BrütalFrenzyMarioRocket

After a healthy dose of New Super Mario Brothers Wii earlier in the week, I admit to burning out on it a little; World 5 just ground me down, with the final Castle nabbing about 35 banked-up lives. I eventually pushed through, doubled back and went through half of World 4, but I’m a little weary of it at the moment. Still fun, but not compelling.

As previously noted, my previous best percentage-complete on the 360 (in terms of attained Achievement points) was just prior to the addition of all the extra Halo 3 Achievements, when I had a GamerScore of 15520 out of a possible 16900… 91.83%. That’s a nice goal to return to, but I’ve had those “discovered” games (from the recently re-discovered XBLA pack-in disc from my 360 Arcade purchase) just waiting to damage my lovely percentage. So this week I bit the bullet and fired up the last of them.

Boom Boom Rocket reminds me of Fantavision (which I’ve only played once, so please forgive any misconceptions there). It also reminds me of rhythm action games and, as such, I am completely at odds with it. Yes, I managed to claw half-a-dozen achievements out of it, but I doubt I’ll get many more, simply because I am utterly crap at it. Sigh; that’s a percentage-denter.

Feeding Frenzy, on the other hand, was a four-day doddle. Brute-forceable Achievments mixed with a curiously apologetic demeanour; the game actually says “sorry” to you every time you fail. Odd. Still, it was a straightforward – if unengaging – load of Achievements… a percentage booster.

So – with all games at least played (including PAC-MAN Championship Edition, Luxor 2, and Uno), that’s a total of 747 points out of 1000 from that re-discovered XBLA disc. Well below average, but with only Luxor 2 and Boom Boom Rocket to work with, unlikely to improve much.

After popping into Halo 3 for a quick bash on this weekend’s DEXP playlist (Living Dead – two of my remaining Halo 3 Achievements are zombie-related), I returned to Brütal Legend, engaging the Normal difficulty for the first time. It’s handy to have half-a-clue what’s going on, and the maps that I’m affording myself on subsequent playthroughs are divine. But, despite the fantastic storyline and voice-work (and incredibly detailed character models that I seem to have missed on my first playthrough), it’s feeling a bit like a slog… here’s hoping the following days make it feel a little easier, and a little more fun. And then I’ll be venturing online with it… oh dear :}

A game I totally suck at: Willpower

I had every intention of not buying any more games this year, quaking with both anticipation and fear of the upcoming onslaught of Must-Buy titles in the New Year (Bayonetta and No More Heroes: Desperate Struggle in January, No More Heroes: Heroes Paradise in February, and a whole heap I’ve temporarily forgotten about in the same way that Brütal Legend and Halo 3: ODST slipped my mind a few months back).

So when previews of New Super Mario Brothers Wii showed a huge multiplayer focus, and with rumours of it being dumbed down with the stupefying “Super Guide” playthrough mechanism, I figured it’d be pretty easy to skip over. To just forget about it. Sure, I’d probably buy it for my nephew at Christmas, but I could get away with not owning it myself.

And then the reviews started popping into my RSS reader. “Like two completely different games in single and multi,” they said. “A return to the hardcore,” spouted others. “Don’t be deceived – behind the cute graphics is a fiendishly difficult game,” said the straw that broke the camel’s back.

So I bought it. And it’s… nice. Fun. But not brilliant.

Surprisingly, I love – really love – the purported “dumbing down” of the game. There’s a stack of hint movies that can be unlocked in exchange for your Big Coins, with each movie being a run-through performed by some gaming ninja. Seriously – some of the “Super Skills” movies are amazing, putting every other speed run you’ve ever seen to shame. Other hint movies include sample 1 Up leeching runs, and some mighty helpful Big Coin guides. And the Super Guide – the big green action item that appears onscreen when you die more than eight times in a level, allowing you to trigger a run-through of the level by Luigi – is magic; in stark contrast to the sharp skills of the hint movies, the Super Guide movies are much more sedate and cautious, almost timid.

I’m finding NSMBWii to be exactly the right level of frustrating – it all looks doable onscreen, I can grok what’s required of me, and then it just requires a bit of coordination to get the actions lined up for the win. For the Big Coin. And blimey, some of those big coins are tough. Still, I’m halfway through both Worlds 3 & 5, having cleansed out World 1 (and leaving only a few coins behind in World 2). But, as I said, it’s not brilliant… yet.

The only other gaming of this week was Luxor 2 – up to Level 13-4 of Easy, and it’s feeling nigh-on impossible. That’s not brilliant at all. It’s a chore, really. Penance.

…oh, Just Cause 2. That’s another one for the New Year.

The one downer of the whole week – besides succumbing to a frankly embarrassingly minor assault to my willpower – was that NSMBWii had the good grace to update my Wii firmware, nixing my USB Loader hack. Bugger – back to the optical disc thing, then. Hopefully I can still get my region-free hacks to work, lest Madworld may be going even further off the backburner.

Hypocrite? Maybe!

This week has been all about two things. I’ll address the less wonderful one first.

Luxor 2. Or, as I like to childishly refer to it, Luxor Poo.

I don’t go for these Match-3 style games much; they’re generally not puzzley enough to be a decent puzzle game, and generally feel too chancey to make me feel like I’m progressing. Or getting anything “productive” done. And yes, I know my entire hobby is largely a massive time-sink and, had it not been for a midlife-crisis-esque plunge back into the gaming pool, I could be spending my evening hours swotting up on the next hot bit of ephemeral technology du jour, hopefully making myself ultra-employable. But I’ve already got a job that I can just about get my head around, so I’m not really sure it’s a great loss.

Ahem.

Given my self-imposed lot in life is to climb this mountain of games to a competent degree, I like to feel like there’s always some progression. It’s always nice to be able to measure things, create projections, determine that there is an end-point and that it will be met. But games that have chance as a central ingredient throw a spanner into the works there: sometimes Lady Luck will bless you with good fortune, enabling you to tear a hole in the outstanding progress; other times will leave you gnawing your own lip in frustration.

Last week I ranted about how much I hated the presence of chance in GTA: Chinatown Wars; as punishment (I guess… what else could it be?) I decided to celebrate the conclusion of that piece of shit game by starting another that I had every expectation of loathing: Luxor 2, a cross between Space Invaders and Zuma. And I fucking hate Zuma. But start it I did and, after a brief flurry of gettable Achievements, I settled into the groove of beating all 88 levels at each of three difficulties.

That’s a lot of levels. Even at one a night, that’s… bloody ages.

Early going was swift, hoofing through the levels with cack-handed button mashing. Five levels per weeknight felt doable. But then extra colours were introduced, my simplistic gameplan fell to pieces, and… Level 7-4 stopped me dead.

For three days.

And then I got into Lady Luck’s good books; she gave me a wink, lifted her skirt a little, and showed me a different approach. BAM – I’m through, but with gritted teeth. Where I was feeling – dare I say it – joy before, revelling in the steady progress, now most of my gameplay was taking place close to the failure point, the ominous “you’ve nearly fucked it” music creating apprehensive chants in my head. I’m constantly on edge, minutes feel like hours, and the only moments of pleasure are coming from the successful completion of a level. And, even better, when I score enough points to advance a rank. I’m currently on Easy Level 11-5, rank “Goods Counter”, but I admit to leaping up and in celebration when I attained “Donkey Washer”.

So – Luxor 2. Milking it for what I can get. Will never finish it on Hard, or even Normal. But I’ll keep on plugging on.

The other game that I’ll never finish is Bayonetta, the other focus of my gaming time this week. Extended play of the 360 demo leads me to believe that I don’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of beating this game on anything other than the easiest difficulty levels; I don’t have the background in DMC-ish action to be able to discern the action in a way that enables me to respond to it. It looks beautiful, of course, but the combo system has my thumb flailing (go on, close your eyes and imagine a flailing thumb… ewwwww) and, after walking through the level in Easy mode, I was summarily trounced on Normal. Still a Day One purchase for me through, especially with Australia getting a cool special edition :)

A couple more parting shots: my New Year’s Resolutions have been playing on my mind a lot lately. Mainly because I’m absolutely stuffed if I can meet them. I’ll still try and give ’em a shot though… if I can pull myself away from Luxor.

I also mentioned above that I chose Luxor 2 as punishment for having played GTA: CW; not strictly true. In all honesty, I looked at my completion percentage over on MyGamercard.net and saw that it was approaching my all-time high of 91.83% (which was 15520 of a possible 16900… that should tell you how long ago that occurred). Knowing that I had three unplayed games in the offing (Luxor 2, Boom Boom Rocket, and Feeding Frenzy), I decided to take the hit on my percentage early, so as to not set myself a tricky new goal. I’d rather tackle the old goal with all my penalties on the table. At the same time, I didn’t want to drop below 90%.

…

That’s how I tick. That’s a demonstration of the fucked up machinations of my mind. You can stop reading now ;)

Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars

So let’s cover it one more time… one last time. Just in case I haven’t made myself clear.

I hated Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.

I found it offensive, reprehensible, and an affront to the idea of gaming that I identify with. Despite being initially delighted by the scope of the game on offer – a massive open world propping up an adult plot – I was soon crestfallen. “Mature” seemed to be a synonym for “caustic swearing”. Gameplay seemed to be stricken with a severe case of DIAS Syndrome. Storylines became cheap excuses to have cardboard characters express themselves through profanity; success in side-missions relied heavily on luck, rather than skill.

Mature? Maybe a thirteen-year-old boy’s impression of maturity, but certainly not one I grok. If this is what constitutes the epitome of post-adolescent gaming, then I can happily live without it; I’d rather have Suda51’s over-the-top hallucinatory ejaculations, tongue planted firmly in cheek, than this gritty “realism”.

Great gameplay? I’d like to think that, at the start of any task, I’ve got the opportunity to successfully complete my objective; GTA: CW thinks otherwise, essentially deciding whether you can complete the task with the roll of a dice. And that, my friends, is not “great gameplay”.

Sure, it’s a technical masterpiece: Rockstar Leeds have managed to squeeze an entire city into a 128MB DS cartridge (cliché would have encouraged me to write “a living, breathing city”, but the anonymous nature of its inhabitants makes that statement very disingenuous). It’s just a massive shame they decided to make it a city that I didn’t want to visit, watching a bunch of arseholes be… ummm… arseholic. And I’ve got The Real World for that sort of thing, thankyouverymuch – except people are generally much nicer (with a wider vocabulary and rational sensibilities) out here.

This was my first venture into the Grand Theft Auto franchise – and will be my last. After 100.00% completing the story, Gold Medalling every side mission (85 Gold, 0 Silver, 0 Bronze), acquiring over 1000 packets of every type of drug, and banking over a million dollars, I’m putting this away for ever. Good riddance.

Pain in Chinatown

Brief, and to the point: 100.00% complete, 80 Gold, 4 Silver, and 1 Bronze… and a numb left thumb-tip. Just awaiting the Gods of Chance to award me four more Gold Medals, then a spot of skill to upgrade that Bronze, and then I’ll be rid of this game forever.

There’s a more substantive post in the pipeline, focussed (or not, as the mood takes me) on the cost of gaming. But… 80 Gold Medals got in the way ;)

ChinatownChampionship

After having a wussy little whine at my lack of skill with PAC-MAN Championship Edition last week, I had a breakthrough win mere minutes after posting, beating Challenge Mode 1 after the squillionth attempt. Surprisingly, Challenge Mode 2 fell shortly thereafter; pushing me well above the MGC averages and making me substantially happier.

Even more surprisingly, I managed to rattle off the remaining Achievements with barely a repeat attempt, closing the book on PAC-MAN CE in quick-fire fashion. And, in case I’ve not mentioned it before, it’s a lovely game: a thoroughly enjoyable re-imagining of a bona-fide gaming classic. And, thankfully, a testament to the adage “practise makes perfect.” If only that applied to Geometry Wars, too.

With PAC-MAN CE out of the way, and not feeling compelled to return to Brütal Legend just yet, my thoughts turned to the next game to tackle (conveniently forgetting all the other ongoing games I’ve got lined up on the coffee table). I thought about the recently discovered 360 games; sure, I could leap into Feeding Frenzy, reputed to be an easy – if grind-irific – 200 GS, but that would just make me obsess about nothing more than fish for a couple of days, and I could kinda do without that. Boom Boom Rocket? Nup, I’m really not in the mood to start learning a rhythm game. Hell, I even considered Luxor 2 for awhile, Zuma traits be damned. But in the end, my eyes drifted from my 360 to the little black box charging quietly next to it: my DSi. And GTA: Chinatown Wars.

This GTA has proven to be as problematic a purchase as, say, Gears of War or Metroid Prime 2. They’re all games that are critically – and widely – lauded, but somehow manage to leave me stone cold. Prime 2 shares thin (but classy) company as being one of the few games that have ever been banished from The Moobaarn (I gave it to a friend gratis and, now that he’s got a week off, I reckon it’s high time he finished it – right, DJ?) But GTA: CW holds pride-of-place in the aforementioned bunch, because it feels utterly loathsome, distinctly player-unfriendly. Spiteful, even.

Now, I’m all for games of skill; nothing thrills me more when, as with PAC-MAN CE above, a bit of practise yields progress. But GTA: CW seems to be completely against that idea, awarding Gold Medals to the recipients of chance. Metal for lucky breaks.

And that really, really annoys me.

A Gold Medal run on a Time Trial side mission could be thwarted at any stage by a random car drifting onto the road, obscuring your path. Normally, one would expect to be able to compensate for happenstance by using their skill, but GTA: CW‘s tolerances are so tight that any slight deviation will cost you the Medal. Rampages fare no better, with the ability to clock up big scores restricted by the random spawning of bad guys; if your killing spree chain gets broken, then you ain’t getting that Medal.

Thus, GTA: CW seems intent on making you repeat the same side missions over and over and over and over again, on the off chance that this time you’ll be smiled upon by the binary gods, this time you won’t make a trivial mistake… this time the stars will align. And that’d be fine… if the game was actually any fun to play.

But it’s not.

Not for me, anyway. I know there’s people out there who love their Rampage modes, and would happily play it ’til the sun comes up; but I’m not one of them. GTA is not my game; it’s just something that I want finished soon, so I can spring the little cartridge out of the DSi, pop it into its box, and bury it in the cupboard.

And maybe, for a minute or so, I’ll feel a happy glow from having conquered that piece of shit game.

But, even with my record currently at 90.69%, 36 Gold, 3 Silver, and 12 Bronze, there’s no happy glow now – just the promise of more painful repetition. Grrrrr.

BrütalChampionshipWars

I started this gaming week by forcing myself through some of GTA: Chinatown Wars – there’s plenty of side-missions yet to be done (I’m currently only 82% complete), and tons of Gold Medals to be acquired. Despite the fact that I can avoid the stupefying storyline, I still feel as though IQ points are shed for every moment that I play this game.

Which could explain why I’m so amazingly crap at PAC-MAN Championship Edition. It’s the only game that I’ve played where my accumulated gamerscore is less than the MyGamerCard.net average of all registered players; I view this as an abject failure, but nothing I attempt helps me play any better. Disappointing!

But the big news of the week was, of course, the release of Brütal Legend. As a fan of eighties metal and Tim Schafer, I was looking forward to this with great interest; and, thanks to a handy tip from Aussie site The Economical Gamer, I was holding my copy in my hot expectant hands within hours of the release date being broken. And so, on Tuesday night, I settled down for a good, solid dose of metal and gaming.

And it was goooood.

I’d avoided playing the demo released on Xbox Live, wanting to come into the game fresh; and the opening titles & menu screen were every bit as awesome as others had raved. The first level was great, a decent bit of hack-and-slash, with some wonderfully expressive character models on display. A few hand-holding tutorials, a bit of decent driving, a few enjoyable boss battles, and evidence of some massive OCD collection side-quests, and I’m hooked, lauding Brütal Legend‘s praises to all who’ll listen.

It wasn’t until the following evening that I happened upon the first RTS section of the game. And, ummmmm, I wasn’t really sure that I liked it. The second one was a little better, but something didn’t feel quite right. Now, I’m no fan of RTS games in general – only having tinkered with a couple vicariously – but I wasn’t sure whether I was enjoying myself during those sections… at all.

Now, I know that Schafer himself has said that it’s not an RTS game, and I suspect that the problem here is all mine; after all, I’m the type of guy who’ll tip-toe through an FPS with health constantly at maximum and all guns fully loaded. I hate the death of any of my avatars, which is why I’m probably having a tough time enjoying myself with those aspects of Brütal Legend. And that’s a massive shame, because there’s so much there to love: the music selection (all 107 songs) is phenomenal (except, maybe, for Def Leppard’s poppy Rock of Ages, which feels woefully out of place), the storytelling is Schafer-sublime, and the voice-cast is superb – OK, so maybe Lemmy is a little too laid-back, but Ozzy is perfect. Lovely little touches – the cymbal bushes, the post-game interactions, the multiple Double Fine intros – are there in abundance… but I can’t shake the memory that Psychonauts managed to deliver phenomenal production, a fabulous story, and a great game.

Still, I’ll soldier on with Brütal Legend – I’ve only 100%-ed Gentle at this stage – and, hopefully, I’ll discover some love for the RTS-ish bits.

Flu? HTFU!

Not much gaming to be had this week: a fun (but short) Halo 3 multiplayer Achievement Whoring session, the completion of the Xin missions in GTA: Chinatown Wars (during a trip to my parents place celebrating my Dad’s 80th birthday), and a painful first exposure to Scribblenauts via my nephew. Maybe it was his tinnitus-inducing “help”, but I don’t think I’ll be buying Scribblenauts anytime soon ever.

I spent most of the week sleeping, a happy escape from the ravages of the flu. But something caught my eye during my occasional visits to my computer: a video from the makers of Eve Online, CCP.

There’s sooooo much about that video that I love that I don’t know where to start… Glorious Production Values seems as good a place as any. Great instrumentation and lyrics. The perfect mix of people who’re taking their place in the video seriously, people who aren’t serious enough, and people who don’t have the faintest idea what’s going on. A Techno Viking reference. And, best of all, a company that isn’t afraid to tell it’s own customers to harden the fuck up.

Now, I don’t give a rat’s arse about Eve Online; the very premise of the game fills me with an uncomfortable mix of boredom and OCD dread. But this video makes me want to give money to CCP, because this is a company that I want to support; they make me feel like they know where their shit is at, and I love that.

And, if there’s any overseeing Internet deity, the phrase “WOOP WOOP it’s the sound of the Space Police” will replace all those fucking cat memes.

SkiWorldRevolution

Last week’s glut of new games provided a focus for this week’s play, with all my other running projects (Katamari Damacy, Tempest 2000) falling by the wayside.

We Ski was the big winner – it was an absolute delight to play, and I’m almost a little sad to have Completed it (160 stars, all animals found, all questions from The Question Guy answered). I even rode the chair lifts without skipping, panning around and checking out the surroundings in moments of enforced relaxation. It’s a beautiful looking game, the feeling of skiing has been absolutely nailed (though I suspect that a 1080-degree Rodeo is a little trickier to perform in real life), and none of the “missions” outstay their welcome. I cannot express how much this game surprised me; I was genuinely feeling a bit iffy about buying this, but it’s turned out to be a Wii highlight. Sure, there’s not a whole lot of content in there – after all, I knocked it all off within a distracted week – but it comes highly recommended. I’d even pick up the sequel if it didn’t include those bloody snowboarders. Snaffle it from Play-Asia (I used the US version on my homebrewed Wii).

A couple of minutes each night were taken up by further progression through GridRunner Revolution, which finally threw up a sizable challenge on Level 48 of the Phaal difficulty level (I’m still stuck on the final level, which goes on for bloody aeons and just grinds me down). Once that nut is cracked, though, there’s another ten levels of Vindaloo and twenty levels of Madras to return to (which should be a doddle, once Vindaloo is conquered), then the fifty levels of the wacky Thrusty Mode and another fifty Vindaloo-ish Endurance levels.

Yak wrote an interesting blog entry during the week addressing the naysayers of GRR – that is, people like me – who claimed it was too easy; and I can kinda understand his points. After all, it is fun to experiment within the spaces that GRR provides, creating beautiful patterns of bullets that swirl around the screen and (maybe, hopefully) wrap your ship in a protective cocoon of weaponry; but my OCD nature wants to push onwards, to achieve something, and that drags me out of the Pretty Zone.

Recognising that I don’t naturally want to dwell anymore has been a bit of a revelation, and provides a pretty decent explanation of my gaming inclinations of the last couple of years. As previously mentioned, I don’t consider myself to be highly skilled – competent, sure, but completely lacking in finesse. Ikaruga is a fine example; yes, it’s easy enough to bludgeon one’s way through the game (just grind twenty hours of playtime, unlock unlimited continues, Bob’s-your-Auntie’s-live-in-lover), but getting A-Rankings? That just reeks of skill and memorisation and hard work. Relentless grinding to level-up to a near-unbeatable position? That’s easy-peasy for me, and it seems to fire off all the right synapses to make it feel enjoyable.

So I reckon that’s why I’ve been leaning towards the soft-RPGs and easy-OCD games lately; they give me all the satisfaction of completing the game, whilst still providing something that feels like accomplishment. Sure, there’ll always be moments where I’ll want to switch off and just be a little less “active” in my pursuits – those times when I’d normally play a couple of levels of New Super Mario Brothers, or try a speed-run through JSRF or Halo‘s Library – and the next time I get in one of those headspaces, I’ll fire up GRR instead… maybe that’ll change my opinion completely.

But the thing is, I also fired up the PC version of Space Giraffe this week (just to… y’know… check that it worked). And bugger me if it’s not beautifully balanced and utterly entrancing – my quick “check” turned into thirty levels. As I’ve said before, I instantly fell in love with the Giraffe, but GRR wants me to work for it’s affection.

My final excursion this week was a brief sojourn into MadWorld. My opinion of it picked up a notch, despite the odd game-hanging bug, and I was actually enjoying myself in its blood-splattered monochrome world… until I hit a level with a one-hit-kill character in it. He hit me from out of nowhere, I died, I muttered “fuck this” and shut the Wii down.

And then I thought again about buying We Ski & Snowboard.

Bloody snowboarders.

Five New Games

The List took a real battering this week: five new games. Five. Well, six really, if you take into account the PC version of Space Giraffe that I snaffled… and, since Rez appears on The List three times for three different platforms, it seems only fair that the Giraffe gets another airing.

Oops.

That unplanned acquisition was, of course, due to the superlative double-bundle currently offered by Llamasoft to celebrate the release of GridRunner Revolution. I excitedly downloaded GRR on Friday night, a painful eight hours after its release (after an unexpected day at work), and… well, to say I was underwhelmed is a bit of an understatement. Is it pretty? Oh yes. Does it sound good? Hell yes – no-one does deep chest-thunking sound effects quite like Minter. But the problem was that there was no excitement in the gameplay; I was rarely troubled at all in the first fifty(!) levels I played. No pressure to perform, no seat-of-your-pants thrills. And that made me well and truly glum. After all, it was love-at-first-sight with Space Giraffe: I could tell straight away that she and I had a connection. GRR, on the other hand, was like the doting girlfriend with puppy-dog eyes, willing to conform to your every whim without offering anything in return. No challenge. No personality. No spark. And, dare I say it, a little boring.

Then I start on the third set of levels (the levels are arranged, in order of difficulty, into collections of Korma, Madras, Vindaloo, and Phaal)… and initially, apart from a bit of a speed bump, it seemed like more of the same. But after another twenty levels, the difficulty actually started going up a notch, and there was a bit of a fight going on. Unlocking the final difficulty level has further piqued interest, but my first (and only) bash on Phaal saw me pummel my way through just over half of the fifty levels.

GRR is most similar to GR++, returning to the fluid mouse control. But the SuperZapper smart-bomb – previously triggered by the mouse button – has disappeared, replaced instead by a rotate mechanic that allows you to send a stream of bullets in any direction you choose. The XY Zapper also seems to have been left out, but the new inclusions – a plethora of subtly different gridrunners, barriers that hem your bullets in and, most importantly, black holes and suns that can be used to bend your streams of bullets – are really neat gameplay mechanics.

But here’s the thing: when GR++ introduced the Sheepie Save (a technique where the player could resurrect their life if they could guide their falling carcass onto the sheepie bonus token), it felt astoundingly fresh. That simple mechanic, and the strategies that bloomed around it (do you take the sheepie for the power-up, or leave it as a safety net?), made GR++ a truly unique experience. GRR maintains the Sheepie Save and tries to improve upon it, allowing the player to continue killing adversaries in the hope of triggering a sheepie to Save them; but all this encouraged me to do was scrub the screen as fast as I could after hearing my death; if I managed to trigger another sheepie, then I was fine. If not… well, the levels don’t reset with death, so it’s a war of attrition.

This is awfully hard for me to write, really; I’m a big fan of Minter’s work, and there’s no denying his unique (and ungulated) take on videogaming. But after the well-weighted and sensual success of Space Giraffe I was expecting massive things from GridRunner Revolution, and… well, I don’t think it’s delivered. It’s not that it’s bad, just… it’s not great. Perfectly competent entertainment if you like bright flashy things and not much challenge.

Let’s put it this way: you really should go buy GR++ now. And as for GRR… well, it’s only US$20 (or US$25 with the superlative Space Giraffe), so you’d be mad not to pick up that double bundle – if only to experience the technicolour mind of Minter. After all, I rate Space Giraffe as one of the best shooters this decade, and GRR is awfully pretty.

Blimey! What a lot of words.

“But wait, Pete!” I hear no-one exclaim; “what about all those other games you picked up this week? Surely you can squeeze out a few words on them as well?”

Well, yes I can.

Monday saw the deliver of one of the Wii’s few M-rated games to my door: MadWorld. Previews videos of this game had me salivating in anticipation, with gloriously rendered black-and-white graphics violently splashed with blood in a Smash TV-esque gameshow of brutality. And it certainly delivers in that regard; despite the monochromatic colouring, the graphics are clean and crisp, and the audio is great. But even after just one level, it’s all feeling mighty samey and not all that inspiring, with woolly controls and a nagging feeling that it’s not quite baked. Luckily, it seems to be a short game, so hopefully I’ll be able to churn through it in quick order.

Tuesday, of course, saw the release of Halo 3: ODST. And let me be quite blunt here: I fucking love ODST. I love the storytelling, I love the snippets of action, I love the voice acting, and I love being back in the Halo universe. It really feels like a paean to all that makes Halo memorable; there’s Warthog runs, Scorpion assaults, Banshee raids, and wars of attrition, each a tiny little vignette in the ODST storyline, each an utterly fulfilling experience. And that’s just on Normal!

And then there’s Firefight. Now, I’ve not played Gears of War 2 or its Horde mode, so it may well be the case that Bungie have ripped Epic off mightily in terms of game style. But you know what? I don’t care, because Firefight is bloody amazing. Playing with three Melbourne mates one weeknight, we managed to hold out for five sets of pain, including one where I had to finish the set off solo, with no ammo of any kind, being chased by half-a-dozen Brutes wielding gravity hammers and fuel-rod guns, with the Black Eye skull enabled, dead team-mates watching remote to tell me when a hammer lunge was coming. Such tension I’ve not experienced since trying to no-collision Island Circle R :)

But the week’s not over yet! Also delivered was We Ski… and it’s bloody fantastic. Somehow this cutesy graphics engine, combined with some intuitive motion controls with the Wiimote & nunchuck, manages to create an absolutely convincing sensation of skiing. The first time I found an ice patch on the shady side of a mountain I panicked, flattening my skis in terror; the first time I hit the powder trail I yelped in delight, then started carving trails. It’s simple, it’s bound to be short, and I’m sure there’s some frustration in store – but I’m utterly chuffed that I took a chance and picked this up.

And that’s it! Hopefully this week will yield lots more Firefighting, and maybe a Legendary run… so much to do, so little time.

The Steely Resolve, The Lapse In Concentration, and The Terrifying Discovery

I often mention the psychological weight that my OCD heaps upon me, and I’ve been trying really hard in the last year to reduce that somewhat; frugality is utterly foreign to me, but it certainly has been fun trying to restrict my purchases somewhat. And that’s partially why I selected my most recent Gaming Resolutions; clearing the backlog, keeping the new stuff in check. So, with nigh-on three-quarters of the year gone, let’s check in to see how I’m doing with those resolutions, shall we?

…to Complete at least two Zelda games. I want to play through them all in release chronological order, and (as I indicated last week) I’m getting close to wrapping up a 100% run on Ocarina of Time. But then what – do I go on to Majora’s Mask (which I’ve never played) or follow-up with the Ocarina Master Quest? Decisions, decisions.

A robust start; not only have I knocked out Ocarina, but Master Quest, Majora’s Mask, and Wind Waker as well. “Comply and exceed,” as we say in the business.

…to Complete at least two PS2 games. This scares me a little, really – of the eight games there, three are rhythm action games (which I’m notoriously bad at), the Katamaris are O/C collection nightmares, and Bujingai is as hard as nails on the higher skill levels.

Oooooh. Ummmmm… not quite as successful here. I tried to hammer out N2O… couldn’t quite push through the skill barrier there, must return to that really. I’ve got one tricky task left in Katamari Damacy that seems to be dependent on luck more than anything, so hopefully that’ll eventually fall in my favour. But then what – We Love Katamari? The safety-net of Super Galdelic Hour?

…to Complete at least four(!) from the PC, Nuon, Dreamcast, and Jaguar groups. Holy shit!

Holy shit indeed. After a promising start – Full Throttle falling quickly way back in April – there’s been scant action since. The dream was to Complete all three renditions of Jet Set Radio on the Dreamcast, but I’ve since discovered that that task would actually require skill. Back to the Jaguar, then, and Tempest 2000, which continues to mock me. Fifteen years old, and so disrespectful to its owner. For shame.

…to keep on top of stuff obtained through the year. In 2008, I managed to Complete 11 of 18 new purchases – let’s aim for a similar target of 60%

This was looking pretty reasonable – I’d only acquired five new games this year, completing three of them… right on the money!

And so, three months out from the end of the year, I find myself in a slightly uncomfortable situation where I need to knock off a bunch of games without actually knowing whether I can conjure the skills required to do so. But that’s OK – there’s not much on the horizon, and I’m prepared to back myself in from here.

Of course, then the Australian dollar goes for a bit of a leap, and I find myself at Play-Asia buying Chrono Trigger DS, Madworld, and We Ski. And mere milliseconds after clicking the checkout button, I realise that there are a few games on the horizon after all… Halo 3 ODST. Brütal Legend. Gridrunner Revolution.

A momentary brain fart has ensured that The List is going to inflate quite a chunk by the end of this week.

But worse was yet to come.

One of my gaming rules-of-thumb over the past couple of years has been to try and Complete at least one game a month; with external forces taking their toll, I figured I was going to be struggling this September (especially after cleaning up Soul Bubbles and Sight Training in late August), but I recently had a rather frantic couple of days that saw me complete a game.

Sadly, it wasn’t a game on The List.

Yes, I managed to complete one of my real-life games: the acquisition of a new Moobaarn, a lovely apartment in the city that I’ll take ownership of in the next couple of weeks. The existing tenant still has another six months on the lease, but that hasn’t prevented me from starting to sift through my possessions, using the upcoming move as an opportunity to shed some excess stuff (fear not: I don’t get rid of games. Except for Half-Life: that was rubbish, and suffered from a massively gamebreaking bug on Windows XP. And Metroid Prime 2: Echoes; that was just plain awful).

But what I found in my burrowing… well, it was terrifying.

I found…

…forgotten games.

First there was a couple of Jaguar CD games, hidden (cunningly enough) in the JagCD box. Two of them. Then a cachet of PC games from years gone by – Quakes a-plenty, a Deus Ex and Soldier of Fortune, and the triggering of a memory that there may be a Thief II hiding somewhere. And then, worst of all, came the discovery of one of my biggest banes – the freebie. The pack-in disc. From the time when I frantically bought an Xbox 360 Arcade after my first RROD.

The Xbox Live Arcade Compilation Disc.

Five games.

And suddenly, the fanciful notion that I secretly carried – of me whittling The List down to forty by the time I hit that age – became completely confounding. It matters not that I jumped right in and knocked Uno off in a matter of hours today, because that compilation includes a rhythm-action game (Boom Boom Rocket) and a Zuma-wannabe (Luxor 2).

And that, quite frankly, has knocked a bit of wind out of my sails.

But then comes The Steely Resolve again… a biting of the bottom lip, and a determination to remain absolutely accountable for my choices. That, and the promise of more Halo hijinks later this week, followed by some nutty Minter goodness on Friday.

ChuChuBubblesTempestTraining

Hello again!

Took last week off because… well, not much happened, gaming-wise. I’ve been a bit more focussed on my other games – work (gasp – yes, I do have a day job) and house-hunting – to play much other than Tempest 2000 for the last fortnight. I’ve still not progressed past that bastard Level 64 yet, but the occasional practice seems to be improving me somewhat; Level 63 now has a five-to-one chance of being successfully completed, and I seem to be getting into the groove of the pulsar waves. Fingers crossed.

This weekend, though, I squeezed in a little extra gaming time. Friday saw me return to a purchase from earlier this year – Soul Bubbles on the DS. My first stint with this game saw me chew through the first brace of levels, proclaim it wonderful, then promptly ignore it. But Soul Bubbles‘ homecoming was… well, addictive. Sure, it’s not the longest game in my collection – I reckon it only took a total of fifteen hours to S-Rank all the levels, but I was absolutely hooked… to the point where I woke up at 5am, just to crank out a couple of S-Ranks, before dropping back to sleep, satisfied.

Clearly, I’m not above a bit of tawdry euphemism ;)

A dash of Sight Training between house inspections (I found some extra content in there, dammit), and a totally sweary-but-brilliant belated first bash at ChuChu Rocket! with a mate rounds out a lazy fortnight. Unfortunately, the Other Games will probably take priority for the near future, but I’ll crank out some gaming where I can.

A Big Whiny Bitchfest

This was a week where I wasted countless (or, more accurately, around a dozen) hours reading a lot of gaming-related forums – some oriented around the fans, some targeted to the industry, and some complete road-crash material.

It all started with a desire to clear up some old items in my RSS reader, some stale links. One pointed me in the direction of a forum meltdown triggered by (what the forum dwellers thought was) the “lack of research” (they thought was) evident in Retro Gamer‘s Metal Slug entry in their “Definitive” series. Now, I’ve encountered – or observed – author “Reverend” Stu Campbell’s work on other forums, and read some of his earlier work (all the way from his ST-era stuff to his superlative – though petulantly antagonistic – Space Giraffe review), so I’d know pretty much what to expect… he’s strongly opinionated, with the conviction to stand by his beliefs. I also used to read Retro Gamer pretty regularly, and found that its English roots were very evident, being constantly reminded of the glory days of Zzap!64 in tone and style.

However, there’s a bunch of people out there who aren’t familiar with the style of Retro Gamer… or Stu. And one of them created a monstrous list of why his article was lacking. Stu responded in his inimitable, aggressively uppity manner… and the following forty pages were, at times, really painful, combining the worst of fanboyisms and internet arguments. And yet I could not look away; it was true car-crash reading, branching into other forums and accompanied by utterly inane “expert” stupidity, supplemented by dubious “facts” being interpreted by those lacking the context and understanding to do so with any integrity. A real downer for the human race, there.

So I went looking for something a little more considered, a little more understanding. A little more highbrow. I thought I’d found it with a story quoting Dave Jones at Gamasutra, where he revealed that Crackdown only just broke even – and lamented the fact that, despite 1.5 million sales, there were about another 1 million secondhand sales. Now, Gamasutra is usually pretty solid in terms of the quality of user comments, but a brief perusal of IndustryGamers and Kotaku didn’t really lift my flagging spirits much.

Now, I don’t really expect anything different; most of these commenters are going to be in their late teens or early twenties, and experience has told me that their judgement is likely to be a little… ummm… ill considered. One-sided, if you will. And that’s OK: that’s usually just a lack of world experience. But I find it pretty ironic that a group of people who clearly don’t give a shit about the integrity of the written word are so eager to take everything so literally; puzzling logic leaps and assumptions abound. And the saddest thing is that the broad opinion seems to be that clearly RealTime Worlds were charging too much for Crackdown, or that their management and spending is clearly reckless. After all, 1.5 million sales should be plenty to keep the company rolling in coin, shouldn’t it?

Ummm… do the math. With current-gen games costing in the region of ten million dollars (Ghostbusters cost $12-15 million), and the expectation of sixty million dollar budgets for AAA titles in the next generation, isn’t it about time we started paying something a little more realistic for games? Complaining that Xbox Live’s Games On Demand service is pricing titles above what you can pay at retail isn’t really the point (though I find the murmurs of per-region pricing to be totally reprehensible), especially when – at almost the same time – Microsoft’s Indie Games initiative is actually making it harder for indies to make any money off the service (by reducing the maximum amount that can be charged for titles). The pressures of selling games at retail have generated a completely unrealistic expectation of cost in the gaming community, and no-one seems to be bothering to consider whether their actions are actually contributing towards a sustainable economy. After all, retail prices are driven by shelf-space and launch windows, with no opportunity for long-tail payoffs, and platforms like the iPhone are also creating downward pressure. After all, if the casual player gets the same game-time out of a $2 iPhone game as a $100 console title, where do you reckon their money is going to start going?

And that leaves us in a position where the only people left to buy The Big Games will be the hardcore, the same people who have been gaming all along. But costs are going up, and they want to pay less for more. So the pressure will be on to make every console title a guaranteed hit.

Do you see where this is going?

Ugh – I’m going to get depressed again.

As for gaming this week: T2K. The location of the final Item in Katamari Damacy (thanks to the fabulous Katamari on the Web forum). And a dozy drizzly hungover session with the original Halo, which – despite the obvious aging of its chunky models – still manages to feels absolutely delightful and perfectly weighted. And more Space Invaders Infinity Gene, accompanied by PomPom‘s Poppi on the iPhone… perfect ad-break-sized portable gaming.

A Moment Of Glumness…

Warning: this is very much a stream-of-consciousness post, likely to only carry any kind of significance to me. By all means, read on; I won’t be disappointed if you just shake your head sadly and unsubscribe ;)

But first, a side note: I’m not including iPhone/Touch games on The List… yet. I still regard them as distractions, rather than compulsions. But if you’ve got the technology – and pay attention here, because this is the best advice you’ll get from me all year – check out Space Invaders Infinity Gene. It’s absolutely batshit bonkers, and in a good way.

Only two games received any love this week: Katamari Damacy and Tempest 2000. And, in investing some time into them, I think I’ve learnt something about myself & my attitude towards games.

Katamari has been on the boil for about two weeks now, and – by all accounts – it’s progressing well. I’m missing just one Item (the Drainboard, from Dove Lake), so if anyone out there knows where it is – or even what it looks like – please please pretty please let me know… the 1437 other items really miss it. There’s a couple of other outstanding tasks – 75% runs on Gemini and Cancer, plus a 100% run through the final roll-up – but everything else is all done… even the Names collection.

Returning to Tempest 2000 for the first time in a couple of months reminded me just why I stopped playing it in the first place – from sheer frustration at lack of progress. Levels 63 and 64 still resolutely refuse to give me a morsel of compassion, though I seem to have at least upped my likelihood at completing Level 63 to about 5%. Yes, five percent – one attempt in twenty will see me complete the level. A sniff around YouTube yields video of someone breezing through 64, claiming that the two penultimate levels are indeed harder than 64; this leaves me scared.

Scared, because I can’t see daylight. I can’t see where the skills are going to come from to push through this barrier, to go on to (satisfactorily) complete the game; it already requires a perfect storm just to get me through one of the “easier” levels. Strangely enough, Katamari also inspired the same kind of response in me – I’ve scoured the specified levels for my missing Item to no avail, and really cannot see how I’m going to complete that game without assistance (and no, the Drainboard is not mentioned in any FAQs). It’s a feeling eerily reminiscent of the hunt for the final Orb in Crackdown, but at least I could devise a methodical, systematic approach to that problem; I’m feeling utterly lost with Katamari.

But I did have a great time with Katamari early on; I compiled a massive checklist of levels to beat, Cousins and Presents to find, Items to locate, then set myself a deadline and started working towards it. Of course, initial progress was easy – and immensely fulfilling – as the earliest tasks were cleaved off the list, and ETAs based on averages revised.

This may sound like utter lunacy – but this is how my brain works.

It’s not “oooh, this is fun, let’s play some more”; that would be fine and dandy, and these weekly entries would read like pretty much every other one-man gaming blog out there. No – instead, my brain constantly reminds me of little deadlines and tasks and expectations, all of them self-imposed and utterly compelling. A little compulsion telling me that I really should complete another game this month, whittle down The List a little, before subsequent retail therapy inflates said List.

Now, I can cope with all this… as long as all my collated tasks appear tangible, doable, within the realms of my ability. And I’ll happily recognise that, whilst I’ll never be a great gamer, I’m solidly competent, and there are some things that I feel I really should be capable of.

And Tempest 2000 is one of them; I’m convinced I should be able to conquer that, and maybe even make a dent in Beastly Mode (though that’s not a List-worthy requirement). So this feeling of frustration is really quite biting, and harkens back to an earlier post… which, having just re-read it, actually makes me feel much better.

Wow.

I read a few blogs where the author has stated that the reason for their blogging was to allow them to Google their own trials and tribulations in the future; it appears I’ve just benefitted from that, too. I’ve just re-located my own mental salvation. What the hell, it’s only the second day of the month – still 29 days left to complete something! – and there’s so much fun to be had. I’ll beat T2K eventually, and someone will point me in the direction of the Drainboard, and I’ll fluke the country roll-up in Katamari. And along the way, there’ll be Gridrunner Revolution and numerous other trinkets of loveliness that remind me of all the fun stuff this hobby provides.

Ah, much better.

That, my friends, was therapy in blog form.