluster of spears from the ground to perforate & trap enemies, would be useful if it covered an area bigger than a twenty-cent piece. But couple it with a flame-throwing powerup and you’ve got a time-wasting, inefficient and very pretty way to kill demons.
The Big Spells are awarded at fixed points in the linear progression of the game; and they, too, tend to be more trouble than they’re worth. In fact, I reckon casting the Meteor spell has actually killed me more often than it’s helped me, and the Tornado spell is impossible to direct, resulting in a massive chunk of magic being used up with a spluttering tornado scooting off into the distance, cannily dodging your foes. In fact, the only thing the Tornado murders is your framerate. Lightning is the big winner, and it had better be, too – it’s the only way to dispose of a number of the bosses you encounter in the game.
And, speaking of bosses, I just have to mention the (inexplicable) fish creature that you have to battle whilst standing on the wings of an airplane traveling at 30,000 feet. Go on, read that sentence again – it just doesn’t make sense, yet is spot-on-the-money in the context of the game. This boss battle was an utter shitpig – more luck than skill was required – and the few opportunities for skill were subject to the distraction of the sheer ludicrous nature of the scenario.
The final boss, too, was a bastard… sometimes seeing you invest a good 45 minutes of cautious shooting before being killed by a single errant stomp. Which is demoralising enough in itself – but when you’re trying to complete the game for the fifth time, on the highest skill level, for the reward of a single solitary GamerScore point, that instakill death is doubly galling. The post-game FMV, another piece of poorly-written exposition, just reminds you how crapulent the writing for Bullet Witch was: “Demon numbers diminishing. No sign of increase” proclaims the front-page headline of The National Times – “the world’s daily newspaper.” Then again, Nations did die off in 2012, so maybe that’s fair enough. “Tower of Pisa struck by lightning. Italy loses national treasure” screams another headline, supposed to inspire questions in my mind of what becomes of Alicia in the post-game; but by that time I’m just waiting for the credits to finish rolling.
Still, it’s not all bad; with the exception of the Big Spells, any spells or power-ups accrued throughout your game (points are gained on the basis of kills, elapsed time, and damage taken) carry over to subsequent games… Hell Mode isn’t so daunting with a Level 3 Gattling Gun. Achievements are reasonable – apart from that 1-point insult – and the game itself is pretty short: maybe only a dozen hours for your first play-through, and there’s plenty of shortcuts (and the benefit of the accruing power-ups) to ease you through the harder skill levels. And then there’s the DLC – each level has an alternate task for a mere 20 Microsoft Points apiece (ummm… no), and then there’s the downloadable costumes for sweet Alicia.
…well, given that they’re free, it’d be rude not to check them all out, wouldn’t it? Nothing pervy in that at all.
Let’s cut to the chase: the schoolgirl and secretary costumes are both worth the cost of the game. Delicious. In fact, they provided the visual highlights of my runs through the harder skill levels – with the somewhat dubious nature of the character physics prone to send limbs akimbo, it wasn’t too annoying to die.
No, wait. It was still annoying to die, despite any potential panty-peeking opportunities, because Bullet Witch suffers many of the worst traits of gaming: it’s unbalanced, unfair, unforgiving, and – worst of all – unfun.
And that’s the big shame of a game like Bullet Witch; it had so much potential, but pissed it all away with lousy writing and shallow gameplay. It just goes to show that two key ingredients – hot female protagonist, and massive guns – do not, by themselves, a tasty cake make.
A little bit of this…
eBay resurrects gaming goodness!
…leads to a lot of this:
Tempest 2000. Is there a finer game?
Besides that… Mercenaries 2. Still. 77% through the second of three play-throughs.
This week: more of the same, with a little DS goodness thrown in. That must mean there’s travel afoot…
So I’m still playing Mercenaries 2 a bit this moment, hammering my way through the game again using the “other two” characters. My OCD target for this game is to unlock all the unlockables (duh), fully explore the dialog trees – different for each of the characters – and check out all the FMVs in all scenarios, finishing up with three 100% character saves. Easy enough, I think – my first 100% play-through was about eighty(!) hours, but that included much faffing about capturing – rather than killing – key bad guys to garner a big fat 50-point Achievement.
This task is made particularly difficult by the fact that the enemy AI is so blinkered and trigger-happy that a careless assault can see enemy minions fill the very chap they’re supposed to be protecting – and who you want to claim alive – full of lead. Or explodey stuff.
Which is bad. And forces you to reload. And play that bit again. And, most likely, again.
Anyway, I was happy in that I’d performed that onerous task (there’s 50-ish of these High Value Targets to capture alive, rather than photograph dead) already, and subsequent playthroughs would be a doddle – I’d just airstrike them to oblivion, then stroll in and take a verifying photo when the area was scorched earth and bereft of life. But then I learned that the penultimate FMV is different depending on whether you’ve captured all the HVTs or not.
Shit. Shitting shit.
My estimate for completion for this game has just bumped out by another forty or fifty hours. And I have to chuck away a three-quarters complete playthrough with the American mercenary – by far the least fun of the three to play with. But such is life… *sigh*
Another 360-bound week has passed – I seem to have completely forgotten about Jet Set Radio for the moment (apart from the obvious comment in passing) – but at least I haven’t bought anything new. The release of Suda51’s Flower, Sun, and Rain is pretty much a must-buy, and I might as well snaffle Soul Bubbles while I’m at it. More DS goodness that, unfortunately, is going to push The List dangerously close to 70 – SEVENTY! – unfinished games.
I used to think that completing – that’s PeteComplete, of course – one game a month was a pretty reasonable goal. After all, my normal “working” week permits a lazy twenty-odd hours of gaming, so that’s eighty hours a month – surely enough for most games, save longer RPGs. But then there’s games that actually require skill and skill (in my case) requires practise… so what am I to do? Even at a game a month, there’s nearly six years worth of gaming on The List!
Case in point: two of the games I played this week I’ve had since the Australian launch of the Xbox 360 (March 23, 2006). Geometry Wars still kicks my arse and, despite my commitment to improve my skills through regular practise late last year, has remained obstinate in giving me a fair go. That’s what I reckon, anyway. Likewise, my skill level in Robotron hasn’t got much better in two-and-a-half years, although I did manage to score a surprise Achievement whilst searching for Ranked matches during the week – the lag associated with my adversary’s host across the Pacific allowed me to jerk my way to Wave 11. Up popped the Achievement, surprising me so much I died thrice in quick succession. Yes, I’ll blame the Achievement Toast… yes ;)
Finally, though, Mercenaries 2 continues to delight with its co-op multiplayer goodness. My co-op buddy in Perth joined me to tackle the PMC challenges (which must be literally impossible in single player mode) and we managed to unlock all the additional costumes for all three characters… Mattias’ suit is a chuckle, and Jennifer’s catsuit is delicious, but nothing – and I mean nothing – can top the Chicken Suit.
No, ma’am, I’m a chicken
Two men, firmly ensconced in middle age, separated by thousands of kilometres, controlling characters running around Venezuela in chicken suits, raining heavy ordinance all over the country and punching army chaps in the head. Seriously, if this is as good as it gets, then I’m pretty bloody happy with the state of gaming :)
I don’t know who was more surprised, really.
In yet another OC-unremarkable week, not much was achieved; Marble Blast Ultra received some DLC on Wednesday, luring me into playing it online for all of two matches to net the one new Achievement on offer… on The List and off again in the same day. Another look at Wii Fit ruptured any credibility in the product, as it awarded my creaking lardy body “Yoga Trainer” status on multiple mini-games. And something lured me back to Gears Of War: perhaps a curious mind that was wondering whether the online multiplayer was really that unpalatable. A whole bunch of matches for all of three kills with a bitchily uncommunicative crowd reminded me that yes, there are better things to be doing with my gaming time… and yet, those multiplayer Achievements still gnaw away at me, goading me with their “Locked” status.
Luckily, the week in gaming was saved by a chum wanting to play a bit of Mercenaries 2 co-op. Not being an Achievement Whore (nor afflicted by OCD), he was unphased by the prospect of killing HVTs (and hence missing out on the “Aces High” Achievement)… the resultant joy as the two of us teamed up for helicopter-hopping, tank-trashing, airstrike-addled mayhem was incalculable. It really, truly is a completely new game with a partner by your side – a noticeably easier game, yes, but staggeringly good fun.
Mind you, Mercenaries 2 did show itself to be horribly bug-ridden. Sound glitches galore, mysterious hangs, and instances where my co-op partner’s 360 and mine didn’t really sync, resulting in our view of proceedings being out-of-whack. And the “…And Justice For All” Achievement – effectively a subset of the aforementioned (and previously obtained) “Aces High” Achievement, refused to unlock until I re-completed the game while physically disconnected from Xbox LIVE. Ermmm… quite.
Still, Mercenaries 2 is fiendishly good fun – especially with that co-op player. Even better, an upcoming update is supposed to include models of Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. The idea of getting Obama to trigger a MOAB airstrike in the middle of the Caracas shanty-town has me cross-legged with giggling anticipation.
A quiet (gaming) week has drawn to a close; a week dominated by some drunken dating revelry and the looming spectre of Work. But, thanks to the resurrection of the Dreamcast, I managed to get some quality time where it matters – in front of the consoles :)
Jet Set Radio, of course, got the bulk of my attention this week. Managed to finish (not complete, List Watchers!) the game this evening, giving it a pretty naked game-time of five evenings and an afternoon – maybe ten hours? Which seems a little light, really – when I first played through (a long, long time ago) it felt like it was much longer – and much more difficult. But, with few lingering memories in place, I managed to cruise through the story mode & all the immediate challenges, just leaving the simple matter of getting Jet Rankings in all the levels to finish unlocking playable characters.
…oh wait, did I just say “simple”?
Hahahahahaaahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaa. Hahahaaa haaa haaaaaaa. Whee.
Jet Set Radio‘s Jet Rankings seem to be anything but simple. Sure, I managed to nail an Infinite Grind in Shibuya first go, netting a Jet Ranking in Technique there, but the Jet Crush races are just insanely difficult. Falling back to my fair Mew, I only just managed to snaffle a win in Kogane… and was presented with a lowly Turbo Ranking. Much work to be done, I fear.
…no, “fear” is the wrong word. I’m loving Jet Set Radio the second time around; it’s got a wonderful style, a good solid world, and isn’t the clunky game I first thought it was. And it’s got Mew.
*swoon*
The only other game played this week was the stand-alone release of Portal on XBLA. This is, surprisingly enough, the first time I’d played Portal – yes, I remain(ed) a virgin to the game which garnered approximately twelve billion Game-Of-The-Year salutations last year. Well, I downloaded the demo to pop my cherry and… it’s not bad. Not bad at all. The portal device has a wonderful satisfying *thunk* to it – bound to be even more impressive with a decent subwoofer – and the game plays rather spiffingly. I bailed out around Chamber 13, so I know better than to comment on the “story”, but I’m committed to picking up Portal: Still Alive… when something else has been knocked off the list.
Now, back to those Jet Rankings…
Woohoo!
A little bit of TLC, a pair of needle-nosed pliers, and advice from this page has led to my Dreamcast being resurrected. Which, in turn, has led to a spate of Jet Set Radio which, whilst still not as arresting as its older Future sibling, is proving to be a lot better than I remember.
I’ve just unlocked Mew, who annoyed me on first playthrough by being somewhat – but not exactly like her successor, Rhyth (who remains my favourite gaming heroine of all time). Obviously my resolve has weakened with age, because Mew has melted my dark and twisted heart, the little minx. Oh how I’ll enjoy the rest of this game (three times… PAL/US/JPN copies to play through!) because of her cute and beguiling “hi there!”
*swoon*
…and so another week skates by, with so many lofty plans (like finishing one of the four longer game musings I’m working on) drifting by the wayside. And what did I manage to do with my week?
Well, not a whole lot.
Truth be told, it was a relatively glum start to the week. Work is going pear-shaped, the ex moved out, and anything else that could go wrong, did. For example: with the extra room in the house, I decided to create a little retro gaming shrine with the spare TV. “Aha,” I thought with a desperate gleam in my eye, “an opportunity to knock some of the Jaguar games off The List.” Alas, my video cable for the Jag has suffered one bend too many, and the only replacement I could find on eBay is now en route from England at the lazy cost of AU$40. Useless Jaguar sitting forlornly by the TV, I seek another platform, and dig out my “useful” Dreamcast (I have two Dreamcasts; one that has the GD-ROM “tuned” for Rez – and plays nothing else – and the other that plays everything except Rez). All plugged in, I fire up Jet Set Radio, keen to give it a concentrated playthrough that I neglected to afford it a few years ago. All seems good, until… it suddenly reboots. And again. And again, at a completely different point in play. So I surmise that the power supply on the “good” DC is on the fritz; looks like a transplant is in order.
There was glum news in the gaming world, too – new gaming darling Little Big Planet got delayed due to Muslim pressures over some background music. Astro Tripper (which, from this video, looks like a HD & tuned-scoring version of Space Tripper) was announced for the PS3, which I fear means that PomPom have turned their backs on the 360 & XBLA. And, despite my giddy excitement the other day, we won’t see No More Heroes 2 until 2010.
But some good stuff did happen over the last seven days; a friend finally picked up Mercenaries 2, leading to many co-op hijinks (and marvelling at the poor voice acting. Again). He managed to snaffle 260 GS inside an hour, and I managed none – but that’s OK. There’s still a lazy 150 points in the wings there that we can work on later.
Scanning The List, I noticed that Duke Nukem remained relatively untouched – if only because I find it somewhat annoying to play, and my current save-point sees me spawning with a mere 4% health, little ammo, and even less of a chance of getting out of the corner I’m stuck in. So I decided, instead, to try and eke out some online ranked kills – after all, there’s achievements all the way up to 500 kills, and my OCD won’t let that go. And – surprise surprise – it’s really good fun. Getting an eight-player duke-match going on the Stadium map is an absolute blast, and there’s a few other maps that are nearly as good. Yes, there’s the lag that seems to affect every XBLA game, but – long story short – I scored 507 kills over the weekend, netting all the online achievements… and actually enjoying Duke Nukem in the process!
There was one more Good Thing for the week… and, as Good Things go, this has lots of sweet whipped cream and a cherry on top.
It’s fantastic.
Yes, we antipodeans (and Europeans, for that matter… let’s just say “non-North-Americans”) have to jump through some hoops to get it (install the Homebrew Channel, and then work through these instructions), but the effort is more than worth it. Or just buy it on the PC (but then you’ll miss out on the delightful Wii control). It’s got all the immediate impact and cleverness and greatness of Braid, but comes from a completely different angle, tongue firmly in cheek. There’s times where I’ve completed a level and jumped up clapping; it’s just an utterly joyous experience. And building a Goo Tower, complete with little cute little flag-carrying clouds that tell me that my tower is the tallest in Australia, is like a Goo-ey form of Achievements.
Seriously, just go and get it now.
