Hello again!<\/p>\n
It’s been a lazy month or so (alright then\u2026 five weeks) since my last post, and so much has happened in-between\u2026 let’s get recapping!<\/p>\n
The maelstrom of E3 hit and\u2026 well, colour me uninspired. Halo 4<\/em>‘s showing, whilst pretty, ensured that I would no longer venture into the world that Bungie built – they’ve got interesting plans for the multiplayer aspects, to be sure, with ongoing story-driven arcs and oodles of stats. But I struggled to (or am<\/em> struggling to) reconcile Reach<\/em>‘s stats, so that’s actually a turn-off for me\u2026 and why was Cortana showing up in Master Chief’s HUD? Criterion’s new Need For Speed<\/em> game looks to have all the addictive qualities of Burnout Paradise<\/em>, but\u2026 I’ve already got Burnout Paradise<\/em>. I’m not sure I need another one.<\/p>\n The biggest turn-off from E3, however, was the reaction of the crowds to the There were some lighter moments, too: Michael Pachter’s appearance on Giant Bomb’s podcast covering Day Zero of E3<\/a> had some brilliant moments, including analysis on Nintendo’s stock valuation, the admission of Assassin’s Creed<\/em> overload, and Pachter’s contrary view that attempts to balance the Watch Dogs<\/em> opinion. But the relatively poor showing of Nintendo, combined with ongoing concerns of asset generation cost (and the aforementioned torture porn response) left me feeling a bit despondent\u2026 though this apology from Kotaku for E3<\/a> (including the great line “Bad Art is not antimatter”, followed by Tycho’s “more art is always the answer”) leaves me with some hope.<\/p>\n Luckily, I’ve managed to stop worrying about the future of gaming by playing<\/em> heaps of games. My dedication to my WipEout HD<\/em> and F-Zero GX<\/em> spreadsheets (as previously documented<\/a>) lasted only a week or two – 8.18% and 5.06%, respectively – before getting replaced by a massive Skyward Sword<\/em> kick. Playing through the most recent Zelda on Hero Mode proved to be tricky early on (no hearts are spawned, and you suffer double damage) until I managed to find the first Heart Medal to redress the balance. I pushed through to the penultimate battle sequence, but there’s the small matter of earning the Hylian Shield that is stopping me from going any farther – and that shield is only obtainable via an eight-battle boss rush challenge, which is something I’m finding too daunting to attempt. I’ll wait until I grow a pair before returning to finish Hero Mode, then duck back for my final play through that glorious game.<\/p>\n A few weeks back I decided to buy a new Xbox 360 – my Premium launch model and my spare Arcade are still going strong (having felt the tender hands of Microsoft once each), but I wanted to get a new 360S (and, more importantly, a new hard drive) before making any significant new game purchases. It turned out that it was only about $10 more expensive to buy a 250GB Kinect bundle than an unbundled<\/em> 250GB model, so I grabbed that\u2026 and the pack-in games that came with it. A bit of furniture shuffling inside the Moobaarn produced a more Kinect-friendly space, and my short-lived assault on Kinect Adventures<\/em> netted me about half the Achievements trapped therein before I turned my back on it, adamant that I would return when I could coerce someone into playing co-op with me.<\/p>\n The other pack-in “bonus” was Carnival Games<\/em>, whose high TA-ratio – 2.92 overall – had me worried that it would be a List<\/a> lingerer. But after a week of jumping, twisting, and posing, I managed to fool the Kinect sensor enough of the time that it was completed\u2026 but it’s far from an easy game, with inconsistent movement responses and emphasis on luck<\/em>, rather than skill. Perseverance pays off, however.<\/p>\n More pestering from Lita ensured that I started playing Assassin’s Creed II<\/em> on The last game I’ve been playing recently is Child of Eden<\/em>. I managed to get a couple of Achievements in that, too (after the best part of a year’s break), and I’m actually starting to get a feel for the game now. Maybe it’s not as bad as I thought it was\u2026 first impressions<\/a>, eh?<\/p>\n But I only really started tackling Child of Eden<\/em> again as a reaction to my 2012 Gaming Resolutions<\/a>, which are worth addressing since we’re at the halfway point. So\u2026 how am I faring?<\/p>\n In 2012, I resolved\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026to leave 2011 with The List pared back to\u2026 64. Yep, the same target as two years ago. Soft, but \u2013 on previous efforts \u2013 pretty unlikely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The List<\/a> currently sits at 71. Might be tough going from here\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026to (still) keep on top of stuff obtained through the year. 50% is fine, since it means that some of the back catalogue is getting wrapped up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n So far, so good: so far I’ve bought thirteen new games, eight of which have already been completed. There’s only a couple of must-buys on the horizon (Fez<\/em>, Jet Set Radio<\/em>, and Dyad<\/em>), so I reckon I’ll manage alright with this one.<\/p>\n \u2026to knock Perfect Dark Zero, Skyward Sword, Uncharted 2, and Halo: Anniversary off The List.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Halo: Anniversary<\/em> has already been done, and significant work has been done on Skyward Sword<\/em> and Uncharted 2<\/em>. PDZ<\/em>, on the other hand\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026to beat Luxor 2\u2018s Normal skill level.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Who said what<\/em> now?<\/p>\n \u2026to make some inroads on both WipEout HD and F-Zero GX. Racing ahoy!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Well, I’ve made some pretty spreadsheets\u2026 and I started playing WipEout<\/em> properly\u2026 that counts, right?<\/p>\n \u2026to clear up some of the lingering 360 titles\u2026 fo\u2019 real this time. Ninety-Nine Nights, Rez, Shadow Complex.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I fired up Shadow Complex<\/em> once. Ummm\u2026 I had a few boozy levels of Rez<\/em>, too\u2026<\/p>\n \u2026to break at least 500 GS in Child of Eden.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Woohoo! I’m up to 380!<\/p>\n \u2026to play something new; something outside the stuff I know I like. To take a risk!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’m going to claim this one as “done” on the basis of Flower<\/em>, Journey<\/em>, and the Kinect rubbish.<\/p>\n So, there you go. In short, I’m hanging on my the skin of my teeth.<\/p>\n Less typing, more playing, methinks ;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hello again! It’s been a lazy month or so (alright then\u2026 five weeks) since my last post, and so much has happened in-between\u2026 let’s get recapping! The maelstrom of E3 hit and\u2026 well, colour me uninspired. Halo 4‘s showing, whilst pretty, ensured that I would no longer venture into the world that Bungie built – … Continue reading Mid-2012 Recap<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[139,138,117,127,137,125,116],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=842"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":846,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842\/revisions\/846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oc-gamer.moobaa.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}torture porn<\/del> demonstrations of titles like the Tomb Raider<\/em> reboot (and the subsequent she’s-being-raped-so-you-care-about-her idiocy) and The Last of Us<\/em>. Justifiable context or not, the shotgun-to-the-face closing of the Sony press conference demo was one of the more disgusting public displays by anyone in this industry I care about\u2026 and the fact that I had to explain to my nephew why<\/em> I thought it was wrong gives me reason to think that widespread sensory dulling continues unabated.<\/p>\nmy<\/del> our TA-Birthday, and the Achievements flowed thick and fast. The main game was wrapped up in about four days, with the terrible<\/em> DLC falling thereafter\u2026 and I’ve currently got a support ticket with Ubisoft to see whether I’ll ever be able to obtain the last 0.79% of the game that is trapped on their Uplay servers.<\/p>\n